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As AI takes the helm of decision making, signs of perpetuating historic biases emerge

Paige Gross — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 09:30:07 +0000

Studies show that AI systems used to make important decisions such as approval of loan and mortgage applications can perpetuate historical bias and discrimination if not carefully constructed and monitored. (Seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images)

In a recent study evaluating how chatbots make loan suggestions for mortgage applications, researchers at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University found something stark: there was clear racial bias at play.

With 6,000 sample loan applications based on data from the 2022 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the chatbots recommended denials for more Black applicants than identical white counterparts. They also recommended Black applicants be given higher interest rates, and labeled Black and Hispanic borrowers as “riskier.”

White applicants were 8.5% more likely to be approved than Black applicants with the same financial profile. And applicants with “low” credit scores of 640, saw a wider margin — white applicants were approved 95% of the time, while Black applicants were approved less than 80% of the time.

The experiment aimed to simulate how financial institutions are using AI algorithms, machine learning and large language models to speed up processes like lending and underwriting of loans and mortgages. These “black box” systems, where the algorithm’s inner workings aren’t transparent to users, have the potential to lower operating costs for financial firms and any other industry employing them, said Donald Bowen, an assistant fintech professor at Lehigh and one of the authors of the study.

But there’s also large potential for flawed training data, programming errors, and historically biased information to affect the outcomes, sometimes in detrimental, life-changing ways.

“There’s a potential for these systems to know a lot about the people they’re interacting with,” Bowen said. “If there’s a baked-in bias, that could propagate across a bunch of different interactions between customers and a bank.”

How does AI discriminate in finance?

Decision-making AI tools and large language models, like the ones in the Lehigh University experiment, are being used across a variety of industries, like healthcare, education, finance and even in the judicial system.

Most machine learning algorithms follow what’s called classification models, meaning you formally define a problem or a question, and then you feed the algorithm a set of inputs such as a loan applicant’s age, income, education and credit history, Michael Wellman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, explained.

The algorithm spits out a result — approved or not approved. More complex algorithms can assess these factors and deliver more nuanced answers, like a loan approval with a recommended interest rate.

Machine learning advances in recent years have allowed for what’s called deep learning, or construction of big neural networks that can learn from large amounts of data. But if AI’s builders don’t keep objectivity in mind, or rely on data sets that reflect deep-rooted and systemic racism, results will reflect that.

“If it turns out that you are systematically more often making decisions to deny credit to certain groups of people more than you make those wrong decisions about others, that would be a time that there’s a problem with the algorithm,” Wellman said. “And especially when those groups are groups that are historically disadvantaged.”

Bowen was initially inspired to pursue the Lehigh University study after a smaller-scale assignment with his students revealed the racial discrimination by the chatbots.

“We wanted to understand if these models are biased, and if they’re biased in settings where they’re not supposed to be,” Bowen said, since underwriting is a regulated industry that’s not allowed to consider race in decision-making.

For the official study, Bowen and a research team ran thousands of loan application numbers over several months through different commercial large language models, including OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 Turbo and GPT 4, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Sonnet and Opus and Meta’s Llama 3-8B and 3-70B.

In one experiment, they included race information on applications and saw the discrepancies in loan approvals and mortgage rates. In other, they instructed the chatbots to “use no bias in making these decisions.” That experiment saw virtually no discrepancies between loan applicants.

But if race data isn’t collected in modern day lending, and algorithms used by banks are instructed to not consider race, how do people of color end up getting denied more often, or offered worse interest rates? Because much of our modern-day data is influenced by disparate impact, or the influence of systemic racism, Bowen said.

Though a computer wasn’t given the race of an applicant, a borrower’s credit score, which can be influenced by discrimination in the labor and housing markets, will have an impact on their application. So might their zip code, or the credit scores of other members of their household, all of which could have been influenced by the historic racist practice of redlining, or restricting lending to people in poor and nonwhite neighborhoods.

Machine learning algorithms aren’t always calculating their conclusions in the way that humans might imagine, Bowen said. The patterns it is learning apply to a variety of scenarios, so it may even be digesting reports about discrimination, for example learning that Black people have historically had worse credit. Therefore, the computer might see signs that a borrower is Black, and deny their loan or offer them a higher interest rate than a white counterpart.

Other opportunities for discrimination?

Decision making technologies have become ubiquitous in hiring practices over the last several years, as application platforms and internal systems use AI to filter through applications, and pre-screen candidates for hiring managers. Last year, New York City began requiring employers to notify candidates about their use of AI decision-making software.

By law, the AI tools should be programmed to have no opinion on protected classes like gender, race or age, but some users allege that they’ve been discriminated against by the algorithms anyway. In 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an initiative to examine more closely how new and existing technologies change the way employment decisions are made. Last year, the commission settled its first-ever AI discrimination hiring lawsuit.

The New York federal court case ended in a $365,000 settlement when tutoring company iTutorGroup Inc. was alleged to use an AI-powered hiring tool that rejected women applicants over 55 and men over 60. Two hundred applicants received the settlement, and iTutor agreed to adopt anti-discrimination policies and conduct training to ensure compliance with equal employment opportunity laws, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Another anti-discrimination lawsuit is pending in California federal court against AI-powered company Workday. Plaintiff Derek Mobley alleges he was passed over for more than 100 jobs that contract with the software company because he is Black, older than 40 and has mental health issues, Reuters reported this summer. The suit claims that Workday uses data on a company’s existing workforce to train its software, and the practice doesn’t account for the discrimination that may reflect in future hiring.

U.S. judicial and court systems have also begun incorporating decision-making algorithms in a handful of operations, like risk assessment analysis of defendants, determinations about pretrial release, diversion, sentencing and probation or parole.

Though the technologies have been cited in speeding up some of the traditionally lengthy court processes — like for document review and assistance with small claims court filings — experts caution that the technologies are not ready to be the primary or sole evidence in a “consequential outcome.”

“We worry more about its use in cases where AI systems are subject to pervasive and systemic racial and other biases, e.g., predictive policing, facial recognition, and criminal risk/recidivism assessment,” the co-authors of a paper in Judicature’s 2024 edition say.

Utah passed a law earlier this year to combat exactly that. HB 366, sponsored by state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Syracuse, addresses the use of an algorithm or a risk assessment tool score in determinations about pretrial release, diversion, sentencing, probation and parole, saying that these technologies may not be used without human intervention and review.

Lisonbee told States Newsroom that by design, the technologies provide a limited amount of information to a judge or decision-making officer.

“We think it’s important that judges and other decision-makers consider all the relevant information about a defendant in order to make the most appropriate decision regarding sentencing, diversion, or the conditions of their release,” Lisonbee said.

She also brought up concerns about bias, saying the state’s lawmakers don’t currently have full confidence in the “objectivity and reliability” of these tools. They also aren’t sure of the tools’ data privacy settings, which is a priority to Utah residents. These issues combined could put citizens’ trust in the criminal justice system at risk, she said.

“When evaluating the use of algorithms and risk assessment tools in criminal justice and other settings, it’s important to include strong data integrity and privacy protections, especially for any personal data that is shared with external parties for research or quality control purposes,” Lisonbee said.

Preventing discriminatory AI

Some legislators, like Lisonbee, have taken note of these issues of bias, and potential for discrimination. Four states currently have laws aiming to prevent “algorithmic discrimination,” where an AI system can contribute to different treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion or disability, among other things. This includes Utah, as well as California (SB 36), Colorado (SB 21-169), Illinois (HB 0053).

Though it’s not specific to discrimination, Congress introduced a bill in late 2023 to amend the Financial Stability Act of 2010 to include federal guidance for the financial industry on the uses of AI. This bill, the Financial Artificial Intelligence Risk Reduction Act or the “FAIRR Act,” would require the Financial Stability Oversight Council to coordinate with agencies regarding threats to the financial system posed by artificial intelligence, and may regulate how financial institutions can rely on AI.

Lehigh’s Bowen made it clear he felt there was no going back on these technologies, especially as companies and industries realize their cost-saving potential.

“These are going to be used by firms,” he said. “So how can they do this in a fair way?”

Bowen hopes his study can help inform financial and other institutions in deployment of decision-making AI tools. For their experiment, the researchers wrote that it was as simple as using prompt engineering to instruct the chatbots to “make unbiased decisions.” They suggest firms that integrate large language models into their processes do regular audits for bias to refine their tools.

Bowen and other researchers on the topic stress that more human involvement is needed to use these systems fairly. Though AI can deliver a decision on a court sentencing, mortgage loan, job application, healthcare diagnosis or customer service inquiry, it doesn’t mean they should be operating unchecked.

University of Michigan’s Wellman told States Newsroom he’s looking for government regulation on these tools, and pointed to H.R. 6936, a bill pending in Congress which would require federal agencies to adopt the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The framework calls out potential for bias, and is designed to improve trustworthiness for organizations that design, develop, use and evaluate AI tools.

“My hope is that the call for standards … will read through the market, providing tools that companies could use to validate or certify their models at least,” Wellman said. “Which, of course, doesn’t guarantee that they’re perfect in every way or avoid all your potential negatives. But it can … provide basic standard basis for trusting the models.”

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Highlander Folk School, training ground for civil rights leaders, fights to regain land

Cari Wade Gervin — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 09:40:39 +0000

The library on the former grounds of the Highlander Folk Center, in which Rev. Martin Luther King once lectured, is one of few buildings remaining on the Grundy County site closed by the state in 1961. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

This much is not in dispute:?? In 1961, the state of Tennessee took 200 acres of land from Highlander Folk School on Monteagle Mountain in Grundy County. Took, as in confiscated on bogus charges of alcohol sales without a license.

Rosa Parks (Library of Congress)

But the real reason for the confiscation stemmed from fears of civil rights and union activism after two decades of training now-icons such as Rosa Parks and Diane Nash at Highlander.

This much is also not in dispute: Five plots of that now subdivided land are owned by a nonprofit called the Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT). The sale of those plots to Todd Mayo, the for-profit owner of The Caverns, a rural concert venue, is pending. And the current Highlander administration, which had its offer to buy the land rejected, is furious.

Everything else — what happened to TPT, whether they ever had plans to sell the land back to Highlander, what might happen to those plots now and the land next to them that TPT doesn’t own — well, the answers vary depending on whom you ask.

On the one hand, TPT preserved some historic buildings that might very well have been lost. On the other hand, the original (and some would say, still rightful) owner of those buildings has been shut out from determining what happens to them.

Still others question whether a group of white men are the right ones to tell the story of the storied civil rights training ground.

“It’s hard to understand what the motive would be for the Trust not to turn the land over to Highlander,” says Denis Marlowe, a longtime neighbor whose mother worked at Highlander before the state raid. “I can see it only one or two ways. Either you’re getting a chance to make some money in this situation, or you don’t agree with what Highlander might do with it.”

The Highlander Center was an important for the Civil Rights Movement and for years supported the struggles of people.
Musician Dennis Marlow’s mother worked for the Highlander Center doing the Civil Rights movement. (John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ?2024

Backed by Eleanor Roosevelt, training civil rights leaders

Over three decades, the tiny Highlander Folk School had a huge, outsized impact on both Tennessee and American history. In 1932, Myles Horton, Don West and James Dombrowski launched the Highlander Folk School on land donated by Lillian Wyckoff Johnson, a progressive educator. Johnson had built and run a model rural school and community center named Kindred Company (KinCo) since 1915 and wanted others to continue her work after retirement.

Attempts to organize local workers quickly drew the ire of businessmen, both in Grundy County and across Tennessee. Although then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had endorsed the school, by 1941 the FBI had launched its first investigation into Highlander for alleged communist activities, surveillance that would continue for over two decades.

By the 1950s, Highlander had pivoted from labor to civil rights and became an instrumental part of the movement to fight segregation. Workshops led by activists Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins and Bernice Robinson taught Black citizens their rights, while other workshops taught white and Black adults together strategies to desegregate schools and businesses. (Parks famously attended a Highlander workshop four months before refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.)

Martin Luther King Jr. visited in 1957, speaking in the library. Horton’s wife Zliphia taught “We Shall Overcome” to Pete Seeger during a visit, who made it part of his repertoire, leading to its adoption as the unofficial civil rights anthem.

‘A story that hasn’t been told’

In 2013, in a splashy story in The Tennessean, historian David Currey announced big plans: The Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT), of which he was then board chair, planned to buy 13.5 acres of the original 200-acre Highlander site with a $1 million national campaign.

“Trying to get our hands on this piece of property allows us to tell that story again in the context of this rural setting,” Currey told the paper at the time. “This place has the potential to tell a story that hasn’t been told.”

A national campaign never really happened, but local donors stepped up and helped TPT buy three parcels on Old Highlander Road in May 2014. One parcel included what was left of the historic one-room library. In 2015, TPT purchased another parcel, followed by a fifth parcel in 2019 — ultimately around 8.5 acres of land with three houses in addition to the library.

Two of the houses have been rentals for the past 10 years. The third house, a historic home used by Highlander, has been left empty. It has visible mold and other exterior damage — rotting floorboards on the porch, a gutter dangling, overgrown shrubbery trying to force its way inside.

Despite some renovations, the one-room library sits empty, too, paint already peeling off the cement blocks. That’s why the organization needs to sell now, says Phil Thomason, TPT board chair, who says the organization never intended to keep the property.

“Our intent when we purchased it in 2014 was to restore the building back to its original design listed in the National Register of Historic Places and then sell it to a person, a benefactor, or an entity that we felt would be a really good steward of the property,” says Thomason.

One of a handful of structures still standing on the grounds of the old Highlander Folk School, a house stand empty and unkempt. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

That steward, however, won’t just be Todd Mayo. It will also be Currey, via a separate nonprofit called Kindred Cooperative in a nod to the original land owner. Last summer, months before Mayo put an offer on the land, Currey’s TPT entered into a 99-year lease of the Highlander property with Kindred for a nominal annual rent. (Thomason says it’s “something like” $1 per year.)

Mayo says he was intrigued by the project when Currey approached him.

“David communicated to me that he borrowed money to save this [property] and put it in a trust through TPT, but that … it needed to be sold and put into his nonprofit to carry on doing things there,” Mayo says. “I said, ‘Man, I’d love to help’.”

The TPT board voted to approve the sale for $600,000 in December 2023. Highlander put forth a competing offer of $800,000 cash in June, but the board voted against it.

These books were still on the shelves of the now abandoned Highlander Center library. (John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ?2024

“The relationship that we had with Highlander was severed a couple of years ago by them … and they disparaged and had unkind words for my organization,” Thomason says. “[Before 2024] we always had the door open to them for an offer, but we never received anything in writing …. [This summer] as we looked at the offer that Highlander presented, the timeline and other considerations just made it imperative that we move forward with Todd’s offer.”

Per state law, the Tennessee attorney general’s office must approve any sale by a nonprofit of substantially all its assets to another entity. That review is currently underway, and if the AG’s office approves the sale, which Thomason seems confident will happen, Mayo will own the land by the end of the year.

The role of race in historic preservation

Ted Debro, a Black Birmingham businessman, worked with Currey to create an experience room in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, examining the aftermath of the 1963 bombings that killed four Black girls.

“We were very pleased with the work that he did, and I found him to be a very open and caring individual and one who really understood the story and how to pull that together,” Debro says. “I didn’t find him to have a prejudice or a racist thought in his body.”

But several people, including Highlander’s current co-executive director, Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele, raised questions about whether an older white man is the right person to tell Highlander’s story, given its storied history in the Civil Rights Movement.

“That’s what [Highlander staff] use when they don’t get what they want — if you don’t agree with them, then everybody’s a racist. – David Currey

“As another white person, I’ve grown to understand that we’re all in recovery from the deepest, entrenched pools of white supremacy that we grew up in,” said Maxfield-Steele. “But the deals that he’s been willing to seemingly make without our consent and without our blessing and without transparency — that’s the issue. And some people do call that white supremacist business practice.”

This attitude is what enrages Currey.

“That’s what [Highlander staff] use when they don’t get what they want — if you don’t agree with them, then everybody’s a racist,” Currey says. “That’s not the case. I do a lot of work with a lot of African American communities around the South. Do you think if I was a racist they would want to do business with me?”

The Highlander Center was an important for the Civil Rights Movement and for years supported the struggles of people.
Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ?2024

A simmering fight for years

This anger — of Currey and Thomason toward Highlander, of Highlander toward the TPT — first came to a head in 2022, but it had been simmering for years.

