>> Coming up on Kentucky Life, celebrate Black History Month with us as we explore Cove Haven Cemetery in Lexington.

Learn about Huntertown Community Interpretive Park, and the town that once stood where the park is today.

Hear the works of Composer and teacher Julia Perry with a concert performed by the Lexington Philharmonic, and the western branch of Louisville's free public library system was the first library in the nation staffed by and built to serve African-Americans.

>> Hey everybody, I'm Chip Polston, and thank you for joining us on another episode of Kentucky Life.

Now we are here at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage, and in this episode we celebrate Black History Month by looking at a few stories from last season, highlighting some of the people and places important to black history in Kentucky.

Our first story takes us to Cove Haven Cemetery in Lexington, a cemetery established during a time of segregation.

This beautiful cemetery has served the black community of central Kentucky since 1907 and is the final resting place for many people whose stories are significant to this day.

>> Georgetown Street in Lexington, Kentucky has been the home to many monuments of African-American history.

Monuments of a community highly influential around the turn of the 20th century.

Monuments from a time of segregation.

But just a quarter mile off Georgetown Street stands the true monument to black history in Lexington, in Cove Haven Cemetery.

>> It holds the remains of some former enslaved people and that second generation following enslavement who became the middle class entrepreneurs of Lexington.

>> Initially called Greenwood Cemetery, the tombstones have stood through time guarding over the graves that hold the stories and memories of Lexington families.

For Dr. Gerald Smith, the cemetery is important for what he calls collective memory.

When >> we think about collective memory, keep in mind that for a number of years there were decoration days, which is actually Memorial Day.

So it was an opportunity for families to gather in the cemetery and share memories.

Memories, experiences that are passed on from one generation to the next, which becomes a collective memory and it continues to evolve as each family visits the cemetery.

>> Standing tall is the marker for Henry Tandy, a builder whose firm laid the brickwork for the Fayette County Courthouse.

>> All of his family is buried around him.

Absolutely wonderful history of building on university campuses all across the state and also here in Lexington, prominently the county courthouse.

>> Buried near the front of Cove Haven is John Bate.

Born into slavery in 1855, John graduated from Berea College and became a principal in Danville schools.

Lizzie Fouse would become president of the Kentucky Federation of Colored Women and was founder of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA.

The humble tombstone of Dr. Mary Ellen Britton does not reflect what a giant she was of her time.

She filled the role as educator, suffragist and civil rights activist.

>> I think what really struck me about her was the photograph that I found of her at the Kentucky Medical Society Association that met here in Lexington and she's the only woman seated in the midst of all these men.

>> Today, the collective memory of this sacred land is inspirational.

They were folks who had such a >> thought about the value and opportunities of education.

They had a certain love for their God, their communities.

They made you want to be something more than you had imagined.

They so often saw things in you that you didn't even see in yourself.

>> Dr.

Helm finds himself inspired by Green P. Russell, who is the first African American teacher in Lexington and twice served as president of the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons, now known as Kentucky State University.

>> It becomes important that we understand even today that this cemetery that is located in this community, which was a very substantial historically black community, many of the folks who live here today do not even know how important this is as a memorial of history for them.

>> One tombstone exists for a Kentuckian no longer buried here, Whitney Young, Jr., a civil rights leader of the sixties and head of the Urban League.

6,000 people filled the cemetery, along with Richard Nixon, on the day Young was laid to rest.

Shortly after the funeral, Young's wife had his body moved to her family plot in New York, but his tombstone remains.

But for thousands, Cove Haven serves as their final resting place.

Each has its own story and legacy for families to cherish and a community memory to pass on to future generations.

>> Rest from their labors and their works do follow them.

The cemetery is so important to understanding the African-American experience.

Once you've known the sacrifices, the struggles, the commitment, the meetings that they were involved in, how they organized, the passion, the love for the community, their family, then it means something different to me.

Understanding that their works do follow them.

>> Our next story takes us to Versailles, where we'll explore the rich history of Huntertown.

Founded in 1871 by Jerry Gatewood, a formerly enslaved Woodford County veteran, Huntertown was a free town for African Americans and flourished for nearly 140 years before falling to floods and a collapsing water system.

Efforts are now being made to restore the land with a community interpretive park being established in August 2021 to commemorate the site's 150th anniversary and educate the community in remembrance of >> Huntertown.

This is sacred ground.

It was a community that was thriving and had people live there that gave much back to this county and this history of Woodford >> County.

We all shared together as family >> and this was a loving and peaceful >> place.

