Episode 6: Lost Cause

Season One | Episode 6

Episode Six: Lost Cause
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With George WrightAnne MarshallKidada Williams, Patrick LewisRicky Jones, Michael Morrow, and Russ Bowlds, and featuring Louis Robert Thompson, Keith McGill, Mark Forman, Susan Linville, and Erin Jones.

In the years that followed the Civil War, many Kentuckians embraced the Lost Cause ideology, even if they had fought for the Union. And some joined armed vigilante groups that used violence and terror to keep Black Kentuckians away from power and prosperity.  Episode Transcript 

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Guests

George C. Wright

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky.

Read More

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky. Wright is involved in special assignments at both the administrative level and in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.

 

Wright received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art in 1972 and 1974, respectively, from UK, both in history, and a doctoral degree in history from Duke University. He became the seventh president of Prairie View A&M University in 2003 and served in the role until 2017, when he was named Prairie View A&M University President Emeritus.

 

A native Kentuckian, Dr. George Wright is the author of “A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980, Volume II; Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule and “Legal Lynchings,” and Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930.

Anne Marshall

Anne Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. 

Read More

Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.  She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Centre College of Kentucky and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2004. She has worked at Mississippi State University since 2006, and teaches numerous graduate level courses, as well as undergraduate courses including Jacksonian American (1825-1850); History of the Old South; and the History of Southern Women.

 

She is the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010). She has also published numerous journal articles and essays, two of which have won prizes for best article for the year of publication (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 2000 and Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011). Marshall has presented numerous papers and commented on panels at conferences including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Society of Civil War Historians.  Her current book project looks nineteenth century anti-slavery politics through the life of the colorful Kentucky emancipationist Cassius M. Clay.

Kidada Williams

Kidada E. Williams is an author and associate professor of History at Wayne State University.

Read More

Kidada E. Williams is a historian and author who researches the history of African American survivors of racist violence. She is the author of They Left Great Marks on Me and co-editor of Charleston SyllabusShe is finishing I Saw Death Coming, a book about African American families held captive by the Klan during Reconstruction. She lives, works, and plays in Detroit.

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Read More

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

Read More

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.  A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jones was educated as an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, Morehouse College (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s alma mater). He was only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky where he specialized in Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. His books include: two editions of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities” and “What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination.”

He is currently co-authoring a new book with attorney and award-winning cartoonist Marc Murphy titled, “Kaepernick, Confederates, and Con-Artists.” He has written hundreds of scholarly and magazine articles, book chapters and opinion columns. 

Dr. Jones has served as a local, national, and international social and political analyst across various media including appearances on HBO, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, the Travel Channel, a variety of NPR and PBS programs, the BBC, E! Entertainment, the Katie (Couric) Show, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and many others. He is the host of the “Erasing History’ Podcast and the “Ricky Jones Show” from iHeart Media. The “Ricky Jones Show” was named Best of Louisville’s 2017 “Best Radio Show.”

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Among many other honors, Jones has been named one of Louisville’s 25 Future Leaders by Louisville Magazine and was also recognized as one of DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education’s “25 to Watch in Academia.”  He is a life-member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Michael Morrow

Michael Morrow is the director of the SEEK Museum in Russellville, Kentucky.

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Michael Morrow is the curator and director of the SEEK Museum. SEEK Museum, formerly known as the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center, is comprised of six historic buildings on two sites in Russellville, Kentucky. SEEK tells the history of the Struggles for Emancipation and Equality in Kentucky beginning with the enslavement of over 100 people at the Bibb House on West 8th Street in Russellville, followed by the emancipation of 99 people between 1832 and 1839 at that site. The story continues at the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center on East 6th Street with exhibits addressing the segregation and mob violence that followed the Civil War, the cultural heritage that developed in the Black Bottom National Register Historic District and the struggle for civil rights, including a park area dedicated to civil rights which features a bronze statue of Alice Allison Dunnigan, a Russellville native and civil rights pioneer.

Tours of either or both museum sites are available Wednesday – Saturday: 10 am – 4 pm, with prior email notification requested. Group Tours (including curriculum-based school tours) are available by appointment, with reduced fees for groups of 10 or more.

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

1871 Testimony of Colored citizens of Frankfort, KY.


Bailey, Fred Arthur. “The Textbooks of the ‘Lost Cause’: Censorship and the Creation of Southern State Histories”. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Fall 1991, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Fall 1991), pp. 507- 533 (http://www.jstor.com/stable/40582363)

Huffman, Greg. “Twisted Sources: How Confederate Propaganda Ended Up In The South’s Schoolbooks”, Facing South, April 10, 2019

Lewis, Patrick.  (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

Marshall, Anne (paid link) Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010).

