The library on the former grounds of the Highlander Folk Center, in which Rev. Martin Luther King once lectured, is one of few buildings remaining on the Grundy County site closed by the state in 1961. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

This much is not in dispute:?? In 1961, the state of Tennessee took 200 acres of land from Highlander Folk School on Monteagle Mountain in Grundy County. Took, as in confiscated on bogus charges of alcohol sales without a license.

But the real reason for the confiscation stemmed from fears of civil rights and union activism after two decades of training now-icons such as Rosa Parks and Diane Nash at Highlander.

This much is also not in dispute: Five plots of that now subdivided land are owned by a nonprofit called the Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT). The sale of those plots to Todd Mayo, the for-profit owner of The Caverns, a rural concert venue, is pending. And the current Highlander administration, which had its offer to buy the land rejected, is furious.

Everything else — what happened to TPT, whether they ever had plans to sell the land back to Highlander, what might happen to those plots now and the land next to them that TPT doesn’t own — well, the answers vary depending on whom you ask.

On the one hand, TPT preserved some historic buildings that might very well have been lost. On the other hand, the original (and some would say, still rightful) owner of those buildings has been shut out from determining what happens to them.

Still others question whether a group of white men are the right ones to tell the story of the storied civil rights training ground.

“It’s hard to understand what the motive would be for the Trust not to turn the land over to Highlander,” says Denis Marlowe, a longtime neighbor whose mother worked at Highlander before the state raid. “I can see it only one or two ways. Either you’re getting a chance to make some money in this situation, or you don’t agree with what Highlander might do with it.”

Backed by Eleanor Roosevelt, training civil rights leaders

Over three decades, the tiny Highlander Folk School had a huge, outsized impact on both Tennessee and American history. In 1932, Myles Horton, Don West and James Dombrowski launched the Highlander Folk School on land donated by Lillian Wyckoff Johnson, a progressive educator. Johnson had built and run a model rural school and community center named Kindred Company (KinCo) since 1915 and wanted others to continue her work after retirement.

Attempts to organize local workers quickly drew the ire of businessmen, both in Grundy County and across Tennessee. Although then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had endorsed the school, by 1941 the FBI had launched its first investigation into Highlander for alleged communist activities, surveillance that would continue for over two decades.

By the 1950s, Highlander had pivoted from labor to civil rights and became an instrumental part of the movement to fight segregation. Workshops led by activists Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins and Bernice Robinson taught Black citizens their rights, while other workshops taught white and Black adults together strategies to desegregate schools and businesses. (Parks famously attended a Highlander workshop four months before refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.)

Martin Luther King Jr. visited in 1957, speaking in the library. Horton’s wife Zliphia taught “We Shall Overcome” to Pete Seeger during a visit, who made it part of his repertoire, leading to its adoption as the unofficial civil rights anthem.

‘A story that hasn’t been told’

In 2013, in a splashy story in The Tennessean, historian David Currey announced big plans: The Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT), of which he was then board chair, planned to buy 13.5 acres of the original 200-acre Highlander site with a $1 million national campaign.

“Trying to get our hands on this piece of property allows us to tell that story again in the context of this rural setting,” Currey told the paper at the time. “This place has the potential to tell a story that hasn’t been told.”

A national campaign never really happened, but local donors stepped up and helped TPT buy three parcels on Old Highlander Road in May 2014. One parcel included what was left of the historic one-room library. In 2015, TPT purchased another parcel, followed by a fifth parcel in 2019 — ultimately around 8.5 acres of land with three houses in addition to the library.

Two of the houses have been rentals for the past 10 years. The third house, a historic home used by Highlander, has been left empty. It has visible mold and other exterior damage — rotting floorboards on the porch, a gutter dangling, overgrown shrubbery trying to force its way inside.

Despite some renovations, the one-room library sits empty, too, paint already peeling off the cement blocks. That’s why the organization needs to sell now, says Phil Thomason, TPT board chair, who says the organization never intended to keep the property.

“Our intent when we purchased it in 2014 was to restore the building back to its original design listed in the National Register of Historic Places and then sell it to a person, a benefactor, or an entity that we felt would be a really good steward of the property,” says Thomason.

That steward, however, won’t just be Todd Mayo. It will also be Currey, via a separate nonprofit called Kindred Cooperative in a nod to the original land owner. Last summer, months before Mayo put an offer on the land, Currey’s TPT entered into a 99-year lease of the Highlander property with Kindred for a nominal annual rent. (Thomason says it’s “something like” $1 per year.)

Mayo says he was intrigued by the project when Currey approached him.

“David communicated to me that he borrowed money to save this [property] and put it in a trust through TPT, but that … it needed to be sold and put into his nonprofit to carry on doing things there,” Mayo says. “I said, ‘Man, I’d love to help’.”

The TPT board voted to approve the sale for $600,000 in December 2023. Highlander put forth a competing offer of $800,000 cash in June, but the board voted against it.

“The relationship that we had with Highlander was severed a couple of years ago by them … and they disparaged and had unkind words for my organization,” Thomason says. “[Before 2024] we always had the door open to them for an offer, but we never received anything in writing …. [This summer] as we looked at the offer that Highlander presented, the timeline and other considerations just made it imperative that we move forward with Todd’s offer.”

Per state law, the Tennessee attorney general’s office must approve any sale by a nonprofit of substantially all its assets to another entity. That review is currently underway, and if the AG’s office approves the sale, which Thomason seems confident will happen, Mayo will own the land by the end of the year.

The role of race in historic preservation

Ted Debro, a Black Birmingham businessman, worked with Currey to create an experience room in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, examining the aftermath of the 1963 bombings that killed four Black girls.

“We were very pleased with the work that he did, and I found him to be a very open and caring individual and one who really understood the story and how to pull that together,” Debro says. “I didn’t find him to have a prejudice or a racist thought in his body.”

But several people, including Highlander’s current co-executive director, Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele, raised questions about whether an older white man is the right person to tell Highlander’s story, given its storied history in the Civil Rights Movement.

“As another white person, I’ve grown to understand that we’re all in recovery from the deepest, entrenched pools of white supremacy that we grew up in,” said Maxfield-Steele. “But the deals that he’s been willing to seemingly make without our consent and without our blessing and without transparency — that’s the issue. And some people do call that white supremacist business practice.”

This attitude is what enrages Currey.

“That’s what [Highlander staff] use when they don’t get what they want — if you don’t agree with them, then everybody’s a racist,” Currey says. “That’s not the case. I do a lot of work with a lot of African American communities around the South. Do you think if I was a racist they would want to do business with me?”

A simmering fight for years

This anger — of Currey and Thomason toward Highlander, of Highlander toward the TPT — first came to a head in 2022, but it had been simmering for years.

Highlander didn’t stop training activists when the center was forced off Monteagle. Now called the Highlander Research and Education Center, it’s been located in New Market, Tennessee, since 1971, after 10 years in Knoxville. The organization has continued to train grassroots organizers and work for social and economic justice, and if it ever ended up with the original land, they say that goal wouldn’t change. But Highlander now has resources they didn’t have in the 1950s — over 50 employees and an annual operating budget of around $9 million.

According to Maxfield-Steele, Highlander has been interested in reacquiring the site and has talked to Currey and TPT members multiple times over the past decade about making it happen.

“In 2014, what we said was that we can’t afford this now, but we believe this project is valuable, and our story is one that should be told by us,” says Maxfield-Steele, explaining that Highlander was in the middle of a capital campaign at the time and couldn’t afford any additional cost outlays. “That was not something that it seemed that they were interested in pursuing.”

Between 2014 and 2019, Highlander had occasional discussions with Currey about the site’s direction but never received any offers in writing. In 2019, Howell E. Adams Jr., a donor who helped TPT purchase the parcels, told Highlander about the Kindred proposal. Maxfield-Steele thought parts of it were ludicrous — both “historic Highlander” and the current iteration of the nonprofit have long worked to “help rural people” — but he agreed to work on a plan.

But after emails back and forth, Maxfield-Steele says they couldn’t get a commitment from Currey about what would happen with the land. The pandemic hit, and things quieted down until 2022, when TPT submitted an application to place the library building on the National Register of Historic Places without notifying Highlander.

“There were citations that were wrong,” Maxfield-Steele says. “And we had never given any legal permission to TPT to submit anything.”

The dispute made the news, but behind the scenes, Highlander made an offer to buy the land.

“We said, we could cut you a check today,” Maxfield-Steele says. “And we offered to compensate [Currey] for his time in 2022.”

Thomason says TPT never received an offer.

“The fact that they objected to [the Register nomination] just told my board that they were not serious and would never provide an offer,” Thomason says. “Were there some minor inaccuracies? That’s correct. And those were corrected.”

Since then, the two parties have not talked until Highlander learned this spring that Mayo had made an offer for the land. Staff drafted a counter-proposal and attached letters of support from prominent historians, activists and Grundy County neighbors, including Tennessee State Historian Carroll Van West. They also included information about partnering with MASS Design Group, the architectural firm that designed the National Memorial for Peace and Justice honoring victims of lynching in Montgomery, Alabama.

Highlander provided financial documents demonstrating that paying $800,000 cash for the site — again, $200,000 more than Mayo and much more than TPT originally paid for the land — was feasible. The board still voted against the plan.

“On paper, it looks weird that they would turn down a significantly higher dollar amount, but it also looks bad that they would reject an 87-page document that included Septima Clark’s family, MASS Design, Brent Leggs of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Black Tennessee historians, and reputable folks from the region and outside the region,” Maxfield-Steele says.

Learotha Williams, a Tennessee State University professor and historian, was one of the supporters who submitted a letter, and he sees racism at play, whether intentional or not.

“The preservation space that we work in is largely dominated by white males who have access to all of the properties, all of the mechanisms for preserving stuff, determining what was going to be preserved, how it was going to be preserved — in other words, who could tell the stories,” Dr. Williams says. “I can see the shock and anger emerging out of [the Register dispute], but nonetheless, this act is an act to punish Highlander, the same way that the sheriff said, ‘We’re going to punish Highlander by not allowing them into this site.’

“I don’t see much difference between the two,” Williams says. “You don’t want them there, so we slap a padlock on it in the 1960s. You don’t want them back at the site now because they called you out for some nonsense, so we don’t wanna sell it to you no matter how much money you got.”

Tempers are unlikely to calm anytime soon. Currey expressed repeated outrage over being perceived as elitist and not knowing what’s best for the land. Meanwhile, Highlander did not know that TPT had entered into the 99-year lease months prior to Mayo’s offer until told by this reporter, and now feels even more betrayed.

“That TPT invited us to make an offer without disclosing a century-long lease which essentially voids ownership is deeply deceptive and only confirms what we feared all along — this was never a genuine invitation,” says Evelyn Lynn, special projects organizer at Highlander.

Thomason, Currey and one member who spoke on background were the only TPT board members who agreed to talk. None of the other eight current members, nor several past members, returned calls or messages.

Potential problems with Kindred and the appearance of a sweetheart deal

There are multiple problems with Kindred potentially running the site, at least as the nonprofit currently exists. The first appears to be a conflict of interest: Not only has Currey been an off-and-on member of the TPT board since 2010, but he also partners with Thomason professionally via his historic preservation firm, Thomason & Associates. The firm’s website states that Currey’s company, Encore Interpretive Design, has provided “planning and interpretation services” for multiple projects.

And Currey is still intimately involved in TPT. Since the 2017 reporting year, he has filed every annual report with the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office and since the 2018 reporting year, his home address has been listed as TPT’s mailing and principal office address.

“It is [my address] because I filed their annual report for them, because I used to be on the board,” Currey says.

Currey’s home address is also listed on all of Kindred’s annual reports.

Both federal and state law say conflicts of interest should be avoided, but they are not technically prohibited.

“When an organization makes a decision that is clouded by conflict, there’s a reasonable concern that that decision was not made in the best interest of the general public,” says Eric Franklin Amarante, a professor and expert in nonprofit law at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who has consulted with Highlander. “If someone is still somewhat involved or maybe even intimately involved in the organization, but they don’t maintain the title, that’s still a concern.”

Then, there are questions about the nonprofit status of TPT and Kindred. Currey says he created Kindred to raise funds because TPT lost its nonprofit status during the COVID era.

“(TPT) didn’t file some tax returns, and their board chair passed away from cancer — I was not on the board at that time — so we created Kindred so that we could finish the [library renovation], says Currey.”

But his timeline is a little off. TPT did have its 501(c)(3) status revoked by the IRS in 2020 for failure to file an annual report for three years in a row, and it has not regained it. However, Currey filed to incorporate Kindred in 2017, and in July 2019, he announced that TPT planned to turn the site over to Kindred to manage.

In 2021, the IRS granted Kindred tax exempt status, but the nonprofit appears to have not been in compliance with state or federal law since 2017. According to the IRS, Kindred has yet to file the required Form 990 annual report for any year, possibly bringing it to the verge of also possibly having that status revoked. It also has not had a board of three people in place, as required both by state law and its own charter.

In annual reports filed with the state, Currey is listed as both the president and secretary of Kindred for 2017 and 2018. From 2019 through 2023, Nashville architect Brian Tibbs is listed as the board secretary. In a phone call, Currey said Tibbs is still on the board. Tibbs, however, says, “I haven’t had any involvement with Kindred.”

Thomason said he was unaware of Currey’s lapses and blamed it on his lack of time.

However, Amarante says none of this looks good.

“If I were counseling the client, I would say, ‘This is a big transaction, basically all of your assets.’ And I would want to make sure that the entire transaction was clean of any self-interest,” Amarante says. “I’ve seen conflict-of-interest policies where the relationship described would not be technically considered a conflict, but if I were working at the IRS or state AG’s office and I were reviewing it, I’d be like, ‘This just looks like a sweetheart deal.’”

The form required by the AG’s office to approve the sale requires a nonprofit to “provide sufficient documents to identify any possible conflict of interest, self-interest, or self-dealing of any board member, officer, or director in connection with the Transaction.”

The future of Highlander

Whether Kindred, Mayo or Highlander end up controlling the lots, one thing seems sure: It will likely take significantly more money and additional land purchases to create a destination landmark that draws tourists from outside the state.

Mayo says his current vision isn’t to change much: Have elementary school children occasionally come by for a field trip, but otherwise keep it a quiet residential street where everyone minds their own business. The sale includes a preservation easement, which limits what can be built on the property.

“I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that,” Mayo says when asked if additional purchases could follow in the years to come. “You’d have to look at it relative to the cost and the benefits. … I plan on keeping everything the way it is for right now.”