Highlander didn’t stop training activists when the center was forced off Monteagle. Now called the Highlander Research and Education Center, it’s been located in New Market, Tennessee, since 1971, after 10 years in Knoxville. The organization has continued to train grassroots organizers and work for social and economic justice, and if it ever ended up with the original land, they say that goal wouldn’t change. But Highlander now has resources they didn’t have in the 1950s — over 50 employees and an annual operating budget of around $9 million.

According to Maxfield-Steele, Highlander has been interested in reacquiring the site and has talked to Currey and TPT members multiple times over the past decade about making it happen.

“In 2014, what we said was that we can’t afford this now, but we believe this project is valuable, and our story is one that should be told by us,” says Maxfield-Steele, explaining that Highlander was in the middle of a capital campaign at the time and couldn’t afford any additional cost outlays. “That was not something that it seemed that they were interested in pursuing.”

Between 2014 and 2019, Highlander had occasional discussions with Currey about the site’s direction but never received any offers in writing. In 2019, Howell E. Adams Jr., a donor who helped TPT purchase the parcels, told Highlander about the Kindred proposal. Maxfield-Steele thought parts of it were ludicrous — both “historic Highlander” and the current iteration of the nonprofit have long worked to “help rural people” — but he agreed to work on a plan.

You don’t want (Highlander) there, so we slap a padlock on it in the 1960s. You don’t want them back at the site now because they called you out for some nonsense, so we don’t wanna sell it to you no matter how much money you got. – Learotha Williams, Tennessee State University

But after emails back and forth, Maxfield-Steele says they couldn’t get a commitment from Currey about what would happen with the land. The pandemic hit, and things quieted down until 2022, when TPT submitted an application to place the library building on the National Register of Historic Places without notifying Highlander.

“There were citations that were wrong,” Maxfield-Steele says. “And we had never given any legal permission to TPT to submit anything.”

The dispute made the news, but behind the scenes, Highlander made an offer to buy the land.

“We said, we could cut you a check today,” Maxfield-Steele says. “And we offered to compensate [Currey] for his time in 2022.”

Thomason says TPT never received an offer.

“The fact that they objected to [the Register nomination] just told my board that they were not serious and would never provide an offer,” Thomason says. “Were there some minor inaccuracies? That’s correct. And those were corrected.”

Since then, the two parties have not talked until Highlander learned this spring that Mayo had made an offer for the land. Staff drafted a counter-proposal and attached letters of support from prominent historians, activists and Grundy County neighbors, including Tennessee State Historian Carroll Van West. They also included information about partnering with MASS Design Group, the architectural firm that designed the National Memorial for Peace and Justice honoring victims of lynching in Montgomery, Alabama.

Highlander provided financial documents demonstrating that paying $800,000 cash for the site — again, $200,000 more than Mayo and much more than TPT originally paid for the land — was feasible. The board still voted against the plan.

“On paper, it looks weird that they would turn down a significantly higher dollar amount, but it also looks bad that they would reject an 87-page document that included Septima Clark’s family, MASS Design, Brent Leggs of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Black Tennessee historians, and reputable folks from the region and outside the region,” Maxfield-Steele says.

Racism, intentional or not, is a factor in the Highlander property dispute, says Learotha Williams of Tennessee State University. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

Learotha Williams, a Tennessee State University professor and historian, was one of the supporters who submitted a letter, and he sees racism at play, whether intentional or not.

“The preservation space that we work in is largely dominated by white males who have access to all of the properties, all of the mechanisms for preserving stuff, determining what was going to be preserved, how it was going to be preserved — in other words, who could tell the stories,” Dr. Williams says. “I can see the shock and anger emerging out of [the Register dispute], but nonetheless, this act is an act to punish Highlander, the same way that the sheriff said, ‘We’re going to punish Highlander by not allowing them into this site.’

“I don’t see much difference between the two,” Williams says. “You don’t want them there, so we slap a padlock on it in the 1960s. You don’t want them back at the site now because they called you out for some nonsense, so we don’t wanna sell it to you no matter how much money you got.”

Tempers are unlikely to calm anytime soon. Currey expressed repeated outrage over being perceived as elitist and not knowing what’s best for the land. Meanwhile, Highlander did not know that TPT had entered into the 99-year lease months prior to Mayo’s offer until told by this reporter, and now feels even more betrayed.

“That TPT invited us to make an offer without disclosing a century-long lease which essentially voids ownership is deeply deceptive and only confirms what we feared all along — this was never a genuine invitation,” says Evelyn Lynn, special projects organizer at Highlander.

Thomason, Currey and one member who spoke on background were the only TPT board members who agreed to talk. None of the other eight current members, nor several past members, returned calls or messages.

Potential problems with Kindred and the appearance of a sweetheart deal

There are multiple problems with Kindred potentially running the site, at least as the nonprofit currently exists. The first appears to be a conflict of interest: Not only has Currey been an off-and-on member of the TPT board since 2010, but he also partners with Thomason professionally via his historic preservation firm, Thomason & Associates. The firm’s website states that Currey’s company, Encore Interpretive Design, has provided “planning and interpretation services” for multiple projects.

And Currey is still intimately involved in TPT. Since the 2017 reporting year, he has filed every annual report with the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office and since the 2018 reporting year, his home address has been listed as TPT’s mailing and principal office address.

“It is [my address] because I filed their annual report for them, because I used to be on the board,” Currey says.

Currey’s home address is also listed on all of Kindred’s annual reports.

Both federal and state law say conflicts of interest should be avoided, but they are not technically prohibited.

“When an organization makes a decision that is clouded by conflict, there’s a reasonable concern that that decision was not made in the best interest of the general public,” says Eric Franklin Amarante, a professor and expert in nonprofit law at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who has consulted with Highlander. “If someone is still somewhat involved or maybe even intimately involved in the organization, but they don’t maintain the title, that’s still a concern.”

Then, there are questions about the nonprofit status of TPT and Kindred. Currey says he created Kindred to raise funds because TPT lost its nonprofit status during the COVID era.

“(TPT) didn’t file some tax returns, and their board chair passed away from cancer — I was not on the board at that time — so we created Kindred so that we could finish the [library renovation], says Currey.”

But his timeline is a little off. TPT did have its 501(c)(3) status revoked by the IRS in 2020 for failure to file an annual report for three years in a row, and it has not regained it. However, Currey filed to incorporate Kindred in 2017, and in July 2019, he announced that TPT planned to turn the site over to Kindred to manage.

In 2021, the IRS granted Kindred tax exempt status, but the nonprofit appears to have not been in compliance with state or federal law since 2017. According to the IRS, Kindred has yet to file the required Form 990 annual report for any year, possibly bringing it to the verge of also possibly having that status revoked. It also has not had a board of three people in place, as required both by state law and its own charter.

The Highlander Center was an important for the Civil Rights Movement and for years supported the struggles of people. The interior of the Highlander Center Library as it is now.
Photograph by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout ?2024

In annual reports filed with the state, Currey is listed as both the president and secretary of Kindred for 2017 and 2018. From 2019 through 2023, Nashville architect Brian Tibbs is listed as the board secretary. In a phone call, Currey said Tibbs is still on the board. Tibbs, however, says, “I haven’t had any involvement with Kindred.”

Thomason said he was unaware of Currey’s lapses and blamed it on his lack of time.

However, Amarante says none of this looks good.

“If I were counseling the client, I would say, ‘This is a big transaction, basically all of your assets.’ And I would want to make sure that the entire transaction was clean of any self-interest,” Amarante says. “I’ve seen conflict-of-interest policies where the relationship described would not be technically considered a conflict, but if I were working at the IRS or state AG’s office and I were reviewing it, I’d be like, ‘This just looks like a sweetheart deal.’”

The form required by the AG’s office to approve the sale requires a nonprofit to “provide sufficient documents to identify any possible conflict of interest, self-interest, or self-dealing of any board member, officer, or director in connection with the Transaction.”

The future of Highlander

Entrance to the Highlander Center Library. (John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout)

Whether Kindred, Mayo or Highlander end up controlling the lots, one thing seems sure: It will likely take significantly more money and additional land purchases to create a destination landmark that draws tourists from outside the state.

Mayo says his current vision isn’t to change much: Have elementary school children occasionally come by for a field trip, but otherwise keep it a quiet residential street where everyone minds their own business. The sale includes a preservation easement, which limits what can be built on the property.

“I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that,” Mayo says when asked if additional purchases could follow in the years to come. “You’d have to look at it relative to the cost and the benefits. … I plan on keeping everything the way it is for right now.”

Mayo says that he would like to restore the dilapidated home if it’s financially feasible. He may look into buying the house just south of the library, which will likely be on the market next year. He also plans to let the tenants in the other houses stay, at least for now.

Although he hopes Highlander ultimately gets their land back, Marlowe has a pragmatic take.

“This whole thing has been almost like a fantasy, as far as having the property saved and preserved,” Marlowe says. “If we’ve learned anything in the last 70 years of fighting these fights it’s just the fact that you’re there fighting doesn’t necessarily mean that the earth’s going to be shook up and changed any time soon. What’s important is to not lose sight that they were fighting.”

Lynn puts it more succinctly.“David Currey won’t be here in 99 years,” Lynn says. “But the Highlander Center will.

This story is republished from the Tennessee Lookout, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

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A second public university in Kentucky closes its diversity office under GOP lawmakers’ pressure

McKenna Horsley — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 19:39:06 +0000

Northern Kentucky University no longer has a diversity office, its president has announced. (NKU photo)

A second Kentucky public university has disbanded its diversity office under pressure from Republican lawmakers.

NKU President Cady Short-Thompson

Northern Kentucky University President Cady Short-Thompson wrote in an email to campus: “The circumstances under which universities across the Commonwealth and the country find themselves, coupled with the legislative priorities of state leaders for the upcoming session, require universities to change.”?

Short-Thompson announced in the Thursday email that she was dissolving the Office of Inclusive Excellence after Chief Diversity Officer Darryl Peal stepped down from his role. Short-Thompson also announced interim employees who will oversee Title IX regulations and investigations at NKU.?

On Aug. 20, the University of Kentucky announced it was disbanding its Office for Institutional Diversity and would establish a new Office for Community Relations.?

UK President Eli Capilouto also cited political concerns in his email to the campus. While university members “share the value that out of many people, we are one community,” Capilouto wrote, “the university has also “listened to policymakers and heard many of their questions about whether we appear partisan or political on the issues of our day.”?

Republican lawmakers target diversity in higher ed

The closings come on the heels of legislative scrutiny of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and initiatives in higher education both in Kentucky and across the country. Republicans pushed anti-DEI bills during Kentucky’s 2024 session, although none were enacted.

One policy change did make it through the session. The Republican-controlled legislature changed the formula for performance-based funding of higher education to prohibit the use of “any race-based metrics or targets.”?

Rep. Emily Callaway (LRC Public Information)

Criticism of diversity programs has continued during the legislative interim as Republican lawmakers have challenged university officials. During an Interim Joint Committee on Education meeting in July, Rep. Emily Callaway, R-Louisville, asked Short-Thompson how her son, who will soon go to college, could feel welcomed at an institution like NKU when there are no organizations specifically for white students. Other public universities are expected to give presentations on DEI during the committee’s September meeting.?

University of Louisville spokesperson John Karman told the Lantern Thursday that there “are no plans to eliminate the UofL Office of Institutional Equity.” According to the office’s website, it “oversees initiatives aimed at fostering inclusive excellence” at UofL and offers resources and training to the campus and community.

“The office serves all UofL students as they progress and complete their degrees,” Karman said. “The success of all our students is UofL’s highest priority.”?

Revisiting, reviewing

Other higher education officials in Kentucky told the Lantern that they are revisiting their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) resources and reviewing how to best meet the needs of all students.

Aaron Thompson

Aaron Thompson, the president of the Council on Postsecondary Education said in a Thursday afternoon interview with the Kentucky Lantern that CPE and public universities have had discussions about how to ensure they are serving all students and that he hopes to continue the conversations in the next legislative session.?

“My goal is to try to show people exactly the power we have by inclusion and having people feeling like they belong on a campus, no matter what their backgrounds are,” he said.?

?CPE oversees Kentucky’s public universities and community colleges.

“My goal is to try to show people exactly the power we have by inclusion and having people feeling like they belong on a campus, no matter what their backgrounds are,” he said.?

Thompson added that CPE specifically is reviewing “what it means for us to make sure that we’re pushing policy and design that will serve all of our students.” That will look like “ an access and success mission,” he said. CPE is asking itself guiding questions like: “Are we getting students from our population groups that are needing to get into college to get a degree that will become part of our economic development system?”?

If not, Thompson said, then “we need to make sure we work on getting those students.”?

“It’s our goal — the campuses’ and my goal — to continue to work in ways that we serve students, and we invite all students to come to us,” Thompson said. “We would always want any student to feel like they’re welcome in our doors and that they, in fact, are going to come to us and get the kind of degree or credential that they need when they leave our doors to have a well paying job, and hopefully they all stay in Kentucky.”

Western Kentucky University “is committed to a safe and welcoming campus with top-ranked faculty and staff, ethical and transparent policies and a thriving, diverse student body prepared for success as global citizens,” spokesperson Jace Lux said in a statement.?

“Our focus is not on programs, initiatives or activities but rather about fostering a sense of belonging so that every individual who comes to our campus to study, teach, live, compete or visit finds their place and recognizes that they are an integral part of our community,” Lux continued. “As always, we will monitor all legislation that could affect higher education throughout the upcoming legislative session.”

Murray State University said in a statement that its Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Access “is focused on equal opportunity including Title IX and operates in a compliance function for complaints, investigations and training regarding illegal discrimination and illegal harassment consistent with the University’s non discrimination statement,” per state and federal laws.?

“This office has a responsibility for remaining impartial and therefore holds no advocacy role,” MSU said.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

Federal government pays $2 billion for farmer discrimination

Jared Strong — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:33:04 +0000

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay a total of about $2 billion to farmers across the U.S. who were victims of discrimination. (Stock photo by Preston Keres/USDA/FPAC)

Tens of thousands of farmers or would-be farmers who say they suffered discrimination when they applied for assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will get one-time payments that total about $2 billion from the federal government.

“While this financial assistance is not compensation for anyone’s losses or pain endured, it is an acknowledgement,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday in a call with reporters.

The payments are the result of a program — the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program — created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that was meant to aid farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. President Joe Biden said it was the result of his promise “to address this inequity when I became president.”

The USDA received more than 58,000 applications from people who claimed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, marital status, disability and retaliation for “civil rights activity.”

Vilsack could not immediately say what type of discrimination was most often indicated by the applicants, but the bulk of the payments went to farmers in southern states with higher percentages of Black residents.

Payments were awarded to people in every state and three of its territories, but residents of Alabama and Mississippi alone received almost half of the money.

In Kentucky, 75 recipients will share in $4.4 million.

More than 43,000 people will be paid, Vilsack said. The payments range from $3,500 to $500,000, depending on the circumstances and effects of the discrimination.

The department could not immediately supply a summary of those claims, but Vilsack said the discrimination resulted in loan denials, loan delays, higher interest rates and an overall lack of assistance.

“We’ve made significant strides in breaking down barriers to access, and my hope is that people will begin to think differently about USDA, so that we can better serve all who want to participate in agriculture in the future,” Vilsack said.

Specifically, Vilsack said the department’s Farm Service Agency, which administers farm loans, now has a more diverse leadership and loan assessment processes that rely less on human discretion.

This story republished from the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

‘Larger than life’ sociologist who broke down racial barriers at University of Kentucky dies at 88

Lantern staff — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 12:54:38 +0000

Doris Y. Wilkinson (Photo provided by University of Kentucky)

Doris Y. Wilkinson, a University of Kentucky sociologist and part of its first class of Black undergraduates, died June 23. She was 88.?

Wilkinson entered UK in 1954, the year a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawed racial segregation in public education and the first year that Kentucky’s flagship public university accepted Black undergraduates.

She had graduated from Lexington’s segregated Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, where, according to her obituary, she was valedictorian and homecoming queen.

Wilknson went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees from Case Western Reserve University and in 1985 a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She taught at Kent State University in Ohio before returning to UK in 1969, where she became the first Black woman to secure a full-time faculty position, joining the Department of Sociology.

She was director of the Project on African American Heritage in the UK sociology department, the winner of many honors and author of numerous articles and eight books, according to the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database. She was a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard University in 1989-90.

Doris Wilkinson received an honorary degree on August 30, 2019. UK President Eli Capilouto is at left. (Photo by Mark Cornelison | UKphoto)

In honor of UK’s 70 years of integration, in 2019, Wilkinson was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters — “a testament to her lifelong commitment to academia and social justice,” says a UK release.

UK President Eli Capilouto described Wilkinson as “powerful, influential and, at times, larger than life.”