Pollard, Edward Alfred.  The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. United States: E. B. Treat, 1867.

United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The UDC Catechism for Children
, Galveston, TX: “United Daughters of the Confederacy”, Veuve Jefferson Davis Chapter No. 17, 1904.1904

Williams, Kidada E. (paid link) They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

Wright, George C.  (paid link) A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980 (Kentucky Historical Society).

Wright, George C. (paid link) Life Behind a Veil. Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Wright, George C. (paid link) Racial Violence in Kentucky 1865-1940 : Lynchings, Mob Rule, and Legal Lynchings.” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1996.‌

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Episode 5: Aftermath

Season One | Episode 5

Episode Five: Aftermath
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Anne MarshallPatrick LewisMarion LucasKidada WilliamsVanessa HoldenGeorge Wright, and Brigitt Johnson, and featuring Erin Jones and Keith McGill. 

Kentuckians fought on both sides of the Civil War but came together at war’s end to oppose a common foe—newly emancipated African Americans yearning for education, dignity, and a decent living. In the process, the state pioneered restrictive racial laws that became models for the rest of the South.  Episode Transcript 

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Guests

Anne Marshall

Anne Marshall is an author and associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. 

Read More
Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.  She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Centre College of Kentucky and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2004. She has worked at Mississippi State University since 2006, and teaches numerous graduate level courses, as well as undergraduate courses including Jacksonian American (1825-1850); History of the Old South; and the History of Southern Women.

She is the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010). She has also published numerous journal articles and essays, two of which have won prizes for best article for the year of publication (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 2000 and Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011). Marshall has presented numerous papers and commented on panels at conferences including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Society of Civil War Historians.  Her current book project looks nineteenth century anti-slavery politics through the life of the colorful Kentucky emancipationist Cassius M. Clay.

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Read More

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Read More
Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Holden’s current book project, tentatively titled, Surviving Southampton: Gender, Community, Resistance and Survival During the Southampton Rebellion of 1831(University of Illinois Press), explores the contributions that African American women and children, free and enslaved, made to the Southampton Rebellion of 1831, also called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Dr. Holden’s work and writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Process: A Blog for American History, and The Rumpus. She also blogs for Black Perspectives and The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.

In addition to her work on enslaved women and slave rebellion, Dr. Holden also co-organizes the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). Her second project, Forming Intimacies: Queer Kinship and Resistance in the Antebellum American Atlantic, will focus on same gender loving individuals and American slavery.

Dr. Holden also serves as a faculty adviser or consultant on a number of public history and digital humanities projects including: Freedom on the Move (a digital archive of runaway slave adds); Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf (an exhibit chronicling the intersecting histories of African Americans and the horse industry in Kentucky), and a grant project aimed at bringing a driving tour and museum to Southampton County, Virginia, that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Find her on Twitter @drvholden.

Marion Lucas

Marion Lucas is an author and Professor Emeritus at Western Kentucky University.

Read More

Marion B. Lucas began teaching at Western Kentucky University in 1966 after receiving a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. Lucas teaches the survey courses in U.S. History and Western Civilization Since 1648, advanced classes in The Old South, The Civil War, and Reconstruction and graduate classes in Slavery and The Civil War. Lucas agrees with historian Carl L. Becker’s assertion that everyone interprets the past, regardless of her or his knowledge of events, and therefore prioritizes helping his students become informed historians.

 

Lucas’s interests reflect his love of nineteenth century American history. After writing a book on the Civil War, Sherman and the Burning of Columbia and A History of Blacks in Kentucky. Vol. I: From Slavery to Segregation 1760-1891, he began researching “A biography of John G. Fee, Kentucky Abolitionist and Educator.” Lucas has also written articles for regional journals, two of which were judged best article of the year, and short articles and biographies for national and regional dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, and newspapers. Dr. Lucas currently holds the titles of University Distinguished Professor and Professor of History.

Kidada Williams

Kidada E. Williams is an author and associate professor of History at Wayne State University.

Read More

Kidada E. Williams is a historian and author who researches the history of African American survivors of racist violence. She is the author of They Left Great Marks on Me and co-editor of Charleston SyllabusShe is finishing I Saw Death Coming, a book about African American families held captive by the Klan during Reconstruction. She lives, works, and plays in Detroit.

George C. Wright

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky.

