Tag Archives: African Americans

by | May 20, 2024 · 10:46 am

The Ladies Art Club

WKU’s Special Collections Library holds the records of many local women’s clubs in its Manuscripts & Folklife Archives: the Current Events Club, the Browning Club, the Twentieth Century Club, the LARTHS Literary Club, the Mothers Club, the Pierian Club, the Delineator Club, the Eclectic Book Club, the Severance Club, and the oldest (1880) of Bowling Green’s women’s clubs, the Ladies Literary Club, to name just a few.  For the first time, we can now include an African-American women’s club on our list.

Ladies Art Club minute books

The Ladies Art Club was founded in 1906 by Virginia Mitchell and her minister husband Robert, the president of Simmons Memorial College in Bowling Green.  Its first president was M. Celestine Slaughter, a teacher at State Street School, the city’s first school for African Americans.  We have yet to learn of the club’s earliest years, but minute books recently recovered from the former Southern Queen Hotel on State Street chronicle its activities during the late 1930s, early 1940s and mid 1950s.  The membership roll, which usually listed about a dozen women, included Ashula P. Williams who, along with her aunt Mattie Covington and daughter Dolores (Williams) Moses, operated the Southern Queen as a hotel for African-American travelers.

Like most such organizations, the Ladies Art Club was grounded in faith, fellowship, intellectual enrichment, and philanthropy.  Meetings regularly included prayer, scripture readings, song, discussion of current news, a tasty meal, and the collection of funds for various good works: flowers for the sick, Christmas baskets for the aged, shoes for needy children, furniture for the State Street School library, and spending money for Kentucky State University students.  Over time, the club contributed from its “sinking fund” to the Kentucky Club Women Scholarship Fund, the March of Dimes, and organizations fighting tuberculosis, cancer and venereal disease.  

One of the regular activities of the club was an annual art exhibit.  Held at a member’s home and open to the public, the exhibit featured fancy sewing works such as pillowcases, tea and guest towels, and pot holders.  Members were urged – sometimes even admonished – to contribute what they could in order to bring a variety of items to the showing.  Another disciplinary measure appeared in the minutes for January 3, 1941, when members were reminded of a club rule “pertaining to gossip”: anyone who did so or caused “discord in any way” would be dropped from the rolls.

In discussions of current news, the club was attentive to matters, both national and local, of interest to the African-American community.  When, in September 1953, funeral director James E. Kuykendall and his family were victimized by a cross burning on his property, the club “by common consent” sent a letter to the family deploring the attack on their “peace and happiness.”  But other correspondence was more joyful.  In 1957, with the club observing its fiftieth anniversary, its first president, M. Celestine Slaughter, wrote from her home in Washington, D.C. in response to a gift.  “What great happiness and gratitude overflowed my heart when I opened the package,” she exclaimed, praising the club’s “earnest efforts in bringing needful spiritual and happy relationships to the less fortunate in relieving them of stress and need.”

Click here to access a finding aid and full-text scans of the minute books for the Ladies Art Club.  For other club records (women’s and men’s), search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | February 19, 2024 · 11:25 am

My friend and critic

After graduating from State Street High School as its valedictorian in 1936, Bowling Green, Kentucky native Lillie Mae (Bland) Carter earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tennessee State University, married, had four children, and pursued a career as a first grade and remedial reading teacher in the Toledo, Ohio public school system.  A civic activist and champion of African American history and literature, Carter encouraged her students to express themselves through writing. 

Carter herself was an author, editor and poet.  Her books included Black Thoughts (1971), a volume of poetry, and Doing It Our Way (1975), an anthology of multi-generational poetry and prose.  But like most writers, Carter encountered obstacles to getting her work published.  This struggle helped her form a bond with one of the most prolific purveyors of the black experience to the world, the poet, author, playwright and icon of the “Harlem Renaissance,” Langston Hughes.

