Rep. George Brown, D-Lexington. (Photo by LRC Public Information)

Kentucky Rep. George Brown, D-Lexington, says he will file legislation in 2025 to try and establish Juneteenth as an official state holiday.?

Past efforts to do so have failed.?

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorating the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free in Galveston, Texas.?

President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, in 1863, but it was not immediately enforced in many areas of the south.?

In late May, Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order making Juneteenth an executive branch holiday.?

Meanwhile, the Legislative Research Commission announced in early June it will “remain open during regular office hours” on Juneteenth and “committee meetings for that day will proceed as scheduled.”?

There are two committee meetings scheduled for that day.?

Gov. Andy Beshear signed executive orders during a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda Thursday. (Screenshot)

Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday signed executive orders making Juneteenth an executive branch holiday and protecting natural hairstyles like braids, locs and twists from discrimination.?

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have tried and failed to pass bills on both of these issues.?

CROWN Act stalls in legislature

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, is among those who have championed the CROWN Act, which is an acronym for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.” His latest bill stalled this session after being passed over in the Senate several times and recommitted to the Judiciary Committee.?

Democratic Floor Leader Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, also filed a bill this session to make June 19 — Juneteenth — a state holiday. It did not get a hearing.?

The Juneteenth executive order?

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorating the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free in Galveston, Texas. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, in 1863, but it was not immediately enforced in many areas of the south.?

“I’ve decided I can no longer wait for others to do what is right,” Beshear, a Democrat, said Thursday ahead of signing the order.?

“It is our responsibility to look back at one of the ugliest chapters in our history. We must look at it straight on and not hide from our own history, even the parts that are painful.” Beshear said. “Instead, we recognize it, we attempt to learn from it and we work to repair the lasting damage and heal our nation’s wounds so we can make progress for a better tomorrow.”??

His executive order will make Juneteenth an official holiday in Kentucky, in line with actions taken by at least 28 other states, according to the Pew Research Center.?

“It is impossible for me to ever fully imagine the horror and lasting scars and legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,” Beshear said during a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda. “But as governor, I’m committed to listening, to learning, to trying to hear and then to take intentional action.”?

Neal joined Beshear Thursday. He said Juneteenth symbolizes “both jubilation and a solemn reminder of the struggles and achievements of African Americans.” He has tried for several years to pass a bill codifying Juneteenth and said he’s committed to keep trying.?

“I urge my colleagues in the General Assembly to support legislation in the upcoming session, recognizing the pivotal role Black Americans have played in shaping our country,” Neal said. In doing so, “we honor our shared history and demonstrate a commitment to equality and justice for all.”??

Natural hairstyles protected

As of 2023, 22 states had enacted CROWN Acts, according to the Legal Defense Fund. The national CROWN Act campaign found, based on a 2023 study, that about half of Black women feel pressured to straighten their hair in job interviews, professional headshots and on the job.?

They also found more than a fifth of Black women between 25 and 34 were sent home from their work because of their hair. Additionally, the survey found that Black women with textured hair are two times more likely to report microaggressions at work than Black women with straightened hair.?

Beshear’s executive order applies only to state government workers and job applicants. Effective immediately, it prohibits discrimination in state government workplaces based on “traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to natural hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks and twists.”?

“The way my hair looks is not a reflection of my work ethic,” said Melinda Wofford, an assistant director in the state’s Transportation Cabinet. “It definitely (is) not a reflection of my character. This order makes possible the freedom needed for me to continue to wear my hair in its natural state, the state that God blessed me with, without fear of discrimination in the workplace.”

Kentucky Black Legislative Caucus members Rep. Derrick Graham, Rep. George Brown Jr. and Sen. Reggie Thomas read names of Black Kentucky lawmakers. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear reaffirmed his support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives during a Black History Month celebration Thursday at the Kentucky Capitol.?

Amid a flurry of anti-DEI legislation in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Beshear told the crowd in the Capitol Rotunda that “diversity is an asset” and makes Kentucky “more welcoming” to companies that might relocate to the state.?

“We talk about equity and it’s something we should all want in our heart, everyone to have true opportunity not held back by hundreds of years of unequal treatment,” the governor said. “And just think about inclusion. It’s what we teach each and every one of our kids how we’re supposed to approach this world as one people, one Team Kentucky.”?

The celebration is held annually by Kentucky’s Black Legislative Caucus, this year on the first day of Black History Month. Speakers included Beshear, lawmakers from both the House and Senate and Chief Justice ???????Laurance VanMeter.?