Read More

George C. Wright is an historian, noted author, and distinguished university scholar and senior faculty fellow for Institutional Diversity at the University of Kentucky. Wright is involved in special assignments at both the administrative level and in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.

 

Wright received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art in 1972 and 1974, respectively, from UK, both in history, and a doctoral degree in history from Duke University. He became the seventh president of Prairie View A&M University in 2003 and served in the role until 2017, when he was named Prairie View A&M University President Emeritus.

 

A native Kentuckian, Dr. George Wright is the author of “A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980, Volume II; Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule and “Legal Lynchings,” and Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930.

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery

 

Forehand, Beverly. Striking Resemblance: Kentucky, Tennessee, Black Codes and Readjustment, 1865-1866. (1996). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 868. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/868

 

Lewis, Patrick.  (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

 

Lucas, Marion B.  (paid link) A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891. Second ed. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 2003.

 

Marrs, Elijah P.  (paid link) Life and History of the Rev. Elijah P. Marrs, First Pastor of Beargrass Baptist Church, and Author. Louisville, Kentucky: The Bradley and Gilbert Company, 1885. Electronic Edition part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the American South. Read for free at Doc South

 

Marshall, Anne (paid link) Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010).

 

Williams, Kidada E. (paid link) They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

 

Wright, George C.  (paid link) A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980 (Kentucky Historical Society).

 

Wright, George C. (paid link) Life Behind a Veil. Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

 

Wright, George C. (paid link) Racial Violence in Kentucky 1865-1940 : Lynchings, Mob Rule, and Legal Lynchings.” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1996.‌

 

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Episode 4: The Civil War

Season One | Episode 4

Episode Four: The Civil War 
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Anne MarshallPatrick Lewis, Jim Downs, and Russ Bowlds, and featuring Mark Forman, Erin Jones, Alec Volz, Keith McGill, and Louis Robert Thompson. 

The Civil War was a confusing time for enslaved people in Kentucky. Because the state remained loyal to the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply and slavery remained legal. And yet when tens of thousands of enslaved Kentuckians joined the Union Army, both the soldiers and their family members were considered free.  Episode Transcript 

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Guests

Anne Marshall

Anne Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. 

Read More
Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University.  She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Centre College of Kentucky and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2004. She has worked at Mississippi State University since 2006, and teaches numerous graduate level courses, as well as undergraduate courses including Jacksonian American (1825-1850); History of the Old South; and the History of Southern Women.

She is the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010). She has also published numerous journal articles and essays, two of which have won prizes for best article for the year of publication (Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 2000 and Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011). Marshall has presented numerous papers and commented on panels at conferences including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Society of Civil War Historians.  Her current book project looks nineteenth century anti-slavery politics through the life of the colorful Kentucky emancipationist Cassius M. Clay.

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Read More

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Jim Downs

Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College.

Read More

Jim Downs is the author of Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His book, Voter Suppression in U.S. Election: History in the Headlines has just been published and includes a printed transcription of a conversation among leading experts including Stacey Abrams, Carol Anderson, among others. He is the author or editor of five other books. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Washington Post, Vice, among others. He is the Gilder Lehrman National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College.

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Browning, Orville H. (paid link) The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning. Chicago: Blakely Printing Company, 1927. Read Free at Internet Archive

 

Downs, Jim.  (paid link) Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2012.

 

Harrison, Lowell H. (paid link) “Lincoln, Slavery, and Kentucky.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 106, no. 3/4 (2008): 571-604. Accessed May 13, 2020. Read Free at JSTOR.org

 

Lewis, Patrick.  (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

 

Marrs, Elijah P.  (paid link) Life and History of the Rev. Elijah P. Marrs, First Pastor of Beargrass Baptist Church, and Author. Louisville, Kentucky: The Bradley and Gilbert Company, 1885. Read for free

 

Marshall, Anne. (paid link) Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2010).

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Episode 3: Recovering History

Season One | Episode 3

Episode Three: Recovering History
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With
Vanessa HoldenRicky JonesPatrick Lewis, Shirley Harmon, Elizabeth Stites, Chenoweth Stites Allen, Lisa Bowlds-Williams, Kate Stites, Russ Bowlds, and Brigitt Johnson, and featuring Louis Robert Thompson, Jacqui Blue, Keith McGill, Mark Forman, and Alec Volz.  