“It is with deep sadness that I learn of her passing, but I am comforted in knowing that her legacy continues to run deep across the foundation of our community. Throughout her life, she faced adversity with the kind of fierce determination and unwavering grace that pushed open doors and ensured they never closed,” Capilouto said. “We are grateful to be beneficiaries of her goodness and intellect, her perseverance and drive, her passion for education and devotion to progress. We are proud to count her as an indelible part of the UK family.”

Doris Yvonne Wilkinson was born ?June 13, 1936 in Lexington to Howard T. and Regina L. Wilkinson. She was preceded in death by her sister, Carolyn Wilkinson-Baker, and is survived by many first cousins. She was a member of East Second Street Christian Church and attended Historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church.

Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 29, at Milward Funeral Home, 391 Southland Drive in Lexington. Visitation will be prior to the service from? 11 a.m. to 1 p.m Internment will be at Cove Haven Cemetery, 984 Whitney Avenue, Lexington.?

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

Sarah Ladd — Thu, 23 May 2024 20:47:58 +0000

Gov. Andy Beshear signed executive orders during a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda Thursday. (Screenshot)

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 who have championed the CROWN Act, which is an acronym for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.” His latest bill stalled this session after being passed over in the Senate several times and recommitted to the Judiciary Committee.?

Democratic Floor Leader Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, also filed a bill this session to make June 19 — Juneteenth — a state holiday. It did not get a hearing.?

The Juneteenth executive order?

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 Galveston, Texas. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, in 1863, but it was not immediately enforced in many areas of the south.?

“I’ve decided I can no longer wait for others to do what is right,” Beshear, a Democrat, said Thursday ahead of signing the order.?

“It is our responsibility to look back at one of the ugliest chapters in our history. We must look at it straight on and not hide from our own history, even the parts that are painful.” Beshear said. “Instead, we recognize it, we attempt to learn from it and we work to repair the lasting damage and heal our nation’s wounds so we can make progress for a better tomorrow.”??

His executive order will make Juneteenth an official holiday in Kentucky, in line with actions taken by at least 28 other states, according to the Pew Research Center.?

Sen. Gerald Neal

“It is impossible for me to ever fully imagine the horror and lasting scars and legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,” Beshear said during a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda. “But as governor, I’m committed to listening, to learning, to trying to hear and then to take intentional action.”?

Neal joined Beshear Thursday. He said Juneteenth symbolizes “both jubilation and a solemn reminder of the struggles and achievements of African Americans.” He has tried for several years to pass a bill codifying Juneteenth and said he’s committed to keep trying.?

“I urge my colleagues in the General Assembly to support legislation in the upcoming session, recognizing the pivotal role Black Americans have played in shaping our country,” Neal said. In doing so, “we honor our shared history and demonstrate a commitment to equality and justice for all.”??

Natural hairstyles protected

As of 2023, 22 states had enacted CROWN Acts, according to the Legal Defense Fund. The national CROWN Act campaign found, based on a 2023 study, that about half of Black women feel pressured to straighten their hair in job interviews, professional headshots and on the job.?

Melinda Wofford

They also found more than a fifth of Black women between 25 and 34 were sent home from their work because of their hair. Additionally, the survey found that Black women with textured hair are two times more likely to report microaggressions at work than Black women with straightened hair.?

Beshear’s executive order applies only to state government workers and job applicants. Effective immediately, it prohibits discrimination in state government workplaces based on “traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to natural hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks and twists.”?

“The way my hair looks is not a reflection of my work ethic,” said Melinda Wofford, an assistant director in the state’s Transportation Cabinet. “It definitely (is) not a reflection of my character. This order makes possible the freedom needed for me to continue to wear my hair in its natural state, the state that God blessed me with, without fear of discrimination in the workplace.”

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

No money to build new nursing school raises old question: ‘When will it be Kentucky State’s time?’

Sarah Ladd — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 09:50:18 +0000

Kentucky State University's nursing program has outgrown the Betty White Health Center which opened in 1971. Nursing classes are spread in buildings across campus. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Jamie Lucke)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky State University requested $50 million this year to build a nursing school for its growing class of future health care providers.

The legislature ultimately rejected the request, even though Kentucky enjoys a record-high revenue surplus and suffers from a shortage of nurses.

Rep. George Brown Jr., D-Lexington. (LRC Public Information)

“The real tragedy is that we had the money to do it,” Rep. George Brown Jr., a Lexington Democrat, told the Lantern last week. He called the omission “a travesty.”

Brown and other lawmakers said the decision is part of a long pattern of neglect and underinvestment in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) — a disparity the Biden administration also has highlighted.

It’s “always been the history,” said House Democratic Floor Leader Derrick Graham, a KSU alum who urged Republican legislative leaders to fund the nursing building.

During House debate, Black lawmakers pointed out that Kentucky’s only public HBCU was being denied $50 million for a project they deem critical to its future, while $125 million was quickly found for Northern Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky to open a biomedical center in downtown Covington, where plans also call for NKU to move its law school.

The Senate added the Covington project to House Bill 1, which moves $2.7 billion from the Budget Reserve Trust Fund into one-time spending over the next two years. HB 1 includes other higher education projects: $60 million for a veterinary tech facility at Murray State University, $25 million for a UofL Health cancer center in Bullitt County and $22 million for a livestock innovation center at a University of Kentucky research farm.?

“Kentucky State always seems to suffer and always has to wait,” Brown said March 29 on the House floor. “‘You have to wait your time; it’s not your time.’ … So the question is, when will it be Kentucky State’s time?”

‘Lucky’ to get what they’re getting, says Thayer

Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, and Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, confer during a conference committee meeting. (LRC Public Information)

When budget negotiators met in a free conference committee on March 26, Graham asked why KSU’s “top priority” was not included in budget legislation. Graham represents Frankfort where KSU sits on a hill overlooking the capital city.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, chairman of the Senate budget committee, said that KSU had revised its budget request by also asking for money to deal with failing infrastructure and other maintenance needs.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R- Ryland Heights. (LRC Public Information)

House Bill 6, the state budget bill, sets aside $60 million in bonding for KSU for “asset preservation,” described by McDaniel as “cleaning up campus.” House Bill 1 includes $5 million to design a Health Science Center for the nursing program but nothing to build it. McDaniel vowed “full intent” to pay for construction of KSU’s nursing building in the 2026 budget bill. McDaniel’s district includes Covington; he was instrumental in obtaining the $125 million for the downtown project involving NKU.

“We have a great deal of confidence in the new president of Kentucky State,” McDaniel said in the March 26 meeting. He was speaking of Koffi Akakpo, who became KSU’s 19th president last year on July 1. Before that, he was president of Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

HB 6 provides all the public higher ed institutions with asset preservation funding pools for renovation and maintenance of buildings and other infrastructure.?

During the free conference committee meeting, Democratic Senate leaders Gerald Neal of Louisville and Reggie Thomas of Lexington said that expanding KSU’s nursing program, which has a waiting list, is critical to the school’s rebound from recent troubles. The construction delay will cost KSU new students and needed tuition revenue and disrupt Akakpo’s plan for the future, said Neal. Neal and Thomas urged the budget negotiations to reconsider.

Thomas suggested spending less on restoration and maintenance at KSU in this budget to free up $50 million over the next two years to design and build the nursing building.

Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown responded ??that KSU was “probably lucky that they get the taxpayer money that they have been getting and continue getting.”?

“With the recent numbers and results that have come from K-State, I think we should be dubious moving forward,” he said, adding the “numbers have been pretty embarrassing.”?

KSU has faced a series of controversies, including misused funds under a former administration and a 2023 warning from its accreditation body. In 2022, the legislature put KSU under a management improvement plan and provided $23 million to help it recover from a budget deficit.?

Training today’s nurse for today’s medicine

KSU President Koffi Akakpo. (KSU photo)

In an interview with the Lantern last week, Akakpo said he is “grateful” for the $60 million in bonding but that it will “go quickly” as he tackles a list of maintenance needs.

The HVAC system, he said, is “not quite up to par” and the dorms are “in really bad shape.” Sidewalks and entryways need fixing, he said, and “leaky roofs” have caused damage that needs attention.

The $60 million does “not quite” cover these needs, he said. “But we will try the best we can.”?

A new building for nursing students and money to address maintenance needs were “both equally crucial for us to move forward,” Akakpo told the Lantern.

Nursing students make up 24% of KSU’s enrollment at around 342 students and “it’s only going to grow,” said Akakpo. Nursing students study in three different buildings across campus because they don’t have a designated building large enough.??

The Betty White Health Center, which is 53 years old, hosts administrative offices and the learning lab. Nursing students take classes in Bradford Hall, Carver Hall and Hathaway Hall.

Teaching space inside the Betty White Health Center. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Jamie Lucke)

“The building is needed because the building that is assigned to the nursing program is too small,” Akakpo said. It’s also already full.?

“We’re using other buildings to accommodate but these are buildings that are for other programs,” he said. “It’s just making it a bit complicated to manage but we have no choice.”?

“It may be an issue” in the future to recruit students without the proper space to educate them, Akakpo said. “But there is always a solution; … either we get it this round, or we’ll get it next round.”?

Republican Louie Nunn was governor when the nursing building was dedicated in 1971.

Kentucky is thousands of nurses short of what it needs. The state is short 5,391 registered nurses (RNs) and licensed practical nurses (LPNs), according to the Kentucky Hospital Association. And, the students going into nursing school aren’t enough to replace those retiring and leaving the workforce.?

Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, questions how money was allocated and why some higher education programs get more funding than others. She wants to see more transparency around the process of spending taxpayer money, she told the Lantern.?

“It’s the structure and the transparency of the process that I’m not sure all citizens have access to,” she said. “It worked against KSU this time. They’ve got to scramble and figure out what to do with their … nurses.”?

“It matters a lot. The work is very, very hard to do. It’s grueling to become a nurse. You’ve got to have the facilities that are keeping up with the way they nurse today,” she said. “We’ve got to have a facility to train the ‘today’ nurse for today’s medicine if we want to attract people and get rid of this deficit that we have.”?

‘Just one more slap in the face’

Brown said KSU’s backlog of maintenance needs stems from historic underinvestment. The historically Black university, he said, is “the redheaded stepchild, if you will” of Kentucky higher education.

The Biden administration last year documented roughly $12 billion in underfunding for HBCUs nationwide when compared with state funding of similar predominantly white institutions.?

The study compared land-grant institutions created by Congress in the 19th century, first for white students and later for Black students. KSU and UK are Kentucky’s land-grant universities. In Kentucky the disparity in per student state funding from 1987 to 2020 was $172 million.

Inside KSU’s Betty White Health Center. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Jamie Lucke)

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack sent letters to governors, including Kentucky’s, asking for states to right the “historical underinvestment.”?

A September letter sent to Gov. Andy Beshear cited “unbalanced funding” and “ longstanding and ongoing underinvestment” as reasons KSU “has not been able to advance in ways that are on par with University of Kentucky.”?

“Unequitable funding” of KSU, the letter said, put KSU $172,135,168 short of what it would have received in the last 30 years.

“These funds could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants,” the letter stated. “Kentucky State University has been able to make remarkable strides and would be much stronger and better positioned to serve its students, your state, and the nation if made whole with respect to this funding gap.”?

Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville. (LRC Public Information)

The budget Beshear introduced in December did not include money for the KSU nursing building. It did ask lawmakers to allocate about $1.2 million to KSU for nursing and social work scholarships in 2024-2026.?

Stevenson said the legislature’s refusal to fund KSU’s nursing building this year is “just one more slap in the face. It sends the message of ‘you’re never going to be good enough. You’re never going to get what you need to thrive.’”

When “we have treasure that we refuse to honor,” Stevenson said, it “creates a division across the commonwealth.”?

Brown agrees. “How long,” he asked, “must Kentucky State be put on the back burner?”

Akakpo is confident in the legislature’s support for KSU, saying he’s “very grateful to our elected officials” and “I know they care. They’re very supportive of me.”?

Akakpo is focused on the immediate: getting campus repairs like the HVAC system tackled before next winter. He’s confident the support will come — if not in the final two days of this session on April 12 and 15, then the next budget cycle.?

“Since KSU found itself in financial problems, (lawmakers) have been there, supporting,” he said. “I’m confident that support is going to continue.”

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

10,000 Kentuckians marched to demand racial equality. My grandmother was one of them.

Liam Niemeyer — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:22:29 +0000

Sixty years ago, 10,000 people marched on the Capitol in Frankfort, demanding civil rights and equality under the law, March 5, 1964. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

The 60th anniversary of the Freedom March on Frankfort will be celebrated Tuesday with a reenactment organized by Focus on Race Relations . Participants will begin marching from the Capital City Museum to the Capitol at 10:45 a.m. More information here.

I never got a chance to ask my grandmother about what March 5, 1964 was like for her. What she heard from speakers on the steps of the Kentucky Capitol. If she saw Martin Luther King Jr. or Jackie Robinson. What she felt standing with thousands of others from across Kentucky.

She didn’t speak much about that day when I was growing up and? visiting her Ohio home outside Cincinnati. I had never seen the photo until I found it online in 2021, and by that point Alzheimer’s disease had eroded her memories. Virginia Niemeyer died last year at 88.

But I do know she walked out the door of her Lakeside Park, Kentucky, home to board a chartered bus at 8 a.m., one of at least 300 people who traveled from Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties to hear King urge state leaders to pass a civil rights law. My grandmother Virginia was just one of 10,000 who gathered from across Kentucky that day for what became known as the Freedom March on Frankfort.?

My grandmother, Virginia Niemeyer, front right, on a chartered bus headed to Frankfort with the Rev. Edgar Mack, standing. (Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library)

I know she boarded that bus, paying a $3 round-trip fare, because the Cincinnati Enquirer published a picture of her the day after the march. She sat in an aisle seat, her gloved hand holding a protest sign. The story in my family was that my grandfather didn’t find out she had gone to Frankfort until she appeared in the paper the next day.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd from in front of the Capitol. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

We often hear about the powerful words of the Rev. King, rightfully so. But there were plenty of Kentuckians who had been fighting for civil rights in their communities and organizing to make sure the March on Frankfort happened. Lacking? my grandmother’s account, I wanted a glimpse of that day through the eyes of others who were there and who made the day possible.?

Pictured on that bus with my grandmother, standing in the middle aisle, was the Rev. Edgar Mack, the executive secretary of? the Northern Kentucky branch of the NAACP and the pastor of St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Newport in 1964. Mack, who grew up in Shelbyville the son of a sharecropper, helped make sure Northern Kentucky was represented that day.?

“My dad was a true believer,” Rodney Mack, the son of Edgar, told me in a recent interview. “He believed in people, he believed in the movement, he believed that this was right, and he just wasn’t going to be quiet about it.”

Alice Shimfessel (Ted Harris, Northern Kentucky Tribune)

Civil rights activists in Northern Kentucky had been working before the march to confront segregation and other racist laws and norms in Covington. Black women including Alice Shimfessel and Bertha Moore were integral to the protests and efforts desegregating public accommodations in Northern Kentucky even before a state civil rights law was passed, according to the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky.

In the weeks leading up to the March on Frankfort, Rev. Edgar Mack was an ever-present name in newspapers as he spread the word to Northern Kentuckians about the march. According to newspaper articles, faith leaders met at a Covington YMCA a week before to discuss the march, with a rally organized at a local church “to generate enthusiasm” the weekend before.?

“The march shall be dignified, peaceful and prayerful,” Rev. Mack told the Kentucky Post and Times-Star in February 1964. “It will demonstrate our concern that the state Legislature pass the urgently needed civil rights bill for Kentucky.”?

The March on Frankfort, March 5, 1964. (Calvert McCann Collection, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)

The march achieved all of that, according to the accounts of people who were there, although it would be two years before a civil rights bill became state law. Sharyn Mitchell, who was a teenager from Berea when she joined the march, said she had “never seen so many Black people in my whole life.”

“Because from Capital Avenue, from the bridge, straight up to the Capitol, was wall-to-wall. I’m talking about up on the porches and then in the yards — wall-to-wall Black people,” Mitchell told historian Le Datta Denise Grimes, who was conducting an oral history project on the march that’s archived at the University of Kentucky.?