Bills have been filed in the House and Senate that target DEI initiatives, particularly in public education. onservatives across the country are pushing similar legislation, arguing such initiatives — which often support minority groups — sow division.?

Beshear, who had previously defended DEI, told the crowd that federal DEI programs support all Kentuckians, including those of various races, veterans and military spouses, people who have been affected by multi-generational poverty and those who come from rural areas. He received cheers from the room. Repeating one of his frequent themes, the governor decried politics that sow “division” and urged “politics of love, of empathy, of inclusion.”?

The governor also praised legislation in recent years that supports Kentucky’s historically Black colleges and universities. Beshear’s office will also take part in honoring the anniversary of the March on Frankfort led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 later this year, he added. Local governments in Frankfort and Franklin County will also participate.?

Beshear also renewed the call for some of his state budget priorities, such as funding universal pre-kindergarten programs, 11% raises for public school employees, clean drinking water and high-speed internet. The House Republicans’ budget proposal got approval in a committee Wednesday and is expected to be voted on Thursday..?

Senate Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, of Louisville, previously told the Kentucky Lantern that the Democratic caucus was watching anti-DEI legislation this session. On Wednesday, he said during the program people should look at both the goodness and badness of the past to learn lessons moving forward.?

“We’re not all of same mind,” Neal said. “We’re not all of same differences, but we do believe — all — in showing respect.”?

House Speaker Pro Temp David Meade, of Stanford and one of the Republican co-sponsors of the House’s anti-DEI bill, House Bill 9, spoke of Anne Braden, a Kentucky journalist and a white ally of the American Civil Rights Movement, during the program.?

“It would have been unthinkable to us to say no, because this is something we believe in. Either you live by what you believe (in) or you don’t,” Meade said, quoting Braden.?

Between speeches from Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer and Meade, someone in the crowd shouted for lawmakers to vote against the anti-DEI legislation.?

Women listen during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Historian Vicki Crawford is the director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, where she oversees the archive of his sermons, speeches, writings and other materials. Here, she explains the contributions of women who influenced King and helped to fuel some of the most significant campaigns of the civil rights era, but whose contributions are not nearly as well known.

An activist in her own right

Coretta Scott King is often remembered as a devoted wife and mother, yet she was also a committed activist in her own right. She was deeply involved with social justice causes before she met and married Martin Luther King Jr., and long after his death.

Scott King served with civil rights groups throughout her time as a student at Antioch College and the New England Conservatory of Music. Shortly after she and King married in 1953, the couple returned to the South, where they lent their support to local and regional organizations such as the NAACP and the Montgomery Improvement Association.

They also supported the Women’s Political Council, an organization founded by female African American professors at Alabama State University that facilitated voter education and registration, and also protested discrimination on city buses. These local leadership efforts paved the way for widespread support of Rosa Parks’ resistance to segregation on public busing.

Following her husband’s assassination in 1968, Scott King devoted her life to institutionalizing his philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She established the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, led a march of sanitation workers in Memphis and joined efforts to organize the Poor People’s Campaign. A longtime advocate of workers rights, she also supported a 1969 hospital workers’ strike in South Carolina, delivering stirring speeches against the treatment of African American staff.

Scott King’s commitment to nonviolence went beyond civil rights at home. During the 1960s, she became involved in peace and anti-war efforts such as the Women’s Strike for Peace and opposed the escalating war in Vietnam. By the 1980s, she had joined protests against South African apartheid, and before her death in 2006, she spoke out in favor of LGBT rights – capping a lifetime of activism against injustice and inequalities.

Women and the March

While Scott King’s support and ideas were particularly influential, many other women played essential roles in the success of the civil rights movement.

Take the most iconic moment of the civil rights struggle, in many Americans’ minds: the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Sixty years after the march, it is critical to recognize the activism of women from all walks of life who helped to strategize and organize one of the country’s most massive political demonstrations of the 20th century. Yet historical accounts overwhelmingly highlight the march’s male leadership. With the exception of Daisy Bates, an activist who read a short tribute, no women were invited to deliver formal speeches.

Women were among the key organizers of the march, however, and helped recruit thousands of participants. Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, was often the lone woman at the table of leaders representing national organizations. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who also served on the planning committee, was another strong advocate for labor issues, anti-poverty efforts and women’s rights.

Photographs of the march show women attended in large numbers, yet few historical accounts adequately credit women for their leadership and support. Civil rights activist, lawyer and Episcopalian priest Pauli Murray, among others, called for a gathering of women to address this and other instances of discrimination a few days later.

Hidden in plain view

African American women led and served in all the major campaigns, working as field secretaries, attorneys, plaintiffs, organizers and educators, to name just a few roles. So why did early historical accounts of the movement neglect their stories?