Due to prohibitions against enslaved people learning to read and write, there are only a few written records left behind by formerly enslaved Kentuckians. But thankfully, over 100 people were interviewed during the 1930s about their experiences while enslaved. These narratives, combined with letters and diaries kept by white enslavers, help us better understand the true nature of slavery in Kentucky.  Episode Transcript 

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Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Read More
Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Holden’s current book project, tentatively titled, Surviving Southampton: Gender, Community, Resistance and Survival During the Southampton Rebellion of 1831(University of Illinois Press), explores the contributions that African American women and children, free and enslaved, made to the Southampton Rebellion of 1831, also called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Dr. Holden’s work and writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Process: A Blog for American History, and The Rumpus. She also blogs for Black Perspectives and The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.

In addition to her work on enslaved women and slave rebellion, Dr. Holden also co-organizes the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). Her second project, Forming Intimacies: Queer Kinship and Resistance in the Antebellum American Atlantic, will focus on same gender loving individuals and American slavery.

Dr. Holden also serves as a faculty adviser or consultant on a number of public history and digital humanities projects including: Freedom on the Move (a digital archive of runaway slave adds); Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf (an exhibit chronicling the intersecting histories of African Americans and the horse industry in Kentucky), and a grant project aimed at bringing a driving tour and museum to Southampton County, Virginia, that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Find her on Twitter @drvholden.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

Read More

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.  A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jones was educated as an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, Morehouse College (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s alma mater). He was only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky where he specialized in Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. His books include: two editions of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities” and “What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination.”

He is currently co-authoring a new book with attorney and award-winning cartoonist Marc Murphy titled, “Kaepernick, Confederates, and Con-Artists.” He has written hundreds of scholarly and magazine articles, book chapters and opinion columns. 

Dr. Jones has served as a local, national, and international social and political analyst across various media including appearances on HBO, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, the Travel Channel, a variety of NPR and PBS programs, the BBC, E! Entertainment, the Katie (Couric) Show, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and many others. He is the host of the “Erasing History’ Podcast and the “Ricky Jones Show” from iHeart Media. The “Ricky Jones Show” was named Best of Louisville’s 2017 “Best Radio Show.”

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Among many other honors, Jones has been named one of Louisville’s 25 Future Leaders by Louisville Magazine and was also recognized as one of DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education’s “25 to Watch in Academia.”  He is a life-member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

Read More

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Bruner, Peter. (paid link) A Slave’s Adventures Toward Freedom: Not Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle. Oxford, Ohio: 1918. Read for free.

 

Bullitt, Thomas W. (paid link) My Life at Oxmoor; Life on a Farm in Kentucky Before the War. Louisville: Filson, 1911. Read Free at Internet Archive

 

Fedric, Francis. (paid link) Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; by Francis Fedric, an Escaped Slave. London: Wertheim, Macintosh and Hunt, 1863.  Read Free at DocSouth

 

Jones, Ricky L. (paid link) Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

 

Marrs, Elijah P.  (paid link) Life and History of the Rev. Elijah P. Marrs, First Pastor of Beargrass Baptist Church, and Author. Louisville, Kentucky: The Bradley and Gilbert Company, 1885. Read for free

 

Lewis, Patrick. (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

 

Smith, Harry. (paid link) Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America. Grand Rapids, Michigan: West Michigan Print. Co., 1891.
Read for free.

 

Yetman, Norman R. “The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection.” American Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1967): 534–53. Read for free at DOI.org

 

Yagyu, Tomoku. 2006. “Slave Traders and Planters In the Expanding South: Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business Networks, and Western Migration In the Atlantic World, 1787-1859”. https://doi.org/10.17615/vatj-2e80 Read free at UNC

 

Young, Amy L. and Young, J. Blaine Hundson. “Slave Life at Oxmoor”, Filson Club History Quarterly, Summer 2000, Vol. 74, NO. 3. Read Free at Filson

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Episode 2: Sold Down The River

Season One | Episode 2

Episode Two: Sold Down the River

Hosted by Dan Gediman. With Vanessa Holden, Joshua RothmanSharon Murphy, Patrick Lewis, Kevin Outterson, Bodley Stites, and featuring Mark Forman, Susan Linville, and Alec Volz.  

Kentucky was an important hub of America’s internal slave trade, with fortunes made by slave traders and those who invested in enslaved people as commodities. We hear from members of a white family that descend from a Louisville slave trader and learn how integral slavery was to their wealth and to the economy of the state of Kentucky.  Episode Transcript

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Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

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Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Holden’s current book project, tentatively titled, Surviving Southampton: Gender, Community, Resistance and Survival During the Southampton Rebellion of 1831(University of Illinois Press), explores the contributions that African American women and children, free and enslaved, made to the Southampton Rebellion of 1831, also called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Dr. Holden’s work and writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Process: A Blog for American History, and The Rumpus. She also blogs for Black Perspectives and The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.