Huntertown was an African-American hamlet settled in 1871, and a hamlet was a community of formerly enslaved people who were able to purchase their own property and start their own lives in a new place with freedom after the Civil War was >> over.

In 1871, the first five-acre tract was purchased by US Colored Troop veteran Jerry Gatewood.

Soon after, African-American families settled there and together they formed a >> community.

It was a thriving community for over 130 >> years.

Residents had almost everything they needed to survive and make a living.

Tobacco fields, vegetable gardens, livestock, stores, and most of all, each other.

An important element in the community was the Huntertown Colored School, which operated from 1895 until 1940.

Anything they needed to travel for, they were able to catch the Riney-B, which was a railroad that ran straight through Huntertown and operated until 1932 when the railroad was discontinued.

>> I was born and raised here.

I picked blackberries along the railroad tracks and people would buy them from me in the >> summertime.

We never had running water out there.

They always called the land crawfish >> land.

A lot of the times the land that was sold to former slaves was not land that would be suitable for agricultural purposes, so it was a wetland.

It had always had issues with >> water.

Residents found ways to live around the flooding problems up until the community was split, once the Bluegrass Parkway project was complete in 1965.

>> It really hurt everybody when >> the BG Parkway came through, because it took my aunt, her house and some of the other residents' homes when they put that bridge >> in.

It wasn't long before people started >> moving.

On the community's behalf, Woodford County tried applying for numerous development block grants, but after a series of denials, they decided to buy out Huntertown residents with a different block grant and allow them to relocate.

When >> they offered everybody the funding for their homes and everything I was really sad, but it was going down and a lot of the people that I knew was passing >> away.

While teaching social studies at Woodford County High School, Sue Finney and her academy students decided to focus on the story of >> Huntertown.

As I began to understand the stories of this place, it just captured my heart and I said, "when I retire, we're going to make this >> happen."

Once Sue retired in 2018, she and a group of volunteers came together and began digging deeper into the history of the Huntertown community.

In 2019, Woodford County's Park and Rec Department agreed to take on the remaining 38 acres in Huntertown as part of the Woodford County Park system.

The group of volunteers began restoring what was left of Huntertown.

What we want to >> see happen is to interpret the community of Huntertown in a way that will engage the whole community >> today.

In August of 2021, on the 150th anniversary of the Huntertown >> community founding, the land was dedicated as a community interpretive park.

The park project is still in the early stages, but volunteers plan for it to be a green space that preserves and celebrates the rich history of Huntertown, as well as the history and significance of wetlands.

It's expected that the park will >> offer things such as a pavilion for gatherings, a community >> garden space, ghost structures of former buildings in Huntertown, a memorial for formerly enslaved war troops, and even an outside classroom >> for students.

It's very relaxing to go out there now because it's quiet, it's peaceful.

Oh, it's wonderful.

It brings back a lot of childhood memories, and it's comforting when I go out there and walk around in the pavilion that they're going to put >> out there.

I'm looking forward to >> that because it would give families a chance to go out and have >> picnics and family reunions and all.

I think it's the most wonderful >> thing I've seen in a long time.

And thanks be to God that I was here to see it.

So many of them gone on and didn't >> see it.

I imagine they're looking >> down today.

Julia Perry was an American classical composer and teacher from Lexington, and from Lexington to the rest of the world, her works have been celebrated by many.

In the fall of 2021, the Lexington Philharmonic recognized the life and work of Julia Perry with a concert at the historic >> Lyric Theater.

So Julia Perry is a composer that was born in 1924 in Lexington, Kentucky.

She died in 1979 and in her life she was a singer, she was a conductor and she wrote >> incredible music.

She wrote opera, she wrote symphonies, she wrote chamber music, and she was quite accomplished in her life.

She won several Guggenheim fellowships.

She studied at Westminster Choir College, but yet her music is not as well-known as perhaps it should be, given the incredible talent that she had and the music that >> she wrote.

She had incredible success that many American composers, regardless of gender or race, just did not have.

It was when a little bit later in her life, when she had multiple strokes, and it impacted her ability to write where she just was kind of quickly forgotten and neglected.

And so when I think of the story of Julia Perry, I think that yes, her gender is important, her race is important, but also as a person with a disability, that that also had a huge impact on her life and career, and it's really the intersection of all of those different identities and influences that ultimately I think led to kind of where her career went and how her >> career ended.

But Julia just had that gift and she knew it.

Her family knew it.

She was growing up in a time of severe Jim Crow laws.