“The only way I know to achieve publication,” Hughes wrote Carter in 1947, “is to continually submit one’s work to magazines, and if it comes back (as it usually does) send it to others.”  “Do not mind rejection slips,” he counseled.  “I have hundreds of them.” 

Over the next twenty years, Carter corresponded with Hughes, who critiqued her poems and offered advice on where to submit them for publication.  He shared her frustration over editors who were reluctant to accept “race-problem” poetry or fiction, but recommended that she simply keep searching for others who weren’t so squeamish.  Delighted with her poem, “Whispering Leaves,” he asked permission to send copies to the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American culture at Yale University, and to New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Hughes found poems she shared with him in 1963 to be “strong and dramatic and, I think, would make most effective program pieces to read aloud to audiences.  I suggest you try them out the next time you have occasion to speak in public – or maybe you should create an occasion to do so.”

Lillie Mae Carter

Carter dedicated Black Thoughts “In memory of my critic and friend, Langston Hughes.”  It included the gentle “My Prayer,” which Hughes had praised (May I live from day to day / In an honest, sincere way; / That someone through me may see / What joys come from serving Thee), and a tribute to a former custodian at Toledo’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School (Keeper of the building, goodbye! / Rest well in new buildings on high).  But also found in its pages were the mournful “Half-Still” (Half slave, half free / Half a citizen still / That’s me) and the bitter “America” (America is not red, white and blue / America is lily white – all the way through.)

Lillie Mae (Bland) Carter’s papers are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here for a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | November 12, 2020 · 8:23 am

“Abe will be reelected”

Soldier William Ballew writes from Tennessee, 1864

It was November 12, 1864, and members of the 12th Kentucky Infantry were pondering the results of the presidential election held four days earlier.

Camped near Spring Hill, Tennessee, William Ballew wrote to friend Thomas Hopkins in Clinton County that his regiment had shown a strong preference for “Little Mac” – the nickname of President Abraham Lincoln’s challenger, Major General George B. McClellan.  Earlier, Lincoln had relieved McClellan of his command after becoming frustrated with his innate caution and failure to produce results on the battlefield.  Though popular with the average soldier, McClellan had run for president as the candidate of a Democratic Party hobbled by its split over what to do about the war.

While Pvt. Ballew himself was unsure which candidate would “be the best for the US,” he claimed access to a “decision desk” of his own, namely the votes of the African Americans in Nashville.  Five thousand of them, he reported, had “voted for abe.”  Ballew forecast “that if the election is carryed on every whare like it was in nashville that abe will be reelected for the negroes had the same privalege of voteing that the white man has.”

Ballew didn’t realize that what he had witnessed was only a mock election, conducted by a still-disenfranchised community demonstrating its intention to secure the “privalege” of the vote.  On Election Day, about 3,200 African Americans had assembled on College Street to participate in a symbolic poll that gave all but one of their votes to Lincoln.  The initiative came after a delegation of Tennessee freedmen returned from the National Colored Men’s Convention in Syracuse, New York determined to press their demands for equality and the abolition of slavery.  It turned out, of course, that their “votes” were prescient. While McClellan carried Kentucky, he secured only 45% of the national vote and lost the election to Lincoln.

William Ballew’s letter is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid and typescript.  For more collections relating to the Civil War and elections generally, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | April 29, 2020 · 11:47 am

Slowing the Spread

A military encampment at Bowling Green: a challenge to “social distancing”

As we know, accompanying the usual physical sufferings from an outbreak of infectious disease are fear and uncertainty, rumors and half-truths, and a search for scapegoats.  Such was the case when the 119th U.S. Colored Infantry set up camp near Bowling Green, Kentucky in March 1866.  Most of its members were recruited from Lexington, and they comprised one of 23 such volunteer regiments organized in Kentucky between 1863 and 1865.  

