US Bank Celebration of the Arts Award Ceremony

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More than 400 artists, family members and friends showed up Friday, February 24 for the US Bank Celebration of the Arts award ceremony and reception kicking off the largest art exhibition in the region. About 190 artists displayed more than 350 works of art in categories of Painting, Watercolor, Ceramics and Glass, Sculpture, Fiber Arts, Works on Paper, and Photography.

Interim Dean Connie Foster welcomed the group and US Bank representative Greg Wassom shared a few words on behalf of US Bank. Kentucky Museum Director Timothy Mullin announced the winners in each of the categories for both amateur and professional levels with Foster and Wassom assisting in award distribution.

Best of Show was awarded to Steve Clay with his sketching of Down the Drain and Jacqui Lubbers received the Purchase Award for her fiber arts A Come Apart.

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The Ralph Bunche School

Ralph Bunche (Library of Congress)

Ralph Bunche (Library of Congress)

Public supported education for African Americans in Barren County began inauspiciously in 1866, when the General Assembly earmarked a mere one-half of revenues generated from taxation of property owned by blacks for the support of black schools in Kentucky.  Although common school funds were later distributed to districts on a strictly per capita basis, black schools continued to struggle; the number of black elementary schools in Barren County declined from 27 in 1892 to 18 by 1931.

In Glasgow, the Glasgow Training School served black elementary students as a unit of the county system.  In the mid-1920s, the school added two years of high school work, which was soon expanded to four.  In 1950, the school became the first state-accredited, 12-year institution for black students in Barren County.  It was renamed the Ralph Bunche School in honor of Ralph Bunche (1904-1971), a political science professor, civil rights advocate, diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner.  Today, the school is succeeded by the Bunche Center which, along with the Liberty District Association, seeks to aid and counsel high-risk youth and families.

In 2009, with funding from the Kentucky Oral History Commission, a WKU student interviewed 10 African Americans about their experiences at the Ralph Bunche School when it was still a segregated institution.  The seven women and three men talk about the school, its teachers, the values they learned there, segregation and attitudes toward African Americans, and the importance of the school to the community.  Their recorded interviews are part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid for the Ralph Bunche Community Center Oral History Project, and here for a related series of interviews about the Ralph Bunche National Historic District in Glasgow.  For more on African Americans in Kentucky, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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Dave Isaacs Performs in Java City

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Master musician from Nashville, Dave Isaacs, performed in this installment of our noon Concert series at the Java City in Helm Library on February 21, 2012.

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Buffalo Trace Distillery @ Kentucky Live! Series

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This month’s “Kentucky Live!” series,  sponsored by  WKU Libraries and Barnes & Noble Booksellers, featured Amy Preske, PR and Events Manager of the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Franklin County, Kentucky. She shared the history of the nation’s oldest continuously operating distillery through a video and slides. She also brought bourbon candies for tasting and a gift basket of Buffalo Trace products as a door prize. The lucky winner was Rosemary Meszaros, Professor and Coordinator of WKU Libraries’ Government Documents.

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Nashville artist Dave Issacs performs at Java City today

The Spring Java City Concert Series continues at noon today with a performance by master musician from Nashville Dave Issacs.  Hailed as one of the most talented performers on the planet by audiogrid.com, Dave is a world class guitarist who has played everywhere from dive bars to concert halls.

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Join Us for a Step Performance in ERC

This event has been canceled. We are sorry for the inconvenience this cancellation may cause you!

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Far Away Places: To Kill a Tiger: a Memoir of Korea

jidlee_s On the evening of Februrary 16, 2012, Professor Jid Lee from Middle Tennessee State University spoke about her book To Kill a Tiger: A Memoir of Korea, a personal narrative of her girlhood in a traditional South Korean family against the traumatic events of recent Korean history including the Japanese occupation. Her lecture is part of the Libraries’ Far Away talk series that take place monthly at Bowling Green Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Campbell Lane. The event concluded with book signing.

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WKU Cultural Diversity

It’s February and during Black History Month the WKU Archives is inundated with questions regarding Blacks and other minorities at WKU. We have created a website: Cultural Diversity at WKU which is a bibliography of resources regarding minorities on campus.

In addition, we have digitized vertical files regarding Jonesville, the African American community which became part of WKU in the 1960s as well as WKU Cultural Diversity.

There are also digitized records regarding desegregation and minority enrollments from the president’s office and a student paper regarding attitudes of WKU students toward minorities in 1970.

Photographs are being digitized weekly and added to KenCat our online catalog. 

WKU Archives staff will continue to post documents and add to the Cultural Diversity at WKU website.  Additional information may be found in the records of the Board of Regents and University Senate.

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Heartbreak Knows No Color

Copper Romance magazine

Copper Romance magazine

Last season, the PBS program History Detectives investigated the origins of a 1950s comic book called Negro Romance, unusual for its depiction of African Americans in the principal roles.  Excerpts from a similarly unique publication can be found in the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.

Copper Romance was a monthly magazine filled with short stories and novellas about African American characters navigating the stormy seas of love.  Like their white counterparts in Intimate Romances, True Story and Romance Confessions, the women in Copper Romance offered up their romantic anguish, sexual transgressions and relationship problems in such tales as “Desperate to Marry,” “Too Old For Love,” or “I Gave My Baby Away.”  Even more intriguing, however, is the fact that the author of some of these stories (including the three just mentioned) was the wife of a Russellville, Kentucky bank executive who typed out her pulp fiction on a pink portable typewriter at her rural Logan County home.

Anne Ridings Trimble (1909-1971) began writing for magazines in 1946.  A prolific author, she declared that she submitted about 50 stories a year to the romance magazine market and enjoyed an acceptance rate of about 33%.  A member of the Nashville Press and Authors Club, Trimble freely shared her productivity secrets at workshops and seminars.  Her provocatively titled stories–“His Horrible Secret,” “My Love Was a Killer,” and “I Was Trapped in a Snake Cult,” to name a few–were typical of the genre, but her “copper romances” added a distinctive element to her portfolio.

A finding aid for the Anne Ridings Trimble Collection can be downloaded here.  On this Valentine’s Day, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat for more collections relating to African Americans, romance, courtship and authors.

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Annual Macy’s Used Book Sale Benefits SOKY Book Fest

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The annual Macy’s Used Book Sale began on Friday, February 10 and ended on Sunday, February 12, 2012 at the Depot. The event is co-organized by the Southern Kentucky Book Fest partners, namely, WKU Libraries, Warren County Public Library, and Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Book Fest.

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