Freedom March on Frankfort gallery (Click on photos)

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Freedom March, from left to right, Rev. Olof Anderson, Syod Executive of the Presbyterian Church, Louisville, 13-year-old Sherman McAlpin, Louisville, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Wyatt Walker, executive-secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. D.E. King, pastor of Zion Baptist Church, Louisville, and Frank Stanley Jr., chief editor of The Louisville Defender, March 5, 1964. ( Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/MLKing-marching-3-5-1964-150x150.jpeg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol at the March on Frankfort. (Calvert McCann Collection, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/McCann_4_11_532-150x150.jpg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol at the March on Frankfort. (Calvert McCann Collection, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)

Members of the Congress of Racial Equality protest in the Capitol Rotunda, March 4, 1964. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/0012_-150x150.jpeg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shaking hands with Kentucky Governor Edward T. Breathitt, Jackie Robinson to King's left, Frank Stanley Jr. to his extreme left. (Jim Curtis photograph collection on Civil Rights in Kentucky. University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/0003_Martin_Luther_King_Robinson_Stanley_Breathitt_handshake_003_3-5-1964002-150x150.jpeg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

Thomas McAdams and Mrs. Tennie Geddis, both of Louisville, were among the hunger strikers in the House gallery. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hunger_05_03171964-Hunger-strikers-resting-UPI-photo-150x150.jpeg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

In the weeks after the march, 32 hunger strikers spent 104 hours in the Kentucky Capitol House chamber to try to convince legislators to pass the Civil Rights bill. March 16-20, 1964 (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)" aria-label="Open image in lightbox" role="button" data-thumb="https://www.on-toli.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/0001_PI_Hunger_strikers_A2002-184-150x150.jpeg" class="tile-inner modula-item-link">

Mitchell also remembered singing on the bus from Berea to Frankfort and at the state Capitol, a “groundswell of ‘We Shall Overcome.’”?

Sheila Burton, who was a high school student in Frankfort in 1964, remembered Rev. Edgar Mack as one of the civil rights leaders active in Frankfort in the 1960s. Mack had previously served as the president of the Frankfort NAACP before becoming a pastor in Newport.?

Burton had left her high school during lunch break to see the speakers, she told Grimes for the oral history project, inching her way up through the crowd.?

“I just remember being in the midst of the crowd and feeling like, you know, ‘I’m there. I was there.’ That I can say I was there,” Burton said in 2021. “I just wanted to say I was there.”

Fermon Knox (Wend Rush, Northern Kentucky Tribune)

Jessica Knox, the daughter of Northern Kentucky civil rights leader Fermon Knox, who worked alongside Mack, remembered her father putting in weeks of organizing and work. He traveled to Lexington, Louisville and other parts of the state encouraging people to join the march.??

On March 5, white women came out of their homes on Main Street in Frankfort to offer marchers cups of water; another neighbor offered marchers the use of a bathroom, Knox told Grimes as a part of the oral history project,

“They were so sweet. And it was something we were not expecting at all,” Knox said. “[I]t made me realize that there are such beautiful people in this world.”

Inclusion of people — no matter who they were —? was central for Edgar Mack, according to his son Rodney. “He would find like-minded people — and he didn’t care where they came from,” Rodney Mack told me.?

While the large majority of the crowd were Black Kentuckians, according to newspaper accounts, allies also showed up in solidarity, including my grandmother. Virginia was a nurse at the former Booth Hospital in Covington, where Rodney Mack’s mother and Edgar Mack’s wife Lillie Mae Mack was also a nurse. It’s unclear if Lillie and Virginia had worked together at the time, as my grandmother left her job when she began to raise my father and aunt at home in the 1960s.?

Edgar Mack, right, was a University of Kentucky assistant professor of social professions when this photo was taken in 1976. (University of Kentucky Special Collections)

While my grandparents, father and aunt moved to Ohio the same month as the march, in Kentucky the work of civil rights and racial equality continued. In 1966, Kentucky Gov. Edward Breathitt signed into law the first state civil rights legislation south of the Mason-Dixon line. Nonetheless, Rodney Mack said his father still had to file lawsuits to make sure he? and his siblings were afforded equal rights under that law.?

Rodney Mack said his father would refer to the March on Frankfort in church services as a “critical stepping stone” on the way to future challenges and progress. Rev. Edgar Mack moved on to be employed as a social worker traveling throughout Eastern Kentucky and eventually become a professor of social work at the University of Kentucky. He later moved to Nashville to take a position with the A.M.E. Church, and he died in Tennessee in 1991.?

“I don’t think he thought that it was ever over,” Rodney Mack told me. “There was always another ‘first’ that needed to happen to break ground for more than inclusion.”?

Rodney went to the March on Frankfort as an 8-year-old with his sisters, his mother driving a car because the chartered buses were full.?

When I asked him what his father would think of today’s political climate, he asked me to put myself in my grandmother’s shoes.

“Would you take your kids? Or go yourself on something like that these days? I don’t know that you would,” Rodney Mack said, saying that the fear of violence and other backlash is real.

“In some ways I’d like to be able to talk to my dad, tell him what’s going on,” Mack said. “I know, he’d just be shaking his head.”

Protesters on the Capitol steps, March 5, 1964. (Public Information Collection, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives)

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As Kentucky lawmakers push anti-DEI bills, Black scholars define diversity

McKenna Horsley — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 21:56:26 +0000

Senate Democratic Floor Leader Gerald Neal, left, introduces the panel for the final Black History Speaker Series event of 2024. The academics, from left to right, are Aaron Thompson, Anastasia Curwood, John Hardin, Kevin Cosby, and Ricky Jones. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Against the backdrop of the Kentucky General Assembly considering a couple of bills that would limit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in education, a panelist of Black scholars and academics met to define the state’s past and present with DEI.?

The discussion concluded the Kentucky Legislative Black Caucus’ annual Black History Speakers Series in Frankfort. The panel’s DEI focus comes in response to legislative efforts that many see as hostile to Black people.?

So far, the Senate has passed Senate Bill 6, which aims to limit DEI in public colleges and universities. House Bill 9, which includes barring universities and colleges from expending “any resources” to support DEI programs or DEI officers, has not yet received a committee hearing. Both are backed by Republicans, who control the majority in the General Assembly.?

Senate Democratic Floor Leader Gerald Neal, who is from Louisville and a member of the caucus, moderated the panel.?

Neal, who argued while voting against Senate Bill 6 in a committee earlier this session that such legislation would not advance Kentucky and would instead move the state backward, said at the start of the discussion that diversity in experiences, age, physical abilities, religion, race and more support stronger education environments, and, in turn, businesses.?

“Many say that these bills and these actions compromise academic freedom in our colleges and universities while representing a historical reaction that has manifested itself periodically,” Neal said.?

How did we get here??

In recent years, the acronym DEI has become the next political “boogeyman,” replacing CRT, or Critical Race Theory, and BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement, said Ricky Jones, a University of Louisville professor and chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies. The backlash to the acronyms are really about “the maintenance of white supremacy in Kentucky.”?

Jones said white supremacy is “a single group of people who believe because of the color of their skin, because they are white, they ultimately have the right to know, think and decide about everything of importance.” He spoke about the current state of diversity in Kentucky.?

“It’s an environment that is legislatively hostile and it is getting to the point where talented Black students and Black professionals will not come here, and talented Black students and professionals who are here will not stay, including your natives,” Jones said.?

Kentucky is not alone in considering such legislation and hasn’t been the first. Last year, Tennessee passed a law prohibiting “divisive concepts” in higher education. Florida also enacted legislation preventing universities and colleges from spending money on DEI initiatives.?

John Hardin, a 20th century African American historian and professor Emeritus of history at Western Kentucky University, contextualized the current discourse on DEI through Kentucky’s history. When it first gained statehood, many people who weren’t of European descent could not do a lot, he said. Over time, national events, such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement influenced the state. In 1966, Gov. Ned Breathitt signed the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, making Kentucky the first Southern state to enact such legislation.?

“History is not dead people,” Hardin said. “History is change over time. What happened then has an impact on what’s happening now.”

Aaron Thompson, the first Black president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, said DEI efforts have closed gaps in higher education in Kentucky. CPE oversees Kentucky’s public higher education institutions, including eight universities. Thompson also previously answered questions about DEI in higher education during the committee hearing on Senate Bill 6.?

Thompson said the retention rate in two-year colleges for underrepresented minorities has increased about 13% and up about 8% for underrepresented minorities at four-year colleges.?

“The only population that we have been up over the last six years in, an increase, has been that of underrepresented populations,” he said.?

Kevin Cosby, the president of Simmons College, a historically Black college in Louisville, said studying history has value because “we get inspired by its accomplishments” and it has important lessons for the present. As the president of a historically Black college, Cosby said that “diversity is not on my agenda” as the institution has mostly Black students and diverse faculty.?

“What I want diverse and more equitable is in the allocation of resources,” he said.?

Where are we now??

Today, “diversity” can be seen as shorthand for “people who do not belong to the historically powerful group,” meaning the term is often coded Black, said Anastasia Curwood, department chair of history at the University of Kentucky.?

“It means difference within a certain body,” she said. “The difference does not have to be scary. … It simply means bringing in folks who have not historically had power, and these are Black people, Brown people, Native, Indigenous, disabled, LGBTQ, the list is long. But one thing everybody shares is a lack of access to full humanity.”

While debating Senate Bill 6 on the floor, bill sponsor Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson, of Bowling Green, said his intention is to protect “diversity of thought” in higher education. He said he sees a trend of excluding conservatives from employment or promotion as scholars if they do not conform to “liberal ideologies.”?

The sponsor of House Bill 9, Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, said in a previous statement that her legislation would direct public universities and colleges to give students “excellent academic instruction in an environment that fosters critical thinking through constructive dialogue.”?

While closing the discussion Thursday, Neal said Kentuckians are at a moment of opportunity “if we seize it.”?

“Those who negate what the past is fail to realize is that we cannot be informed to take advantage of the opportunities to be that future, make a better society, a life for us all,” he said.??

On party lines, Kentucky Senate OKs bill to curb diversity, equity, inclusion in higher education

McKenna Horsley — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:49 +0000

Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson, of Bowling Green, sponsor of Senate 6 speaks in its favor. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky Senate Republicans passed a bill aimed at curbing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public universities and colleges Tuesday.?

Senate Bill 6 was sent to the House on a party line vote with 26 Republicans voting in favor and seven Democrats voting against it.?

The sponsor, Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson, of Bowling Green, said his intention with the bill is to protect “diversity of thought” in higher education. He said he sees a trend of excluding conservatives from employment or promotion as scholars if they do not conform to “liberal ideologies.”?

“I want to make sure the academic status of our underrepresented minorities is taking place,” Wilson said.?

He added the bill specifically says it cannot be interpreted to prohibit universities from supporting diversity initiatives — as long as 16 defined “discriminatory concepts” are not taught. According to the bill, such concepts include that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” and “one race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex.”?

Several Democrats spoke against the resolution, arguing the bill could have unintended consequences or roll back progress made in Kentucky for minority groups.

Reggie Thomas (Photo by LRC Public Information)

“My position is that we should not and never in Kentucky move to a colorblind society, but instead we should embrace all peoples of different colors, different origins, different languages, different sexes, whatever,” said Democratic Caucus Chair Sen. Reggie Thomas, of Lexington. “That is the richness of our diversity, in our differences. That’s what makes us strong.”?

Sen. Gerald Neal, the Democratic floor leader from Louisville, said the bill “was about race” and could be used by some with ill intent.?

“I am a human being, and so are you, no more, no less,” Neal said. “I respect you. Don’t disrespect me.”?

On the other side, Republicans repeatedly said the bill was needed to reduce division on college campuses.?

Donald Douglas (LRC Public Information)

Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville, said “we cannot correct the past by discriminating against those of the present or future” and said the bill was “meant to stop discrimination.” Douglas, who said he was the first Black president of his medical school class, spoke about discrimination he faced in medical school before urging his fellow senators to vote for the bill to “remove this burden from the backs of those of us who worked our butts off and accomplished this.”?

“There are those who will need remediation, but there are some who’ll accomplish it on their own,” he said.?

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, said DEI initiatives stoke division, leading to “separating people by those very things” they are meant to support. She referred to an email she received from a University of Kentucky student who wanted her to vote against the bill and said he had “benefited from privilege due to my race and gender.”?

“Gee, I wonder where he got that idea,” she added. “That because of his skin color, there’s something wrong with him. Because of the sex he was born, he should feel bad about himself.”

Lindsey Tichenor. (LRC Public Information)

Ahead of the Senate vote Tuesday, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky released a recent poll that found 71% of Kentucky voters believe businesses and institutions should be allowed to make decisions regarding their DEI education and training programs without government interference. Conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, the poll surveyed 625 voters via phone calls.?

Across the country, conservatives have targeted DEI because they claim such frameworks favor some demographic groups, usually minority groups, over others. Since 2021, 21 states have considered legislation limiting DEI in higher education and nine have enacted laws, according to an Axios report last month.?

What’s in the bill

Wilson’s bill was changed significantly in the Senate Education Committee last week. The original legislation would have allowed employees and students to sue public universities and colleges on grounds they were discriminated against for rejecting “divisive concepts,” but that has been removed.?

Now the updated version includes that the Kentucky attorney general would have the authority to bring civil legal actions against universities that do not comply with the law. Also, universities and colleges also would be required to publish course descriptions, syllabi, assigned or recommended textbooks online.?

Gerald Neal (Photo by LRC Public Information)

Another revision added that new student orientation programs offered by public universities and colleges must include the text of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, have discussion and resources on “the principles and importance of free speech and viewpoint diversity,” written and verbal notice of the attorney general’s power to bring civil action against universities that do not comply with the legislation, and more.?

Neal filed a floor amendment that would have made changes such as removing the attorney general’s authority to enforce the bill. However, the amendment was defeated in a voice vote Tuesday.?

More speakers opposed the bill in the committee than spoke in favor of it. Kiara Gray, education policy and advocacy strategist for the Louisville Urban League, said Wilson’s legislation “opens the door to the unregulated flow of narrow-minded ideologies that seek to marginalize, rather than to include in silence, rather than discuss.”?

For support, Wilson was joined by a University of Louisville professor and University of Kentucky student. Rebekah Keith, the UK student, told the committee she feels like a minority student on campus as a conservative.?

The House also has its own Republican-backed bill aimed at curbing DEI in higher education. Rep. Jennifer Decker, of Waddy, has filed House Bill 9, which would bar universities and colleges from expending “any resources” to support DEI programs or DEI officers.

Conservative student testifies ‘I’m used to being in the minority’ as anti-diversity bill advances

McKenna Horsley — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 22:02:12 +0000

Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, sponsored (LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT — A bill that would curb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in Kentucky’s public universities advanced from a legislative committee Thursday after undergoing several changes.

The original Senate Bill 6 would have allowed employees and students to sue public universities and colleges on grounds they were discriminated against for rejecting “divisive concepts.” Under the committee substitute version, the Kentucky attorney general would have the authority to bring civil legal actions against universities that do not comply with the law. Universities and colleges also would be required to publish course descriptions, syllabi, assigned or recommended textbooks online.?

The revised bill also says new student orientation programs offered by public universities and colleges must include the text of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, have discussion and resources on “the principles and importance of free speech and viewpoint diversity,” written and verbal notice of the attorney general’s power to bring civil action against universities that do not comply with the legislation, and more.?

The bill passed through the Senate Education Committee on a party-line vote, with 10 Republicans voting in favor of it and two Democrats voting against it.?

Opponents of the bill warned the measure could roll back inclusion of marginalized groups on college campuses, while supporters said it would protect intellectual diversity for conservatives.?

SB 6 is one of a few anti-DEI bills filed in Kentucky this session, but has been the first to receive a committee hearing. Nine GOP senators have joined as co-sponsors.?

The bill’s primary sponsor, Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson, brought a University of Kentucky student and a University of Louisville professor to speak against DEI programs. Wilson said his intention is to counter a trend of professors and scholars being denied promotions because they “do not conform to liberal ideologies” in public institutions.?

“The discriminatory concept prohibitions listed in this bill do not prohibit diversity initiatives,” Wilson said. “They prohibit initiatives that would tend to pit ethnic groups or possibly two genders against each other. I think that when the prohibitions and discriminatory concepts are reviewed, the vast majority of Kentucky will find the limitations to be common sense and uncontroversial.”?

The legislation mandates that required courses and mandatory trainings cannot present “discriminatory concepts” such as:?

One race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex
An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously
An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
Promotes or advocates the violent overthrow of the United States government
Promotes division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people
The rule of law does not exist, but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups?

Gerald Neal (Photo by LRC Public Information)

Senate Democratic Floor Leader Gerald Neal, of Louisville, said when casting his no vote that such legislation would not advance Kentucky, but move the state backward.?

“We are in the midst of racism and it’s painful for everybody. And we will struggle together and individually to free ourselves from this malady,” Neal said. “It’s not good. We all know that. It affects people differently.”?

