Author

Berry Craig

Berry Craig

Berry Craig, a Carlisle countian, is a professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and the author of seven books, all on Kentucky history. His latest is "Kentuckians and Pearl Harbor: Stories from the Day of Infamy" which the University Press of Kentucky published. He is a freelance journalist, a member of the American Federation of Teachers and a longtime union activist.

Commentary

Early ‘sound bite’ helped Kentucky gain fame as ‘paradise for barbarous Yahoos’

By: - August 8, 2024

The first sound bite in American political history was recorded more than two centuries ago in Western Kentucky. First District Congressman Matthew Lyon of Eddyville, a fierce Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican, used his teeth to detach a detractor’s digit. It was self-defense. The constituent was trying to pop the congressman’s eyeball out. Lyon was an Irish-born Revolutionary […]

Commentary

Anti-immigrant politics could spark violence in Kentucky. It has happened before.

By: - April 24, 2024

Donald J. Trump, meet Charles S. Morehead, the guy who was elected governor of Kentucky in 1855 on the anti-immigrant “Know-Nothing” ticket. “Americans should rule America” was the Know-Nothings’ credo. Translation: white, native-born Protestants like them.? Officially, the American Party, it was dubbed the “Know-Nothing” party because members were supposed to reply — like Sgt. […]

Commentary

‘Ghosts of a Lost Cause’ tells an unfinished story stretching beyond ‘friendliest small town’

By: - January 8, 2024

Murray’s controversial court square Confederate monument “represents a distorted, bloody and awful past that we cannot forget but should not celebrate,” said Murray State University historian Brian Clardy. The 1917-vintage stone memorial topped by a 5?-foot statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s most famous general, is the subject of a new film, “Ghosts of […]

Commentary

Happy New Year. Don’t try this at home.

By: - December 29, 2023

More than a few of our foolhardy forebears rang in the New Year with earth-trembling blasts that threatened — and sometimes claimed — lives and limbs. Called anvil-firing, the ear-splitting holiday custom was forsaken long ago, possibly because it proved so hazardous. (The custom is preserved — safely — at special events held annually around […]

Commentary

The Kentucky ‘governor’ who fled Frankfort before approaching U.S. troops

By: - December 12, 2023

Whatever happens at Gov. Andy Beshear’s second inauguration, odds are federal soldiers won’t run him out of town. During the Civil War, Confederate troops captured Frankfort, the only capital of a loyal state to fall to the enemy during America’s most lethal conflict. The rebels’ advent forced Unionist Gov. James F. Robinson and the Union-majority […]

Commentary

‘Something wicked’ coming our way?

By: - November 20, 2023

Bully Mullin, meet Bully Brooks. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., recently threatened to fight Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien during a Senate hearing on unions. On the Senate floor in 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks, D-S.C., nearly killed Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass, with a heavy cane.? Elected last year, Mullin is all MAGA all the time. He […]

Commentary

Burgone?

By: - November 6, 2023

Burgoo is long gone as a Kentucky campaign trail staple. “Maybe Kentucky is too sophisticated for burgoo these days,” speculated Northern Kentucky Tribune columnist Bill Straub, a Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer.? He suspects that many Kentuckians, especially younger folks, have never heard of the famous stew that was served at political events for decades. […]

Commentary

A Kentuckian transplanted to Detroit ‘sat down’ with the United Auto Workers in ’37

By: - October 16, 2023

I saw on Instagram that the daughter of a 1937 sit-down striker at a Flint, Michigan, General Motors plant recently walked a picket line with United Auto Workers strikers at a GM facility in Swartz Creek, Michigan. “86 years after the sit down strike, UAW members are standing up!”?uaw.union?posted. I’m sure Western Kentucky natives Ermon […]

Commentary

Ahem, Rand Paul, aren’t you forgetting something?

By: - September 25, 2023

In a fundraising letter boosting Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron for governor, GOP Sen. Rand Paul praised the state’s top cop for suing Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear over “virtually every authoritarian edict” the incumbent “unleashed on Kentucky.” Paul meant Beshear’s?emergency executive orders that were aimed at keeping Kentuckians out of the hospital and the cemetery […]

Commentary

Abraham Lincoln was no favorite son in his native Kentucky

By: - February 10, 2023

No son of Kentucky is more famous or more revered than Abraham Lincoln,?who was born on Feb. 12, 1809, near Hodgenville. His birthplace is a national shrine. His statue stands tall in the Capitol rotunda in Frankfort. Lincoln was the first Republican president, and today Kentucky is one of the reddest Republican red states. Yet […]