There were women propelling national civil rights organizations and among King’s closest advisers. Septima Clark, for example, was a seasoned educator whose strong organizing skills played a consequential role in voter registration, literacy training and citizenship education. Dorothy Cotton was a member of the inner circle of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King was president, and was involved in literacy training and teaching nonviolent resistance.

Yet women’s organizing during the 1950s and 1960s is most evident at local and regional levels, particularly in some of the most perilous communities across the deep South. Since the 1930s, Amelia Boynton Robinson of Dallas County, Alabama, and her family had been fighting for voting rights, laying the groundwork for the struggle to end voter suppression that continues to the present. She was also key in planning the 50-mile Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Images of the violence that marchers endured – particularly on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday – shocked the nation and eventually contributed to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Or take Mississippi, where there would not have been a sustained movement without women’s activism. Some names have become well known, like Fannie Lou Hamer, but others deserve to be.

Two rural activists, Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, joined Hamer as representatives to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a parallel political party that challenged the state’s all-white representatives at the 1964 Democratic Convention. A year later, the three women represented the party in a challenge to block the state’s congressmen from taking their seats, given ongoing disenfranchisement of Black voters. Though the congressional challenge failed, the activism was a symbolic victory, serving note to the nation that Black Mississippians were no longer willing to accept centuries-old oppression.

Many African American women were out-front organizers for civil rights. But it is no less important to remember those who assumed less visible, but indispensable, roles behind the scenes, sustaining the movement over time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. It originally published in March 2023. Read the original article.

Kentucky Capitol (Getty Images)

Kentucky House Democratic Caucus Leader Derrick Graham will not run for reelection in 2024, he announced Friday.?

Graham, a Frankfort Democrat, said in a statement that, “I feel strongly that now is the time to give someone else the chance to be our next state representative, a job I have loved since first being elected in 2002.”?

“Whether in office or out, I will never stop doing all I can for the community I love and that made me who I am today,” Graham said. “There’s no better place to work, live and – as I’ll soon find out – retire.”

Several of Graham’s colleagues have made similar announcements that they’re leaving state government in recent days. They include Sen. Denise Harper Angel, D-Louisville, Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, and Rep. Kevin Bratcher, R-Louisville.?

Graham will “enjoy retirement” with his wife, Mildred, he said.?

“Being an elected official takes a lot of your time, and your family pays that price as well,” he said.? “I promised my wife that I would begin to scale that back so we can truly enjoy our retirement, and this decision will fulfill that goal.”???

Graham made history in 2022 when he became the first Black Kentuckians to head a House of Representatives legislative caucus.?

From left, Robyn Pizzo, Sherman Neal and Shelly Baskin, who campaigned for removal of a Confederate monument from the Calloway County Courthouse grounds, display some of the yard signs that sprouted across the community. The fiscal court decided to leave the statue of Robert E. Lee where it has stood since 1917. (Photo Courtesy of Rural-Urban Exchange)

Sherman Neal spent many days of the summer of 2020 in the Western Kentucky college town of Murray next to a Confederate monument at the county courthouse.?

It was on the heels of the murder of George Floyd and the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor when Neal — a Black volunteer college football coach, veteran and recent transplant to the city — penned an open letter to local leadership calling for the monument to be removed.?

In that letter, he evoked his young children, saying if they asked about the monument, he would have to tell them it was a racist symbol put in place “to keep Black people quiet and subservient.” The monument, which features a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was erected with funds from a local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter in 1917.?

Neal’s letter sparked a movement that led to months of protests, a local man assaulting protesters with mace and a march on the county courthouse square, a place where those wanting the monument to stay often confronted those who wanted it removed.

“You don’t get too many opportunities in life to go through real shared hardships together and learn lessons at the same time,” Neal said in a recent interview with the Lantern. “It takes actual experience sometimes to learn certain things and build certain bonds.”?

A new documentary, “Ghosts of a Lost Cause,” captures the struggles and bonds built by those in Murray who pushed for the monument to be removed.

It is one of a series of documentaries airing this Saturday in communities across Kentucky, coinciding with a regional tradition of celebrating emancipation from chattel slavery on Aug. 8.?

The Rural-Urban Solidarity Project, coordinated by the organization Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, is airing four films that chronicle actions and protests for racial justice that Kentuckians took following the killing of Breonna Taylor, while also uplifting and celebrating Black communities across the state.?

Robyn Pizzo, a resident featured in the Murray documentary, made “Move the Monument” yard signs that sprouted across the community. She said watching the film is “painful” and “heartbreaking” in some ways given that advocates, like herself, for removing the Confederate monument didn’t achieve their goal.?