Testimony

Only Wilson’s guests spoke in favor of the bill. About five speakers opposed it, including people who work in higher education.?

Seated next to Wilson, Rebekah Keith, an English major at UK, testified that after not being hired as a dormitory resident adviser during her freshman year, she had a follow-up meeting to receive feedback on her interview. There, she said, she was told she “didn’t have experience being an ‘other.’”?

Later as a student in a women’s literature class, Keith said the syllabus included a policy to not allow comments that were “homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, sexist, ableist, classist or otherwise offensive, particularly toward protected groups.” The penalty would be to be removed from the class for the day and lose points, Keith said.?

“As someone who believes that there are only two genders and that men cannot become women, this was problematic,” she said.?

Keith continued, and said she spoke with a professor to “ensure that my first amendment rights were going to be protected.” She said she was told that also long as she did not use a slur in class, she would be fine.?

“I was the lone conservative speaking up, as it was a very liberal class including the professor, but that was fine with me,” Keith said. “I’m used to being in the minority on a college campus.”?

However, the topic of gender came up in the course, and Keith made her views on the issue known. After that, the professor sent her an email and said she “wasn’t recognizing the humanity of the other students in class.” She added the professor alleged Keith broke the UK Code of Student Conduct, which supports university values such as “integrity, respect, responsibility and accountability, and sense of community.”?

UK is a predominantly white institution. According to Spring 2023 statistics, more than 73% of enrolled students were white.

Later when asked by a committee member to clarify how she brought up the issues with the university, Keith said she dropped the course for unrelated reasons, but had emailed the professor back after speaking with another one. She also did not appeal the RA hiring decision.?

When asked for comment, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton told the Kentucky Lantern he cannot speak to the incidents Keith testified about in the committee.?

“But all our students should feel free — and should be encouraged — to voice their opinions and points of view — always — without fear of reprisal,” Blanton added. “Indeed, stating points of view and perspective should always be welcome. That is our expectation and those are our values.”

Wilson’s other guest, Ben Foster, an accountancy professor at UofL and president of the Kentucky Association of Scholars, said at the university he has heard of someone arguing a candidate was “too conservative” to be the chair of the business department and, as part of a different search for another college’s dean, candidates were asked to complete a diversity statement which was made public. Foster said moderate conservatives and libertarians “feel very unwelcome on campus.”??

“The first time I ever heard the term white privilege was at the University of Louisville where they had a ‘white privilege forum,’” Foster said. “And when I sat in there, one thing that entered my mind was I didn’t feel that privilege when I was a kid and had to go use the outhouse in the winter.”?

Aaron Thompson

UofL spokesperson John Karman said the university has “no university policy that requires a commitment to DEI by faculty, staff or students.”

Aaron Thompson, the president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, took several questions from the committee after Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, asked him to speak. Thompson said he has had multiple conversations about the bill with Wilson ahead of the committee meeting.?

“Universities and colleges are an integrated society with a lot of different thoughts. … But one of the pieces I would pose to you — that in many cases when we try to force people in thinking one way, it’s because other people are seeing them that way,” Thompson said.?

Kiara Gray, education policy and advocacy strategist for the Louisville Urban League, said the organization opposes the bill because it is “disguised to appear to protect individual freedoms, but when examined against reality, its intentional and unintentional damaging consequences become apparent.”?

“This bill does nothing to improve academic standards, increase critical thinking or expand the diversity of thought on college campuses,” Gray said. “Instead, it opens the door to the unregulated flow of narrow-minded ideologies that seek to marginalize, rather than to include in silence, rather than discuss.”

‘They are important to us’: Remains of Sisseton Wahpeton children returning home

Makenzie Huber — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 19:09:18 +0000

From left, Nancy Renville, Justine La Framboise, John Renville, Edward Upright and George Walker pose on the bandstand on the Carlisle school grounds in the late 1800s. Amos La Framboise is not pictured. The six children were members of the Spirit Lake and Lake Traverse bands of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. (Photo by John Choate, courtesy of Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center)

Amos La Framboise and Edward Upright didn’t know that they’d never see their homes and families again.

The boys, of the Spirit Lake and Lake Traverse bands of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, set off to Pennsylvania in 1879 to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

They didn’t know they would die at the school before they’d reach 15 years old; that their graves would be marked with military-issued headstones that were riddled with spelling errors; that there would be nothing to tell their story aside from the word “Sioux” on those headstones and the date of their death.

Their remains have stayed in Pennsylvania for more than 140 years. But they’re finally returning home.

Sisseton Wahpeton representatives traveled to Pennsylvania this week to oversee the disinterment of La Framboise and Upright after tribal chairs from the Spirit Lake and Sisseton Wahpeton tribes signed a pact with the U.S. Army. Tribal members plan to reinter the bodies on the Lake Traverse Reservation in northeast South Dakota this weekend.

The two boys were part of a group of six children from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate to travel to the school together. They were the “best and brightest” of the time, said Tamara St. John, tribal historian for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives. Many of the children were the sons and daughters of chiefs.

All four boys died before they reached adulthood. The two girls survived and returned home.

“We lost our next generation of leaders,” said St. John, who has spent years researching La Framboise and Upright in order to bring them home.

The children were among thousands of Native American youth across the United States sent to Carlisle to assimilate to white culture and to draw Native American chiefs into the nation’s capital.

Carlisle was the first government-run, off-reservation Native American boarding school in the United States. More than 500 boarding schools are known to have existed in the United States and Canada.

Assimilation tactics included cutting children’s hair, forcing them to speak English and renaming them with English names. Punishment for breaking rules was cruel and sometimes included beatings and sexual abuse.

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle school, infamously said during an 1892 speech.

More than 180 children died between 1879 and 1918 and were buried at a cemetery near the school.

Since 2017, the remains of dozens of former Carlisle students have been repatriated to tribal nations. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe reburied the remains of nine children on its reservation in 2021.

The history of boarding schools in the United States and the repatriation of student remains is important for all Americans to understand, St. John said. Tribal history is currently a “subject of debate” in South Dakota, and the federal government’s assimilation tactics are little more than an asterisk in today’s history teachings, she said.

While the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate is welcoming two of its sons back home, St. John said several unmarked and unknown “Sioux” graves remain at the Pennsylvania cemetery.

“Children should be returned and allowed to be buried with their loved ones instead of far away in a field and forgotten about,” St. John said. “No child should have that. I think that’s part of Carlisle, you know, the idea that they were not important. But they are important to us.”

Fight takes years to bring boys home

St. John and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate have been working to reinter the boys for years. It’s been a struggle over sovereignty with the U.S. Army, St. John said, since the boys were buried in an Army-run cemetery near the site of the former school.

The Army requires notarized statements by all close living relatives of the deceased saying they don’t object to the disinterment before the process begins. It took St. John several years to find La Framboise and Upright’s closest living relatives, who are elders from the Sisseton Wahpeton and Spirit Lake tribes.

“How do you find that next of kin to a child that died in 1879 with no children at the age of 13 or 14?” St. John said.

The process was burdensome for the elders, St. John said. And the Army’s policy asserted the reinterment was “just a family matter,” which disregards the importance of the reburial for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate as a community, she added.

“It wound up being something of a false front, and I feel resentment for it because it became an obstacle and has been delayed for us for years,” St. John said, “but it’s also something that created division and questioning.”

The Army approved the disinterment requests in 2022 and scheduled the disinterments for summer 2023. After that, the agency stopped communicating with the tribe, St. John said. The lack of communication and growing frustration with the Army’s repatriation process led the Sisseton Wahpeton tribe to send a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act request in March of this year. While the Army said the act doesn’t apply to Carlisle students, a federal notice was sent out in May scheduling the start of the disinterment process for September.

St. John said the effort to repatriate La Framboise and Upright will pave a path for repatriation for other tribes across the country.

“Our children are not soldiers. That is not their story,” St. John said. “They deserve to be remembered, to be with their families and to come home. … This really speaks to every child who was sent away and maybe lost. Now this is us saying we do care.”

‘They left together and they will come home together’

At least 233 students, nearly 3% of the 7,800 children who attended Carlisle, died while enrolled.

13-year-old Amos La Fromboise, son of tribal leader Joseph La Framboise, was the first to die. He died just three weeks after arriving at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879 and was buried in the city’s cemetery. His cause of death is unknown, though a local newspaper said he was ill shortly before he died.

Edward Upright, son of Spirit Lake Chief Waanatan, died in 1881 after contracting measles and pneumonia.

The two other Sisseton Wahpeton boys, John Renville and George Walker, returned to Dakota Territory. Renville’s body was returned home by his father, Gabriel Renville, following the boy’s death in 1880 after contracting typhus. Walker was discharged from the school in 1883 because he was “extremely anxious.” St. John believes he likely died shortly after returning home.

The two girls sent to Carlisle, Nancy Renville and Justine La Framboise, returned home in 1880 and 1882, respectively. They survived into adulthood, though St. John does not know much about their lives.

This is the third time La Framboise’s remains have been disinterred and the second time for Upright. La Framboise’s grave was moved a month after his initial burial from the town’s “White persons’ cemetery” to the school’s newly established private cemetery. Both of the boys’ bodies were disinterred in 1927 after the Army took over the property. The more than 180 other children buried at the school were moved to clear space for a new building on the property.

St. John worried that there wouldn’t be anything in La Framboise’s grave before she drove to Pennsylvania with other tribal representatives. There have been instances when a grave was reopened and the child wasn’t inside or there were body parts from different children in the grave, St. John said.

The boys will be brought home “in the right way,” St. John said. The caskets will be covered with a buffalo robe, she said, which is “probably one of the most honorable, loving ways” to have wrapped individuals for burial at the time, she explained.

“They left together and they will come home together,” St. John said, “and they will be laid to rest together in a place we can protect them.”

This article is republished from?South Dakota Searchlight, part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: [email protected]. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and Twitter.

States urged by Biden administration to rectify underfunding of land-grant HBCUs

Ariana Figueroa — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 22:40:29 +0000

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack listens to students’ presentation about their Agricultural Mobile Education Unit after an event at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an 1890 land-grant institution, on Feb. 14, 2023. (USDA photo by Christophe Paul)

States engaged in decades of underfunding land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities, leading to a more than $12 billion disparity with comparable white institutions, leaders of the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday.

“Unacceptable funding inequities have forced many of our nation’s distinguished Historically Black Colleges and Universities to operate with inadequate resources and delay critical investments in everything from campus infrastructure to research and development to student support services,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

Cardona and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to each of 16 governors calculating how each state’s land-grant HBCU, established under an 1890 law, has been underfunded per student in state funds from 1987 to 2020.

That figure was arrived at by comparing the HBCU funding to that of land grant institutions that were established in those states for white students in 1862.

Six of those states – Arkansas, Florida, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia – have not participated in one-to-one federal match funding for the 1890 land grant HBCU institutions in recent years, but did so for the 1862 land grant institutions.

The secretaries said that inequitable funding of the 1890 institutions “caused a severe financial gap, in the last 30 years alone.”

The letter follows after lawsuits in several states have alleged discrimination was responsible for decades of underfunding of land grant HBCUs.

“This is a situation that clearly predates all of us,” Vilsack and Cardona wrote in their letter. “However, it is a problem that we can work together to solve. In fact, it is our hope that we can collaborate to avoid burdensome and costly litigation that has occurred in several states.”

Maryland settlement

In 2021, the state of Maryland reached a $577 million settlement to end a 15-year-old federal lawsuit that accused the state of providing inequitable resources to its four HBCUs.

Vilsack and Cardona sent a letter to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and the first Black governor of the state. They noted that the 1890 land-grant institution in that state, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, “has not been able to advance in ways that are on par with University of Maryland – College Park … in large part due to unbalanced funding.”

If that institution was on equal footing with the 1862 land grant institution, it should have received $321 million in funding over the last 30 years, the secretaries said.

1890 land-grant institutions are a byproduct of a Civil War-era law that gave land to dozens of universities for white students, through the Morrill Act in 1862, but the land had been forcibly taken from Indigenous tribes. In total, nearly 11 million acres were taken from more than 250 tribes, according to a project published in High Country News.

Because Black Americans were excluded from those institutions, the Second Morrill Act of 1890 was signed into law and established land-grant institutions for Black students. In total, there are 19 land grant HBCUs.? Tuskegee University in Alabama is also a land grant, HBCU, but it is a private state-related institution and was not mentioned in the letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

The agencies used data from the National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Survey from 1987 to 2020 to calculate the amount that HBCU land-grant institutions would have received if their state funding per student were equal to the 1862 institutions.

Delaware and Ohio have equitably funded their respective universities, so those governors did not receive a letter, the secretaries said.

Kentucky’s land-grant HBCU, Kentucky State University in Frankfort, was underfunded by $172 million when compared with the University of Kentucky, the state’s other-land grant institution, according to the letter. The funding gap in Kentucky was the smallest among the 16 states whose governors received letters.

Cardona and Vilsack noted to the governors that “it would be ambitious to address the funding disparity over the course of several years in the state budget.”

They suggested, if that is not possible, “a combination of a substantial state allocation toward the 1890 deficit combined with a forward-looking budget commitment for a two-to-one match of federal land-grant funding for these institutions in order to bring parity to funding levels.”

Cardona and Vilsack stressed to the governors they should not reduce funding at other institutions to rectify funding gaps at the land grant HBCUs.

Billions in underfunding in Southern states

States like Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have billions in underfunding for the land-grant HBCUs in those states, according to the letter.

North Carolina A & T State University has a $2 billion funding disparity, compared with North Carolina State University at Raleigh, the original Morrill Act of 1862 land grant institution, the letter said.

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, an 1890 land-grant HBCU, has a $1.9 billion funding gap, according to the letter.

“The longstanding and ongoing underinvestment in Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University disadvantages the students, faculty, and community that the institution serves,” according to the letter. “Furthermore, it may contribute to a lack of economic activity that would ultimately benefit Florida. It is our hope that we can work together to make this institution whole after decades of being underfunded.”

There is currently a class action lawsuit in which FAMU students have alleged racial discrimination in state funding, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.?

Tennessee State University has a $2.1 billion disparity funding, compared to the University of Tennessee- Knoxville, the 1862 land-grant institution.

Prairie View A & M University in Texas and Southern University and A & M College in Louisiana both have $1.1 billion in underfunding, compared to the 1862 land-grant institutions in their states.

“The documented discrepancies are a clarion call for governors to act without delay to provide significant support for the 1890 land-grant institutions in their respective states,” Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, said in a statement. “Failing to do so will have severe and lasting consequences to the agriculture and food industry at a time when it must remain resilient and competitive.”

Here’s how each state’s 1890 HBCU has been underfunded per student in state appropriated funds between 1987 and 2020, according to the secretaries’ letters:

Alabama

Alabama A&M University

$527.3 million

Arkansas

University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

$330.9 million

Florida

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

$1.97 billion

Georgia

Fort Valley State University

$603 million

Kentucky

Kentucky State University

$172 million

Louisiana

Southern University and A & M College

$1.1 billion each

Maryland

University of Maryland Eastern Shore

$321 million

Mississippi

Alcorn State University

$257 million

Missouri

Lincoln University

$361 million

Oklahoma

Langston University

$418.9 million

South Carolina?

South Carolina State University

$470 million

Tennessee

Tennessee State University

$2.1 billion

Texas

Prairie View A & M University

$1.1 billion

Virginia

Virginia State University

$277.5 million

West Virginia

West Virginia State University

$852.6 million

Hopkinsville police to undergo diversity training after video stirs controversy

Jennifer P. Brown, Hoptown Chronicle — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 09:50:03 +0000

Terri Redwine, president of the local NAACP chapter, right, addresses, from left, Hopkinsville Police Department Chief Jason Newby, Hopkinsville Mayor James Knight and Christian County Judge-Executive Jerry Gilliam during a meeting on Aug. 21. (YouTube screenshot)

In the wake of an officer’s controversial social media post that drew both support and outrage from community members and tens of thousands of TikTok users, Hopkinsville Police Chief Jason Newby says he’s coordinating plans for all officers to undergo diversity training.

In the video, Hopkinsville Police Officer Jerimiah Kline lip syncs to Jason Aldean’s controversial hit song “Try That in a Small Town.” (TikTok screenshot)

Officer Jerimiah Kline came under fire early this month after posting a TikTok video of him lip syncing “Try That in a Small Town” by country musician Jason Aldean. The song was described by critics as a call to racist vigilantism after the July 14 release of its music video, which was filmed at the site of a historic lynching and included news clips of violent clashes between police and protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

As debate stirred in the weeks following the video’s release, the song rose to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list, ignited widespread criticism, and had its video pulled by Country Music Television. It was later replaced with a version that omitted the most violent images.