Mayo says that he would like to restore the dilapidated home if it’s financially feasible. He may look into buying the house just south of the library, which will likely be on the market next year. He also plans to let the tenants in the other houses stay, at least for now.

Although he hopes Highlander ultimately gets their land back, Marlowe has a pragmatic take.

“This whole thing has been almost like a fantasy, as far as having the property saved and preserved,” Marlowe says. “If we’ve learned anything in the last 70 years of fighting these fights it’s just the fact that you’re there fighting doesn’t necessarily mean that the earth’s going to be shook up and changed any time soon. What’s important is to not lose sight that they were fighting.”

Lynn puts it more succinctly.“David Currey won’t be here in 99 years,” Lynn says. “But the Highlander Center will.

This story is republished from the Tennessee Lookout, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Himlerville, circa 1920, was the coal camp for the Himler Coal company, a cooperatively owned mining operation in Martin County. Many of Himlerville’s original buildings still stand today. (George Gunnoe Papers, Marshall University)

For over 100 years, Himler House stood on a hill overlooking Beauty, formerly Himlerville, in Martin County. Once the site of grand Christmas parties and banquets, the house was eventually abandoned and fell to ruins.

But few of the teens, vandals, and ghost hunters who frequented the abandoned mansion knew that it had been the center of a unique and radical experiment in Appalachian history: a cooperatively owned coal mine.

The Himler Coal Company, founded in 1918, was owned and operated by a group of predominantly Hungarian miners. The founder of the company was Martin Himler, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who had arrived in New York in 1907 with 13 cents in his pocket.

Over the course of his life Himler mined coal, published a popular Hungarian-language newspaper, owned a series of businesses, and worked for the Office of Strategic Services arresting and interrogating Nazis in post-war Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2021.

Himler’s house in Beauty, Kentucky, was disassembled in 2022 because it was structurally unsafe. But the house is at the center of the Martin County Historical Society’s efforts to preserve Martin Himler’s legacy and revitalize the town of Beauty in the process.

Cathy Corbin is the director of the Himler Project, a group made up of a mix of local government, civic and educational institutions. The group formed in 2014 after the Himler family brought a manuscript of Martin’s unpublished autobiography to the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society. Corbin, a former English teacher, agreed to edit the manuscript and prepare it for publication. It was through this process that Corbin came to understand Himler’s significance.

“We realized there was a lot more to Martin Himler than just being an immigrant who came to America and mined coal,” Corbin said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

One of the primary goals of the Himler Project is to rebuild Himler House and restore it to how it looked in the 1920s, when it was the social center of a thriving coal camp. To that end, Corbin submitted an application to have Himler House designated as a National Historic Landmark. The application is currently being considered by the National Park Service.

“It would be a tremendous economic boost to Martin County to have Himler House designated as a United States National Landmark and possibly Himlerville itself as a historic district,” Corbin said.

Himler Coal

Beauty is one of many former company towns in Eastern Kentucky. But it is not an exaggeration to say its history is wholly unique in Appalachian history, according to Briane Turley, a professor of history at West Virginia University and co-founder of the Appalachian-Hungarian Heritage Project.

Appalachian coal camps were notoriously exploitative. Miners were forced to rent their homes from the company at exorbitant prices, and the company store — the only business in town — used their own currency known as “scrip.” Other expenses, from miners’ equipment and uniforms to their transportation, were taken directly from their wages, creating a system of indentured servitude.

Martin Himler experienced this system firsthand shortly after his arrival to the United States. Born to a Jewish family in a small town called Pászto, Himler immigrated alone at the age of 18. With no contacts or resources besides a distant cousin, he accepted “free transportation” from New York to Thacker, West Virginia, to work in coal mines there.

Upon his arrival, he was informed that he owed $32 (around $1,200 in today’s dollars) for the costs of transportation and equipment. Together with the cost of room and board, and because Himler was not a very good coal miner, he expected to go months without any wages. After only eight days working in the mine, he abandoned most of his belongings and “skipped,” running away on foot to find better circumstances elsewhere.

“It was a form of slavery, and Himler understood that,” Turley told the Daily Yonder. “And he literally had to slip away in the dead of night. Otherwise, they would arrest him, have him dragged back into the camp and force him to work until he paid everything off.”

Himler later worked in another mine in Pennsylvania, along with stints doing everything from shoe cobbling to show business. But this experience in West Virginia’s coal mines was the basis for the eventual founding and operating of Himler Coal as a cooperative in 1918.

During the coalfield labor disputes of the 1920s, Himler Coal sought a middle way between unfettered exploitative capitalism and bloody battles for unionization. According to Turley, Himler was able to create his cooperative because he was a well-known and trusted presence in the Hungarian mining community, which was one of the largest immigrant groups in Appalachia at the time. This was in part due to his weekly newspaper, Magyar Bányázslap (Hungarian Miners’ Journal) which was circulated among Hungarian coal miners nationwide.

“Because he had experienced the worst environments of coal mining in Appalachia before unionization, he knew how difficult the work was and how unfair labor practices were among the corporations that ran the mine,” Turley explained. “The mining companies were out for a lucrative, quick profit.”

In contrast, the miners themselves were shareholders of Himler Coal and sat on the company’s governing board, an arrangement unheard of in Appalachia or elsewhere. Himler himself never owned more than 3% of shares, according to Turley.

Himlerville

Himler Coal’s unique structure was also reflected in its company town, Himlerville. Unlike standard coal camps, Himlerville’s miners owned their own houses. Himler also did away with the oppressive “scrip” system at the company store.

“The company stores in most of Appalachia were terrorist organizations. You either purchased from them or you didn’t survive,” said Turley. “But there it was just one of many stores. You could go someplace else.”

Himlerville was known for its relative luxury. Each house had electricity and indoor plumbing, which was almost unheard of in Appalachian coal camps in those days.

In his autobiography, Himler writes that his personal objective in developing Himlerville was “to raise the standard of living of my people in every respect. My people were encouraged to live up to the standard in their modern and much-appreciated homes, and visiting Americans were astounded to see coal miners eating off white tablecloths and using white napkins.”

Himler also put great emphasis on education. The local school was soon rated the top school in the state of Kentucky. And because such a large percentage of miners and residents were Hungarian, the school was bilingual. Himler also considered Himlerville to be a great Americanization project and organized a night school to teach civics and prepare miners to become U.S. citizens.

According to the Himler House’s registration form for the National Register of Historic Houses, Himlerville was found to be the nation’s second most livable coal town by the U.S. Coal Commission.

“One of my miners told me that life on the camp would have been paradise were it not for the mine,” Himler wrote in his autobiography. “And he was right.”

Of course, Himlerville was not free from controversy. The Hungarian press was divided on Himler’s exploits – he was too conservative for the Left and far too radical for conservatives. Additionally, there was often tension between American-born Appalachians and Hungarian immigrants in Martin County. Linguistic and cultural differences played their part, as did nativism and negative stereotyping on both sides.

But like so many American utopian experiments, Himlerville would prove to be short-lived. After World War I, the coal industry fell into a depression. Supply continued to increase as mines got more efficient, but without the demand driven by the war, prices fell steeply. Like many coal companies in the 1920s, Himler Coal could not survive the downturn in the market and the company struggled financially. A devastating flood in 1928 marked the end of an era. Himler Coal went bankrupt and Himler and most of his miners left the town.

Preserving legacy

Today, nearly 30 original miners’ homes are still standing and in use in Beauty, along with the original Himler Coal company bank, powerhouse, railroad bridge, and Hungarian Cemetery.

Himler House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, but the Martin County Historical Society is aiming to upgrade that status to a National Historic Landmark — a much rarer designation that indicates national significance. The Historical Society also hopes that the rest of Himlerville could eventually be declared a National Historic District. The National Historic Landmark application for Himler House is currently under review.

“Each of these sites are very important to Martin County and to Eastern Kentucky,” said Corbin. “If the house does receive National Landmark designation, this is a tremendous asset for this area of Appalachia, which has been hit hard by lack of coal mining.”

The Himler Project’s goals go beyond rebuilding and restoring the house itself. Celebrating Himlerville’s history and legacy has become an international affair, with Hungarian musicians and scholars participating in cultural and scholarly exchanges in Appalachia.

The Historical Society hopes to develop a museum, and potentially add a restaurant and event space to make the house into a destination for school field trips and tourism alike. Himler’s later work interrogating Nazis for the Office of Strategic Services makes him a local entry point for Holocaust history, a topic that is mandatory in Kentucky public schools. Some other ideas to generate tourist traffic include adding Beauty to a National Scenic Byway like the Coal Heritage Trail, or connecting it physically to a network of local hiking trails.

But historical preservation is never a cheap proposition, especially in the case of a house that has to be rebuilt from its foundations. Charlotte Anderson, president of the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society, said funding is the biggest obstacle.

The project is estimated to cost nearly $1.9 million dollars, and in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky, that kind of funding is hard to come by. The Historical Society puts on a number of annual fundraisers, selling Polish sausages, sweets, and soup beans at various events.

“One of our board members is somewhat famous in our area for his soup beans, so that’s a big fundraiser for us. Now, when I say big, I mean a thousand dollars or so. That’s about as much as we get at any one time,” Anderson said. “It’s been a slow process, trying to come up with things in order to make the money to get at it.”

Jim Hamos is Martin Himler’s great-great-nephew, and one of several family members involved in the Himler Project. He worries that Beauty is too inaccessible to attract much out-of-state tourism.

“I don’t know how many people will make that sort of trek. It’s one thing when you’re off an interstate highway, but it’s another thing when you’re so remote” Hamos said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “I find it really interesting. But how it becomes someplace where lots of people will go and pay money, I don’t know. But I’m hopeful.”

The National Parks Service lists tax incentives, access to grants, and assistance with preservation as some of the key benefits of National Historic Landmark status. Corbin is hopeful that such a designation will give the Himler Project the support they need to rebuild Himler House and manage the site as a tourist destination.

In the meantime, Hamos, who was himself a refugee during the Hungarian Revolution, takes inspiration from the lessons that can be learned from Himlerville.

“I’m thrilled that the people of Martin County want to do this. They’re trying to claim a piece of their history,” Hamos said. “I do believe this country is a family of immigrants. So I think that’s what we should be continuing to accept in this country.”

This story is republished from The Daily Yonder under a Creative Commons license.

The demolition of the Thomas Hart house in 1955 to make way for a parking lot galvanized the historic preservation movement in Lexington. Many feared Hopemont, also known as the Hunt Morgan House, across the street would be the next to fall. Hart, a veteran of the American Revolution, was an early Lexington settler. (Library of Congress, 1940)

Bettye Lee Mastin, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and champion of historic preservation in the Bluegrass, died May 8. She was 97.

Mastin said her mother encouraged her to write every day and that when she graduated from high school in Jessamine County she wanted to be a poet. A professor at the University of Kentucky steered her toward journalism, saying “Betty Lee, poetry doesn’t pay.”

Mastin worked as a proofreader at the Lexington Herald during college, graduated from UK Phi Beta Kappa and began a 50-year career at the Lexington newspaper as a reporter and feature writer.

Respected as an architectural historian, Mastin taught university classes and seminars. She was the author of “Lexington 1779: Pioneer Kentucky as Described by Early Settlers” and “A Walking Tour of Shakertown.”

In an oral history interview in 1980, she said she became interested in “old things and old buildings as a child.”

“I think anyone living in Lexington, growing up around here would become acquainted with a lot of old buildings —? until the age of the bulldozer — because we had so many of them.”?

In the 1960s, the newspaper assigned her to write about preservation and urban renewal after Ed Wilder, the executive secretary of the Lexington chamber of commerce, returned from a conference in Washington, D.C. with about 100 color slides of the posh Georgetown neighborhood, where President John F. Kennedy had lived when he was in the U.S. Senate, Mastin told the oral history interviewer.

Wilder had been struck by the similarities in Georgetown’s and Lexington’s historic architecture. He convinced the Herald’s general manager, Fred Wachs, that Lexington’s old buildings and neighborhoods were “a resource that Lexington was stupid not to use,” Mastin said.

The newspaper made Mastin available to local groups to talk about preservation and to present a slide show highlighting the similarities of D.C.’s Georgetown section and the areas around downtown Lexington.

Mastin also visited other cities — Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia — to report on their preservation and urban renewal efforts and worked briefly in Lexington’s urban renewal agency. She said her stories for Kentucky readers about other cities’ preservation successes were “geared to profit, dollars and cents,” emphasizing the higher real estate values in historic areas.

In 1965, she became a member of the board of the Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation.

She lived in a home that was built in 1795.?

She was friends with the late Clay Lancaster, an architectural historian, artist and author. She? alerted Lancaster when the Moses Jones house, built in the early 1800s, in Salvisa on the Kentucky River in Mercer County went on the market. He bought the property now managed by the Warwick Foundation. Mastin served on the foundation’s board and was an emeritus member when she died.

Mastin said she was disappointed that Lexington allowed so much of its built history to be destroyed and replaced with nondescript architecture and parking lots, even as awareness and interest in preservation bloomed.

When asked whether growth and preservation can coexist, Mastin in 1980 said, “When you look at the type of community we inherited and the situation now I wouldn’t say they’re coexisting very well.”??

Long-time Herald-Leader readers will remember her Sunday Home spreads; many were detailed descriptions of historic residences, interviews with their occupants and multiple photographs.

In 2017, Tom Eblen, former Herald-Leader managing editor and columnist, wrote that he nominated Mastin for the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame “because no journalist did so much for so long to inform Central Kentuckians about the unique built environment that surrounded them.”

Her legacy will likely live on in future scholarship. Mastin’s papers, covering the period from 1823 to 2013, are archived at the University of Kentucky in more than 100 boxes, including research files, urban renewal records, maps and architectural drawings.

Bettye Lee Mastin was born April 9, 1927 in Midway to the late Winfield and Ruby Glass Mastin, one of six sisters. Her obituary says she loved plants and wildflowers and knew their Latin names. She was a long-time member of Nicholasville Baptist Church where she had been a Sunday school teacher. Her family will have a private scattering of ashes at Indian Falls in Jessamine County at a future date.??

Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy. (LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT —The House Education Committee on Thursday overhauled and expanded Senate-approved restrictions on diversity programs without hearing from the bill’s Senate sponsor.

Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, presented a substitute for Senate Bill 6 that goes much further than the version approved by the Senate and sponsored by Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson.

Decker’s substitute would end diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs at public universities in Kentucky.?

Thirteen Republicans on the committee voted for SB 6 Thursday evening while three Democrats voted no. Republican Reps. Kevin Jackson and Scott Lewis passed.?

