Community, Race, and Memory: The Cultural Life of African-Americans in Frankfort, Kentucky (review)

On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, at 5:30 p.m., about 200 adults, an even mix of blacks and whites, filed under an art deco marquee and into the lobby of the historic, newly renovated Grand Theatre in Frankfort, Kentucky. Among many amiable conversations along the way, there was a sense of collective excitement, and perhaps some cautious anticipation, about what would be presented and discussed. A majority of attendees had personal connections to the general topic "Cultural Life of African-Americans in Frankfort" and to the specific topics presented in the three oral history efforts brought together in the symposium.

Michael Fields, a Grand Theatre board member, welcomed the audience and introduced oral historian and former Kentucky Historical Society assistant director James Wallace, who then introduced the three presenters:

• • Sheila Mason Burton, associate editor of Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Kentucky (Kentucky Historical Society, 2003)

• • Doug Boyd, PhD, author of Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community (University Press of Kentucky, 2011)

• • Joanna Hay, filmmaker of Stories from the Balcony (Joanna Hay Productions, expected release in 2014).

Each of these projects deserves its own media review, but this review will maintain broader focus on the symposium as a whole.

Sheila Mason Burton presented first on Community Memories, a book that was published as a result of an oral history and photograph collection project and exhibition. Burton was associate editor, with senior editor Dr. Winona L. Fletcher who was seated in the audience. With audio playback and a slideshow on the theatre's big screen, Burton demonstrated how the Frankfort African American community in which she grew up dealt with social problems caused by urban renewal, such as displacement and relocation. She emphasized the main idea behind the Community Memories exhibit and book—that her neighbors survived by upholding values of family, community, employment, education, and religion.

Doug Boyd followed with a multimedia presentation on his new book Crawfish Bottom, named for the mostly black, working-class neighborhood that once existed in the flood zone next to the Kentucky River in Frankfort. A section of that neighborhood became known as a vice district in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Nonresidents of the Crawfish Bottom began to associate this ill reputation with the entire neighborhood, giving it the name "Craw." Residents of the neighborhood called it simply "the Bottom" while outsiders continued using the derogatory Craw. This trend was picked up by historians and perpetuated for years after the neighborhood was removed by urban renewal. Some recent, sensationalist marketing of the book Crawfish Bottom dwelt on the dangerous area of the neighborhood, but the author was ready to address this issue. Projecting on-screen one such review that emphasized controversy and violence, Boyd said, "Actually, this is just describing Chapter 1." The rest of his book explores another side of the story—the positive, supportive community relationships among blacks and whites who lived in the Crawfish Bottom before, during, and after the vice district's heyday. This story is told through oral history, and as a whole, the book demonstrates how history is made, and how interviews and archives can change history.

The third presenter was filmmaker and community scholar Joanna Hay. Her documentary film Stories from the Balcony is expected to be complete in late 2012. Using video oral history, Hay conducted interviews with Frankfort residents who remember going to the Grand Theatre for entertainment during segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s, black visitors had to use a separate entrance, and were required to sit in the balcony, separate from the white audience below. Hay played a nine-minute sneak preview of the film. Watching this preview while seated in the very theatre that is the film's subject, one had a heightened sense of connection with the story. (It is worth noting that no one chose...