Lee’s statue remains by the county courthouse after the Calloway County Fiscal Court decided to keep it on county property in 2020. But the bonds made between Pizzo, Sherman and other community members throughout those efforts also remain.?

“I think some of the power in the storytelling is the diversity of the people who were interviewed and the people who were part of the movement, like the backgrounds that we all came from, our motivations to join, how it’s impacted our lives since,” Pizzo said. “I think that there is a hope, that even individual people making small changes can have an impact to the future of what Kentucky looks like and making it a more welcoming and equitable place for everyone.”

Years in the making

Savannah Barrett, the co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, is still deeply connected to her roots in Grayson County.

Barrett helps lead the Exchange, an organization that brings together Kentuckians from rural and urban communities to share ideas and create understanding and bridge divides.?

When people began to fill the streets of her current home in Louisville following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, she was also hearing from people she knew about Black Lives Matter protests popping up in smaller communities across the state, including in her home of Grayson County.?

She saw that younger people in Leitchfield, the Grayson County seat, were organizing a protest at a local courthouse.?

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that that has never happened in Leitchfield,” Barrett said.?

She said she recognized the protests sweeping across rural communities in solidarity with Black Kentuckians was something “very special,” and working with filmmakers she knew, efforts began to capture some of those moments on film. The ideas for the documentaries were conceived from that footage.?

“We started to work with our member network to try and figure out how to make these films in a way that was by and for the folks who were supporting these actions across the state,” Barrett said. “We needed to hear from more Black Kentuckians. We needed the leadership and oversight of some of the luminaries in African American arts and culture in the state.”

As the ideas for the films progressed, she reached out to people such as Betty Dobson who runs the Hotel Metropolitan, a storied hotel-turned-museum in Paducah that hosted Black travelers including stars such as James Brown and Louis Armstrong during the era of segregation. A documentary highlighting Hotel Metropolitan’s history and the importance of preserving and sharing Black history, “Preserving the Past to Build a Better Future,” became one of the films in the series.?

Barrett said the films are purposefully being shown around when gatherings take place for Black communities in Kentucky, specifically the Old Timers festival in Covington and the Eighth of August emancipation celebrations in Western Kentucky. The film in Harlan County is also dedicated in the memory of two people featured in the documentary who have since passed away.

“It just felt right,” Barrett said.?

Other documentaries that came into shape include “Words I Speak: Solidarity + Resiliency,” featuring stories of Black women leaders from Northern Kentucky who stepped up to organize their community or run for office.

Another film being showcased in Harlan County highlights the Eastern Kentucky Social Club, a treasured gathering space and far-flung network of friends and family. The film also details the challenges and resilience of Black people in the mountain county.

“We looked at different stories,” said Gerry James, one of the filmmakers involved with the documentaries. “We wanted to have diverse geography.”

James was particularly involved with the production of the film in Murray. The story of Sherman Neal and his struggles to remove the monument personally resonated with James, who is also Black. James works in outdoor recreation planning and recounted a story of visiting downtown Glasgow in southern Kentucky to help build a trail.?

“I pulled up to downtown Glasgow, and I parked right in front of a Confederate monument. And then a Black family walks past,” James said. “It just reminded me of myself in that moment and how I felt about that monument.”

James said he wanted to show the “humanity” of those involved to remove the monument in Murray, noting Neal’s background as a Marine veteran in challenging a monument dedicated to Confederate veterans.

Neal faced a backlash for being a frontline advocate for removing the Murray monument. He left Murray in 2021 after he wasn’t brought back on his college football team as a volunteer coach.?

But he feels it’s still important to document movements, including ones that don’t achieve every tangible goal, for future posterity.

“A lot of times we look at the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” he said. “‘Oh, that’s great.’ Well, there’s a lot of bad that comes, too, and sacrifice that comes with all these things. And I think it’s important to capture the reality of some of that.”

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.

Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon. (LRC Public Information)

A bill that would ban state and local law enforcement, governments and their employees from enforcing federal gun laws or regulations in Kentucky advanced from a Senate committee Thursday morning.?

House Bill 153, sponsored by Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon, would prevent local law enforcement, employees of public agencies and local governments from assisting or cooperating with a “federal ban” on firearms, firearms accessories and ammunition. The bill’s language would also prevent local governments and public agencies from adopting rules or spending public funding or resources to enforce such a federal ban on firearms.?

The Republican reiterated his support for the bill, speaking before the Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee.?

