Lexington has dozens of well-restored landmarks, but unfortunately so many more are lost forever. The famous Phoenix Hotel, a longtime stop for weary travelers and politicians alike, has risen from its own ashes numerous times over the past centuries. The works of renowned architect John McMurtry were once numerous around town, but some of the finest examples are gone. The Centrepointe block has been made and unmade so many times that its original tenants are unknown to natives now. Join local blogger, attorney and preservationist Peter Brackney as he explores the intriguing back stories of these hidden Bluegrass treasures.
Lexington is known as the "Horse Capital of the World," but the city's history runs much deeper. Learn about the mayor who refused the Ku Klux Klan permission to march and organize in the city. Meet one of the nation's foremost advocates for voting rights for women who was a native of the city. Visit the many small hamlets around Lexington that were settlements for the formerly enslaved. Lexington was the state's first capital and the nation's first community to establish an urban service boundary to regulate growth and preserve horse farms. Seventh-generation Kentuckian and Lexington native Foster Ockerman Jr. offers an updated history.
A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw’s” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city’s Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s. Douglas A. Boyd’s Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw’s residents as a “rough class of people, who didn’t mind killing or being killed.” In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.
"The Athens of the West. The Horse Capital of the World. The Home to the Greatest Tradition in College Basketball. Heart of the Bluegrass. Lexington has a lot of names and an even richer history. The region played an oversized role in America's educational, political, religious, and cultural development. Visit a historic AMC church in downtown Lexington that was a stop on the Underground Railroad for escaping slaves. Walk through fifteen local historic districts. Explore an equine cemetery. Join historians Foster Ockerman, Jr. and Peter Brackney on a tour through historic sites and buildings in Lexington and central Kentucky."--Provided by publisher
HISTORIC PHOTOS OF LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY captures the remarkable journey of this city and her people with still photography from the finest archive of private and public collections. Through four wars and urban development, Lexington has endured and prospered, due in large part, because of the persistence and innovation of its civic leaders. With hundreds of archival photos reproduced in stunning duotone on heavy art paper, this book is the perfect addition to any historian's collection.
Kentucky is most commonly associated with horses, tobacco fields, bourbon, and coal mines. There is much more to the state, though, than stories of feuding families and Colonel Sanders’ famous fried chicken. Kentucky has a rich and often compelling history, and James C. Klotter and Freda C. Klotter introduce readers to an exciting story that spans 12,000 years, looking at the lives of Kentuckians from Native Americans to astronauts. The Klotters examine all aspects of the state’s history—its geography, government, social life, cultural achievements, education, and economy. A Concise History of Kentucky recounts the events of the deadly frontier wars of the state’s early history, the divisive Civil War, and the shocking assassination of a governor in 1900. The book tells of Kentucky’s leaders from Daniel Boone and Henry Clay to Abraham Lincoln, Mary Breckinridge, and Muhammad Ali. The authors also highlight the lives of Kentuckians, both famous and ordinary, to give a voice to history. The Klotters explore Kentuckians’ accomplishments in government, medicine, politics, and the arts. They describe the writing and music that flowered across the state, and they profile the individuals who worked to secure equal rights for women and African Americans. The book explains what it was like to work in the coal mines and explains the daily routine on a nineteenth-century farm. The authors bring Kentucky’s story to the twenty-first century and talk about the state’s modern economy, where auto manufacturing jobs are replacing traditional agricultural work. A collaboration of the state historian and an experienced educator, A Concise History of Kentucky is the best single resource for Kentuckians new and old who want to learn more about the past, present, and future of the Bluegrass State.
A new form of strip mining has caused a state of emergency for the Appalachian wilderness and the communities that depend on it-a crisis compounded by issues of government neglect, corporate hubris, and class conflict. In this powerful call to arms, Erik Reece chronicles the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain and offers a landmark defense of a national treasure threatened with extinction.
In 1920, ten-year-old Geneva Hardman was murdered on her way to school, just outside Lexington. Both civil authorities and a growing lynch mob sought Will Lockett, a black army veteran, as the suspect. The vigilantes remained one step behind the lawmen, and a grieving family erred on the side of justice versus vengeance. During the short trial, tensions spilled over and shots were fired outside the courthouse, leading to a declaration of martial law. Six people died in what civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois described as the "Second Battle of Lexington." Join author Peter Brackney and delve into this century-old story of murder and mayhem.
Once the capital of the Confederacy and the industrial hub of slave-based tobacco production, Richmond, Virginia has been largely overlooked in the context of twentieth century urban and political history. By the early 1960s, the city served as an important center for integrated politics, as African Americans fought for fair representation and mobilized voters in order to overcome discriminatory policies. Richmond's African Americans struggled to serve their growing communities in the face of unyielding discrimination. Yet, due to their dedication to strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African American politicians held a city council majority by the late 1970s. In The Dream Is Lost, Julian Maxwell Hayter describes more than three decades of national and local racial politics in Richmond and illuminates the unintended consequences of civil rights legislation. He uses the city's experience to explain the political abuses that often accompany American electoral reforms and explores the arc of mid-twentieth-century urban history. In so doing, Hayter not only reexamines the civil rights movement's origins, but also seeks to explain the political, economic, and social implications of the freedom struggle following the major legislation of the 1960s. Hayter concludes his study in the 1980s and follows black voter mobilization to its rational conclusion -- black empowerment and governance. However, he also outlines how Richmond's black majority council struggled to the meet the challenges of economic forces beyond the realm of politics. The Dream Is Lost vividly illustrates the limits of political power, offering an important view of an underexplored aspect of the post--civil rights era.
In the years following the Revolutionary War, the young American nation was in a state of chaos. Citizens pleaded with government leaders to reorganize local infrastructures and heighten regulations, but economic turmoil, Native American warfare, and political unrest persisted. By 1784, one group of North Carolina frontiersmen could no longer stand the unresponsiveness of state leaders to their growing demands. This ambitious coalition of Tennessee Valley citizens declared their region independent from North Carolina, forming the state of Franklin. The Lost State of Franklin: America's First Secession chronicles the history of this ill-fated movement from its origins in the early settlement of East Tennessee to its eventual violent demise. Author Kevin T. Barksdale investigates how this lost state failed so ruinously, examining its history and tracing the development of its modern mythology. The Franklin independence movement emerged from the shared desires of a powerful group of landed elite, yeoman farmers, and country merchants. Over the course of four years they managed to develop a functioning state government, court system, and backcountry bureaucracy. Cloaking their motives in the rhetoric of the American Revolution, the Franklinites aimed to defend their land claims, expand their economy, and eradicate the area's Native American population. They sought admission into the union as America's fourteenth state, but their secession never garnered support from outside the Tennessee Valley. Confronted by Native American resistance and the opposition of the North Carolina government, the state of Franklin incited a firestorm of partisan and Indian violence. Despite a brief diplomatic flirtation with the nation of Spain during the state's final days, the state was never able to recover from the warfare, and Franklin collapsed in 1788. East Tennesseans now regard the lost state of Franklin as a symbol of rugged individualism and regional exceptionalism, but outside the region the movement has been largely forgotten. The Lost State of Franklin presents the complete history of this defiant secession and examines the formation of its romanticized local legacy. In reevaluating this complex political movement, Barksdale sheds light on a remarkable Appalachian insurrection and reminds readers of the extraordinary, fragile nature of America's young independence.
