Return Home

AASRP Continues Series
“2010 Dialogues on Race”

The Kentucky Oral History Commission, a division of the Kentucky Historical Society, started the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project in 1998 to gather stories from the civil rights era in the 1950s and '60s. Dr. Betsy Brinson, project director, and Dr. Tracy K’Meyer of the University of Louisville conducted and taped interviews with more than 175 participants in the movement. Producer/director Arthur Rouse created the television series in which fifteen Kentuckians tell what they saw, heard and experienced - as they acted on their convictions to make great changes leading to legal and social equality in Kentucky.  Kentucky women experienced the Civil Rights Movement differently, and so we have chosen to focus in this series on the role of gender and race in this particular era of Kentucky history.  Join us in the AASRP Dialogues on Race series to talk about what it must have been like to be part of the civil rights movement in Kentucky -- and what these issues mean to us today.

Her Story - September 16: Jennie Wilson was born in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1900 to parents who had been slaves. Her daughter Alice Wilson was one of ten African-American students who decided to enroll at Mayfield High School shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education decision declared “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional.  Watch the video online in advance - see more information at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_jwilson.htm.

Her Story - October 14: Audrey Grevious served as president of the Lexington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the 1960s, working with other local civil rights leaders for peaceful integration of businesses.  Watch the video online in advance - see more information at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_grevious.htm.

Her Story - November 18: Anne Braden, a lifelong activist, became embroiled in one of Louisville’s most notorious incidents of race-based violence when she and her husband, both white, were asked to buy a house in an all-white neighborhood in order to resell it to a black family. The house was bombed, and the Bradens were branded Communist conspirators and tried for sedition in 1954. Watch the video online in advance - see more information at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_braden.htm.

Her Story - December 2: Senator Georgia Davis Powers was the first African American elected to the Kentucky Senate. First elected in 1968, she served for 21 years and championed bills prohibiting discrimination by race, sex, and age. Previously, she had helped organize the 1964 civil rights March on Frankfort.  Watch the video online in advance - see more information at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_powers.htm.