In addition to her work on enslaved women and slave rebellion, Dr. Holden also co-organizes the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). Her second project, Forming Intimacies: Queer Kinship and Resistance in the Antebellum American Atlantic, will focus on same gender loving individuals and American slavery.

Dr. Holden also serves as a faculty adviser or consultant on a number of public history and digital humanities projects including: Freedom on the Move (a digital archive of runaway slave adds); Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf (an exhibit chronicling the intersecting histories of African Americans and the horse industry in Kentucky), and a grant project aimed at bringing a driving tour and museum to Southampton County, Virginia, that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Find her on Twitter @drvholden.

Dr. Joshua D. Rothman

Joshua D. Rothman is a Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama.

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Joshua D. Rothman received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, and he is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama, where he specializes in the histories of slavery, the South, and nineteenth-century America. He is the author of several books, and is currently completing a manuscript tentatively titled “The Ledger and the Chain: A Biography of the Domestic Slave Trade”.

 

http://history.ua.edu/people/joshua-d-rothman/

Dr. Sharon A. Murphy

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI, and the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America.

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Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI. She is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (2010, Johns Hopkins University Press), winner of the 2012 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history, and Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (2017, Johns Hopkins University Press).

Her latest projects are an investigation of the public perception of banks around the Panic of 1819, and an examination of the relationship between banking and slavery in the United States during the nineteenth century.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/investing-life

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/other-peoples-money

Dr. Patrick Lewis

Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History.

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Patrick Lewis is Scholar in Residence at the Filson Historical Society and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Ohio Valley History. A Trigg County, Kentucky, native, Lewis graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society, and has won digital history grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). He tweets about public history at @KyPLewis.

Kevin Outterson, J.D., LL.M.

Professor Outterson teaches health care law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program.

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Professor Outterson teaches health care law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program.  He serves as the Executive Director and Principal Investigator for CARB-X, a $500M international public-private partnership to accelerate global antibacterial innovation.  Key partners in CARB-X include the US Government (BARDA & NIAID), the Wellcome Trust, the UK Government (GAMRIF, DHSC), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Professor Outterson’s research work focuses on the law and economics of antimicrobial resistance (available at Google Scholar). He served as a senior author on many key research reports on antibiotic innovation, including Chatham House, ERG, DRIVE-AB, and the Lancet Commission. Professor Outterson was given the 2015 Leadership Award by the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics for his research and advocacy work.  He has testified before Congress, Parliamentary working groups, WHO, and several state legislatures. Since August 2016, he leads CARB-X, the world’s largest and most innovative antibiotic accelerator. www.carb-x.org

Professor and N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law,

Boston University
Executive Director & Principal Investigator, CARB-X

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Andrews, Susan C., and James P. Fenton. “Archaeology and the Invisible Man: The Role of Slavery in the Production of Wealth and Social Class in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, 1820 to 1870.” World Archaeology 33, no. 1 (2001): 115-36. Accessed May 12, 2020. Read Free at JSTOR

 

Brown, Patricia L. “In a Barn, a Piece of Slavery’s Hidden Past.” The New York Times, May 6, 2003.

 

Browning, Orville H. (paid link) The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning. Chicago: Blakely Printing Company, 1927. Read Free at Internet Archive

 

Clark, Thomas D. (paid link) Kentucky: Land of Contrasts. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

 

Clark, Thomas D. “The Slave trade between Kentucky and the Cotton Kingdom,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 21, issue 3 (Dec., 1934), pp.331-342. Read free at JSTOR. DOI: 10.2307/1897378

 

Coleman, J. Winston. (paid link) “Lexington’s Slave Dealers and Their Southern Trade.” The Filson Club History Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1938).

 

Deyle, Steven. (paid link) Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. For an in-depth examination of local sales see chapter five.

 

Fitzpatrick, Benjamin. “Negroes for Sale: The Slave Trade in Antebellum Kentucky.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2010. Read Free at CurateND

 

Ireland, Robert M. (paid link) The County Courts in Antebellum Kentucky.  Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

 

Lewis, Patrick.  (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

 

Murphy, Sharon A. “Banking on Slavery in the Antebellum South”. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Economic History Workshop, May 1, 2017.

 

Murphy, Sharon A. (paid link) Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010.

 

Rothman, Joshua D. (paid link) Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012.

