Black History in Kentucky
- February is Black History Month, a four-week-long celebration during which we shine a light on—and seek to learn more about—the people, events, experiences, and contributions of Black America throughout the past 400-plus years.
February is the birth month of two figures who loom large in the Black past: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (born February 12), who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and African American abolitionist, author, and orator Frederick Douglass (born February 14).
- African American history in Kentucky has roots in the Commonwealth’s earliest history, as African Americans accompanied and assisted Daniel Boone on his arrival to the new frontier in 1769.
There were about 25,000 African American Kentuckians who served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) in the Civil War. This made up nearly one-third of the union soldiers in Kentucky. Besides Louisiana, Kentucky has the most Black men serve in the Civil War.
Shelby Lanier, Jr. (04/20/1936 – 03/24/2019) was born in Louisville, KY and was a graduate of University of Louisville. He joined the joined the police force in 1965 and served 27 years. In 1971, he organized the Black Police Officers Organization and was its first president. In 1974, he became the co-founder of the National Black Police Association. He was the first African American motorcycle police officer in Louisville. He was elected president of the Louisville Branch of the NAACP in 1988.
Helen Humes (06/23/1913 – 09/09/1981) was born in Louisville, KY to Emma Johnson and John Henry Humes. She grew up as an only child. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father was the first black attorney in town. Humes started as a teenage jazz and blues singer, then a vocalist with Count Basie's band, and later became an R&B diva. At the age of 14, Humes went to St. Louis and began recording albums singing the blues. She went on to New York, where she performed and became known all over the world.
Dr. Grace Marilynn James (08/12/1923 – 01/14/1989) was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to Edward L. James and Stella Grace Shaw James. She became a practicing pediatrician in Louisville when hospitals in the city were racially segregated by law. At the University of Louisville School of Medicine, she was the first African American physician on the faculty. She was also one of the first African American women on the faculty at any Southern medical school. Additionally, she was the first African American woman to serve as an attending physician at Louisville's Kosair Children's Hospital. She was also the first African American woman to be granted membership in the Jefferson County Medical Society.
Alberta Odell Jones (11/12/1930 – 08/05/1965) was an attorney and civil rights icon. She was the first woman appointed city attorney in Jefferson County. Jones graduated from Louisville Central High School and went to the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, graduating third in her class. She attended the University of Louisville School of Law for one year before transferring to Howard University School of Law for her degree. She was appointed in 1965 to the Louisville Domestic Relations Court, where she was a prosecutor. Just five months after becoming a prosecutor, Jones was abducted from her car, beaten and thrown off the Sherman Minton Bridge. No one was ever arrested for her murder. Before her untimely death, Jones was active in the civil rights movement. She formed the Independent Voters Association of Louisville and was very involved with the Louisville chapter of the Urban League, as well as the NAACP.
The Louisville Defender was founded in 1933 by Alvin Bowman, with the encouragement and financial backing of John Sengstacke and the Chicago Defender. Public service projects quickly made the paper an important part of Louisville's black community. The Louisville Defender is the city’s oldest newspaper still in operation, which has a focus on the city’s Black community. In 1936, Frank Stanley, Sr. purchased Bowman’s shares and would later write a syndicated column in the 1940s called “Being Frank”. Today, the Louisville Defender is owned by Clarence Leslie, who took over in 1985.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the featured speaker at the March on Frankfort, Kentucky in 1964, where an estimated 10,000 people gathered in a peaceful protest for civil rights.
One of the many historic structures in Frankfort, Kentucky was built in 1871, the Frankfort Barracks. They were used by the U.S. military until 1876 to house black soldiers during Reconstruction after the Civil War.
Green Hill Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky was established in 1865 and is the home of the African American Civil War Memorial. This ten-foot-tall monument honors the 142 soldiers whose names are inscribed on the stone façade and the estimated 25,000 who constituted Kentucky’s U.S. Colored Troops.
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is in Paducah, Kentucky and was dedicated in 1983 by the Paducah Branch of the NAACP. This memorial stands in tribute to one of our nation’s most well-known preachers, humanitarians, and icons of the Civil Rights Movement.
Paducah is also that place where the Hotel Metropolitan is located. During segregation, blacks had to establish their own lodging for travelers who would otherwise have nowhere else to stay. Beginning in the early 1900s and for decades the follow the Hotel Metropolitan welcomed people lie Justice Thurgood Marshall, Duke Ellington and other musicians moving along the South’s “Chitlin’ Circuit”, members of the Negro Baseball League, and other notable African American personalities.
The African American Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky is situated on the Western Kentucky University campus and houses a rich collection of exhibits and artifacts highlighting the significant history of African Americans who lived in this area during the early 20th century.
State Street Baptist Church, previously named Baptist Church of Bowling Green and African Baptist Church is home of the oldest African American congregation located in the Shake Rag Historic District in Bowling Green and it was originally built in 1873, destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1898.
In Simpsonville, Kentucky, on the campus of what was once the Lincoln Institute, an all-black high school, there is a simple wooden house. There, in 1921, one of America’s greatest Civil Rights leaders, Whitney M. Young, Jr. was born. Whitney M. Young, Jr. Spent his life and career working to end employment discrimination. He served as an advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Today, you can explore Young’s legacy at the house where he was born. After his death, in 1971, the house was dedicated to his memory and contains photographs, articles and other memorabilia.
In Lexington, Kentucky, the African Cemetary #2 encompasses over 5,000 graves. Many of the Civil War’s U.S. Colored Troops, educators from the former 4th Street Colored School, veterans of World War I and II, individuals who worked in the state’s thoroughbred horse racing industry and others are remembered here.
Also in Lexington, downtown’s African American Heritage Trail and the East End Walking Trail focus on Lexington’s early Black community.
The “Traces: Slavery at Ashland” tour tells the story of the enslaved at Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate.
In Nicholasville, you can immerse yourself in stories from the Civil War to Civil Rights at Camp Nelson, one of the Civil War’s largest training camps for U.S. Colored Troops.