Unfortunately, the 119th’s presence coincided with an epidemic of smallpox in the town.  This appears to have prompted a local newspaper to accuse the African-American troops of introducing or spreading the disease among the citizens.  Its editor seemed to have little evidence, however, being satisfied to attribute the contagion only to “careless Negro Soldiery.”

This casual condemnation rankled the detachment commander, Captain William T. Y. Schenck.  “What you mean by ‘careless Negro Soldiery’ I do not know,” he wrote the editor, inviting him “or any other person” to visit the camp and inspect it for order and cleanliness.  Just “a few inquiries,” he pointed out, would have revealed that “this disease had shown itself in town at least two weeks before we had a single case of it here.”  It seemed just as likely that his men had become infected by the local civilians, not the other way around.

Schenck then assured the editor that he had quickly taken steps to “flatten the curve” of infection.  Upon learning of the outbreak, he “had all the men vaccinated” and, with few exceptions, allowed no one to leave the camp, “not in fear of the disease being carried from here, as we had none, but if possible to keep it without the limits of this camp.”  Despite his efforts, about 20 of the men fell ill, but they were being isolated in a “secluded building” and the threat was now “very much on the decrease.”  He concluded with a request to the paper to print his response “in order to do justice before the public to me & my fellow officers.”

A finding aid and typescript for Captain Schenck’s letter can be downloaded here.  To browse Civil War collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections, click here or search TopSCHOLAR or KenCat.

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by | August 8, 2019 · 8:26 am

Emancip-eight!

Historical marker for Paducah’s Eighth of August celebration

Paducah, Kentucky’s Eighth of August Emancipation Celebration is a days-long, event-filled dive into the city’s African-American heritage.  Since at least 1886, the community has been the site of an annual grand gathering to commemorate the end of slavery.  The relation of August 8 to emancipation is a little uncertain, but the most popular theory is that it harkens back to the day in the 1790s when the enslaved people of Santo Domingo (Haiti) were declared to be free. 

In 2008, field workers with the Kentucky Folklife Program visited Paducah to gather information about the current celebration.  They took photographs and video and collected material, including a thick program highlighting that year’s theme “A Journey By Faith.”  Along with sponsors’ ads and event schedules, the program features memorials, announcements, and autobiographies of African-American Paducahns that chronicle their lives, achievements, and spiritual journeys.  Included for that election year of 2008 was a scholarship-winning essay by a local high school senior on the topic “Is America Ready for an African-American President?”

The field workers also conducted an interview with James Dawson, a Hopkinsville native who had made his home in Paducah since 1951.  He recalled hearing his grandfather talk about the celebration, which drew African Americans from all over the country.  Dawson’s own memories included dances, bands, street parties, class and family reunions, and all-night merriment.  He and his son helped to serve up a food staple—barbeque (Dawson’s favorite was pork or mutton)—together with fried fish and hamburgers.  Unlike the old days, Dawson observed, the event had become less spontaneous, bringing in commercial food vendors and requiring committees, permits, insurance, security and all the accoutrements of modern civic existence.  Nevertheless, the 2008 gathering was another successful chapter in a tradition that retains its unique place in Paducah.

This project focusing on Paducah’s Eighth of August Emancipation Celebration of 2008 is part of the Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to download a finding aid. For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | May 2, 2019 · 8:26 am

Strummin’ on the old ban. . . No!

James Weir

A descendant’s recent donation to WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections of the letters and papers of the Weirs, a prominent 19th-century Muhlenberg County, Kentucky family, has provided rich insights into the Civil War history of that county (here and here, for example).  Another wonderful item in this collection is the journal of patriarch James Weir (1777-1845), who emigrated to Muhlenberg County from South Carolina.  En route in 1798, Weir sojourned in Knoxville, Tennessee and taught school for several months.

Shortly after posting our collection finding aid on TopSCHOLAR, we received an inquiry about the Weir journal from Knoxville librarian Steve Cotham.  He had seen excerpts in typescript, but was interested in the original because it was long thought to contain “the first reference to African American banjo music” in that part of Tennessee.  Indeed, James Weir’s journal has been cited several times as the source for this interesting tidbit of musical history.