Ordinarily, the bill’s primary sponsor would have presented the bill to the House committee, but Wilson was not there.

Jackson — who, like Wilson, is a Republican from Bowling Green — told the committee that he had concerns after speaking with Wilson earlier in the day?

“I think you both think that you’re right, and you’re passionate about what you’re doing, and I think probably there could be a little compromise somewhere in the middle, but after talking to Sen. Wilson this morning, he didn’t know what had happened to his Senate Bill 6,” Jackson said, adding he wanted further information about the situation.

The bill that Decker presented to the committee has been overhauled to include language from her House Bill 9 barring universities and colleges from expending resources to support DEI programs or DEI officers. Her original bill has not received a committee hearing.?

A Senate GOP spokesperson did not return an email request for comment about Wilson’s opinion of the current version. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Wilson had a “scheduling conflict” during the meeting. Wilson is a member of the Senate Education Committee, which was meeting at the same time, although that meeting was much shorter.

Decker told the Kentucky Lantern she met with Wilson before filing her legislation but hadn’t “talked to him since then.”?

“I have no role to play in the decision of what the bills are when they come to the House,” she said. “I’m not in leadership.”

Before the initial bill passed the Senate on a party line vote, Wilson said his SB 6 aims to protect “diversity of thought” in higher education. He said he’s seen a trend excluding conservatives from employment or promotion as scholars if they do not conform to “liberal ideologies.”?

The 32-page committee substitute says public universities shall not “provide any differential treatment or benefits to an individual, including a candidate or applicant for employment, promotion, contract, contract renewal, or admission, on the basis of the individual’s religion, race, sex, color, or national origin.”?

What the committee heard

In her opening remarks, Decker said her version of the bill directs public institutions to give students “high quality academic instruction in an environment that is inclusive and welcoming to all.”

“They shall no longer provide any differential treatment or benefits to an individual on the basis of the individual’s religion, race, sex, color, or national origin — protected classes,” she said while explaining the bill. “They shall no longer manipulate or influence the composition of the student body based on protected classes. They shall no longer impose any scholarship criteria or eligibility restrictions based on protected class.”?

Representatives of the Heritage Foundation and Manhattan Institute, conservative think tanks, spoke in favor of Decker’s proposal. So did Kentucky Students Right Coalition Executive Director Michael Frazier and University of Kentucky student Gavin Cooper.

Cooper said that as a “gay Democrat from West Virginia,” he does not agree on much with Decker, but he is supportive of SB 6. He criticized UK for spending money on DEI employees and initiatives rather than scholarships for low-income students.?

“Academic freedom and inquiry are a cornerstone tradition on universities across this country, and if you truly believe that universities should be places of debate and true learning, you will support any attempt to clear the way for such practices,” Cooper said.?

About a dozen opponents spoke against the bill, including Travis Powell, vice president and general counsel for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education.The organization coordinates public higher education across the commonwealth. He warned that Kentucky cannot “afford to leave anybody behind at any of our campuses,” but vowed CPE would continue to help students be successful, even if resources are limited by the legislation.?

He said the bill’s prohibition on promoting or providing “differential treatment to individuals based on the differences that we know that they have” would? “severely limit us in being able to do the things we need in order to help them be successful.”?

Felicia Nu’Man, the director of policy for the Louisville Urban League, said the group opposes the bill because it would “clawback all the progress we’ve made here in the commonwealth.” She recalled stories she heard from her mother, who was born in the 1950s, about segregation she experienced.?

“These things are important. They are the legacy of my family, and I’m a Kentuckian. These stories need to be told, and these stories need to be talked about. These stories also are a part of the legacy of the entire United States.?

As amended, SB 6 would require university governing boards to adopt “viewpoint neutralaity” policies by June 30 that prohibit “discrimination on the basis of an individual’s political or social viewpoint” and promote “intellectual diversity within the institution.” The policies would have to be published online and in the student and faculty handbooks.?

During questions, Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, asked Decker if Nazism would be protected on college campuses under such “viewpoint neutrality” policies.??

“There should be adopted a policy that would promote and enforce viewpoint neutrality,” Decker said, adding that Nazism is a discriminatory concept if it’s “offered without debate as true.”

Where did ‘DEI’ criticism come from?

Kentucky’s anti-DEI legislation follows a nationwide trend as conservatives lead rolling back such measures, particularly in higher education. Earlier this month, the University of Florida closed its DEI offices, eliminated DEI positions and administrative positions and stopped DEI contracts with outside vendors after the state board of education prohibited universities from spending money on DEI programs. Tennessee passed a law last year that would allow students and employees to file reports against schools for allowing “divisive concepts” to be taught.?

The movement gained traction following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end affirmative action in higher education. Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office released an opinion that found the Council on Postsecondary Education’s definition of “underrepresented minority” using “race-exclusive terms” violated the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act. Decker requested the opinion. It cites the Supreme Court decision.?

“Equality will not arise out of inequality,” the opinion said. “Kentucky public postsecondary institutions will not achieve equality by being forced to treat students of different races differently.”?

A February poll released by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky found that 71% of registered Kentucky voters believe businesses and institutions should be allowed to make decisions regarding their DEI education and training programs without government interference. Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy conducted the poll, which surveyed 625 voters.?

Since the introduction of Kentucky’s legislation, a panel of Black scholars argued DEI initiatives offer protections for historically marginalized groups, such as those in poverty, women, members of the LBGTQ+ community, people of color and more.?

Last month, University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto and University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel both affirmed their support for DEI initiatives at those universities in letters to campus.?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has also vocally supported DEI, saying “diversity is an asset” and makes Kentucky “more welcoming” to companies that might relocate to the state.?

Sixty years ago, 10,000 people marched on the Capitol in Frankfort, demanding civil rights and equality under the law, March 5, 1964. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

I never got a chance to ask my grandmother about what March 5, 1964 was like for her. What she heard from speakers on the steps of the Kentucky Capitol. If she saw Martin Luther King Jr. or Jackie Robinson. What she felt standing with thousands of others from across Kentucky.

She didn’t speak much about that day when I was growing up and? visiting her Ohio home outside Cincinnati. I had never seen the photo until I found it online in 2021, and by that point Alzheimer’s disease had eroded her memories. Virginia Niemeyer died last year at 88.

But I do know she walked out the door of her Lakeside Park, Kentucky, home to board a chartered bus at 8 a.m., one of at least 300 people who traveled from Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties to hear King urge state leaders to pass a civil rights law. My grandmother Virginia was just one of 10,000 who gathered from across Kentucky that day for what became known as the Freedom March on Frankfort.?

I know she boarded that bus, paying a $3 round-trip fare, because the Cincinnati Enquirer published a picture of her the day after the march. She sat in an aisle seat, her gloved hand holding a protest sign. The story in my family was that my grandfather didn’t find out she had gone to Frankfort until she appeared in the paper the next day.

We often hear about the powerful words of the Rev. King, rightfully so. But there were plenty of Kentuckians who had been fighting for civil rights in their communities and organizing to make sure the March on Frankfort happened. Lacking? my grandmother’s account, I wanted a glimpse of that day through the eyes of others who were there and who made the day possible.?

Pictured on that bus with my grandmother, standing in the middle aisle, was the Rev. Edgar Mack, the executive secretary of? the Northern Kentucky branch of the NAACP and the pastor of St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Newport in 1964. Mack, who grew up in Shelbyville the son of a sharecropper, helped make sure Northern Kentucky was represented that day.?

“My dad was a true believer,” Rodney Mack, the son of Edgar, told me in a recent interview. “He believed in people, he believed in the movement, he believed that this was right, and he just wasn’t going to be quiet about it.”

Civil rights activists in Northern Kentucky had been working before the march to confront segregation and other racist laws and norms in Covington. Black women including Alice Shimfessel and Bertha Moore were integral to the protests and efforts desegregating public accommodations in Northern Kentucky even before a state civil rights law was passed, according to the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky.

In the weeks leading up to the March on Frankfort, Rev. Edgar Mack was an ever-present name in newspapers as he spread the word to Northern Kentuckians about the march. According to newspaper articles, faith leaders met at a Covington YMCA a week before to discuss the march, with a rally organized at a local church “to generate enthusiasm” the weekend before.?

“The march shall be dignified, peaceful and prayerful,” Rev. Mack told the Kentucky Post and Times-Star in February 1964. “It will demonstrate our concern that the state Legislature pass the urgently needed civil rights bill for Kentucky.”?

The march achieved all of that, according to the accounts of people who were there, although it would be two years before a civil rights bill became state law. Sharyn Mitchell, who was a teenager from Berea when she joined the march, said she had “never seen so many Black people in my whole life.”

“Because from Capital Avenue, from the bridge, straight up to the Capitol, was wall-to-wall. I’m talking about up on the porches and then in the yards — wall-to-wall Black people,” Mitchell told historian Le Datta Denise Grimes, who was conducting an oral history project on the march that’s archived at the University of Kentucky.?

Freedom March on Frankfort gallery (Click on photos)

Freedom March, from left to right, Rev. Olof Anderson, Syod Executive of the Presbyterian Church, Louisville, 13-year-old Sherman McAlpin, Louisville, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Wyatt Walker, executive-secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. D.E. King, pastor of Zion Baptist Church, Louisville, and Frank Stanley Jr., chief editor of The Louisville Defender, March 5, 1964. ( Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol at the March on Frankfort. (Calvert McCann Collection, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)

Members of the Congress of Racial Equality protest in the Capitol Rotunda, March 4, 1964. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shaking hands with Kentucky Governor Edward T. Breathitt, Jackie Robinson to King's left, Frank Stanley Jr. to his extreme left. (Jim Curtis photograph collection on Civil Rights in Kentucky. University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)

Thomas McAdams and Mrs. Tennie Geddis, both of Louisville, were among the hunger strikers in the House gallery. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

In the weeks after the march, 32 hunger strikers spent 104 hours in the Kentucky Capitol House chamber to try to convince legislators to pass the Civil Rights bill. March 16-20, 1964 (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

Mitchell also remembered singing on the bus from Berea to Frankfort and at the state Capitol, a “groundswell of ‘We Shall Overcome.’”?

Sheila Burton, who was a high school student in Frankfort in 1964, remembered Rev. Edgar Mack as one of the civil rights leaders active in Frankfort in the 1960s. Mack had previously served as the president of the Frankfort NAACP before becoming a pastor in Newport.?

Burton had left her high school during lunch break to see the speakers, she told Grimes for the oral history project, inching her way up through the crowd.?

“I just remember being in the midst of the crowd and feeling like, you know, ‘I’m there. I was there.’ That I can say I was there,” Burton said in 2021. “I just wanted to say I was there.”

Jessica Knox, the daughter of Northern Kentucky civil rights leader Fermon Knox, who worked alongside Mack, remembered her father putting in weeks of organizing and work. He traveled to Lexington, Louisville and other parts of the state encouraging people to join the march.??

On March 5, white women came out of their homes on Main Street in Frankfort to offer marchers cups of water; another neighbor offered marchers the use of a bathroom, Knox told Grimes as a part of the oral history project,

“They were so sweet. And it was something we were not expecting at all,” Knox said. “[I]t made me realize that there are such beautiful people in this world.”

Inclusion of people — no matter who they were —? was central for Edgar Mack, according to his son Rodney. “He would find like-minded people — and he didn’t care where they came from,” Rodney Mack told me.?

While the large majority of the crowd were Black Kentuckians, according to newspaper accounts, allies also showed up in solidarity, including my grandmother. Virginia was a nurse at the former Booth Hospital in Covington, where Rodney Mack’s mother and Edgar Mack’s wife Lillie Mae Mack was also a nurse. It’s unclear if Lillie and Virginia had worked together at the time, as my grandmother left her job when she began to raise my father and aunt at home in the 1960s.?

While my grandparents, father and aunt moved to Ohio the same month as the march, in Kentucky the work of civil rights and racial equality continued. In 1966, Kentucky Gov. Edward Breathitt signed into law the first state civil rights legislation south of the Mason-Dixon line. Nonetheless, Rodney Mack said his father still had to file lawsuits to make sure he? and his siblings were afforded equal rights under that law.?

Rodney Mack said his father would refer to the March on Frankfort in church services as a “critical stepping stone” on the way to future challenges and progress. Rev. Edgar Mack moved on to be employed as a social worker traveling throughout Eastern Kentucky and eventually become a professor of social work at the University of Kentucky. He later moved to Nashville to take a position with the A.M.E. Church, and he died in Tennessee in 1991.?

“I don’t think he thought that it was ever over,” Rodney Mack told me. “There was always another ‘first’ that needed to happen to break ground for more than inclusion.”?

Rodney went to the March on Frankfort as an 8-year-old with his sisters, his mother driving a car because the chartered buses were full.?

When I asked him what his father would think of today’s political climate, he asked me to put myself in my grandmother’s shoes.

“Would you take your kids? Or go yourself on something like that these days? I don’t know that you would,” Rodney Mack said, saying that the fear of violence and other backlash is real.

“In some ways I’d like to be able to talk to my dad, tell him what’s going on,” Mack said. “I know, he’d just be shaking his head.”

Gov. Andy Beshear delivers the State of the Commonwealth as Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne look on from the dais, Jan. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT — Republican lawmakers say a flurry of bills to limit the governor’s authority would give more power to Kentuckians. However, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear chalks up the trend to partisan “games.”

While the power struggle between Kentucky’s legislative and executive branches is nothing new, it’s become a recurring theme since voters elected a Democratic governor in 2019 — just three years after giving Republicans complete control of the General Assembly.

In this session, lawmakers are trying to flex control over everything from when they can meet in special session to decisions about permanent displays in the Capitol Rotunda.

Kentucky voters in 2022 rejected allowing lawmakers to call themselves into special session, a power now held exclusively by the governor. Republicans are trying again this year with House Bill 4 which the sponsor, House Speaker David Osborne, says would put a similar, but simpler, amendment on the ballot in November.

Also moving is Senate Bill 8, which would put new limits on the executive branch by allowing voters to decide membership of the Kentucky Board of Education. Now the governor appoints members who are confirmed by the Senate. The elections would be partisan. The move comes on the heels of the legislature enacting a law last year — over Beshear’s futile veto — that gives the Senate power over the state education commissioner’s confirmation and contract renewal.?

Tensions between GOP lawmakers and the Democratic governor were heightened almost from the beginning of Beshear’s first term by COVID-19. In 2021, the Kentucky Supreme Court handed Beshear a defeat, upholding GOP-backed laws to limit the governor’s emergency powers. Beshear had challenged the laws arguing they undermined his ability to respond to the public health crisis.

