Black history

Lexington Democrat will attempt to make Juneteenth a state holiday (again)

BY: - June 14, 2024

Kentucky Rep. George Brown, D-Lexington, says he will file legislation in 2025 to try and establish Juneteenth as an official state holiday.? Past efforts to do so have failed.? Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorating the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free in […]

Beshear makes Juneteenth a Kentucky holiday, protects natural hair in state workplaces

BY: - May 23, 2024

Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday signed executive orders making Juneteenth an executive branch holiday and protecting natural hairstyles like braids, locs and twists from discrimination.? Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have tried and failed to pass bills on both of these issues.? CROWN Act stalls in legislature Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, is among those […]

Beshear underscores support for DEI during Black History Month celebration

BY: - February 1, 2024

FRANKFORT — Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear reaffirmed his support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives during a Black History Month celebration Thursday at the Kentucky Capitol.? Amid a flurry of anti-DEI legislation in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Beshear told the crowd in the Capitol Rotunda that “diversity is an asset” and makes Kentucky “more […]

Commentary

The women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social?change

BY: - January 15, 2024

Historian Vicki Crawford is the director of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, where she oversees the archive of his sermons, speeches, writings and other materials. Here, she explains the contributions of women who influenced King and helped to fuel some of the most significant campaigns of the civil rights era, but whose […]

Frankfort Democrat Derrick Graham to not seek reelection

BY: - December 8, 2023

Kentucky House Democratic Caucus Leader Derrick Graham will not run for reelection in 2024, he announced Friday.? Graham, a Frankfort Democrat, said in a statement that, “I feel strongly that now is the time to give someone else the chance to be our next state representative, a job I have loved since first being elected […]

Film series captures Black communities, struggles, solidarity across Kentucky

BY: - August 4, 2023

Sherman Neal spent many days of the summer of 2020 in the Western Kentucky college town of Murray next to a Confederate monument at the county courthouse.? It was on the heels of the murder of George Floyd and the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor when Neal — a Black volunteer college football coach, […]

Resistance was everywhere in Kentucky. Enslavers advertised it daily.

BY: - July 4, 2023

LEXINGTON — Throughout the late spring of this year a group of nine University of Kentucky students did work that no one had ever done before.? They scrolled through digital copies of early Kentucky newspapers, looking for advertisements seeking the return of people who had fled slavery, to record and preserve them. “Ran away last […]

Bill to ban state help with federal gun laws, regulations advances from Senate committee

BY: - March 9, 2023

A bill that would ban state and local law enforcement, governments and their employees from enforcing federal gun laws or regulations in Kentucky advanced from a Senate committee Thursday morning.? House Bill 153, sponsored by Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon, would prevent local law enforcement, employees of public agencies and local governments from assisting or […]

‘Black history is American history’: Lawmakers lead celebration of Black Kentucky history?

BY: - February 7, 2023

Members of the Kentucky Black Legislative Caucus marked Black History Month and the arrival of lawmakers back to the state Capitol Tuesday with a celebration of Black history, being joined by the justices of the Kentucky Supreme Court, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican legislative leadership. Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, who’s the Democratic candidate for […]