Wasn't supposed to have any of this happen for her, but she had talent.

People recognized that talent.

Here at the Lyric Theater and the music that the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra will play, we are welcoming Julia back home after nearly a >> hundred years.

So the Stabat Mater as a Latin text is about the moment where Jesus is on the cross and Mary is with him in those final moments.

And then I think artistically, I mean her music is incredible and there's such a depth and beauty and ferocious just energy and development of themes, and there's just everything there that you think of when you think of great music.

There are four values that are very important to Lex Phil, and they are excellence, innovation, collaboration, and accessibility.

And when we see that right up the street from where we are, there was born this incredible composer who had this amazing career and wrote great music, it is absolutely our responsibility to contribute to sharing that music, celebrating that music, getting it out there in the community.

The story of Julia Perry has inspired us as an organization to really think deeply about how do we continue this work?

How do we continue to celebrate her and her life?

We all can do our part to share great music with >> our community.

Libraries are a vital part of our communities, making sure that everyone can obtain information, access books, and participate in free or low-cost community activities.

But libraries haven't always been accessible to everyone.

That's why the Western branch of Louisville's Free Public Library System opened in 1905.

Located in downtown Louisville, Western was the first library in the nation staffed by, and built to >> serve, African-Americans.

Western is Louisville's history.

Western is Kentucky's history.

Is the Ohio River Valley's history.

But it is not a "oh, poor pitiful me" story, though it's important to know the constraints that these people faced in building this library, and the people who came >> to it - but it is always first and foremost a story of excellence.

Well, the Western Library was the first Carnegie branch that was designed to serve an African-American community.

It was founded at about the time that the free library system of Louisville was created, in which the black community really staunchly advocated for some portion of Carnegie Library funds be devoted to a library that would serve the black community.

The origins of the branch begin in the 1890s and they begin with Albert Meyzeek.

Albert Meyzeek was probably one of the most prominent civil rights leaders in Louisville in the late 19th through the middle of the 20th century.

He was briefly principal of Central High School for three years in the 1890s, and when he was principal at Central High School, which is the one black high school for Louisville, he found that the library resources were wholly inadequate.

So what he began doing was taking his students to Polytechnic Library, and after a couple of visits, suddenly they were barred from the entrance to the library because of segregation.

They said, you cannot come here anymore.

No race mixing, so on and so forth.

And Meyzeek was outraged.

So then when the Louisville Free Public Library system was developed in the early 20th century, and there was clearly access to Carnegie Library funds to build different branches, he immediately began petitioning for there to be a library that would serve African-Americans.

The first librarian was Thomas Blue.

Thomas Blue came to Louisville in the 1890s, and he first came here to direct the colored branch of the YMCA.

Blue was such a skilled administrator that when the opportunity came to create a Western branch, they instantly turned to Blue.

Blue tried to make sure that its collections were not only comparable to all of the other branches that you would find, but he tried to make sure that there were a lot of reading material written by black authors and black publishers.

Nowhere else in the city would you have such a variety of books by say, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B.

Dubois, James Weldon Johnson.

They could go to the shelves in the library and pick up books in which they could see themselves.

They could see their history accurately depicted.

They could find literary voices in which they could imagine themselves becoming literary voices, and telling their own stories and telling their own histories.

In a city where segregation still dominated, and in a state where segregation still dominated, this was an area where people could kind of push back and kind of define themselves, define images of who they were.

I mean, that's why Western's really, really important.

It was planting the seeds of thought and creativity and selfhood for generation of generation of >> black Louisvillians.

This library was the hub of the community.

You didn't have anything else because it was so unique.

So they came from far and wide to come here to check out books, learn that knowledge, to take part in the programs and the things that they had.

It was just a significant part because this is where you came to remove all those barriers to the access of everything.

Today I try to relate back to Reverend Blue as much as I possibly can and keep the mission that he had all the way back then in the forefront of when I do programming.

So we do things that are very unique in the system that speaks specifically to the community that we're serving.

Like we have some on parenting black youth.

We've had a young black storytellers mini film festival, different things >> like that.

I mean, to me, that's the most important thing is making sure that we're protecting the original legacy and then help it to grow by fostering the things that we do today to honor what they started doing all the way back then, and that's serving the community to the best of >> our ability.

Thank you so much for joining us for our Black History Month special on Kentucky Life.

We've learned so much during our time here at the Kentucky Center for African-American Heritage, and we hope you were able to take something away from this episode as well.

Until next time, I'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this >> Kentucky Life.

Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.