This history book focuses on Western Kentucky, particularly Muhlenberg County. It examines racial relations and violence after the Civil War to school integration in the 1960s.
A strength of this work is the contextualizing of the events that are explored in detail, expanding outward to other areas of the Bluegrass State and the South.
This volume begins with the author remembering the uncanny segregated experience of going with his white fourth-grade class to see “The Ten Commandments” movie at the local theater in 1957. Black students lined up in the side alley to file through the side door to walk up to the dark balcony.
Besides Jim Crowism and Lost Cause ideology and education, this book examines in detail the 1907 trial and execution of a 16-year-old Black youth, the Possum Hunter terrorism in the coalfields in 1914-1916, a physician’s dramatic courtroom suicide, spatial and social segregation in a small town, and school integration in the 1950s-1960s. Coal mining is covered as are blackface entertainment and Black soldiers in World Wars I and II.
This book has an index and fully cites its sources for those who want to explore further.
For two weeks, Amazon has tagged it as the “Top Seller in Historical Geography.”
The author already had a Ph.D. in a social science, but he realized he needed a graduate degree in history to understand better how historians operate. So, he completed an M.A. in American History at Gettysburg College in 2013.
Targeted Age Group:: 18 years +
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
When I returned to Kentucky, my home state, after several decades away, including as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, I began reading Kentucky history. I quickly saw a gap in the literature of the Black experience in Western Kentucky. My idea was to fill that gap. This book took me more than ten years of dedicated intensive study and writing to produce.
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