Having only recently processed the collection, however, we knew something was amiss.  Arriving in Knoxville on County Court day, the pious Weir had written that he found a rollicking town, “Confus[e]d with a promiscuous throng of every denomination some Talked some sung but mostly all did profainly sware – I stood ag[h]ast,” he declared, “my soul shrunk back to hear the horrid oaths and dreadful Indignities offered to the supream Governer of the universe.”  Weir was further mortified to witness “dancing singing & playing of Cards,” and on a Sunday, no less.

It’s a vivid portrait of a frontier community, but nowhere in Weir’s description is there a reference to either African Americans or banjos.  So how did this source become part of the body of scholarship on African American banjo music?

Here’s what probably happened:

In 1913, Greenville, Kentucky’s Otto Rothert gained access to the journal when he wrote about the Weir family in his book A History of Muhlenberg County.  He quoted accurately from its pages, with only minor edits for spelling and punctuation.  But then along came Robert M. Coates with his 1930 book The Outlaw Years: The History of the Land Pirates of the Natchez Trace.  Writing of the notorious Harpe brothers and their criminal exploits in Knoxville, Coates used James Weir as a source for his portrait of the city.  In what looked deceptively like a paraphrase of a passage from the journal, Coates declared that Weir saw “men jostling, singing, swearing; women yelling from the doorways; half-naked n—–s playing on their ‘banjies’ while the crowd whooped and danced around them.” Mixing quotation and invention, Coates continued: “The town was confused with a promiscuous throng of every denomination”—blanket-clad Indians, leather-shirted woodsmen, gamblers, hard-eyed and vigilant — “My soul shrank back.”  

This embellished version of Weir’s journal, including the sudden appearance of “banjies,” took on a life of its own.  The reference was picked up in 1939 by the Federal Writers’ Project in Tennessee: A Guide to the State (where the racial epithet was changed to “Negroes”).  It appeared again in Cecelia Conway’s African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia (1995) and in George R. Gibson’s 2001 article “Gourd Banjos: From Africa to the Appalachians.”  With the original Weir journal in private hands until only recently, it was perhaps impossible for scholars to locate and check the original; in any event, the colorful prose of Coates, who spent most of his career as a novelist and art critic, must have been too good to overlook.  The story of the banjies-that-never-were is a lesson for all historical researchers: whenever possible, go straight to the source.  And with James Weir’s journal in our collection, now they can.

Lines from James Weir’s Journal – alas, no “banjies”

Click here for a finding aid to the Weir Family Collection.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | February 28, 2019 · 11:19 am

8th of August Emancipation Celebration

On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln placed pen to paper and wrote the following executive order,

The first page of the Emancipation Proclamation. Handwritten document.
The Emancipation Proclamation
(Courtesy of the National Archives)

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

As an authoritative wartime measure, the Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom to more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans who remained under control by the Confederate government in ten southern states—not including the “border states” and those already under Union occupation.

While the proclamation, which was contingent upon a Union victory, may have ignited a firestorm of criticism from white southern sympathizers and praise from anti-abolitionists, its implementation was slow to take root, especially in Texas.

Seceding from the United States on February 1, 1861, Texas became the fourth state admitted into the Confederacy. Throughout the course of the Civil War, slaveholders from eastern states, notably Arkansas and Louisiana, routinely brought slaves to Texas in order to avoid emancipation, which significantly increased the number of slaves across the state. When the Emancipation Proclamation was made official in 1863, however, it took nearly two and a half years before the order was enforced. While theories abound in order to explain this severe lag—ranging from murder to deliberate miscommunication—history itself is quite clear.