Rothman, Joshua D. (paid link) Reforming America, 1815-1860 (Norton Documents Reader). New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

 

Russell, Thomas D. “Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption of Slave Families at Court Sales.” Utah Law Review, Vol. 1996, p. 1161-1209, 1996. Available free at SSRN.com

 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. (paid link) Uncle Tom’s Cabin. London: Cassell, 1852. Read for free at GoogleBooks

 

Woolfolk, George R. “Taxes and Slavery in the Ante Bellum South.” The Journal of Southern History 26, no. 2 (1960): 180-200. Accessed May 12, 2020. doi:10.2307/2955182. Read for free at Jstor

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Episode 1: Hidden History

Season One | Episode 1

Episode One: Hidden History
Hosted by Dan Gediman. With
Patrick LewisVanessa Holden,  Ricky JonesSadiqa ReynoldsChanelle Helm, Sharon Murphy, Russ Bowlds, Brigitt Johnson, Loretta Williams, and Lisa Bowlds-Williams, and featuring Alec Volz, Susan Linville, and Mark Forman.    

The history of slavery is often taught as a bitter chapter of America’s past that has been rectified. But in Kentucky that history has been rarely acknowledged, and is poorly documented. This has made it particularly difficult for African American families to learn anything about their enslaved ancestors. We’ll meet one Black family just beginning to learn about their family’s connections to a plantation in Louisville.  Episode Transcript

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Dr. Vanessa M. Holden

Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Read More
Vanessa M. Holden is an assistant professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Holden’s current book project, tentatively titled, Surviving Southampton: Gender, Community, Resistance and Survival During the Southampton Rebellion of 1831(University of Illinois Press), explores the contributions that African American women and children, free and enslaved, made to the Southampton Rebellion of 1831, also called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Dr. Holden’s work and writing has been published in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Process: A Blog for American History, and The Rumpus. She also blogs for Black Perspectives and The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.

In addition to her work on enslaved women and slave rebellion, Dr. Holden also co-organizes the Queering Slavery Working Group (#QSWG) with Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University). Her second project, Forming Intimacies: Queer Kinship and Resistance in the Antebellum American Atlantic, will focus on same gender loving individuals and American slavery.

Dr. Holden also serves as a faculty adviser or consultant on a number of public history and digital humanities projects including: Freedom on the Move (a digital archive of runaway slave adds); Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf (an exhibit chronicling the intersecting histories of African Americans and the horse industry in Kentucky), and a grant project aimed at bringing a driving tour and museum to Southampton County, Virginia, that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Find her on Twitter @drvholden.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

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Dr. Ricky L. Jones is Professor and Chair of the University of Louisville’s Department of Pan-African Studies.  A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jones was educated as an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, Morehouse College (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s alma mater). He was only the second African-American to receive a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kentucky where he specialized in Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics. His books include: two editions of “Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities” and “What’s Wrong with Obamamania?: Black America, Black Leadership, and the Death of Political Imagination.”

He is currently co-authoring a new book with attorney and award-winning cartoonist Marc Murphy titled, “Kaepernick, Confederates, and Con-Artists.” He has written hundreds of scholarly and magazine articles, book chapters and opinion columns. 

Dr. Jones has served as a local, national, and international social and political analyst across various media including appearances on HBO, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, the Travel Channel, a variety of NPR and PBS programs, the BBC, E! Entertainment, the Katie (Couric) Show, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, and many others. He is the host of the “Erasing History’ Podcast and the “Ricky Jones Show” from iHeart Media. The “Ricky Jones Show” was named Best of Louisville’s 2017 “Best Radio Show.”

He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Courier-Journal and USA Today Network for which he was named 2018 “best editorial/opinion columnist” by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Among many other honors, Jones has been named one of Louisville’s 25 Future Leaders by Louisville Magazine and was also recognized as one of DIVERSE Issues in Higher Education’s “25 to Watch in Academia.”  He is a life-member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Visit him at: www.rickyljones.com

Follow on Twitter: @DrRickyLJones

Sadiqa N. Reynolds, esq.

Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League, the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history. 

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Sadiqa Reynolds is the President and CEO of Louisville Urban League. Her appointment made her the first woman to hold this title in the affiliate’s 95-year history. She has previously served as Chief for Community Building in the Office of the Mayor where she oversaw approximately 1500 employees. Sadiqa serves on several boards including Fund for the Arts, the Louisville Chamber, WAVE3 Editorial Board, WDRD Advisory Board and is a Director for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

 

She has served as District Judge for the 30th Judicial Court. She was also the first African American woman to clerk for the Kentucky Supreme Court when she served as Chief Law Clerk for the late Chief Justice Robert F. Stephens. Her life as a public servant also includes being the first African American to serve as Inspector General for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Services.