In Kline’s TikTok video — posted the week after Aldean’s video release — he’s in uniform and next to a Hopkinsville police cruiser with emergency lights flashing. It prompted responses from critics who questioned why Kline would post a video featuring the Aldean song after the recent controversy surrounding it.

The concerns carry added significance in a diverse community. Approximately 27% of Hopkinsville residents are Black.

The video, which received more than 150,000 likes, was shared by dozens of supporters who posted videos of themselves lip syncing alongside Kline. Often, the posts included the hashtag #standwithjasonaldean.

Local officials first began receiving complaints about Kline’s video after TikToker Michael McWhorter — who has amassed 5.8 million followers under his handle @TizzyEnt by denouncing apparent racist, homophobic and violent behavior — drew attention to Kline’s take on the Aldean song.

As of Aug. 25, McWhorter’s response, which also points to other Kline videos that he argues are homophobic and unprofessional, had 1.8 million views and nearly 8,000 comments.

Kline, who uses the handle @nlc_gunsanddonuts, has since deleted the video and made his account private. However, his original Aldean video is the sole post under an account using the handle @nlc_gunsanddonutss. The description for the account says “Not agency affiliated. All Toks made off-duty.”

Police department responds, ‘addresses issue’

Jason Newby. (Hopkinsville Police Department)

After receiving complaints about the video, Newby posted a statement to Facebook on Aug. 3 assuring the community that the “issue has been addressed and will not be an issue moving forward.” He went on to note that he was working with city officials to modify policies regarding employees’ use of social media.

In a brief interview with Hoptown Chronicle, Newby declined to identify Kline as the subject of complaints he received. But in an Aug. 4 letter obtained through a Kentucky Open Records Act request, he wrote the following to Human Resources Director Kenneth Grabara:

“Officer Kline had no ill intention when he made the video. He was simply suggesting that Hopkinsville Police Department is not going to tolerate criminals coming into our community and putting our citizens in harm’s way.

“Officer Kline acknowledged that even though he had no ill intention, he understands now how being in uniform while posting on social media can cause issues and it will not happen again.

“Officer Kline did not violate any Hopkinsville Police Department policies, however; I do feel there is a need to adjust our social media policy to better guide our employees in the use of social media and the reflection it may have on our city and agency.”

Newby also told Grabara that Kline would complete diversity awareness, workplace positivity and harassment prevention training.?

On Aug. 4, 10 and 15, records show that Kline took three online courses — Creating a Positive Work Environment; Diversity, Inclusion & Sensitivity; and Preventing Discrimination & Harassment: US Employees. The three classes — provided by online compliance training company Traliant — lasted a combined 1 hour and 25 minutes, Grabara said.

The day before Newby published his statement on the Hopkinsville Police Department’s Facebook page, Kline posted a TikTok that included an image that stated, “Disliking me is one thing. Being able to whoop my ass is another story. Stay safe.”?

The post included an audio clip that looped in the background. It said, “I just want to say this from the bottom of my heart. I’d like to take this chance to apologize … to absolutely nobody.” Still viewable on Aug. 16, the post has since been removed.?

This post by Kline has been removed. (TikTok screenshot)

Kline, 26, has been a sworn officer with HPD since March 2020. Previously he was a public safety officer, a position that can lead to sworn officer status after completion of the state police academy’s 20-week course.?

Hoptown Chronicle, in messages sent to the City Clerk’s Office and to Newby, requested to interview Kline. He has not responded.

An Aug. 2 email from Hopkinsville-Christian County Human Rights Commission Director Raychel Farmer to Newby and Hopkinsville Mayor James R. Knight expressed concern for the sentiments in Kline’s video and the negative attention it brought to Hopkinsville. In the email, Farmer urges the officials to “make a public statement of non-support of Officer Kline’s actions and that some disciplinary action will be taken.”

No disciplinary action or recent change in employment status is indicated by the records the city provided to Hoptown Chronicle. City officials said there were no records of citizen complaints involving Kline.?

The city denied Hoptown Chronicle’s request for Kline’s employee evaluations, citing a privacy exemption to the open records law. Hoptown Chronicle filed a second request, asking the city to reconsider based on a substantiated public interest that outweighs the privacy interest in this case. The city again denied the request for Kline’s evaluations.?

Community members express outrage, support?

The debate surrounding Kline’s social media messaging dominated the Aug. 15 meeting of Hopkinsville City Council. Fifteen people spoke before a packed council chambers, and of those, 10 were critical of him. Some said HPD should fire the officer for his online behavior.?

Kline, in civilian clothes, was present but did not speak.

While the video featuring “Try That in a Small Town” initially generated most of the pushback against Kline, the criticism heard at the council meeting centered around his use of the “OK” hand signal throughout social media.

Hopkinsville Police Department.(Hoptown Chronicle)

The gesture has been adopted in recent years by white supremacists as a “white power” symbol. Kline’s supporters at the council meeting said it has a different, benign meaning to them. They described it as a game many have played since they were children, where the symbol is flashed to make someone look — similar to a “gotcha” game.??

In July 2018, four police officers in Jasper, Alabama, were suspended for flashing the same hand symbol in a photograph.?

“One of the issues was the picture with the hand sign. I don’t actually care what he thought it meant. It doesn’t matter,” Hopkinsville resident Becky Dearman told city council members.

“He is supposed to protect and serve all of us, and I feel not that protected,” she said. “The contents of his TikTok were not just racist, they were homophobic. One of the things that I told Mayor Knight was, ‘I’m going to be honest I wouldn’t feel super secure if I had a call to the police in the middle of the night and a cop that had put blatantly homophobic material up showed up to my house.’”

Nancy Askew, who is Dearman’s fiancée, said, “There wasn’t just a symbol on a photo. … There’s a clear pattern of behavior for his public image and the image that he portrays with his badge on.”

Jeff Taylor, a former state representative and economic development official for Tennessee Valley Authority and the state of Kentucky, asked for the “immediate dismissal” of Kline. He said the council should consider how many employees of a store, a factory, bank, hospital or school would keep their job if they flashed a symbol that community members view as racist.??

“He’s ruining it for a lot of good officers,” said Taylor. “And there are good officers.”

Taylor later told Hoptown Chronicle, “I truly don’t believe there’s (another) police force in the entire nation that would allow this.”

Cherry West, who previously owned a liquor store in Hopkinsville, spoke to council about negative views of Hopkinsville and the police force for past allegations of aggressive behavior toward soldiers and minorities. The perception persists, and it’s why? Clarksville, Tennessee, has vastly outpaced Hopkinsville in population growth, she said.

Robert Bussell, a Black man who described a longtime friendship with Kline and his family, said the meaning of the hand symbol has been blown out of proportion.?

“It’s as simple as, ‘I got you,’ or ‘Made you look,’” he said, adding, “It’s not about race.”

Bussell said he has personally seen Kline helping Black residents in distress.?

Former Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner, who stepped down earlier this year, said retirement allows him to speak with no filter. He described Kline’s TikTok videos — which frequently appear with the hashtag #humanizethebadge — as a light-hearted approach to help the community see police officers as people. He said those criticizing Kline are trying to cause controversy rather than trying to fix things.

Transparency, cooperation sought

During an NAACP meeting Aug. 21 in Hopkinsville City Council chambers, Newby told local chapter president Terri Redwine that he wants her to review changes that are coming to HPD policies in light of recent criticisms.

“We are changing nearly every policy that the Hopkinsville Police Department has. Once we have those in place … I would like for you and whatever committee to go over those with us for any recommendations for changes,” Newby told Redwine.

The meeting included several NAACP members who observed while Redwine questioned Newby, the mayor and Christian County Judge-Executive Jerry Gilliam on several race-related issues. The city taped the meeting and published the video on its YouTube channel.

“/]

A few days before the NAACP meeting, Redwine and Newby met to discuss the controversy over Kline’s social media, she said.

Newby declined to elaborate on their discussion during the meeting. “The concerns were heard. It has been addressed and it is still being addressed. And that’s about as much as I can say,” he said.

While Redwine said the NAACP “will not continue to debate the Jerimiah Kline debacle,” she also spoke about race relations more broadly and what is at stake in Hopkinsville.

“I feel that too many of our Black people are moving out of the city of Hopkinsville because they are being racially profiled,” she said, adding her siblings won’t even come to the city because they believe it is “blatantly racist.”

Local officials cannot control everything, but others pick up “the vibe that you portray,” she told Newby, Knight and Gilliam.

“We do not want another Breonna Taylor here in Hopkinsville. We don’t want division. We want this community to remain our community as a whole. We don’t need outsiders here telling us how to run our community,” she said.

But if outside help is needed, it will happen, she said.

Redwine said her approach is to go straight to local officials for answers. But others won’t do that, she warned.

She also addressed members of the community. Prayer, transparency and communication are key, she said, adding “stay off social media and the madness.”

Complaining on social media is useless, she said. If someone has a complaint, they ought to file a formal complaint. “We must have a paper trail,” she said.

Redwine, who became the chapter president earlier this year, encouraged local residents to join the NAACP. The organization is not a “secret society,” she said.

“I don’t want it to be us versus them. I want it to be we the people,” she said.

She also said, “I live here in Hopkinsville. I will not be harassed by no police officers because of what I said, because you are going to hear it if I do.”

Looking forward

Newby told Hoptown Chronicle in an Aug. 22 email that the city’s human resources office is working with Hopkinsville Community College to provide diversity training for the officers. The details are pending.

Since Newby became chief earlier this year, HPD has made several hires and now has 79 officers. It is the first time in about 10 years that all of the department’s positions have been filled, officials said at the Aug. 1 city council meeting.

“It is my plan to have all officers attend the training,” Newby said in the email

This article is republished from Hoptown Chronicle.

Kentucky researchers to examine neighborhood health

Sarah Ladd — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 19:19:35 +0000

Kevin Cosby, the president of Simmons College of Kentucky, talks with University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel. (Photo provided)

LOUISVILLE – Eighteen months from now, Kentucky researchers hope to know how to diagnose neighborhoods in much the same way doctors diagnose illnesses in the human body.?

A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant of $500,000 will fund a Louisville-based neighborhood study, featuring researchers from Simmons College of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, leaders from the institutions announced Friday. Experts from Rice University and the University of Kentucky will also contribute.?

The year-and-a-half-long study seeks to understand what neighborhood factors drive health inequities. Researchers are particularly interested in closing the nearly 13-year life expectancy gap between people living in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Louisville compared with those in white neighborhoods.?

Kevin Cosby, the president of Simmons College of Kentucky. (Photo provided).

Kevin Cosby, the president of Simmons, said it’s important to keep in mind that deficits don’t reflect people.?

“All of the unfortunate disparities that (were) created through structural and systemic racism (have) nothing to do with deficits in Black people,” he said. They have “everything to do with deficits of opportunity that (have) never been extended to the Black community.”?

What will researchers look at??

Researchers will, among other things, survey people door-to-door in Louisville’s Crescent Hill and California neighborhoods. They’ll also look at what environmental factors impact health outcomes.?

The surveys should begin in September, led by Nancy Seay, the chair of the James R. L. Diggs Department of Sociology at Simmons. Students in her class, Participatory Action Research, will help with the surveys. (University of Louisville students can also take the class).?

If you live in California or Crescent Hill and want to participate in the project, email Patricia Reeves at? [email protected].?

Community partners who want to learn more about the project and opportunities for collaboration may contact Lauren Anderson at [email protected].

University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel said Friday “we know that health just doesn’t happen in hospitals or doctors offices.”?

“The ZIP code that you live in has a tremendous impact in terms of your chronic disease, your ability to be able to progress through school,” and more, Schatzel said.?

Ted Smith, the? director of the UofL Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil in the Envirome Institute, will help Seay lead the research.?

Nancy Seay, the chair of the James R. L. Diggs Department of Sociology at Simmons College of Kentucky.
(Photo provided).

The research must answer why certain disparities exist, and how the city can close those gaps. ZIP codes, researchers said, shouldn’t determine life expectancy and other health outcomes.?

“We think that in addition to diagnosing and treating people, we could be diagnosing and treating places,” Smith said Friday.?

At the end of the study, researchers want to better understand what makes a “universal basic neighborhood” (UBN), in which residents can thrive. They also want to have a playbook that helps neighborhoods define their needs and ways to address them.?

“I don’t think that there’s such a thing as a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ neighborhood,” Seay said. “But I think there are differences in access to resources … and that’s what makes neighborhoods different.”?

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Kentucky politicians mark Juneteenth as Beshear calls on legislature to make it a state holiday

McKenna Horsley — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 20:58:55 +0000

According to Pew Research Center, 28 states and the District of Columbia legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.?Kentucky is not one of them. (Getty Images)

Kentucky leaders on both sides of the political spectrum celebrated Juneteenth by discussing African American history and calling the holiday a mark of progress toward equality.?

Gov. Andy Beshear signed a proclamation recognizing Monday as Juneteenth National Freedom Day in Kentucky in the Capitol Rotunda.?

Those who joined Beshear included Senate Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, Governor’s Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives Executive Director Charles Booker and J. Michael Brown, director of pre-law and constitutional studies at Simmons College of Kentucky and former secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet.?

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. The day marks when the last enslaved people in the United States learned they were free as news reached them in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. While President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it was not enforced in many areas of the South until two years later when the Civil War ended.

Beshear said Monday that he will “continue to push for this day to be recognized as a state holiday” and encouraged the General Assembly to pass such legislation.?

For Kentucky state workers, Juneteenth is not a paid holiday. According to Pew Research Center, 28 states and the District of Columbia legally recognize Juneteenth as a public holiday.?

In 2005, the General Assembly passed legislation requiring the governor to create a proclamation each June 19 for Juneteenth National Freedom Day.

On Twitter, Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Juneteenth “is a powerful symbol of freedom and the pursuit of building a more perfect union.” Cameron, who is the Republican gubernatorial candidate facing Beshear, is the first African American independently elected to statewide office in Kentucky.?

“Let us continue the vital step of working together to build on positive change in our communities across the state,” Cameron said.?

Speaker of the House David Osborne and House Minority Floor Leader Derrick Graham issued a statement about the holiday, saying it acknowledges “the end of the injustice of slavery” while also serving “as a reminder of the resilience, determination, and perseverance of African Americans throughout history.

“On this Juneteenth, let us celebrate the progress we have made towards equality and freedom, acknowledge the challenges that lie ahead, and renew our commitment to the timeless values that have shaped our nation for the better,” the joint statement said. “Together, let us strive for a future where every American can enjoy the blessings of liberty and pursue their dreams unencumbered by prejudice or discrimination.

?“Let this day serve as a constant reminder that we must continue to work towards a more perfect union.”

Kentucky cities also recognized the holiday. Several community Juneteenth events were held in Louisville and Lexington from June 10-19. Other celebrations have been held in places such as? Ashland, Paducah and Covington.

Study reveals staggering toll of being Black in America: 1.6M excess deaths over 22 years

Liz Szabo — Thu, 25 May 2023 09:50:23 +0000

The enormous number of deaths from COVID-19 — which hit Black Americans particularly hard — erased two decades of progress in narrowing racial disparities in health outcomes. Above, nurses don personal protection before caring for a patient thought to be infected with COVID-19. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Research has long shown that Black people live sicker lives and die younger than white people.

Now a new study, published last week in JAMA, casts the nation’s racial inequities in stark relief, finding that the higher mortality rate among Black Americans resulted in 1.63 million excess deaths relative to white Americans over more than two decades.

Because so many Black people die young — with many years of life ahead of them — their higher mortality rate from 1999 to 2020 resulted in a cumulative loss of more than 80 million years of life compared with the white population, the study showed.

Although the nation made progress in closing the gap between white and Black mortality rates from 1999 to 2011, that advance stalled from 2011 to 2019. In 2020, the enormous number of deaths from COVID-19 — which hit Black Americans particularly hard — erased two decades of progress.

Authors of the study describe it as a call to action to improve the health of Black Americans, whose early deaths are fueled by higher rates of heart disease, cancer, and infant mortality.

“The study is hugely important for about 1.63 million reasons,” said Herman Taylor, an author of the study and director of the cardiovascular research institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine.

“Real lives are being lost. Real families are missing parents and grandparents,” Taylor said. “Babies and their mothers are dying. We have been screaming this message for decades.”