On June 19, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger and his troops landed on the beaches of Galveston Island and declared Texas under federal occupation. Granger read Lincoln’s executive order, thereby liberating the nearly 250,000 slaves living in Texas. “Juneteenth,” then, has come to be recognized as the “traditional end of slavery in Texas.” The day has become established as a state-recognized holiday, while other states may observe Juneteenth in other forms of ceremonial remembrance. The underpinnings of Juneteenth rest on the celebration of Black pride, solidarity, and cultural heritage.

Akin to Juneteenth festivities, the 8th of August is another emancipation-related holiday observed by African American communities in both western Kentucky and Tennessee. While the reasons for celebrating August 8th remain unclear, the lasting impact it has had on the region is decidedly obvious. Every year, the city of Paducah, Kentucky hosts its 8th of August Homecoming Emancipation Celebration. The Homecoming seeks to honor exceptional members of the African American community, both past and present, through memorial services, picnics, music performances, and church assemblies.

Program booklet for the 2008 8th of August Emancipation celebration
Program booklet for the 2008 8th of August Emancipation Celebration

WKU’s Manuscripts and Folklife Archives contains a collection (FA 635) of materials gathered together from Paducah’s 2008 8th of August Homecoming Emancipation Celebration titled “A Journey by Faith.” In his program introduction, Robert Coleman, President of the W.C. Young Community Center Board of Directors, writes,

“America’s struggle, rise, and triumph from slavery to equal rights for all is a living testament to the power of deep, personal faith for Americans of all colors. That deep well of faith from the darkest days of slavery sets the African American experience of religion apart.”

The program itself includes articles describing the accomplishments of distinguished members of the Black community, advertisements for local businesses and churches, and a schedule of the weekend’s events. The collection also contains photographs of the celebration, vendor information, business cards, and two interviews with James Dawson, a member of the First Liberty Missionary Baptist Church, that were recorded on digital videocassette tapes.

For more information on African American folklore, material culture, foodways, and achievements throughout the state of Kentucky and beyond, visit TopSCHOLAR or browse through KenCat, a searchable database featuring manuscripts, photographs, and other non-book objects housed in the Department of Library Special Collections! Post written by WKU Folk Studies graduate student Delainey Bowers

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by | February 21, 2019 · 8:31 am

African-American Heroes of San Juan Hill

"Bill," an African-American soldier photographed by Bowling Green native Frank M. Thomas, then serving as chaplain for the 3rd Kentucky Infantry during the Spanish-American War
“Bill,” an African-American soldier photographed by Bowling Green native Frank M. Thomas, then serving as chaplain for the 3rd Kentucky Infantry during the Spanish-American War

Although he had retired in 1892, Civil War veteran and Warren County, Kentucky native Captain Richard Vance took great interest in all aspects of his country’s prosecution of the Spanish-American War.  Among the topics covered in his personal scrapbooks, letters and essays was the plight of American soldiers who had volunteered for the war only to be met with disease, poor camp conditions, and substandard food and medical treatment. 

For African-American soldiers, Vance realized that the conditions were far worse.  He noted that, in spite of their outstanding gallantry, African-American troops could not escape the racism of their white counterparts; in particular they “continued to be despised objects in the estimation of southern volunteers.”  Vance cited an example in which “certain Virginia gentlemen (volunteers) refused to receive their pay because it was offered to them by a Negro paymaster.”  He had heard stories of “disorders” in some African-American regiments, but dismissed them as no worse than those in other volunteer organizations.  His own long military experience had taught him “that the ‘white-washing’ process is invariably used in such cases.”

Vance included clippings in his scrapbook to illustrate his points.  During the fierce battle around Santiago, Cuba, read one report, African-American soldiers not only “fought like devils” but came to the aid of the wounded, and when wounded themselves showed “more nerve” under the surgeon’s knife “than many of their fellow soldiers of lighter hue.”  When the men returned home, Louisville, Kentucky offered cheers for the 10th Cavalry—“The Colored Heroes of San Juan Hill”—but as the troop trains passed through Richmond, Texas and Meridian, Mississippi, they were targeted with gunfire.  When Charles Mason Mitchell, a veteran of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, attempted to pay tribute to the bravery of his African-American comrades during a lecture in Richmond, Virginia, he was booed off the stage.  “Is there a remedy for these evils?” asked Vance.  “Yes.  Unquestionably.  Will it ever be applied?  That remains to be seen.”

