Book description
Memories fade, witnesses pass away, and the stories of how social
change took place are often lost. Many of those stories, however, have
been preserved thanks to the dozens of civil rights activists across
Kentucky who shared their memories in the wide-ranging oral history
project from which this volume arose. Through their collective memories
and the efforts of a new generation of historians, the stories behind
the marches, vigils, court cases, and other struggles to overcome racial
discrimination are finally being brought to light. In Freedom on the
Border: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky,
Catherine Fosl and Tracy E. K'Meyer gather the voices of more than one
hundred courageous crusaders for civil rights, many of whom have never
before spoken publicly about their experiences. These activists hail
from all over Kentucky, offering a wide representation of the state's
geography and culture while explaining the civil rights movement in
their respective communities and in their own words. Grounded in oral
history, this book offers new insights into the diverse experiences and
ground-level perspectives of the activists. This approach often
highlights the contradictions between the experiences of individual
activists and commonly held beliefs about the larger movement.
Interspersed among the chapters are in-depth profiles of activists such
as Kentucky general assemblyman Jesse Crenshaw and Helen Fisher Frye,
past president of the Danville NAACP. These activists describe the many
challenges that Kentuckians faced during the civil rights movement, such
as inequality in public accommodations, education, housing, and
politics. By placing the narratives in the social context of state,
regional, and national trends, Fosl and K'Meyer demonstrate how
contemporary race relations in Kentucky are marked by many of the same
barriers that African Americans faced before and during the civil rights
movement. From city streets to mountain communities, in areas with black
populations large and small, Kentucky's civil rights movement was much
more than a series of mass demonstrations, campaigns, and elite-level
policy decisions. It was also the sum of countless individual struggles,
including the mother who sent her child to an all-white school, the
veteran who refused to give up when denied a job, and the volunteer
election worker who decided to run for office herself. In vivid detail,
Freedom on the Border brings this mosaic of experiences to life and
presents a new, compelling picture of a vital and little-understood era
in the history of Kentucky and the nation. Catherine Fosl, associate
professor of women's/gender studies and director of the Anne Braden
Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville,
is the author of Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for
Racial Justice in the Cold War South. Tracy E. K'Meyer, associate
professor of U. S. history at the University of Louisville, is the
author of Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville,
Kentucky, 1945-1980.