 

Prior to entering the public sector, Sadiqa owned and managed her private legal practice. Her practice included criminal litigation, employment law, death penalty litigation and serving as Guardian Ad Litem representing abused, neglected and dependent children as well as arguing successfully before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. She has also been recognized by the Louisville Bar Association for providing pro bono hours in which she represented domestic violence victims and other disadvantaged citizens.

 

Sadiqa earned her BA in Psychology from the University of Louisville and her law degree from the University of Kentucky. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and Bates Memorial Baptist Church.

 

She is an advocate for mental health awareness and received the 2017 Community Leader of the Year Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness because of her work to reduce the stigma around mental health. She is also a proponent for Restorative Justice and participated in the face it campaign to end child abuse.

 

Under her leadership, the Louisville Urban League is committed to jobs, justice, education, health and housing. She has been featured on CNN’s Headline News for the Louisville Urban League’s work on the State of Black Louisville and been a guest on FOX News as well as the national Funky Politics podcast.

 

Sadiqa is a much sought-after speaker who has been recognized as a Business First Enterprising Woman to Watch and a Woman of Influence. She has been honored with a Tower Award, a Torch of Wisdom and named a Daughter of Greatness by the Muhammad Ali Center. She’s received the Fannie Lou Hamer award, for her commitment to justice and in 2016 was recognized as BizWomen’s Business Journal top 100 women to watch nationally. She was also recognized for her housing advocacy work by the Mortgage Banker’s Association and in 2017 was recognized as Louisville’s Communicator of the Year. Just this year she was honored to be named a recipient of the Gertrude E. Rush Award by the National Bar Association.

 

She has been featured on public radio, television and numerous print media outlets including the NY Times. She has two beautiful daughters Sydney, 8th grade and Wynter, 6th grade, both being educated in public schools. Sadiqa has received two honorary Doctorates, one from Spalding University and the other from Simmons College of Kentucky. Sadiqa Reynolds was the 2017 Louisville Magazine Person of Year and a 2018 National Urban League Woman of Power.

Chanelle Helm

Chanelle Helm is the core lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Louisville. 

Dr. Sharon A. Murphy

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI, and the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America.

Read More

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College in Providence, RI. She is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (2010, Johns Hopkins University Press), winner of the 2012 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history, and Other People’s Money: How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic (2017, Johns Hopkins University Press).

Her latest projects are an investigation of the public perception of banks around the Panic of 1819, and an examination of the relationship between banking and slavery in the United States during the nineteenth century.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/investing-life

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/other-peoples-money

Episode Bibliography

Learn more about slavery and its lasting effects in America by exploring the source materials referenced in The Reckoning. Our bibliography contains many items that are available to read or download for free. If you choose to purchase any of the books through the links provided, as an Amazon Associate, our non-profit organization Reckoning, Inc. earns commissions from qualifying purchases.

Bullitt, Thomas W. (paid link) My Life at Oxmoor; Life on a Farm in Kentucky Before the War. Louisville: Filson, 1911. Read Free at Internet Archive

Coleman, J Winston. (paid link) Slavery Times in Kentucky. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940.

Jones, Ricky L. (paid link) Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

Klotter, James C., Friend, Craig Thompson. (paid link) A New History of Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2018.

Klotter, Freda C. and Klotter, James C. (paid link) A Concise History of Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

Lewis, Patrick.  (paid link) For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War. University Press of Kentucky, Mar 9, 2015

McDougle, Ivan E.  (paid link) Slavery in Kentucky, 1792-1865. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Press of the New Era Printing Company, 1918. Digitized by Google Books, 2006. Read Free at Google Books

Murphy, Sharon A. “Banking on Slavery in the Antebellum South”. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Economic History Workshop, May 1, 2017.

Murphy, Sharon A. (paid link) Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Young, Amy L. and Young, J. Blaine Hundson. “Slave Life at Oxmoor”, Filson Club History Quarterly, Summer 2000, Vol. 74, NO. 3. Read Free at Filson

How to Subscribe to The Reckoning Podcast

You can subscribe to our podcast by following these links to Apple Podcasts (for iPhones or iPads), Google Podcasts (for Android phones and tablets), and Spotify. For any other podcasting services (Stitcher, Amazon Music, etc.), search for The Reckoning: Facing the Legacy of Slavery in America or paste this RSS feed in the app: https://feed.podbean.com/reckoningradio/feed.xmlYou can also listen to all episodes of the series on the Podcast page of our website, as well as on our YouTube channel. 