Additionally, the Republican supermajorities put Beshear in a tough spot to push back because they can override any veto he issues.??

Beshear, who was reelected in November, told reporters in his Thursday press conference that he views the moves to limit gubernatorial power at the start of his second term as an example of partisanship in Frankfort.??

‘The back and forth’

Asked about pending bills curbing gubernatorial authority, Beshear hypothesized that Republicans would likely return the power they’ve taken away from him if a Republican is elected governor.

“People are exhausted about the back and forth,” the governor said. “And think about it, I mean, they’re focused on who has what powers instead of the jobs that people are going to or the quality of the roads or bridges that they’re traveling over. We could spend this time talking about public safety, public education. It’s time that they stop with the games and the partisanship, and focus on what’s most important for the people.”?

However, Republican lawmakers argue that while their bills may restrict governor powers, they are putting more power in the hands of Kentuckians.?

When asked if this year’s bills would have been filed if the governor was not a Democrat, Republican Senate President Robert Stivers, of Manchester, pointed to legislation he sponsored in 2017 to ease years of? turmoil at the University of Louisville that had been aggravated by interference from Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.?

Stiver’s law changed how board trustees at U of L are appointed. “If it’s there and we believe it to be bad policy or being abused in authority or power, we can do that,” Stivers said. “And have done it to Republicans and Democrats.”?

But Bob Heleringer, a former Republican member of the House from Louisville, predicted that when a Republican returns to the Governor’s Mansion, a lot of the powers? taken away during the Beshear administration will be restored.?

The agendas of Republican lawmakers and Beshear are “very different,” Heleringer said. Also, Beshear is in office year-round while legislators are in session between 30 to 60 days a year.?

Heleringer said his election to the House in 1979 came at the dawn of legislative independence in Kentucky. Before then, the governor dictated policy to the General Assembly.

When Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. won office in 1979, he did not get involved in the election of legislative leaders. Years later In 1992, voters approved amendments to the Kentucky Constitution that allowed governors to succeed themselves for a second term and? changed the role? of lieutenant governor, who previously could cast tie breaking votes in the Senate.?

Now, the legislature is likely taking on an “enhanced role” because it’s controlled by a party different from the governor’s, Heleringer said. Republicans gained control of the Senate in 2000 and the House in 2016.?

“They’ve gone from that to where the legislature is almost become the preeminent branch of government,” he said. “They have the numbers to do what they want from a partisan standpoint.”

People have also speculated that Beshear could run for higher office, even president. Heleringer said that is also an incentive for Republicans to not “l??et him have accomplishments that he can brag about in some future race.”?

‘Giving power to the people’

Stephen Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, said historically the state legislature has been weaker than the executive branch but over time has gained more power. The growing independence of the General Assembly has been a slow shift over the last century, making it a more co-equal branch of government with the executive branch.?

The current Kentucky Constitution was adopted in 1891 during the Progressive Era. At the time, a lot of states were gutting legislative power and gave executive branches more authority over the lawmakers.?

By the late 20th Century, Kentucky had relatively strong governors, who could call special sessions and set the topics for them, Voss said. Governors could also influence policy before lawmakers returned to Frankfort.?

Democrats were also in power throughout that time. Republicans later took control of the Senate in 2000 and the House in 2016. However, governors of the same party as the legislature have had power struggles with lawmakers. For example, Gov. Wallace Wilkinson, a Democrat, unsuccessfully sought support from lawmakers on constitutional amendments to allow state office holders to succeed themselves in office. (The amendment succeeded only after Gov. Brereton Jones agreed that it did not have to apply to him.)

“It’s no surprise that as soon as we had a legislative branch with distinctly different policy preferences than the governor, that the legislature has tried to claw back some of the power that it didn’t have compared to the balance we see in other states,” Voss said.?

On the legislature returning powers if a Republican becomes governor in the future, Voss said “political institutions rarely give up power once they’ve gotten it.”

Separation of powers is “a matter of perspective,” Stivers said. The state Constitution enumerates certain powers to the governor and the rest is “prescribed by law,” which is made by the General Assembly. Stivers gave the example that the Transportation Cabinet is not written in the Constitution, but the legislature created it.

Bills like the one to create partisan elections for the Kentucky Board of Education allow Kentucky voters to have a voice in the process rather than “having one type of autonomous functioning person making the appointments,” Stivers said.?

“Actually, we’re giving power to the people, allowing them to vote on it,” he said. “And that’s what we think would be an appropriate thing.”?

House Republican Floor Leader Steven Rudy, of Paducah, made similar comments while speaking to reporters about his bill to change how Kentucky’s U.S. Senate vacancies are filled. He said the U.S. Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to decide how to temporarily fill vacancies in federal offices.

“We’re not taking power from the governor and giving it to the legislature,” Rudy said. “If anything we’re giving it to the people.”

Earlier this week, the day after U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will step down from that role later this year, a committee unanimously approved House Bill 622 which limits the governor’s role in filling any Senate vacancies. The General Assembly had already changed the process in 2021, with McConnell’s backing, to ensure that Beshear couldn’t appoint a Democrat if a vacancy occurred.

When asked about HB 622, Beshear said governors of both parties before 2021 had the same “type of authority that they’re trying to tear away from me in my time as governor.”

“We want good government that focuses on our people, and think about how much time they’re going to spend debating it,” Beshear said. “How about we talk about expansion of health care and important needs that people have and not try to change this for the second time in two years?”?

On Friday morning, the House passed a bill to give the General Assembly control over permanent displays in the Capitol Rotunda, rather than the governor’s appointees on the Historic Properties Advisory Commission. Beshear successfully urged the group to remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the area in 2020.?

Meanwhile, Bevin, the one-term Republican governor, is still inspiring lawmakers to curb gubernatorial powers. The Senate this session has passed a bill with bipartisan support aimed at limiting governors’ pardon and sentence commutation powers around elections. The primary sponsor, Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, has repeatedly said his legislation was in response the controversial pardons issued by Bevin after his defeat, including to convicted? rapists, murderers and child abusers.?

“It adds democratic accountability to the use of an important check that the executive has on the judicial branch,” said Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, while voting in favor of the bill.?

Charlotte Henson, with her son, Robby, and daughter, Heather, at the theater in Danville.

Charlotte Hutchison Henson, the matriarch of the historic Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, has died. She was 93.

Charlotte Henson, with her late husband, Col. Eben Henson, brought Broadway to the Bluegrass by establishing what is now Kentucky’s oldest outdoor theater. It has attracted hundreds of young actors over the years, including John Travolta, Lee Majors, Jim Varney and Bo Hopkins and will be celebrating its 75th season this summer.

Charlotte shared her husband’s vision of the Playhouse and continued his legacy after he died in 2004, said Mike Perros, who was mayor of Danville from 2014 to 2022 and longtime board chairman of the theater.

Perros gave her the nickname “Iron Butterfly.”? “I called her that because she was tough as could be. She was light on her feet but could be all over the place at the theater. She was graceful but could get her message across. She was delightful yet so strong. She cared about that place.”

Charlotte Henson was producer and president of the Playhouse’s board of directors when she died Feb. 13 at her home on the grounds back of the historic theater.

Her daughter, Heather, said her mother had suffered a series of mini-strokes but had been able last summer, as she did every summer for decades, to sing for the patrons before the show. ? Her repertoire never varied, and she would start off her set with “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The noted folk singer and archivist, John Jacob Niles, called Charlotte’s voice one of the purest he had ever heard.

Charlotte was born on Jan. 3, 1931 and raised on a farm on the Boyle-Mercer County line.

As a youth, she was praised for her voice. After graduating from Burgin High School, she studied music at Transylvania College (now University) in Lexington. After college, she taught music in North Carolina and later was the choir director of the First Christian Church in Danville.

Charlotte first met Eben Henson when she attended an early performance of his fledgling theater at Darnell State Memorial Hospital. He used a free auditorium at the site for his plays, where Northpoint Training Center is now located.

Later, Eben met Charlotte and her mother for lunch at a drugstore soda fountain booth in downtown Danville. He asked Charlotte for a date. Charlotte’s mother kicked Eben in the shin to signal disapproval but Charlotte already had said yes.

In the early years of their marriage, the Hensons saw big-name movie stars flock to their area of the state to star in MGM’s “Raintree County.” Charlotte was a featured extra in the film. The distinctive gingerbread ticket office at the Playhouse was taken from the set of the movie.

Charlotte worked hard with Eben to make the theater go. She also raised four children, all of whom grew up in the theater. Robby Henson today is artistic director, Heather is managing director. When Eben,

known as “the Colonel,” died in 2004, daughter Holly took over the helm of running the theater. It flourished under her leadership. But she died unexpectedly in May 2013 from breast cancer. Her husband, Tom Hansen, is the theater’s chef today. Another son, Eben David, has contributed musically and in other ways to the theater.

The theater also has been guided over the years by a board of directors and influential emeritus board members like the late Gov. Brereton Jones and Lexington businessman and philanthropist Warren Rosenthal.

Charlotte Henson was named Danville’s Arts Citizen of the Year in 2006. She donated space in the old Henson Hotel building for the Danville/Boyle County African-American Historical Space to have a home for meetings, exhibits and archives. She was a lifelong member of the First Christian Church of Danville.

Tori Kenley, office manager for Pioneer Playhouse, said she will miss “Miss Charlotte.”??

“She would come by every morning about 10:30 to say hi and ask how things were going.? She always took pride in the kitchen and was always working with the gift shop,” said Kenley. “Miss Charlotte was very much involved.”

Daughter Heather said it will be difficult to run the theater without her mom, “but as we always have said, ‘The show must go on.’? We will.”

Stith Funeral Home in Danville is handling arrangements. Visitation at the funeral home will be from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Feb. 22 and the funeral will be held at 1 p.m. Feb. 23 at the First Christian Church in Danville.

Donations may be made in Charlotte’s name to Heritage Hospice of Danville or to Pioneer Playhouse, both of which are non-profit organizations.

Sen. Max Wise (LRC Public Information)

Four years after leading the effort to cut corporate middlemen out of the prescription drug business for Kentucky’s Medicaid program, Sen. Max Wise now is taking aim at those same companies’ role in private health insurance.

Noting his Senate Bill 50, enacted in 2020, resulted in millions of dollars in savings to Kentucky Medicaid, Wise, R-Campbellsville, has filed a measure meant to restrict the role of companies known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, in commercial health insurance.

Reprieve for Kentucky’s independent pharmacies is saving Medicaid millions

The Kentucky Lantern last year reported state officials estimated Wise’s bill eliminating outside PBMs from state Medicaid resulted in about $283 million in savings between 2021 and 2022—savings plowed into expanded Medicaid dental benefits for adults.

Wise, in a news release, said he believes Senate Bill 188, filed Feb. 8, will aid many more Kentuckians’ access to prescription medication and help struggling local pharmacies.

“I’m optimistic this measure will yield similar savings by applying the same standards to the commercial market, effectively cutting costs for Kentuckians with private health insurance plans,” Wise said.

The news release said it would also help the state’s around 500 independently owned drugstores, with at least 64 having closed in the past two years.

Pharmacists throughout Kentucky have complained that PBM’s extreme cost-cutting measures have reduced their revenue and left them struggling to survive, as PBMs kept a share of proceeds for themselves.

PBMs, many owned by large pharmacy chains, have argued they save money by processing prescription drug claims more efficiently and at better prices.

CVS Health says on its website that its PBM business, CVS Caremark, helps “increase access to care, deliver better health outcomes and help lower overall health care costs” for consumers.

CVS and other national PBMs unsuccessfully fought Wise’s 2020 bill which eliminated their role in Kentucky’s $15 billion a year Medicaid program and instead directed the state to hire a single, independent PBM to oversee Medicaid’s about $1.2 billion a year prescription drug business.

They likely will oppose Wise’s bill but lawmakers in recent years have expressed increased skepticism about the role of PBMs in Kentucky and other states including Ohio and West Virginia.

Monday’s news release said SB 188 “builds on the success” of Wise’s legislation affecting Medicaid prescription drugs.

Lexington, the inspiration for Big Lex, the Blue Horse, was born in 1850 and was the greatest Thoroughbred sire of his time. (City of Lexington)

In honor of the 250th anniversary of its founding next year, Lexington is seeking proposals for an outdoor work of art to be placed in the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza.

“Lexington has a long history with the arts, and a new work of art in the heart of downtown for our city’s 250th anniversary provides a meaningful connection between our early identity as the ‘Athens of the West’ and the cultural legacy that we are building,” said Mayor Linda Gorton.

The 250 Lex Commission is inviting professional and practicing artists residing in the United States to submit qualifications to propose a permanent, unique, 3D artwork in recognition of the city’s anniversary, according to a news release.

A a prominent outdoor site along Main Street in front of the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza is the selected site for the permanent artwork, according to the release which said it will be “the largest work of public art ever commissioned by the City of Lexington.”

Artists and design teams interested in this project can access the official request for qualifications (RFQ) on the 250 Lex Commission website. Artists must submit their qualifications through CAFé – Call For Entry. All interested and qualified applicants must submit qualifications by 11:59 p.m. MST – Mountain, Thursday, February 29 (in Lexington, 1:59 a.m. EST-Eastern, Friday, March 1).

A selection committee composed of City of Lexington personnel, artists, arts professionals, and other community stakeholders will review the credentials of professional, practicing artists and design teams that can demonstrate experience in successfully executing large-scale public sculpture projects. Entries not meeting requirements will not be considered.

Upon review of all qualified RFQs, three finalists will be invited to submit a proposal for the design of a site-specific public artwork. Finalist proposals should represent a unique commission in ample detail.

For more information, go to https://www.lexingtonky.gov/250lex.

Julian Carroll was Kentucky's governor, House speaker and a state senator. On Jan. 30, 2020, during his last term in office, he spoke on the Senate floor. (Photo by LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT — At age 92, former Kentucky Gov. Julian Carroll sits in a recliner at his Franklin County home, talking about his glory years in politics and the six-page program-in-progress on a nearby stand.

The program is entitled “Julian Morton Carroll: A Lifetime of Public Service.” It contains a portrait of him, his bio and a program that will include family and Democratic and Republican colleagues.

It is to be distributed when Carroll lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda.?He says he has no idea when that will be but that he is ready mentally and spiritually.

Carroll has been under limited hospice care for about six months.

Family members now attend to him. He takes oxygen. He can’t walk without assistance. His hands tremble.

But his memory of years gone by is sharp.

His red-brick home is in an isolated, heavily wooded area of Franklin County known as Deer Run Farm. It is remote but only six miles from the hustle and bustle of the state Capitol where he served as governor from December 1974 to December 1979.