“The concept behind it is pretty simple: it says going forward, no state tax dollars, state manpower will be allocated towards the enforcement of a federal firearm ban,” Bray said.?

The legislation passed out of the House on mostly party lines last month. A similar bill sponsored by Bray last year also had passed the House but failed to receive a vote by the full Senate before the end of the legislative session.?

Anderson County writer Teri Carter testified against the bill, pointing to how a federal judge this week struck down a similar law in Missouri as unconstitutional and void because of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution. That clause establishes that federal law generally takes precedence over state law.?

Carter referenced reporting by the Kansas City Star that following the Missouri legislation being signed into law in 2021, some police departments there restricted cooperation with federal authorities on collaborations such as sending gun serial number information to federal databases or joint drug task forces.?

?“I live in a mostly rural county in Kentucky. I talk to my local police department regularly. I have lunch with them every month,” Carter said. “I don’t see where this helps my community. I don’t see where this helps make everyone safer. I don’t see where this helps my police department.”

Chuck Eddy, a former Democratic candidate for Kentucky Senate District 22 who was endorsed by the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said the legislation would require the state “to spend money defending this bill.”?

“In the end, it will not survive,” Eddy. “The fact of the matter is, the Supreme Court is not going to blow up the federal constitution to allow individual states to say, ‘Nah, we don’t want to follow this.’”?

Bray had previously responded to concerns about cooperation between local law enforcement and federal authorities by saying such concerns were not that “big of an issue.”?

In the legislation’s language, it states that nothing in the bill would prevent or limit local law enforcement, local governments or public agencies from working with federal officials if the collaboration was about something other than a federal gun ban or regulation.??

Bray, responding to a question from Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said the bill was to make sure people like his wife can protect themselves through the use of firearms, referencing a recent federal rule change banning stabilizing braces for pistols as an example of overreach.?

That federal rule change has gotten pushback from federal gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association that say such braces were originally designed for firearms use by veterans with disabilities.?

“Murder’s already illegal. Possession of a firearm by a felon is already illegal. But what it’s going to stop is it’s going to stop people with disabilities or people like my wife who — I frequently have to be up here, so she’s home alone — it’s going to stop her from being able to defend herself or her family as she sees fit,” Bray said.?

Disclaimer: Teri Carter contributes columns to the Kentucky Lantern.

Charles Blatcher III, chairman of the National Coalition of Black Veteran Organizations, shakes Senate Minority Leader Gerald Neal's hand during the Capitol Rotunda ceremony. (Photo for Kentucky Lantern by Liam Niemeyer)

Members of the Kentucky Black Legislative Caucus marked Black History Month and the arrival of lawmakers back to the state Capitol Tuesday with a celebration of Black history, being joined by the justices of the Kentucky Supreme Court, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican legislative leadership.

Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, who’s the Democratic candidate for state Attorney General, mentioned how the impact of racism on all communities is still being felt, yet the celebration was to honor Black Kentuckians in the past who persisted despite that.?

“Black history is American history,” Stevenson said. “We get to celebrate the African Americans who no matter what was happening, they achieved.”?

One of the past Kentuckians mentioned throughout the celebration was Brig. Gen. Charles Young, the third African American to graduate from West Point and the highest-ranking Black military officer at the time of Young’s death in 1922. Young was posthumously promoted to Brigadier General in 2021.

Senate Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, said a bill would be filed in the legislature to name a stretch of highway after Young that reaches up to the military officer’s birthplace of Mays Lick in Mason County.

The keynote speaker of the celebration, Charles Blatcher III, spoke about his efforts to raise awareness about Young’s life through his role as chairman of the National Coalition of Black Veteran Organizations. Blatcher said his group was one of several that were instrumental to getting Young promoted in military rank.?

“Black military history is a subset of Black history. Black military history fills the void in Black history not fully recognizing the importance of our military participation, especially in the initiation and subsequent passage of civil rights legislation,” Blatcher III said.?

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Hopkinsville, who was speaking at the celebration in place of Senate President Robert Stivers, said the GOP-dominated Kentucky General Assembly has been focusing on issues of race more than he’s ever seen in his lifetime.

He said challenging conversations on race still remain, mentioning that some of the writings of bell hooks — a Black author from Hopkinsville who wrote acclaimed work commenting on the intersectionality of race, class and gender — had recently been challenged in curriculum.?

bell hooks was one of several African American authors who was recently dropped from the AP African American Studies curriculum after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced the original plan for the AP course.?

“May we strive to uphold our nation’s ideals and make certain the next generation of Kentuckians appreciates the history and enormous contributions of African Americans to our way of life more than the last,” Westerfield said.?