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Matthew Hume

In this excerpt, the interviewer describes Matthew Hume’s experience with religion when he was enslaved in the third person.  
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

…The mistress on a neighboring plantation was a devout Catholic and had all the children come each Sunday afternoon to study the catechism and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. She was not very successful in training them in the Catholic faith as when they grew up most of them were either Baptists or Methodists. Mr. Hume said she did a lot of good in leading them to Christ but he did not learn much of the catechism as he only attended for the treat. After the service, they always had candy or a cup of sugar…


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age) Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Matthew Hume Unknown (Unknown) Grace Monroe Daniel Payne
Interview Location Residence State Birth Location
Jefferson County, IN IN KY
Themes & Keywords Additional Tags:
Religion Trimble County, Third Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty

Hume_M_2

Charles Green

Charles Green lived in enslavement in Kentucky before and during the Civil War.  In this excerpt, he describes the fear the enslavers put into the enslaved about the raiding Union (Yankee) soldiers, and how Confederate Soldiers (led by John Morgan) were not to be feared.  However, he also mentions how his half brother and father joined the Union cause.
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

When old John Morgan came through raiding, he took meat and horses from our place, and just left the smokehouse empty.  Father and my half-brother, George Spencer Green, joined up with the 112th Kentucky boys, and was with General Sherman marching to the sea.  Father, he died, but Spence came home after the war and settled in the lower part of Mason County.  

…We thought the Yankee soldiers were coming to carry us off, and they told us to hide if we saw them.  I remember one night; ‘twas mostly dark; I saw some Yankee soldiers, and I was scared to death.  They yelled at me, and I took to my heels;  then they shot in the air and I ran all the faster getting back to the house.  But when Old [Confederate General] John Morgan came along a-raiding and carrying off the meat and good horses, we weren’t afraid.


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Charles Green1859 (78)Not NamedWallingsford
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Clark County, OHOhioMason County, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Family, Emancipation, Civil War,First Person, Union Troops,

Green_C_1

Charlie Richmond

This Third Person recollection of an interview with the formerly enslaved Charlie Richmond describes how the dialect of the formerly enslaved populations remained prominent in the South among both Black and White families due to the fact that so many of them lived together during times of enslavement.
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Source Description:

The n—-o dialect of this county is a combination of the dialect white folk use plus that of the n—o of the South. The colored population is continually moving back and forth from Alabama, Georgia, and North and South Carolinas. They visit a lot. Colored teachers so far have all been from Ohio. Most visiting colored preachers come from Alabama and the Carolinas. The negroes leave out their R’s use an’t han’t gwin, su’ for sir, yea for yes, dah for there and such expressions as, “I’s Ye?”

The wealthiest families o’ white folk still retain colored servants. In Prestonsburg, Kentucky one may see on the streets neat looking colored gals leading or wheeling young white children along. Folks say this is why so many southerners leave out their R’s and hold on to the old superstitions, they’ve had a colored mama for a nurse-maid.


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Charlie RichmondUnknownJohn I. SturgillJudge Richmond
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Floyd County, KYKentuckyUnknown
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Family, class, dialectThird Person, dialect

Richmond_C_1

Charles Anderson

Charles Anderson lived in enslavement in Kentucky before and during the Civil War.  In this excerpt, he describes becoming a free man, his hesitancy to leave the plantation, the act of voting, and his realization that racial problems continued to exist in our country long after Reconstruction.
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

I don’t know when freedom came on. I never did know. We was five or six years breaking up. Master Stone never forced any of us to leave. He give some of them a horse when they left. I cried a year to go back. It was a dear place to me and the memories linger with me every day.

There was no secret society or order of Ku Klux in reach of us as I ever heard.

I voted Republican ticket. We would go to Jackson to vote. There would be a crowd. The last I voted was for Theodore Roosevelt. I voted here in Helena for years. I was on the petit jury for several years here in Helena.

I farmed in your state some (Arkansas). I farmed all my young life. I been in Arkansas sixty years. I come here February 1879 with distant relatives. They come south. When I come to Helena there was but one set of mechanics. I started to work. I learned to paint and hang wallpaper. I’ve worked in nearly every house in Helena.

The present times are gloomy. I tried to prepare for old age. I had a apartment house and lost it. I owned a home and lost it. They foreclosed me out.

The present generation is not doing as well as I have.


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Charles AndersonUnknown (77 or 78)Irene RobertsonIsaac and Davis Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Helena, ARArkansasNelson County, Kentucky
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Emancipation, Voting, Citizenship, 15th AmendmentFirst Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Slaver Father

Anderson_C_2

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