The former Democratic governor has lived on the property for about 40 years and has enjoyed its calming solitude. It is filled with memories, especially of his wife, Charlann Harting Carroll.? She died in 2014. They had been married for 64 years.

On the Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Kentucky’s 54th governor talked for nearly two hours about the good and the bad of his life and its winding down.

As he spoke, he wore red pajama trousers and a pull-over gray shirt. He frequently adjusted the oxygen tube to his nose.

A large-screen TV was not far away on which he regularly watches the news and religious programs, especially sermons of Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

Surrounding his recliner were several chairs for guests who drop by to chat with him, mostly about his years in Kentucky politics. A walker is near his chair to assist him when he stands.

“I’m doing as well as I can be expected,” he says in a clear, though somewhat shaky, voice.

“I can’t walk by myself any longer. The oxygen seems to be getting more a problem. I go to the kitchen at night for dinner and occasionally go out to eat with a friend.”

He then smiles and says ever hopeful, “The way I look at it is I’ll be 93 soon (next April 16) and then 94. I have been blessed.

Before politics

Born in 1931 to Elvie “Buster” and Eva Heady Carroll in West Paducah, Carroll was one of 11 children and still amazed to have been part of such a large family. Six of the siblings became college graduates.

He was a good student. Near the end of 1950 when he was 19, he began dating Charlann Harting. They parted ways the next year so she could attend the University of Kentucky and he the nearby Paducah Junior College.

After their first college year, they decided to get married. They eventually had four children — Kenneth, Patrice, Brad and Elly.? Kenneth takes care of the farm and Patrice lives in Lexington. Elly lives in Washington state.? Brad was killed on Aug. 14, 2011, when his Ford Explorer struck an embankment and caught fire on Leestown Road. He was 47. One of his sons, John Bradley, 30, now lives with his grandfather, the former governor.

Driving home from church the Sunday morning of their son’s fatal accident, the former governor and his wife saw emergency responders at the scene. They did not know their son was involved until they received a call from the hospital.

“I could not cry,” said Carroll. “I wanted to so badly but could not. The grief was that overpowering. I was numb. You never want to lose one of your children. Never. It tears you up like nothing else.”

Family remains important to Carroll. He has seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He used to make chocolate chip cookies for them on Sundays.

After graduating from the University of Kentucky Law School in 1956, Carroll served three years as an Air Force attorney and then returned to Paducah to practice law.

He garnered public attention when he successfully led a public campaign to allow the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide electricity at lower costs. The referendum passed by a 3-1 margin and Carroll became a household name in the county.

He became active in civic affairs with a beautiful family and was a frequent lay speaker at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

He was ripe for the political world.

The state House

Carroll was elected to the first of five two-year terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1962 and held its highest office, speaker, from 1968 to 1970.

As House speaker, Carroll inherited a chamber where lobbyists frequently roamed the floor and family members came and went as they wanted. Carroll removed the lobbyists and family members from the floor to provide more decorum. Soon afterwards, the members gave him a standing ovation for the move, saying it made them more professional.

The governor was a Republican, Louie Nunn.

“Louie was a country lawyer and we got along really well,” said Carroll. “Of course, we had our differences. I voted against his raising the state sales tax. It was a gutsy move on his part but it destroyed him politically.”

The sales tax increase was called “Nunn’s nickel” by his political opponents and he never won another election. Carroll’s critics say he got to spend all the money when he was governor that Nunn had raised.

“I just thought the increase was too much,” Carroll says.

The governor’s office

Carroll said he “flat out campaigned, shaking over 7,000 hands and beat” the popular Attorney General John Breckenridge in the 1971 Democratic primary election for lieutenant governor.? He won the office by defeating Lexington businessman Jim Host in the general election.

Carroll was the informal running mate of former Gov. Bert T. Combs, who was seeking a second term. (The governor and lieutenant governor were elected separately at the time.) Combs, however, lost to Democrat Wendell Ford of Owensboro. Ford beat Republican Thomas Emberton in the fall’s general election. It marked the last time a Republican for governor has carried Jefferson County.

As Ford’s lieutenant governor, Carroll said he “felt ignored. Wendell just sort of ignored me.”

But Ford later came calling on Carroll, urging him to run for the U.S. Senate in 1974 against Republican Marlow Cook.

“I kept telling Wendell no, that I wanted to stay in Kentucky,” said Carroll.? “I remember that night when some of us were meeting and I kept refusing. Wendell slammed a tablet on the table and used a well-known profanity to say he was going to run.”

With Ford’s departure to Washington, Carroll was elevated to the governorship. He won a four-year term as governor in his own right in 1975.

As governor, he says he was most proud of increasing funding to education — doubling some teachers’ salaries — and promoting the coal industry during a national energy crisis.

He also was governor when Kentuckians approved a constitutional amendment in 1975 to reorganize the state’s judicial system.

His toughest problem to deal with, he says, was the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire.

The fire in Southgate in Campbell County occurred on the night of May 28, 1977. In it, 165 people died and more than 200 were injured. The state found numerous code violations and initiated new safety policies.

His biggest disappointment as governor, he says, was “dealing with the FBI.”?

Carroll and his predecessor were under the cloud of an investigation for an alleged workers compensation insurance kickback scheme. They were never convicted of any wrongdoing. Howard “Sonny” Hunt, a former state Democratic Party chairman, pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks from state insurance contractors and served time in prison.

“I consider him as a friend,” says Carroll of Hunt. “He comes to visit me and I enjoy his company.”

The state Senate

After the governor’s office, Carroll practiced law in Frankfort.

In 2004, he was elected to the Kentucky Senate. He served there until he retired in 2020.

Republicans were taking control of the state and ruled the state Senate.

David Williams, a Burkesville attorney and former House member, had become the Senate president in 2000. He was smart and adept in keeping the Republican caucus together.

“I learned quickly that the best way for me to deal with David Williams was to stay out of his way,” says Carroll.

Williams left the Senate in 2012 to become a circuit judge. His successor as president was Clay County attorney Robert Stivers, who still holds the post.

“Robert Stivers was willing to work with me. I appreciated that very much,” says Carroll.

“When I retired, he wrote me a personal note. Robert Stivers is a real gentleman.”

Carroll does not have such feelings for Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown.?“He’s overbearing, like Napoleon,” says Carroll. “He likes to run things but he has a hard time doing that.”

Carroll attributes his party’s decline in power in Kentucky to the abortion issue.

“It’s ironic that the Republican Party’s cry against abortion helped them in gaining public offices but it’s hurting them now because most people are concerned about what happens when the mother’s life is in danger or rape or incest occur.”

Carroll also gives U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell much credit for building up the Republican Party in Kentucky.

“He’s tough, very tough. I knew him as a county judge. He has totally dedicated himself to the Republican Party.” McConnell was Jefferson County judge-executive before unseating Democratic U.S. Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston in 1984.?

A bright light for Democrats in Kentucky, says Carroll, is Gov. Andy Beshear, who recently won reelection against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who would have been Kentucky’s first Black governor.

“Andy Beshear has been a very good governor but I really don’t know if he will reach the national stage,” says Carroll. “The Republicans will be out even more so now for him to make his life miserable. I wish him well.”

Concerning the recent gubernatorial contest, Carroll said he hopes it wasn’t but wonders whether race was “a slow death knell for Cameron.”

“You didn’t hear the media talk about race much but I’m guessing it was somewhat a factor in the election,” says Carroll.

Carroll says he also guesses he will be interested in politics until his last breath.

On the farm and elsewhere

For now, Carroll is thankful for his family and “best” friends like Judy Campbell, a sister of the late Lexington businessman and attorney Terry McBrayer, and David Cobb, who was Carroll’s chief of staff in his Senate office.

“I still have people come and visit me,” he says.

He says he is most positive about his faith.

He is a member of Elevate Church, a local Assembly of God church. He likes to talk about his Christian beliefs, including that “mercy and grace for an eternal life in heaven” await those who believe.

“The Lord has been so good to me,” says Carroll.

“Every night before I go to bed, I thank the Lord for letting me have another day.”

Jill Lepore (Courtesy of University of Kentucky Libraries)

University of Kentucky Libraries will welcome essayist, author?and professor of history Jill Lepore for the 2023 Earle C. Clements Lecture-Symposium on Tuesday, Sept.?12.

Drawing from her book, “The Deadline: Essays,” Lepore will reflect on the relationship between America’s past and its fractious present, exploring such difficult questions as “Why does impeachment no longer work?” and “Why do race riot commissions never fix anything?”

The Clements Lecture will be held at the Young Library Auditorium in William T. Young Library at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, and RSVPs are appreciated. “The Deadline” will be available for purchase at the event, and Lepore will sign copies after the lecture.

Lepore is the David Woods Kemper Professor of American History and affiliate professor of law at Harvard University and a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker.

The annual Clements Lecture-Symposium honors the legacy of Earle C. Clements, who served as governor of Kentucky and represented the state in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. The Clements Lecture-Symposium is made possible by the generous gifts of Clements’ daughter, Bess Clements Abell, her husband Tyler Abell, and their two sons, Dan and Lyndon.

From left, Rona Roberts, Councilman-At-Large James Brown and Barbara Sutherland stand on the site of what once was the racially integrated South Hill neighborhood, now the Rupp Arena parking lot. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

LEXINGTON — On Friday, May 17, 1907, the Lexington Leader ran an ad promoting a new subdivision. “Mentelle Park is the only perfectly appointed and finished residence park ever attempted in Lexington,” it proclaimed.?

The joys of the park were extolled: ?“model macadam roads … streets curbed with Bedford stone … splendid forest and shade trees on every lot.”?

And there were assurances the properties would not lose their value: “Every lot … of the same high class thus assuring the same high class of residents. … No nearby steam-railroads. … No negroes can ever own property or live in the park.”

This ad was uncovered by two women who set out to discover and document why Lexington housing is so segregated. The resulting website, Segregated Lexington, includes this ad and many more painful and much more current reminders of the enormous effort to create and reinforce segregated housing in Lexington that continued for decades after the development of Mentelle Park.

Barbara Sutherland and Rona Roberts document that virtually every institution connected to real estate — the federal and local governments, banks, developers and real estate agents — worked to restrict where Black people could buy and finance homes.

For example, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), created in 1934 to help the country and the building industry revive from the Great Depression, subsidized white suburbs with low down payments and affordable long-term mortgages. But the FHA enforced segregation by insisting the races not mix — a practice known as redlining — while imposing more stringent terms for people buying in the neighborhoods the FHA approved for Black residents.

Roberts and Sutherland figure that of 15,546 lots developed in Lexington from 1945 to 1961, Black families had access to only 225 lots, or 1.45%.

By the 1940s many new developments had restrictive covenants in property deeds that limited ownership to whites. Some were even included in deeds after 1948, when the Supreme Court rejected their legality.

After that court decision, racial segregation continued to be enforced through real estate agents, lending institutions, zoning and a variety of other structural and cultural avenues. For example, they found that in one 1960 edition of the Lexington Leader newspaper, Guyco real estate had one ad for “Wish House on Beautiful Fairway… that speaks of Southern Hospitality,” and another offering “Investment, Colored Property.”

The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act outlawed steering — the practice of pointing homebuyers or renters toward or away from neighborhoods based on race — but a decade later a study by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights found it was still prevalent.

People trained for the study, who differed in almost no way but by race, approached real estate agents and apartment complexes looking for a place to live. “At the rate of two out of every three cases, blacks and whites seeking homes or apartments in Fayette County were given racially discriminatory information about the availability, prices and requirements,” the KCHR reported.

In 1987, almost 20 years after steering was outlawed, the commission conducted a similar study. The rate of discrimination had dropped but remained at slightly over 38%. “It takes a long time for a law to become effective,” Roberts said.?

Time to level the playing field?

“I think their presentation makes it very clear that it has not been a level playing field,” said Urban County Council Member-at-Large James Brown, himself a real estate agent and one of the early supporters of Roberts’ and Sutherland’s work. And, he agrees, Lexington is still very segregated. Brown rejected the idea that people “self sort” based on cultural affinities. The source of the persistent segregation, he said, “is 80% economic.”

Americans have traditionally built wealth through their homes, often a family’s main asset. As homes appreciate, families are able to buy bigger, better houses, pay for college educations and help their kids, in turn, buy their own homes, continuing a cycle of generational wealth.

Brown has supported Lexington’s investment in recent years in an affordable housing trust fund that has invested almost exclusively in rental property. Now he said, he’s shifting his focus to “creating a wider path” to home ownership for historically underserved groups. “I think it not only helps stabilize families but it also helps stabilize neighborhoods.”

Brown foresees “a parallel affordable housing fund that’s targeted at home ownership,” with funding from the private sector. He’s had some conversations with financial institutions and others who might invest in it and is hopeful. “I think some folks are ready to put their money where their mouths are … helping to undo some of these historic wrongs.”

Another ally in the effort to address historic wrongs is the Bluegrass Realtors, led by CEO Justin Landon. “Many people think of this as ancient history and it’s just not,” he said, about the history of enforced segregation in housing. “The impacts of it are something we are very much still feeling today.”

There is no quick fix, he said. “It’s going to take a lot of work over a protracted period of time” to address the inequities baked into the system over more than a century. “Organizationally, we’re committed to doing that work.”

That’s starting in-house, he said, by making sure all their members see the material and understand their responsibilities both under the law and the Realtor code of ethics, which prohibits discrimination of any kind, not just in real estate transactions.?

His organization has approached the county clerk about helping to ferret out some of the restricted covenants in deeds to get them modified or removed. “They’re not enforceable but the reality is nobody should ever have to go in to buy their house and see that still sitting on their deed, right?”

Landon also believes his industry must work to diversify itself. “We need more Realtors, more mortgage lenders, more title professionals who come from the communities that don’t have as high home ownership rates,” he said. There are a few now, “and I could name them all,” which, he said, tells the whole story. The more real estate professionals from diverse communities “we can bring into the industry the more home ownership will seem like a natural, obtainable goal” for everyone, he said.

He agrees with Brown that there needs to be some kind of public-private partnership to help people whose families had been locked out of the market “begin the process of getting on that home ownership ladder,” whether that’s through down payment assistance or other services.?

But Landon thinks the search for solutions must go much further and deeper. “This did not happen by accident. This was public policy that was made by the government and reinforced by cultural issues,” he said, and it will take changes in public policy to find solutions.?

Noting that the Realtors are the largest trade association in America, Landon suggested some legislative changes the local chapter is likely to pursue in Frankfort, including homeowner savings accounts and tax credits for first time homebuyers.?