Click here for a finding aid to the Richard Vance Collection, and here for a gallery of primary resources in the Department of Library Special Collections relating to the Spanish-American War.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | February 6, 2019 · 2:53 pm

Side by Side

As we have seen, Edward R. Weir, Sr. (1816-1891) of Greenville, Kentucky took an active role in advocating, arming and funding the Union cause during the Civil War.  His entire family, in fact, opposed secession.  Weir’s wife Harriet defiantly nailed the U.S. flag to a tree when Confederate Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner toured Muhlenberg County.  Weir’s daughter Anna helped raise volunteer home guards and made pocket needle-and-thread cases for soldiers’ kits.  Weir’s son Edward, Jr. served as an officer in two Kentucky infantry regiments, and saw action at Shiloh, Corinth, and Saltville, Virginia. 

But Edward Weir Sr. was also the owner of some 100 slaves, and therein lies the tale of another family.  Weir’s youngest son Miller (1859-1935) recalled the patriarch of this family, known as “Copper John.”  Copper John’s daughter Amy was Miller’s nurse and maid to his mother Harriet.  Amy’s four sisters also worked in the Weir mansion, the centerpiece of a 1,200-acre plantation. 

Four sisters, all servants in the Weir household

The sisters had two brothers, Silas and Jesse (or Jessey).  It was the latter who, as cook, manservant and companion, made Edward, Jr.’s life considerably more bearable after he entered military service.  Writing from Camp Calhoun in McLean County, Edward described his tent, a spartan but comfortable space.  “I have a grand time & live like a king all alone with Jessey,” he told his family. “I sleep on one side & Jessey on the other,” with a small stove for warmth.  His modest dinner table, with its tin cups and plates (and one china plate “for the Captain” as Jessey said), was evidently a source of pride and comfort for Edward.  Even when he was ill and out of sorts at Corinth, Mississippi, he boasted of Jessey’s culinary skills and his ability to make biscuits just as good as those back home.

Amy, maid to Harriet Weir and nurse to Miller Weir

With the exception of Amy, who died in Chicago, the later lives of the children of “Copper John” are unrecorded.  Edward Weir, Sr., however, praised the intelligence and resourcefulness of his former slaves; one became a missionary, another attended Oberlin College, and others became teachers.  And during the upheaval of the Civil War, he gratefully remembered, they “watched over me and mine, with a devotion which I shall never forget.”

The Weir Family Collection of letters and photographs is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.  

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by | February 15, 2018 · 8:58 am

Abel, Boyd, and Kuykendall

Abel Brothers funeral program (Kentucky Library Ephemera Collection)

Abel Brothers funeral program (Kentucky Library Ephemera Collection)

In 1900, James E. Kuykendall (1874-1960), an African-American native of Butler County, Kentucky, opened a funeral home at 819 State Street in Bowling Green.  For more than 50 years, he served the city’s African-American population both alone and in partnership with James A. Boyd.  In the 1930s, brothers Francis and Richard Abel established Abel Brothers, which also served the same constituents.

The records of these historic African-American businesses were later placed with Gatewood and Sons Funeral Chapel, and copies are held in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Dating from 1900-1970, they provide data about funeral dates and expenses, but some are useful genealogical resources because they provide additional information about the deceased such as occupation, cause of death, parents’ names, and place of interment.  Also included with these records is a listing of interments in Mt. Moriah, Bowling Green’s African-American cemetery.

A finding aid for these funeral home records can be accessed here.  For more collections on funeral homes and other businesses, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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