See Ky. Civil Rights Struggle Through Her Eyes

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 13, 2010) −Mayfield, Kentucky-native Jennie Wilson has a story to tell.

Not only was Wilson born in 1900 to former slaves, but her daughter Alice was one of ten African American students who decided to enroll at Mayfield High School shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education decision declared "separate but equal" schools unconstitutional. 

"I've seen so much," Wilson said in her 2002 interview with the Kentucky Oral History Commission's Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky Oral History Project. "And my feet, they've been around for over 100 years. They're getting kind of tough on the bottom."

The University of Kentucky and Lexington community will have the chance to hear Wilson's story at the African American Studies and Research Program's first "Fall 2010 Dialogues in Race Film Series: Sisters in the Struggle," from 4:30-6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 16, in the Martin Luther King Cultural Center, located in Room 133 of UK's Student Center.

Kentucky women experienced the civil rights movement differently, and AASRP chose to focus on the role of gender and race in this particular era of Kentucky history, according to event organizers.

"We'll be talking about what it must have been like to be part of the civil rights movement in Kentucky, as well as what these issues mean to us today," said AASRP Director Sonja Feist-Price.

One of history professor Randolph Hollingsworth's classes is participating in the AASRP Dialogs on Race as well. "We are honored that the dialogs have been designed to focus on what we are working on in our class this semester," she said, "celebrating and giving scholarly attention to the voices of Kentucky women who tell their stories of how they experienced the civil rights movement."  

The Commission, a division of the Kentucky Historical Society, began the oral history project in 1998 to gather stories from the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s.

AASRP is sponsoring the four-part series this fall. Each "Sisters in the Struggle" event will focus on one biography, followed by a question and answer session.

The Commission's project hopes to "give contemporary audiences a sense of what it was like to be part of the civil rights movement, to encourage further exploration of the subject and to inspire young people by illustrating the role people their age played in the movement," according to its website.

"This important partnership with the AASRP in building the Dialogs this semester will greatly enrich the history students' efforts at reaching out to the communities around us here at UK," said Hollingsworth. "We hope to bring these issues out for exploration and analysis by the larger community across Kentucky - not just keep it as something we do in our own class but offer up an open content initiative that takes advantage of and builds on existing resources available to the general public." 

Preview Wilson's interview and video with the Kentucky Oral History Commission at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_jwilson.htm. For more information on the "Sisters in the Struggle" series, contact AASRP at (859) 257-3593 or Le Datta Grimes at (859) 257-0187.