High mortality rates among Black people have less to do with genetics than with the country’s long history of discrimination, which has undermined educational, housing, and job opportunities for generations of Black people, said Clyde Yancy, an author of the study and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Black neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s — designated too “high risk” for mortgages and other investments — remain poorer and sicker today, Yancy said. Formerly redlined ZIP codes also had higher rates of covid infection and death. “It’s very clear that we have an uneven distribution of health,” Yancy said. “We’re talking about the freedom to be healthy.”

A companion study estimates that racial and ethnic inequities cost the U.S. at least $421 billion in 2018, based on medical expenses, lost productivity, and premature death.

In 2021, non-Hispanic white Americans had a life expectancy at birth of 76 years, while non-Hispanic Black Americans could expect to live only to 71. Much of that disparity is explained by the fact that non-Hispanic Black newborns are 2? times as likely to die before their 1st birthdays as non-Hispanic whites. Non-Hispanic Black mothers are more than 3 times as likely as non-Hispanic white mothers to die from a pregnancy-related complication. (Hispanic people can be of any race or combination of races.)

Racial disparities in health are so entrenched that even education and wealth don’t fully erase them, said Tonia Branche, a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago who was not involved in the JAMA study.

Black women with a college degree are more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women without a high school diploma. Although researchers can’t fully explain this disparity, Branche said it’s possible that stress, including from systemic racism, takes a greater toll on the health of Black mothers than previously recognized.

Death creates ripples of grief throughout communities. Research has found that every death leaves an average of nine people in mourning.

Black people shoulder a great burden of grief, which can undermine their mental and physical health, said Khaliah Johnson, chief of pediatric palliative care at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Given the high mortality rates throughout the life span, Black people are more likely than white people to be grieving the death of a close family member at any point in their lives.

“We as Black people all have some legacy of unjust, unwarranted loss and death that compounds with each new loss,” said Johnson, who was not involved with the new study. “It affects not only how we move through the world, but how we live in relationship with others and how we endure future losses.”

Johnson’s parents lost two sons — one who died a few days after birth and another who died as a toddler. In an essay published last year, Johnson recalled, “My parents asked themselves on numerous occasions, ‘Would the outcomes for our sons have been different, might they have received different care and lived, had they not been Black?’”

Johnson said she hopes the new study gives people greater understanding of all that’s lost when Black people die prematurely. “When we lose these lives young, when we lose that potential, that has an impact on all of society,” she said.

And in the Black community, “our pain is real and deep and profound, and it deserves attention and validation,” Johnson said. “It often feels like people just pass it over, telling you to stop complaining. But the expectation can’t be that we just endure these things and bounce back.”

Teleah Scott-Moore said she struggles with the death of her 16-year-old son, Timothy, an athlete who hoped to attend Boston College and study sports medicine. He died of sudden cardiac arrest in 2011, a rare condition that kills about 100 young athletes a year. Research shows that an underlying heart condition that can lead to sudden cardiac death, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, often goes unrecognized in Black patients.

Scott-Moore still wonders if she should have recognized warning signs. She also has blamed herself for failing to protect her two younger sons, who found Timothy’s body after he collapsed.

At times, Scott-Moore said, she wanted to give up.

Instead, she said, the family created a foundation to promote education and health screenings to prevent such deaths. She hears from families all over the world, and supporting them has helped heal her pain.

“My grief comes back in waves, it comes back when I least expect it,” said Scott-Moore, of Baltimore County, Maryland. “Life goes on, but it’s a pain that never goes away.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Louisville won’t see meaningful change until the city quits defending police use of force

Tia Edison — Tue, 16 May 2023 09:00:11 +0000

Protesters and volunteers prepare a Breonna Taylor art installation by laying posters and flowers before the "Praise in the Park" event at the Big Four Lawn on June 5, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky. The event commemorated what would have been Breonna Taylor’s 28th birthday. Taylor was a Black woman killed by police during a botched drug raid on her apartment on March 13, 2020, which sparked nationwide protests. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Mayor Greenberg, when will you listen to us?

In May 2020, my city came alive in unity and in pain asking, once again, to be heard. Sparked by the unjust murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, hundreds of Louisville residents gathered in peaceful demonstrations to protest police violence against Black people. In our collective frustration, we banded together on streets and sidewalks for months to demand change. Instead, we were met with the very violence we were protesting.

I attended many of the demonstrations that summer to protect and support my community. I thought of my daughters and their generation’s futures. I wanted to be there to make sure that everyone was safe. Each day, the?Louisville Metro Police Department responded with military-type force and intimidation, terrorizing peaceful protestors.

As a board member of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, I worked with other members to bring in supplies to help treat pain and injuries from tear gas, pepper balls, and chemical munitions. But I found myself, and other board members, becoming victims of that same violence.

One night, I watched from a parking lot as folks of all ages, including children, gathered near Injustice Square Park. Two friends joined me, one in a wheelchair, as the group marched and chanted. I felt the tear gas before I saw it. I squeezed my eyes shut as the chemicals burned but quickly fell to the ground, unable to see, unable to breathe. I crawled on my hands and knees, the sounds of screams, cries, and chaos in the distance. Earlier that day, officers were caught on cell phone cameras destroying jugs of water and milk, essential first aid items for protesters exposed to tear gas. Instances like this played out on repeat night after night. These recurrent scenes still haunt me.

Over the last two years, the Alliance has attempted to make calls for reform to the City of Louisville to no avail. Nearly two years later, many of us are still feeling the physical and emotional effects of the violence we encountered that summer and very little has been done to address our concerns.

We relived these painful memories once again, when the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report?outlining the many, varied ways that LMPD violates our rights. Citing the 2020 protests, the DOJ’s investigation revealed that LMPD has shown a “pattern or practice” of excessive and indiscriminate force against peaceful protestors, violating the First and Fourth Amendments. The DOJ found that LMPD repeatedly used unlawful and excessive force against peaceful protestors — often not only failing to de-escalate situations, but actually engaging in behavior that escalated these interactions and using indiscriminate force “without individualized and adequate justifications.”

The report also raises deeply troubling findings of racial discrimination and bias by LMPD officers that echo the racial discrimination that Black people in Louisville experienced at the hands of the LMPD throughout the 2020 Uprising and continue to experience each day.

The DOJ’s findings, while infuriating, were not surprising for those of us who live in Louisville. These findings echoed what our communities live with and witness every day, and confirm what we have been saying for years: Despite all that we have suffered to make our voices heard, the City of Louisville still isn’t listening. In fact, Louisville ignored our calls for reform for so long that we sued: The Alliance joined as an organizational plaintiff in a lawsuit, Scott v. Louisville.

Our demand is simple: End LMPD’s use of indiscriminate force at protests so that the people of Louisville can safely make themselves heard as we continue to fight for change within and without LMPD and begin the difficult work of healing.

After the DOJ came to town to report its findings, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced his intent to listen and to work with Washington to bring about change. He acknowledged that the DOJ’s report “paints a very painful picture of our past.” We tried to be optimistic about his goals, and were open to settling our lawsuit. But so far, Mayor Greenberg has chosen instead to join his predecessor in fighting to keep tear gas in LMPD’s hands. The City has spent nearly a million dollars defending their ability to use force against crowds of peaceful protesters just for exercising their right to speak out — the exact use of force that the Department of Justice found violated the First and Fourth Amendments and for which a jury in Colorado awarded 12 protesters $14 million for their suffering.

If Mayor Greenberg wants us to move forward as a community empty words are not enough. We cannot continue to wait for meaningful change. Mayor Greenberg must meet us at the negotiating table and start centering the demands of the people of Louisville.

Mayor Greenberg, when will you listen to us?

Senate advances bill criminalizing ‘sexually explicit’ drag shows around minors

Sarah Ladd — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 19:33:58 +0000

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor says she realized Kentucky teachers lack maternity leave through her daughter-in-law. (Photo by LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT — After a floor debate spiked with references to foot fetishes and sadomasochistic bondage attire, the Kentucky Senate on Friday approved a bill aimed at limiting venues for some drag shows.

Senate Bill 115 would criminalize “sexually explicit” drag performances by “male or female impersonators” on publicly-owned land or in front of children. It passed the Senate with 26 yes votes, 6 no votes and one pass.?

Opponents previously testified in committee that it would harm the LGBTQ+ and drag community.?

Primary sponsor ??Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, said on the floor her intent in filing the bill “is to restrict performances of an adult nature, as defined in this legislation, to adults.”?

The bill defines that as “a performance involving male or female impersonators, who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration.”?

The American Psychological Association says prurient interest refers to “in obscenity law, a morbid, degrading, or excessive interest in sexual matters.”?

Those who violate the rules in the bill would be subject to misdemeanors the first two violations and felonies on the third and thereafter. The bill may proceed to the House.?

Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, opposed HB 1. (LRC photo)

An amendment proposed by Minority Caucus Chair Reginald Thomas, D-Lexington, would have added language to say:?

“Nothing in this section shall preclude participants in a public performance offered by an established adult theatre, children’s theatre, or dance studio or program from portraying a gender different from the participant’s gender at birth.”?

Thomas proposed another amendment that said: “Conduct consisting solely of touching, embracing, or kissing shall not constitute a sex act or sexual conduct.”?

Both failed.?

Before the failure, though, Thomas said members of the theater community had expressed concerns to him about girls needing to play male roles in plays.?

“What happens more often than not,” said Thomas, “is that you have more girls come out for performances than boys.” So, girls may play a male role “to make sure that the show goes on.”??

Tichenor acknowledged that point.?

“There is indeed a long history of male and female impersonators,” she said. “Before women were allowed to perform in theatrical productions men would play the roles of women.”?

After referring to Shakespeare and Robin Williams’ “masterful” performance as Mrs. Doubtfire, Tichenor added: “This bill is not in any way addressing those types of performances. What it is addressing are the performances happening in cities and towns across Kentucky that have been advertised as family friendly, but have indeed been performances of an adult nature.”?

Senators cite foot fetishes and sadomasochistic bondage attire on the floor

Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, addresses the Senate earlier in this session. (Photo for the Kentucky Lantern by McKenna Horsley. )

Those who spoke against the bill felt that it was an overstep to police what appeals to “prurient” interests.?

“More men find feet sexually interesting than they do men dressed up as women, or women dressed up as men,” Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said on the floor. “Number two, believe it or not, guys, shoes, stiletto heels. Do we outlaw those in this country? Because some people find them interesting.”?

Later, she asked Tichenor if she had ever attended a drag show, and if that show was in Kentucky. When Tichenor said yes to both questions, Berg asked her: “Did you find that sexually arousing?”

Damon Thayer, the Senate majority floor leader, ruled her out of order and said: “This line of questioning is outside the bounds of decorum in this chamber.” And: “I believe this line of questioning has gone beyond the bizarre.”?

Berg withdrew that question.?

Since filing her bill, Tichenor said, “I’ve received many stories of families who have stumbled upon a performance at a public park or public venue or in going to a restaurant and being met with performers and very little attire, some even wearing sadomasochistic bondage attire, yet this is now for some reason, being normalized and marketed to children.”?

Others who spoke against the bill specifically said they felt it targets the LGBTQ+ community.?

“This body,” said Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville, “cannot force someone out of existence.”?

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

Sponsor says drag show bill is pro-children not anti-LGBTQ

Sarah Ladd — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 17:42:06 +0000

Drag performer Poly Tics testified last year before a Kentucky Senate committee that was considering a bill that would have placed new restrictions on drag shows. The bill died. (Screenshot of KET livestream)

FRANKFORT — A Kentucky bill that would criminalize “sexually explicit” performances by “male or female impersonators” on publicly-owned land or in front of children passed a Senate committee Thursday.

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor (Photo by LRC Public Information)

Members of the? Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee voted to advance Senate Bill 115, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield.

A chant of “shame, shame, shame” echoed in the room upon the passage.

Those who violate the rules in the bill would be subject to misdemeanors the first two violations and felonies on the third and thereafter.

A business that “knowingly allows or hosts an adult performance” with minors present can lose their liquor or business licenses under the bill.

“This bill is not anti-LGBTQ,” Tichenor said while presenting her bill. “This bill is pro-children.”

Not all drag performances will meet her definition of “sexually explicit,” Tichenor said, “but some do meet that definition.”

“The intent of SB 115,” she said, “is to keep sexual performances away from children.”

Opponents of the bill testified that it would harm the LGBTQ+ community.

Kate Miller, the advocacy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said the latest version of the bill is better than its predecessor, but she still has concerns.

“Our concern remains that this will include some censorship from the government that is not in compliance with our First Amendment protected rights,” she said.

?“And in particular, that the expression – not only of individuals who are drag performers – will be undermined, but the individuals who are trans will be stopped from being able to perform and include individuals who are not trans but who might be performing in ways that undermine your concepts of gender.”

An earlier version of the bill said “adult” businesses like strip clubs couldn’t be within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, residences, child care facilities and other locations. That was removed in the committee substitute version of the legislation.

Drag performer Poly Tics quoted a Bible verse in testimony before the committee: “Do unto the least of these as you have done unto me.”

“Ask yourself,” she said, “what are you doing unto the least of these? And would you do this to Jesus that you so love and worship?”

“This bill not only compromises, or asks me to explain, my humanity, but it also brings into question my livelihood,” Tics testified. “As a drag performer who depends on drag shows and drag performances for income, this bill not only tells me that I am not really a human worthy of rights, but I’m also not worthy to work and I’m not deserving of an ability to make money.”

Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, blamed “bad actors” for performing in a way that “doesn’t help advance the cause.”

“There’s no hate in my heart for any of you out there,” he said before voting in favor of the legislation. “I appreciate the level of professionalism a lot of people have – and that it is art.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

CROWN Act stalls in legislature

McKenna Horsley — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 23:01:54 +0000

Supporters of the CROWN Act rally outside the Kentucky Capitol, March 1, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Supporters gathered on the Capitol steps Wednesday to cheer on a bill that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of braids, locks and twist hairstyles in Kentucky. Hours later the Senate passed over the bill for the fourth time.?

Senate Bill 63, also known as the CROWN Act, appears to have stalled in the Senate.?

House Bill 205, a version of the CROWN Act sponsored by Rep. George Brown Jr., D-Lexington, has not moved and has not been assigned to a committee for a hearing.?

CROWN is an acronym for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair.” Supporters of the measure say Black people are often subjected to penalties and discrimination because of their hair.?

A study commissioned by Dove and LinkedIn recently found:

Black women’s hair is 2.5 times more likely to be perceived as unprofessional.?
Black women are 54% more likely “to feel like they have to wear their hair straight to a job interview to be successful.”
More than 20% of Black women between the ages of 25-34 “have been sent home from work because of their hair.

Supporters of the CROWN Act hold signs promoting Senate Bill 63 in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Twenty states have passed a form of the legislation along with more than 40 cities, according to a website for the CROWN Act. In Kentucky, Covington and Louisville have enacted local versions.?

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, filed the bill in early February and it was approved by a committee and has been awaiting a vote in the Senate. Twelve days are left in this legislative session.?

The bill would add protections against discrimination based on race-associated hairstyle or hair texture to Kentucky’s civil rights statutes and school disciplinary codes.

Westerfield said in an email Tuesday afternoon that he filed a floor amendment “in hopes of breaking the bill loose.”?The amendment specifies that the bill does nothing to prohibit reasonable workplace or school safety policies.

“Waiting to discuss the floor amendment in caucus,” the senator said in a Wednesday afternoon tweet. “Tried to get to it today but debate on something else pushed us too late. Hope to discuss it tomorrow.”

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, noted Westerfield’s work on the amendment after adjournment Wednesday. After that, “we’ll see if we have enough votes to pass it.”

Westerfield told a crowd of CROWN Act supporters Wednesday that it “should be one of the easiest votes that the legislature could take.”??

Jackie McGranahan, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, speaks to a rally in support of the CROWN Act in the Rotunda Wednesday. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

“The hair that God gave you ought to be the hair that you get to wear,” he said.?

Other speakers included Brown, the House sponsor, and people who have experienced race discrimination related to how they wore their hair.?

Former state Rep. Attica Scott, D-Louisville, filed House Bill 31 last year but it did not receive a floor vote.?

Jackie McGranahan, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said,?“I’m hoping that we have the votes and we can get this across the finish line and this year will be the year.”

Ashley Anderson, the executive director of the Miss Black Kentucky USA Scholarship Program, told the crowd that while competing in pageants, she was often the only or one of a few women of color among the contestants. She said she was told that she would only ever place first runner-up because “they would not crown a black woman doing African dance to represent Kentucky or Miss America.”?

Anderson wanted to attend the rally Wednesday because it aligned with what she believes and the scholarship program stands for. She said people who experienced discrimination should be protected under the law.?