‘Unequal life opportunities’

Log in to history

The Digital Access Project?aims to digitize more than 60,000 pages of Fayette County records from the late 1700s through 1865, many providing information about chattel slavery in Kentucky.

Deputy Clerk Shea Brown is the director of the project, a collaboration by the University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Institute of Black Studies, the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative?and the Fayette clerk’s office.

In 2020, after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as the country seemed to, once again, unravel over racial tensions, Roberts and Sutherland,?self-described senior citizens who have known each other for decades, “turned toward the question of what responsibility white people like us bear for the horrors of systemic racism.”?

They decided to focus on Lexington and to investigate residential segregation. “We saw that race-based differences in Black and white home ownership result in unequal life opportunities that affect wealth, work, income, health, and education,” they wrote on the Segregated Lexington website.

And so they set out to research and document how residential segregation came about in Kentucky’s second-largest city and why it persists.

They have stayed away from suggesting “fixes,” deciding instead to remain focused on their research. “We can share this little body of information with other people but that doesn’t make me an expert in what to do about it, absolutely not,” Sutherland said.

Awareness, Landon said, is the first step in righting wrongs, finding solutions to difficult problems, and the two women took on the hard work of raising awareness. “It’s incredibly important work,” he said.

And hard. “It is always difficult to be the first person to speak up in a very public way about a topic that will make people uncomfortable.”?

One integrated neighborhood lost

For decades, there was at least one racially integrated neighborhood in Lexington.

The South Hill area had existed since at least the 1850s, and although it included blocks that were all-Black residents and all-white residents, since the 1930s there were blocks that were home to both Black and white residents.?

Then, in the 1970s, the Lexington Center Corporation was created to build Rupp Arena to provide a new home to the Kentucky Wildcat men’s basketball team right next door to South Hill. Since basketball fans would need a place to park, LCC turned its sights toward the “modest but livable homes in the three blocks closest to South Broadway,” to create a vast asphalt lot, according to Segregated Lexington.?

Although this was the era of urban renewal and slum clearing, the blocks were hardly slums. A 1971 planning commission study found that only 7.6% of the homes could be termed dilapidated.

Still, in November 1974 the Urban County Council backed LCC’s plan, setting off three years of protests, acrimonious public meetings, and lawsuits,” the authors, Barbara Sutherland and Rona Roberts, note. Ultimately, though, LCC won.

The result, they write, was that 580 residents of this small, stable, integrated neighborhood of modest homes, had to move.?

As Roberts and Sutherland sum it up, “the neighborhood was demolished, the residents were relocated, and Rupp Arena got its parking lot.”?

Rescue teams at work on the capsized hull of USS Oklahoma (BB-37), seeking crew members trapped inside, 7 December 1941. The starboard bilge keel is visible at the top of the upturned hull. Officers' Motor Boats from Oklahoma and USS Argonne (AG-31) are in the foreground. USS Maryland (BB-46) is in the background.( Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)

For decades, Elmer P. Lawrence was unaccounted for after dying at Pearl Harbor.

Now, he’ll be buried this weekend 13 minutes from his hometown.?

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which works to identify soldiers lost, announced in June that its scientists had identified Lawrence in 2021 and would send him home for burial.?

Navy Seaman 1st Class Lawrence was assigned to the USS Oklahoma, which capsized after being torpedoed in 1941. He was one of 429 crew members to die that day. The DPAA says 365 have now been identified.?

Lawrence enlisted in Louisville in 1940, a year before his death, at age 23.?

The Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II.

Lawrence was awarded many honors for his service: the Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (with Bronze Star), American Defense Service Medal (with Fleet Clasp), World War II Victory Medal and the American Campaign Medal.?

Lawrence will be buried during a 3:30 p.m. service Saturday in the Shilo Cemetery in Railton in his native Barren County, according to the Navy Office of Community Outreach.

Gov. Andy Beshear has ordered flags in Kentucky to fly half-staff on Saturday to honor Lawrence.?

A rosette will be placed next to Lawrence’s name on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl Cemetery, in Honolulu to let people know he’s been found and identified.?

“We are saddened to acknowledge the death of another young Kentuckian who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Beshear said in a statement. “But we are gratified that modern science and military determination has, against all odds, found him and will bring him home.”

Dr. Bill Collins, a supporter of the Medicaid dental expansion, treats a patient at the Red Bird Mission dental clinic in Clay County. (Photo by Deborah Yetter)

A public hearing on Gov. Andy Beshear’s plan to have Medicaid cover more dental, vision and hearing services for adults scheduled Friday, July 14, has been canceled.

The hearing by the Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee was to have been held at 1 p.m. in Frankfort for comments on Beshear’s plan that expands Medicaid to pay for additional health services including dentures, fillings, crowns and root canals as well as vision and hearing benefits such as glasses and hearing aids.

The cancellation was confirmed by a spokesman for the Legislative Research Commission.

About 900,000 Kentuckians who get health coverage through Medicaid are eligible for the new dental, vision and hearing benefits.

Medicaid is the federal-state health plan that provides coverage for about 1.7 million children and adults in Kentucky.

The next meeting of the committee is Aug. 8, according to the legislative website.

The first known advertisement by a slaveholder seeking return of an enslaved person in Kentucky was published in 1788, before statehood. (University of Kentucky Libraries)

LEXINGTON — Throughout the late spring of this year a group of nine University of Kentucky students did work that no one had ever done before.?

They scrolled through digital copies of early Kentucky newspapers, looking for advertisements seeking the return of people who had fled slavery, to record and preserve them.

“Ran away last spring, a man named Bartlett,” began one of the ads found in the Kentucky Gazette in 1803. “Uncommonly stout and broad across the shoulders, very dark complexion, his eyes sunk deep into his head, when spoken to generally puts on a smile but other times he has a thoughtful, ill look and possessing a great share of cunning acquiescence.”

Once owned by Colonel William Montgomery in Lincoln County, the ad said, he was sold to Henry Hall of Shelby County in 1801. The slaveholder trying to get him back lived in Natchez, Mississippi, and thought Bartlett might be trying to make his way “to Kentucky to his former place of residence.”?

The reward for returning this stout, cunning man was $100, close to $3,000 today.

Although the description of Bartlett is exceptionally detailed and the amount offered for his return is unusually large, advertising for the return of human property in early Kentucky was very ordinary.

“Each ad is probably the only record that exists for a whole person’s life,” said Caden Pearson, a history major, who recorded the ad for Bartlett.

In a matter of weeks the students found more than 700 ads that ranged from the vivid and specific like that for Bartlett to descriptions so generic it “almost makes you wonder if they even cared if they got the same person back,” Pearson said.

These ads, and thousands more that University of Kentucky research librarians and historians believe remain to be found in historic Kentucky newspapers will join the national digital archive Freedom on the Move.?

Based at Cornell University, Freedom on the Move’s goal is to create a database containing every runaway slave ad published in the United States from the Colonial Period until slavery was abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment.?

“It’s heartbreaking but it’s also inspiring,” said Vanessa Holden, the history professor at UK who formed the link with the national archive.

The descriptions often include scars from beatings, missing limbs, fingers and toes as well as evidence of sexual violence. “There are a lot of ads for young girls, 13, 14,” Holden said. “They’re described as beautiful, their hair is described, their stature is described, they’re described as attractive. And then you look to see who the enslaver is and it’s a guy who is significantly older.”?

But, horrible as it all is, she’s inspired by the fact that they left, even if they knew they would likely be recaptured. “It’s really empowering to learn stories of resistance. It’s really important to know that people fought back,” Holden said. “Can you imagine,” she said, in 1803 striking out alone as a runaway slave into the Kentucky wilderness? “We’re talking about people who are making these courageous leaps.”

Holden, an associate professor of history and African American and Africana studies and director of the Central Kentucky Slave Initiative, joined UK in 2017.?

That year ?she also became part of the group that was working to make the? idea of a digital registry into the reality it has become. By lucky coincidence, she arrived in Kentucky just as the project was getting underway and at UK, which has the biggest collection of historic newspapers in the state.

“Kentucky and Kentuckians are everywhere,” in the ads, Holden said. “Thanks very much to the slaving industry right here in Lexington, black Kentuckians are sold all over the American South,” she said. One of many misapprehensions the archive destroys is that enslaved people were only running to freedom. As was the case for Bartlett, “people looking for them often thought they might be heading back to Kentucky to be near family,” Holden said.

Not all the ads are placed by slave owners, there are also many from jailers — a very loose term that could include an actual public official but in many cases also meant just any white person who had a place to tie up people, often called slave jails or holding pens.??

Sometimes the people were being held while a slave trader accumulated enough people to make up a coffle to take South, sometimes it was a person who had run away and the ad hoc jailer was looking for a reward from the owner. If they weren’t claimed within a certain time the jailer could sell the person and keep the money.?

“It’s really crass to talk about human life in that way but you have to think in terms of movable property. The way large animals are treated legally is very close to slave law,” Holden explained. “They do treat people like runaway horses, or runaway livestock.”

But, as the ads illustrate clearly, the runaways were individuals with distinctive personalities and with families. Now the ads collected in a searchable database might help African American genealogists reconstruct those families that slavery tore apart.?

The archive “takes them so far beyond that 1870 wall,” explained Reinette Jones, reference librarian and researcher in UK Special Collections who is co-creator of the Notable Kentucky African-Americans Database.

To reach back into a family’s history, genealogists typically search census records for information about family groups, births, places of residence and the like. But before the 1870 census enslaved African Americans appeared only as property, perhaps with a first name or an age but often simply enumerated with other possessions. They didn’t appear as individual humans with full names and family groups until the first census after emancipation, in 1870.

Jones said this archive opens up additional information that people who want to break through that wall can use. Linking it with other sources, “you can go through and possibly piece together the genealogy.”

Freedom on the Move launched in 2018 with ads that had been collected for other research projects, bringing them into one database. But by last year it was beginning to look for other institutions around the country that could add to the collection.?

Jones was the person Holden reached out to as she sought a way to bring Kentucky and UK into the Freedom on the Move project. Soon, they assembled a meeting that included two others from UK Special Collections, Jennifer Bartlett, oral history librarian, and Kopana Terry, curator of the newspaper collection at UK.?

They met in August last year and by the fall began planning to bring in students to find the ads. The students began work in mid-March. This summer the team is working with Cornell to sort out any glitches in uploading the Kentucky information into the national database and expects the first Kentucky ads will go online in late July or early August.

It is Jennifer Bartlett who sorted out how to make the technical aspects of the project work. “We wanted to make it as easy as possible (for the students) to go in and concentrate on the papers themselves,” she said. In early newspapers the ads can be hard to find because they might just be words in type without images or anything else to separate them from other items on the pages. Sometimes, too, Jones said, the ad may start off being about a missing horse and it’s only farther down that you see a human ran away with the horse.?

Without getting deep into the technical aspects, because the ads are clipped in Photoshop, all the metadata associated with the ad — publication, date, page, column and how many slave ads are on the page — is automatically recorded along with a rough, searchable transcription. That means the ads can much more easily be searched for information that could add to the understanding of slavery in the United States — whether it’s by occupation (seamstress, groom, blacksmith, carpenter, etc.) or by former owners, or physical characteristics like scars or missing digits. The system is also designed to allow researchers to click through and see the entire page where an ad appears, providing context for that moment in time.

Using this system — which Bartlett hopes to be able to hand over to other institutions as they join the Freedom on the Move project —- the students had clipped over 700 ads by the end of the semester, barely nine months after the team first started planning. “This team worked together better than any team I’ve ever been on,” Jones said.

All of this means that when the effort started there were both newspapers to search and the technical know-how to make the findings available to the world. For Kopana Terry that means anyone going forward will be able to see the humans in the story that was slavery in the United States. She believes a vast collection of thousands upon thousands of runaway slave ads will have “far more impact” than reading one or two. “Imagine how humanizing it’s going to be to look at all those ads in a single database and realize that those are people, those are people,” she said. “You really get an insight into who these people were.”

The ads open a window on the people trying to break free, Holden agrees, but they also tell a story about the slaveholders and the society that tolerated, profited from slavery. “Enslavers knew how much enslaved people didn’t want to be slaves and that is pervasive. Resistance was pervasive, it was everywhere, all the time, and it was right there in the newspaper next to ads for corn and candles.”

Beyond the researchers who will learn more about slavery in this country, the team believes Freedom on the Move represents a tremendous resource for younger people. “It’s important for many of the students, especially in K through 12, to learn about slavery through resistance,” Holden said.

Jones welcomed the idea that in the current political environment using runaway slave ads as a teaching tool might meet with pushback.

“Let them push. This is part of the resistance,” she said. “Come on and push, help promote this project. I dare you to push.”

Thomas D. Clark: The gift that keeps on giving to Kentucky

There’s another story about historians, librarians and archives that has to be told to explain how the University of Kentucky’s involvement in Freedom on the Move could even happen.?

Without saved newspapers there would be nothing for the students to find, nothing for the digital readers to scan and record.?

That story goes back to the 1940s when Kentucky historian Thomas Clark began traveling around the state with a clunky thing that looked like a suitcase but opened up to display a camera with lights on either side. Working with librarians, he visited local newspapers and set up shop to photograph their archives, creating microfilm for the UK archive.?

Although the quality was not so great, with the images fading out toward the sides because the lights didn’t really reach the edges, that early and admirable effort set the scene for UK’s newspaper collection.

Eventually, the National Endowment for the Humanities spearheaded an effort to inventory newspaper holdings across the country, called the United States Newspaper Program, which operated for almost 30 years, beginning in 1981. Instead of traveling the state with a suitcase setup, newspaper archives came to UK. Kopana Terry at UK Special Collections said they reached out to longstanding Kentucky newspapers to get their historic records. “We brought them in, we microfilmed them, we sent them back out,” she said.

By this century, the effort had shifted to digitizing newspapers and UK was one of the first six institutions to be awarded a grant under the National Digital Newspaper Program, and the only one to do all the work in-house.?

That allowed UK to help refine the standards for digitizing newspapers, Terry said, and create a training program, called meta/morphosis, that is still used around the country and the world to teach people how to transfer from film to digital storage.

When librarians and archivists do the work of saving records they don’t know, can’t know all the uses they will serve. It’s unlikely that Clark envisioned Freedom on the Move when he was driving around with his suitcase setup. But, 70 years later his work is helping unearth the lives of people whose names were never even put in a census.

Newspapers are often called the first draft of history but Reinette Jones, Terry’s colleague at Special Collections, thinks they are more than that: “For many people it’s the only draft.”

This story has been updated to correct a misattribution.