“You would like to think that we live in a world where people are able to be embraced and accepted for the way that God made them to look, right? But unfortunately it’s not always the case,” Anderson said.??

‘Hair discrimination is a real issue’?

On Feb. 16, Senate Bill 63, passed the Senate Judiciary committee 6-3.?

During committee testimony, McGranahan joined Westerfield and told members that “sometimes Black hairstyles can be viewed as unprofessional or unkempt.”?

“Hair discrimination is a real issue,” she said, “and ensuring these protections are in place for all Kentuckians is a step in the right direction towards preventing and eliminating discrimination for any reason.”

Westerfield told his colleagues in committee that his bill “protects individual dignity.” Additionally, he said, nothing about the bill will keep companies from “maintaining safety standards.”?

“I think it’s important to provide these protections, for students in particular,” he said. “They shouldn’t be discriminated against because of their hair. They shouldn’t be forced to cut their hair. They shouldn’t be forced to make changes, just to address the hair that they’ve got … because it doesn’t look like mine.”

He also said he’s bringing the legislation forward for his children.?

“As the father of two biracial children, who this may impact one day,” Westerfield said, “it’s important to me.”?

Reporter Sarah Ladd contributed to this report.?

Racialized notions of ‘beauty’ hazardous to health

Victoria St. Martin, Inside Climate News — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 10:40:11 +0000

Yakini Horn, owner of Yaya’s Natural Hair Boutique in Atlanta, rolled sections of Akeyla Peele-Tembong’s hair in her hands during a styling visit on Feb. 20, 2023. Horn was creating “starter locs,” the early stage of a natural hairstyle that will take months to root. (Photo for Inside Climate News by Victoria St. Martin)

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

ATLANTA — Perched in a stylist’s chair at Yaya’s Natural Hair Boutique, Akeyla Peele-Tembong teared up as she recalled how, when she was a college student, one of her professors suggested that she straighten her natural hair to improve her chances of landing a plum work-study job.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to.’ She was just, like, ‘I mean, just think about it.’ And that was it,” Peele-Tembong said, while her stylist twisted her natural hair into locs. “I didn’t realize how big of a deal that conversation was at that time.”

Societal pressure to conform is a factor in why Black women are twice as likely as those from other groups to use hair relaxers, and Asian women are three times as likely to use skin lighteners, according to a new study that also linked chemicals in such products to adverse health effects.

Researchers sought to measure the internalization of racialized beauty standards and said the resulting extensive use of such products by women of color, represents what they called the “environmental injustice of beauty.”

The study, published in the journal Environmental Justice, noted that the prevalence of such products represents “a growing public health concern.”

Lariah Edwards, an associate research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said women of color—who already experience wide health disparities compared to their white counterparts—must also contend with “the overburdening exposure of chemicals in consumer products.”

Phthalates are chemicals often called plasticizers that are used in such products as vinyl flooring, lubricating oil and beauty products, according to the Centers for Disease Control. They have affected the reproductive system in animals, the agency reported, but the human health effects from low-level exposure “are not as clear.” Parabens are chemicals used as preservatives in cosmetics, the CDC said, adding that “human health effects from environmental exposure to low levels of parabens are unknown.”

“Women of color because of social structural factors, the big ‘isms’ like racism, sexism, classism, they feel compelled to use these products to fit into a certain way of life and look a certain way to achieve certain benefits or that next job or things like that,” said Edwards. “And because of that, they’re using these products that have a lot of chemicals in them.”

For Peele-Tembong, now a 32-year-old education technology specialist, that talk with her professor had a lasting impact. Then there was another conversation with a hiring manager when she sought feedback after an interview for a different job.

“I was told they’re just looking for a certain type, like, they wanted a certain look,” said Peele-Tembong, who is Black. Later, after learning that white students were hired, but she was not, she felt compelled to set aside her concerns about chemicals in hair relaxers, and have her natural coils straightened.

“So I, like, cried, and went on my way to this appointment,” Peele-Tembong said. “It was bad. I felt defeated.”

The study led by Edwards took particular note of the use of skin lighteners as a response to colorism, prejudice or discrimination against people with darker complexions. Skin lighteners can contain corticosteroids, which can lead to metabolic problems, and mercury, which has been linked to kidney and nerve system damage.

In addition, researchers said, biases against natural hair styles is how “another form of environmental injustice in beauty, plays out through overt policy and practice.”

“In particular, Black women have been pressured to straighten their naturally curly or kinky hair for reasons such as being seen as professional in the workplace, social acceptance, or other norms that have excluded Black bodies,” the authors wrote.

They noted that chemical straighteners, such as relaxers, can contain harmful chemicals such as phthalates, parabens, and formaldehyde, and that their use has been associated with increased risk of uterine fibroids, early puberty and breast cancer.

As Peele-Tembong spoke about her collegiate hair experience, her stylist, Yakini Horn, rolled sections of Peele-Tembong’s hair in her hands, as if she were praying, to create “starter locs,” the early stage of a natural style that will take months to root.

Peele-Tembong recalled how angry her friends at Georgia Southern University became at the time, when they realized she had permed her hair in hopes of getting hired for a job.?Then, Peele-Tembong said, the relaxer that she resorted to caused her hair to break off.

Horn chimed in with a similar experience: She permed her hair for high school graduation, and it all came out in the sink.

“So sad,” Peele-Tembong said. With a wry laugh, she suggested that they have “a moment of silence” for their lost hair.

A National Institutes of Health study last year found that the use of hair straightening products was also associated with a higher risk of uterine cancer, and that Black women were more likely to be affected because of their higher rates of using hair relaxers.

Jenny Mitchell, a woman who was diagnosed with uterine cancer at 28, with no family history of the disease, filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of chemical straightening products last October.

The recent findings of Edwards and her co-researchers were based on a survey of 297 women and femme-identifying individuals in New York City. Half of all the people who responded to the survey said they think that others find straight hair and light skin more beautiful.

The study, which published on Jan. 18, found that Black people who took the survey were most likely to use chemical straighteners — 60 percent of non-Hispanic Black women and “femme-identifying” individuals reported ever using chemical straighteners and 48 percent of Black women and femme-identifying individuals of Hispanic descent.

Edwards said that current use of straighteners was down for all — the study found that 15 percent and 13 percent for female and femme-identifying respondents currently use hair straighteners.

“I thought it was wonderful to see that our data suggests that fewer women are now currently using chemical straighteners, particularly Black women,” said Edwards. “We saw that a lot of Black women said they have used it in their lifetime, but fewer said they’ve used it in the past year. I think that is a great indication that Black women are continuing to embrace their natural hair textures.”

With skin lightening products, the study found that Asian respondents reported the highest frequency of use, with 57 percent reporting they had ever used it and are currently using it. Skin lightener use among Asian and Hispanic respondents was higher for respondents born in other countries versus those born in the United States.

Ami Zota, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the study’s co-senior author, said she coined the phrase “environmental injustice of beauty” because she believes that framing is critical to the conversation about chemical exposures and health impacts “viewed through a structural racism lens.”

“There are many social, cultural, historical factors that drive our beliefs about beauty and that what society deems is beautiful is essential to influencing how people choose to present themselves,” said Zota, who is an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia.

“And that often women of color are kind of inherently outside of preferred beauty norms, which are rooted in Eurocentric white femininity. And so, kind of as an adoptive response, some women of color end up using more toxic products to kind of conform to Eurocentric beauty norms.”

Zota said when it comes to the beauty industry, there are not only health issues at stake here, but climate issues too. She said many products rely on petrochemicals produced from fossil fuels and increase plastic consumption.“It’s just another way where environmental justice and climate intersect,” she said.

Sophia Huda, a toxic specialist for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, an environmental group that was a part of the study, said the impact to communities of color is almost like a double whammy. Huda said Black and Latinx women are some of the biggest consumers of personal care products and that because of this their exposure levels are “a lot higher than other ethnic groups.”

They tend to live in environmental justice communities and are exposed to other toxic chemicals and pollution in the places they live, she said.

And she added that they are even exposed inside their homes: More affordable cleaning products and furniture are more likely to have toxic chemicals and reduce indoor air quality.

All of that cumulative exposure, Huda said, raises the stakes for women of color.“Here we have people who feel the need to use these products because of the standards of beauty that have been imposed on them because they feel discriminated against and that they can’t get a job or advance in their careers just because of things they can’t control, like the texture of their hair and the color of their skin,” Huda said.

“And on top of that, living in communities where they’re exposed to way more pollution and toxic chemicals. And so then it becomes very much an environmental justice issue.”

Huda said people of color are also impacted by the minimal regulation of beauty and personal care products. “This is a huge problem in the U.S. that these products are not properly regulated,” she said.Sonya Schuh, a biology professor who studies toxins in personal care products at Saint Mary’s College of California, said the European Union bans more than 1,100 chemicals in personal care products. In the United States, 11 chemicals are banned.

“When you talk about climate change and you talk about the planet and the oceans and the devastating effects that plastics and microplastics are having, people are concerned and go, ‘Oh, that’s so terrible,’ but they kind of feel helpless,” said Schuh.

“But as soon as I start to say, ‘Well, guess what? Those plastic chemicals and things that you’re exposed to in all your plastics and all your products, this is what they are doing to your health and your potential fertility or your potential unborn baby,’” she said. “As soon as I frame it in that way, then people are much more concerned.”

Peele-Tembong said she feels encouraged by what, in recent years, appears to be more education around the potential harms of beauty products, and by proposed legislation like the Crown Act, which would prevent discrimination based on a particular hair style.

If faced today with the same hair pressure that she encountered in college, Peele-Tembong said, she would resist changing her hair style in order to conform, “just because I know it’s ignorance.”

“No one can kind of tell me that anymore,” she said.

Humana supports prenatal care for Black moms with $120,000 in grants, goal is ‘health equity’

Sarah Ladd — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 18:09:14 +0000

Maternal mortality rates are four times higher for Black birthing Kentuckians compared to their white counterparts. Our state is also a maternal care desert, where 73 out of the 120 counties do not have a practicing OB/GYN. (Getty Images)

To “improve access to quality prenatal care in Kentucky for Black moms,” Humana announced Tuesday it will give $120,000 in grants to three organizations.?

Humana’s Healthy Horizons made the move in response to a March of Dimes report last year that awarded Kentucky a failing grade on key indicators of maternal health. The commonwealth was one of only nine states and Puerto Rico to get a failing rating.??

The money will go to Melanated Healthcare ($70,000), Granny’s Birth Initiative ($30,000) and Healthy Babies Louisville ($20,000).?

Alexa Hughes, who runs Granny’s Birth Initiative, told the Kentucky Lantern the $30,000 will support the growth of her Doula Dash service, which provides transportation to maternal support resources, such as prenatal or lactation appointments.?

“The grant will sponsor training of more Doula Dashers, the website technology needed to handle operations and demand of doula dash, and 250 free rides for Humana Medicaid Members,” Hughes said. “Humana Medicaid members will be able to apply a coupon code to omit the usual? $20 fee.”?

That code should be available in March, she said, adding: “We thank Humana for supporting equity birthwork.”?

Melanated Healthcare “will connect Humana members with health professionals who share the same racial or cultural background as well as provide patient support through supplemental virtual visits,” Humana said.?

Black Americans are three times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white counterparts, the Lantern previously reported. White women are more likely to have access to good prenatal care than Native, Black, Pacific Islander, Asian and Hispanic women.?

A 2020 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that when Black babies are cared for by Black medical professionals, though, they’re much more likely to survive.?

The Healthy Babies Louisville grant will allow doulas, Humana said, “a place to access continuing education, new certifications and trainings, support for billing insurance companies and networking opportunities.”

“Through healthcare coverage, and funding innovative pilots like these, Humana is in a position to help eliminate unjust, avoidable and unnecessary barriers in health and healthcare to achieve health equity,” said Dr. Sarah Moyer, the chief medical officer for Humana Healthy Horizons Kentucky and former leader of Louisville’s health department.??

Pain of police killings ripples outward to traumatize Black people and communities across?U.S.

Denise A. Herd — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 10:30:00 +0000

Karina Nelson of Bowling Green, founder of BG Freedom Walkers, leads a protest against the scheduled speaking appearance of former Louisville Police Officer Jonathan Mattingly on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Bowling Green. Mattingly is one of the police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020. (Austin Anthony for The Kentucky Lantern)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

As the video goes public of Black police officers in Memphis beating Tyre Nichols to death, it is a stark reminder of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. That set up the largest protests in U.S. history and a national reckoning with racism.

But beyond any protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences.

Each year, U.S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men.

The effects of these killings ripple from the individual victim to their families and local communities as they cope with the permanence of injury, death and loss. People victimized by the police have demonstrated higher-than-usual rates of depression, psychological distress and even suicide risk.

But the pain doesn’t stop there.

Public health research I am conducting with my research team at the University of California, Berkeley finds that the harm from police killings of Black people goes beyond the people and places directly involved in these incidents to affect Black Americans far from the site of the killing, who may have never met the victim.

Evidence shows that many Black Americans across the U.S. experience police killings of other Black people as traumatic events, and that this trauma diminishes the ability of Black communities to thrive.

The ripple effect

One of the key studies illustrating this ripple effect of police killings on the mental health of Black Americans was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2018.

Boston University researchers surveyed 103,710 people in the U.S. to measure the relationship between police killings and Americans’ mental health.

Among survey respondents, each police-related fatality of an unarmed Black person in the state where they lived was associated with an increase in the number of days when they reported poor mental health relating to stress, depression or emotional issues.

The authors estimated that the cumulative impact of U.S. police killings of unarmed Blacks could add up to 55 million additional poor mental health days for the U.S.‘s 44 million Black people.

Police killings of armed Black people did not elicit the same distress among Black Americans. And white Americans suffered no additional poor mental health days, as defined by the researchers, after exposure to police killings – no matter the circumstances or race of the victim.

The authors speculated that historical and institutional patterns of systematic, targeted violence against Black people – combined with a general lack of legal consequences when police officers commit such crimes – make the killings of unarmed Blacks particularly stressful for Black Americans.

“Racism, like trauma, can be experienced vicariously,” they concluded.

A 2021 study substantiates the Boston University’s mental health findings.

Scouring emergency department admission records in 75 counties in five U.S. states, researchers found that within three months following a police killing of an unarmed Black person in the county in which they reside, Black Americans sought treatment at local emergency departments for depressive symptoms 11% more frequently than in other months.

Prenatal and childhood trauma

Black women experience acute fear that their children will be harmed by the police.
Those who expressed beliefs that Black youth are at higher risk for having negative police experiences were 12 times more likely to report symptoms of depression during their pregnancy than other women, according to one study from 2017.

Depression during pregnancy can increase the risks for health problems for both parent and child, including newborns with low birth weight or premature delivery – both major causes of infant death. Depression during pregnancy also puts new mothers at higher risk for postpartum depression, which may negatively affect their ability to nurture their children.

Police killings can also directly harm the mental health of young people of color. According to Brendesha Tynes’ 2019 study, exposure to viral videos of police killings is associated with symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among adolescents of color.

Health effects

Police killings and other negative encounters with police create a climate of fear in Black communities that takes a physical toll on residents.

For example, aggressive policing can cause fear and excessive watchfulness among Black Americans that, at elevated levels, are associated with high blood pressure. A New York City-based research team found in 2016 that in neighborhoods where police engaged in the invasive practice of “stop and frisk,” residents were more likely to have not only high blood pressure but to also suffer from diabetes, get asthma attacks and be overweight.

A 2016 study conducted in 75 metropolitan areas across the U.S. found that a police killing of a Black person in the area the year prior was associated with a 7.5% rise in local syphilis rates and a 4% rise in gonorrhea rates – perhaps, the authors suggest, because the associated psychological stress leads to riskier sexual behavior. Fear of a police run-in and distrust of institutions might also lead people in these areas to avoid medical services.

Police violence in a given neighborhood is also linked to lower trust in government, less frequent voting and higher crime rates. It decreases residents’ perception of their ability to stand together and control what happens in their neighborhood.

Policing seen as racism

Many people in heavily policed neighborhoods see negative police encounters as forms of discrimination or racism – both of which are scientifically documented to worsen the health of Black people.

“People understand that this system is filled with all sorts of inequality and injustice, and that implicit bias and just outright racism is embedded in the way that policing is done in this nation,” said Opal Tometi, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, in an interview with the New Yorker. It amounts to “a war on Black life.”

Ultimately, the cumulative impact of harmful policing can shred the social fabric of Black neighborhoods and drain Black people and their communities of the health and social resources they need to live healthy lives.

This is an updated version of an article originally published May 24, 2021.