Elevated Access has recruited more than 1,200 volunteer pilots to privately fly those in need of an abortion to states where it is accessible. (Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Editor’s note: This report is part of a special States Newsroom series on abortion access one year after the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down the federal right to abortion.

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision one year ago, people of childbearing age in states across the country suddenly faced what seemed like a new prospect — having to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from home to get an abortion.

But historians say it is merely continuing a long tradition of pregnant people seeking out the sometimes lifesaving care they need wherever it can be found, and other people helping them along the way.

In the Midwest, Dr. Josephine Gabler operated an abortion clinic that served tens of thousands of people in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin between 1930 and 1940.?Patricia Maginnis?kept a list of trusted physicians in Mexico, Japan and Sweden through the 1950s and ‘60s where people could be?referred from California?for safe abortion care.

The Clergy Consultation Service, made up of 3,000 religious figures across 38 states, helped 7,500 women find abortions from 1967 until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Roe and legalized the procedure nationwide.

Today, with 14 states that have implemented near-total bans on abortion, one organization called Elevated Access has recruited more than 1,200 volunteer pilots to privately fly those in need of an abortion to states where it is accessible.

Since the Dobbs ruling, states with abortion access have experienced an increase in out-of-state patient volume. In Illinois,?nearly one-third?of Planned Parenthood patients came from other states, compared to an average 6% prior to Dobbs. Similarly, clinics in Colorado reported out-of-state patients doubled from 14% in 2021 to 28% in 2022, with a large share coming from Texas, which has a strict abortion ban. At least one state, Idaho, has passed legislation aimed at restricting out-of-state travel for an abortion for minors who don’t have parental permission, but it’s unclear how that law will be enforced. Other states with bans have not successfully implemented any laws aimed at restricting travel.

“This is part of a long history of people seeking out ways to end their pregnancies and to get abortions, or ‘get their menstruation back,’ as they called it then, that often included travel,” said Leslie Reagan, a historian who wrote?“When Abortion Was a Crime”?and scholarly articles about women traveling for abortion throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. “They could be coming by train, driving, or taking a bus, depending on what time period we’re talking about and their circumstances.”

Groups across America ran underground networks that kept organized lists of trusted physicians who would provide abortion care. Sometimes those physicians operated covertly in communities within the U.S., but often they were located across the border in Mexico, or across oceans in Puerto Rico, Europe and Japan.

Overseas, people have also traveled where abortion was illegal. Irish citizens?traveled to the United Kingdom?for abortion care for many decades, and still do for pregnancies beyond 12 weeks’ gestation. Canadians traveled to U.S. cities like New York City and Chicago and Washington state prior to legalization in 1988. Between 2001 and 2017, Dutch Dr. Rebecca Gomperts used ships to ferry women from cities in Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Guatemala and Mexico to international waters, where they could terminate their pregnancies legally aboard the ship and then return home.

“Sometimes people can’t control when they’re going to get pregnant, or if the timing is right, or you’re going to get kicked out of school,” Reagan said. “And really what I saw was not only were women doing it, they had a lot of support. There’s really a lot of moral support for this even though the laws might say it’s illegal.”

Volunteer pilot raised $15,000 to buy small seaplane?

A Midwestern pilot who goes by Mike Bonanza?started Elevated Access three days before the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe was released on May 1, 2022. He volunteered for the?Midwest Access Coalition, an abortion access fund in Chicago, and his background as a pilot led him to put the two together to help more people. The organization also flies those who need gender-affirming care, which is quickly becoming a larger need. As of June 1,?21 states?have banned gender-affirming care for minors, including all 14 states with abortion bans.

One of Elevated Access’ volunteer pilots is Adrian, who asked only to be identified by his first name, as all Elevated Access volunteers and staffers do to protect themselves from harassment and potential legal scrutiny. But he is one of the most outspoken individuals affiliated with the organization, and one of the only people who willingly shows his face on social media — his TikTok account has more than 115,000 followers.

“I stopped counting donations (to Elevated Access) once we crossed over $150,000,” he said.

When asked why he volunteers, Adrian speaks plainly about his mother, who was raped by an older man when she was 13 years old. Her parents, he said, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah and did not allow her to seek an abortion. She was forced to give birth to Adrian and his identical twin brother at the age of 14.

For the first eight years of their lives, Adrian and his brother lived with his grandparents, until his mother returned and took the boys to Georgia to live on a military base with her and a man she was dating. From that time until he left home, Adrian and his brother frequently experienced food insecurity and other abuse.

Now that he is married and living in Wisconsin, Adrian said he doesn’t have a relationship with his mother, stepfather or his brother, who has also struggled with substance abuse.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh well, my god, he’s doing so much for his mom,’” he said. “No, it’s not about my mom. Yes, my mom is an individual that perfectly embodies the individual that should have access to reproductive health care. It doesn’t mean I like her.”

His plane is a model from the 1980s, and one of less than 50 left in operation around the country. He opted for an amphibious plane for its versatility, especially after rumors that states with strict abortion laws such as Texas might try to interfere with people trying to leave the state for the procedure. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, about 2.1 million of Wisconsin’s 5.7 million people live in coastal areas of the state, or nearly 37%, and he could taxi through the water right up to their docks if needed.

Although Elevated Access has many volunteer pilots, Adrian said they need more who own their own planes.

“That’s our biggest hurdle, is actually pilots with planes,” he said.

Word of mouth spreads easily in the internet age

Some of the circumstances surrounding abortion access today are easier to navigate now than they were prior to 1973, according to historians. Katrina Kimport, a researcher at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, said travel has historically been limited to those with the means and resources to do it. Wealthier people had the financial backing as well as more connections who could help lead them to the right people. In the internet age, information is readily available to many more people, she said, and there is often more financial support for those who can’t afford it.

Christabelle Sethna, a professor at the University of Ottawa who wrote a book called “Abortion Across Borders,” said the information network that exists today is an essential difference from history.

“In the past it was sort of underground, whispered information; you’d have to ask a whole number of people and maybe one would come through for you with the name of a doctor,” Sethna said. “It was much more disparate in the past, and now it’s much more organized because of the internet and the vast reach of the internet.”

That includes being able to access abortion medication through websites, Sethna said, which is another option that wasn’t available in the past. Another significant difference is that the procedure is legal at various stages of pregnancy in 36 states rather than banned nationwide, as it was between the late 1890s and 1973.

Despite those changes, Kimport said her research shows there are still many?logistical, emotional and financial burdens?placed on those forced to travel because of a lack of access in their own state. She pointed out that prior to the Dobbs ruling, abortion after 24 weeks was still heavily restricted, which provided a preview of what pregnant people are experiencing now at a much broader scale.

“Putting aside the cost of the procedure, travel itself is an additional cost,” Kimport said. “There’s also the logistical burden of having to seek out child care or pet care, time off work, getting reservations. Some people don’t have credit cards, some don’t have a car. This is a time and resource and organizational burden.”

Emotional costs are difficult to measure, she said, but are some of the most heightened effects, especially for someone leaving a rural area and traveling to an urban area if they have never traveled before.

“Even for people who have experience in travel, going to an unknown place can be extremely stressful and unsettling,” Kimport said.

Abortion access funds rely on each other to cobble together funds for travel

While Elevated Access is responsible for the pilots and the actual flights, it is partner organizations large and small that refer clients to them and help arrange lodging and other logistics, often providing additional financial support for meals and other expenses.

One of those partners is?New River Abortion Access Fund, which started in 2019 in rural Virginia, where it can take hours to drive to the nearest clinic. Sophie Drew, interim director of the fund, said barriers to access already existed prior to the Dobbs ruling, but at a much smaller scale. The initial budget for the fund was about $600 per week, she said, with maybe five calls for help during that week.

Now, the fund averages $20,000 per week with 60 to 70 calls on average in one week.

Gianna G., an intake coordinator for New River, said that might sound like enough funding, but with an average cost of $300 to $500 for first-trimester abortion care and as much as $20,000 for abortions later in pregnancy, abortion funds around the country rely on each other to cobble together enough dollars from donations each week to help all of their callers.

“Right now, we just don’t have the money we need in order to make this sustainable,” they said. “I think a lot of people support abortion care, but they don’t know the monetary need behind it.”

The vast majority of those who call New River seeking help can travel by car where they need to go, Drew said, but there are still instances when a flight is the best option.

Gianna G. said much of their job is identifying barriers, like someone who doesn’t have a car or driver’s license, or doesn’t have a support person who can come with them for a long car ride.

Both commended Elevated Access, and said the fact that the flights don’t come at additional cost, including for a support person, is incredibly helpful.

“We’ve gotten feedback from some callers about their experience and it’s been exclusively positive,” Drew said. “Even if someone was nervous about flying. Elevated Access has been a great support both logistically and emotionally.”

Pilots use their own funds to gas up their planes, which Adrian said typically burn 10 to 25 gallons per hour. With the typical average cost of fuel, it can range from $60 to $120 per hour in gas alone. Sometimes Elevated Access can help offset those costs, but that funding is limited.

“Any of these pilots actually volunteering their time and resources, they’re losing money,” Adrian said.

Most patients who need flights come from the South and Midwest

Elevated Access has a policy of not asking many questions about the patient or their circumstances to respect their privacy as much as possible, especially because the situations can be complicated and emotionally difficult. Some flights have even been one-way trips, for those fleeing abusive situations or other dire circumstances.

“By the time they get to Elevated Access, they have tried many, many approaches,” said Fiona, who acts as a volunteer media relations coordinator. Elevated Access volunteers and staffers go by their first names only to protect themselves from harassment and potential legal scrutiny. “We are often the end of a long road for them. They are often very desperate at that point. They know that they can’t carry the pregnancy to term for many reasons.”

The organization does not disclose how many flights it has completed through volunteers over the past year to avoid becoming a target of anti-abortion advocates. But it now has three full-time staff members, including the executive director and two flight coordinators, and nearly 2,500 people have donated in the past year, even without active fundraising campaigns.

The requests for flights come from all states with abortion bans, Fiona said, but the largest share come from the South and the Midwest, where 13 of the 14 states with abortion bans at any stage of pregnancy are located.

“There are states where we will get requests where technically there is access, but it’s eight weeks out to get an appointment, or it’s a very specialized need for care,” Fiona said. “That’s more the exception.”

Researchers: Stigma from community adds to stress

The stigma surrounding abortion remains, presenting an added burden, according to Kimport’s research. She interviewed 30 women who traveled for abortion prior to the Dobbs decision about their experiences and said many of them felt forced to disclose their situation to people before they were ready or lied because they had to explain their absences.

Being away from support networks, including children, family, pets, neighbors and friends is another difficulty, she said.

Those who have to travel for an abortion, especially if it is by plane, are often in more advanced stages of pregnancy, Kimport said. Sometimes that is because a lethal fetal anomaly was discovered and sometimes it’s because the person did not know of the pregnancy until it was advanced — or, in today’s environment, an appointment could take weeks to obtain, depending on the demand at available clinics.

Whatever the reason, Kimport said those late-term abortion seekers face added emotional, physical and logistical burdens, since the procedure itself is more intense and requires more time to recover.

“People with third-trimester abortions had to travel because their state said that care was not allowed, and they talked about how that particular fact made things additionally emotionally stressful,” Kimport said. “One woman said she felt cast out from her community, that the law was saying what she was doing was deviant and she felt stigmatized.”

One benefit of Elevated Access and its volunteer pilots, according to the organization’s leadership, is that it offers a private method of flying to a destination. Kimport said those who have traveled for later-term abortions are more visibly pregnant and have to interact with strangers who will compliment and congratulate them and offer unsolicited advice. For someone whose wanted pregnancy went wrong, she said, that can be devastating.

‘We shouldn’t get used to it being complicated’

At the moment, as is in the case in so many states, the reproductive rights landscape in Wisconsin is complicated. The state is currently operating under a criminal abortion ban that went into effect in 1849, banning all abortions except to save the pregnant person’s life. But it’s unknown if a law that dated can still be enforced, particularly since Roe was in effect for 50 years in between. The law passed to comply with Roe allowed abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

The question of enforceability is currently under consideration in one of Wisconsin’s circuit courts, after Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against the three district attorneys who would prosecute cases in the counties with abortion clinics.

“Whichever party loses, I anticipate they would file a notice of appeal to the court of appeals and then it would go up to the (Wisconsin) Supreme Court,” said Michelle Velasquez, director of legal advocacy and services for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. “But the circuit court’s decision is an important first step to potentially restoring abortion access.”

The state’s governor is also a Democrat, but Republicans have a majority in both chambers of the legislature, creating a split, stalemated government. Unlike other states that are using citizen ballot initiatives to try to codify abortion access, Wisconsin only allows the legislature to propose ballot referendums.

Even before Roe fell, access to abortion was restrictive. Only three of the state’s 72 counties had a health center that offered abortion care, and using telehealth for abortion medication was prohibited by law. To obtain mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-drug regimen used to terminate early pregnancies, an individual is required to complete two in-person visits with the same physician present.

But Wisconsin is an island in the upper Midwest in terms of access — its border states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa all continue to allow abortions.

By plane, Adrian can fly from Wisconsin’s eastern peninsula to a Minnesota clinic in about 45 minutes, but it would take someone living on the peninsula four hours to make the drive.

“That’s kind of how ridiculous this is,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine what it feels like to be told, ‘No, you can’t get the care you need.’ It’s also going to permanently rearrange your body, and you’re never going to be the same all because some a— h—- assaulted you or some tech bro didn’t want to wear a condom.”

Although the people working to connect pregnant people with abortion care are passionate about the work, New River’s Interim Director Sophie Drew said she hopes having to drive for hours or take a private flight to get an abortion doesn’t become normalized. In her ideal world, none of these resources would need to exist.

“People should be able to access abortion in their communities without all these hoops to jump through,” she said. “That’s the main thing I wish people knew, is that it can be a complicated process, and we shouldn’t get used to it being complicated.”

When Roe was overturned, Adrian posted a video to promote Elevated Access and recruit more pilots. His presence as “cheesepilot” on TikTok is how the leadership at Elevated Access found him and asked for his help in May 2022. The organization had barely started in April, and only had a few volunteers. He made a quick video on a break from his job as a pilot for a regional airline and came back several hours later to nearly 500,000 views and hundreds of people asking how to donate. The seaplane he bought last year was made possible with a $15,000 down payment raised by his TikTok followers.

According to Pew Research Center, 28 states and the District of Columbia legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.?Kentucky is not one of them. (Getty Images)

Kentucky leaders on both sides of the political spectrum celebrated Juneteenth by discussing African American history and calling the holiday a mark of progress toward equality.?

Gov. Andy Beshear signed a proclamation recognizing Monday as Juneteenth National Freedom Day in Kentucky in the Capitol Rotunda.?

Those who joined Beshear included Senate Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, Governor’s Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives Executive Director Charles Booker and J. Michael Brown, director of pre-law and constitutional studies at Simmons College of Kentucky and former secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet.?

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. The day marks when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free as news reached them in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. While President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it was not enforced in many areas of the South until two years later when the Civil War ended.

Beshear said Monday that he will “continue to push for this day to be recognized as a state holiday” and encouraged the General Assembly to pass such legislation.?

For Kentucky state workers, Juneteenth is not a paid holiday. According to Pew Research Center, 28 states and the District of Columbia legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.?

In 2005, the General Assembly passed legislation requiring the governor to create a proclamation each June 19 for Juneteenth National Freedom Day.

On Twitter, Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Juneteenth “is a powerful symbol of freedom and the pursuit of building a more perfect union.” Cameron, who is the Republican gubernatorial candidate facing Beshear, is the first African American independently elected to statewide office in Kentucky.?

“Let us continue the vital step of working together to build on positive change in our communities across the state,” Cameron said.?

Speaker of the House David Osborne and House Minority Floor Leader Derrick Graham issued a statement about the holiday, saying it acknowledges “the end of the injustice of slavery” while also serving “as a reminder of the resilience, determination, and perseverance of African Americans throughout history.

“On this Juneteenth, let us celebrate the progress we have made towards equality and freedom, acknowledge the challenges that lie ahead, and renew our commitment to the timeless values that have shaped our nation for the better,” the joint statement said. “Together, let us strive for a future where every American can enjoy the blessings of liberty and pursue their dreams unencumbered by prejudice or discrimination.

?“Let this day serve as a constant reminder that we must continue to work towards a more perfect union.”

Kentucky cities also recognized the holiday. Several community Juneteenth events were held in Louisville and Lexington from June 10-19. Other celebrations have been held in places such as? Ashland, Paducah and Covington.

Riverside Cemetery in Perry County, where members of the author's family are buried. (Photo by Tracy Staley)

This story was first published in The Daily Yonder on May 21, 2021 and is is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

While their friends are cannonballing into the city pool this weekend, my sons will spend the day in an Eastern Kentucky cemetery, placing flowers on the graves of relatives they never knew.

We are going back home on Decoration Day — a folk tradition practiced by generations of Appalachians and Southerners dedicated to visiting cemeteries where their families are buried to clean and decorate their graves, and often to attend a religious service and dinner on the cemetery grounds.

Like most who grew up in Eastern Kentucky, I’ve been practicing various rites of Decoration Day all my life. I loved the reunions, playing with my cousins, and filling plates of food and desserts. Although, I admit: I have often seen the other parts of Decoration Day as an unnecessary effort, one I had little interest in carrying on. What good was there in spending money on artificial flowers for people who would never know you made the gesture?

Yet this year, something changed. Perhaps it was turning 40, or the reckoning of the pandemic, or both, that made Decoration Day seem urgent and important not only to observe, but to pass down to my children.

As my perspective changed, my interest grew and sent me seeking answers, both historical and personal, about the cultural tradition, its origins, and why I felt a sudden urge to drag my three children to a cemetery on their first week of summer vacation.

What Is Decoration Day?

In Ohio, the streets of my small town are lined with tiny American flags. Living near a military base, with many active-duty and retired U.S. Air Force neighbors, I am keenly aware of the reverence paid to Memorial Day. Each year, I’d find myself asking my friends, “We always called it Decoration Day. We decorated everyone’s graves. Did you?” The answer was, with rare exception, no. Secretly, I worried if somehow I had incorrectly celebrated a patriotic holiday. Was this the same as not knowing I needed to illuminate a flag at night or take it down in the rain? Did we get this wrong? Had we expanded it selfishly to include everyone when we should have been only honoring those who died in battle?

For insight, I turned to the book “Decoration Day in the Mountains,” by folklorist Alan Jabbour, founding director of the American Folklife Center?at the?Library of Congress.

Jabbour’s thorough exploration of Decoration Day relieved me of my concerns and filled me with a new appreciation for history and rituals.

Decoration Day, Jabbour wrote, actually inspired Memorial Day, pre-dating any post-Civil War celebration in the South or North. Before the war, Appalachians and Southerners were already practicing what they called Decoration Day, also called “a decoration,”??which involved an annual “cleaning of community cemeteries, decorating them with flowers, and holding a religious service in the cemetery, often with “dinner on the ground.” Families spent weeks leading up to Decoration Day making buds and petals from bright crepe paper, cleaning the cemeteries.

His research also softened my other silent concern that Decoration Day was tied up in celebrating the Confederacy. Jabbour

explains that two early and unrelated celebrations of the Confederate dead — one in Charleston, South Carolina, and the other in Petersburg, Virginia — both using the word “decoration” and both using flowers, led Jabbour to the conclude that organizers of the events each drew upon an existing tradition.

After reading Jabbour’s book, I called my grandmother, with whom I had tagged along to the cemetery, reunions and flower-buying expeditions. It was she who had carried the duty of Decoration Day to me, and I wanted to know why.

‘I was kindly like your youngins‘?

One question from me about Decoration Day transports my grandmother back to her childhood — and ties me to the generations that came before me.

Hearing her stories made it clear: Decoration Day, for me, was the remembering, linking myself and my children to the generations before us.

As I grow older, and as a pandemic has brought the fragility of life into clear focus, I’m buoyed by the remembering, by the traditions that connect the present, future and past. To quote Alan Jabbour, “At the deepest spiritual level, a decoration is an act of respect for the dead that reaffirms one’s bonds with those who have gone before.”

And so?today, my children will carry the flowers over the hillside to the graves of their great-grandfather, great-great grandparents and other relatives.

We’ll make sure to place a small bouquet on the stone of my grandfather’s little brother, who died as an infant.

They’ll listen to our stories as we walk around the cemetery, and I hope, feel connected to the people who came before them.

They will get hot, tired, and bored.

Like their great-grandmother 80 years before them, they will want us to hurry up and get gone.

But someday, maybe they will want to come back.

"United We Stand. Divided We Fall" by Amanda Mathews was officially unveiled on the Kentucky Capitol grounds. (Photo provided by Kentucky governor's office)

Kentucky officials unveiled a new memorial honoring those lost to COVID-19 at the Capitol Wednesday.?

The installation, called “United We Stand. Divided We Fall,” is an Amanda Mathews design and sculpture.?

Matthews is the CEO of Prometheus Art in Lexington. She sculpted the Nettie Depp statue, the first of a woman to be displayed in the Capitol. She also sculpted Kentuckian Alice Dunnigan, the first Black woman journalist to be credentialed to cover the White House, and other projects.?

Her COVID Memorial design features a reflective orb inscribed with the sculpture’s title and state motto. A pillar representing the health care workforce and other frontline workers supports it.?

Surrounding the orb are figures — including a ballerina, a child, a pregnant woman.?

“Common to each figure is a noticeable hole at the base of the neck and the top of the chest,” Matthews previously explained. “This empty space represents the indescribable grief and despair at the loss of our loved ones, relatives and friends who left us far too soon. This grief sometimes feels like a cold wind moving through our chest, shivering a fragile broken heart.”?

White lights will illuminate the memorial through the night. It also features green lights, which represent empathy. Many people throughout the pandemic shone green lights on their porches at night.?

Jacqueline Woodward, who served on the COVID-19 Memorial Advisory Panel, said during the dedication ceremony that while “there is no way to truly prepare for the grief we have experienced … the COVID Memorial brings me joy because I know that my loved one will never be forgotten.”?

UofL Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jason Smith praised all health care workers during the memorial dedication ceremony.?

“Day in and day out, people would show up in the hospital and offices, knowing that we didn’t know anything about how to treat this,” he said of the early days of the pandemic. Smith was the first Kentuckian to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the state.?

Health care workers knew “you may die from doing it,” he said. But: “we never had a problem getting people to come and take care of the people that were affected.”?

Gov. Andy Beshear said the “evil” COVID-19 virus left legacies of loss and of unity among Kentuckians.?

“While we were going through the worst of the worst of darkness, we saw the brightest of lights,” he said. “We saw our health care heroes … showing more courage than most of us could have imagined.”?

Cabinet for Health and Family Services data shows 18,726 Kentuckians died with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, as of May 24. The majority of deaths were among men and those 75 to 84 years old.?

“The COVID 19 pandemic interrupted our entire world, introducing unexpected illness, grief and insecurity to our families and friends,” Matthews said at the unveiling ceremony. “It pulled many of us into the depths of despair and isolation, rendering bear the reality that every person is susceptible.”

The pandemic also, she said, “gave us a glimpse of how our communities can hold each other up in times of great challenge,” a sentiment represented in her design.

And: “It showed us the grit, determination and innovation of our medical and scientific communities and frontline workers as well as the compassion and altruism of all types of caregivers across our great commonwealth.”

Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl, displayed after a drug bust in New York. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A bipartisan Kentucky bill that would pave the way for fentanyl strips to not be considered illegal drug paraphernalia passed the House unanimously 93-0 on Wednesday.?

House Bill 353 is sponsored by Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser, R-Taylor Mill and has three Democratic co-sponsors.?

Fentanyl test strips, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are paper strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid —?in pills and other drugs within minutes. Using them can help prevent overdoses, the CDC says.?

“People with a substance use disorder shouldn’t be arrested when they’re trying to stay alive,” Moser said on the House floor. “Access to fentanyl test strips and a strong education and awareness campaign are evidence-based practices that will prevent fatal overdoses and the all-to-present death that we see from fentanyl.”?

In 2021, 2,250 Kentuckians died from overdoses, Volunteers of America previously reported, with fentanyl playing a role in 73% of those fatalities. That’s an increase from 2020, when the CDC reported 2,083 deaths in the state, which had one of the nation’s worst rates of fatal overdoses.?

“Given the insidious introduction of fentanyl into the illicit drug supply chains, such as counterfeit pills that we see being bought on the street, the risk of accidental overdose and unintentional exposure is extraordinarily high,” said Moser. “Making fentanyl test strips more available is going to change behavior and it will save lives.”?

The bill may proceed to the Senate now.

Along the Ohio River in Moneta Sleet's hometown of Owensboro, K.O. Lewis's portrait of the photographer is displayed. As background, Lewis painted images from Sleet's photojournalism; the woman on the right was marching in the rain from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. (Photo by Drew Hardesty, Wonder Boy Media)

Moneta Sleet Jr.’s eye led him from his hometown of Owensboro around the world.

As a photojournalist for Ebony magazine, Sleet captured on film some of the 20th century’s most iconic moments; his work earned a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, the first awarded a Black American.

This week, the Ohio River town where nine-year-old Sleet first picked up a camera will celebrate his life and legacy with a festival called?“Through Sleet’s Eyes.”?

Each event will be held free of charge at the RiverPark Center.

Born in 1926, Sleet is best known for his coverage of the Civil Rights Movement. He photographed the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, all while subject to racism and discrimination himself.

Sleet’s most recognized work, a photo of Coretta Scott King and her daughter, Bernice, grieving at the funeral of their husband and father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., earned the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1969.

A graduate of the-then Kentucky State College in Frankfort, Sleet built an extensive portfolio?during his 41-year career at Ebony. He recorded the joys, pains, dreams and artistry of Africa and Black America.

Sleet, who was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1989, died in 1996.

“Moneta Sleet’s story is American history, and it’s American history that starts in Owensboro,” said Emmy Woosley, the festival chair and an MBA student at Vanderbilt University.?

Woosley initially pitched a public art piece for Sleet in 2021 to her Leadership Owensboro class. What began as a plan for a bronze sculpture in his honor quickly evolved into a community effort, Woosley said.?

The festival was born shortly after a portrait of Sleet, created by local artist and educator K.O. Lewis, was unveiled and circulated in Daviess County.

Friday, Feb. 24

“Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival” will open to the public at 6 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 24, beginning with a gallery of Sweet’s photographs entitled “A Witness to History.” The exhibit invites viewers to “witness the miracle of Moneta” by exploring images that curator Bob Morris calls “some of the most important of the 20th century.” A jazz performance by the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra will supplement the program.

At 6:30 p.m., Ozier Muhammad, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and friend of Sleet, will give a firsthand account of Sleet’s career and personal life.?

Muhammad “was just so excited to come and be part of this event because I think he truly recognizes how great Sleet’s legacy is not just on photojournalism, but on American history,” Woosley said.

Saturday, Feb. 25

On Saturday, the festival will start at 3 p.m. with a guided experience of the photo exhibit, followed by community conversations with the festival’s creators and a musical performance by the Owensboro Men’s Mass Community Choir at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively.

The festival’s main programming begins at 7 p.m. with a screening of the documentary “A Fine Remembrance” and a performance of a one-man-play called “The Power of the Lens.”

“A Fine Remembrance,” produced by Woosley and Drew Hardesty of Wonder Boy Media, explores Sleet’s impact through a series of interviews with people who were his colleagues and also a visit to his alma mater Kentucky State University.

Woosley and Hardesty started by visiting Sleet’s son, Greg, a retired U.S. district judge in Delaware, and traveled across the country, interviewing those who keep his legacy alive.

“When we talk to his colleagues, they just light up talking about Sleet, his stories and how much he pushed them to be better,” Woosley said. It’s that energy, she hopes, that will empower Owensboro’s youth to realize their potential.

“The Power of the Lens,” written and performed by Jeremy Gillett, is a three-movement play that takes a contemporary look at Sleet’s life. It follows Walter, a teacher at an art camp, through a story that explains the overlap between Black history and Sleet’s photography.

Gillett, an actor, writer and teacher with an expansive portfolio in theater and television, said he was drawn to Sleet’s story for its prominence in the Black community and its message to youth who may struggle with identity.

“His work was like a silent film. Each picture had a point, each picture had stood for something; there was a mission, a purpose,” Gillett said. “I want to bring visibility to the long lineage of paradigm-shifting inventions and creations that have come out of the Black community.”?

For more information on the “Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival” and to see more of his photographs, visit tsefest.org.

BBC News wrote about Sleet and published many of his photographs on the 50th anniversary of his Pulitzer Prize in “Moneta Sleet: The great black photographer you’ve never heard of.”

Terry Birdwhistell

Historian, author and educator Terry L. Birdwhistell died Sunday after a brief illness, according to a news release from the University of Kentucky where he had been dean of ?libraries and holder of the William T. Young Endowed Chair.

Best known for his oral histories, Birdwhistell was 72.