The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia ed. by Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, and John A. Hardin (review)

At the height of the Great Depression, Alice Dunnigan, an African American schoolteacher in a small segregated Kentucky school, decided that it was time for her students to learn about their own history. Since the meager textbooks provided by the county provided no information about the role of African Americans in Kentucky’s history, she began doing research. Each day she gave her students a “fact sheet” of information about the contributions and achievements of Kentucky’s African Americans (p. xix). It was Dunnigan’s work and determination that her students have this learning experience that became the inspiration for The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia more than sixty years later.

Kentucky and the University Press of Kentucky have been leaders in successful encyclopedia projects. After the publication of The Kentucky Encyclopedia in 1992 as one of the state’s bicentennial projects, its editor, John E. Kleber, began another project, The Encyclopedia of Louisville, which was published in 2001. The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool, focusing on eleven counties near the Ohio River, was published eight years later. Now this newest encyclopedia focusing on the state’s African American history manages to make a unique and important contribution in what might seem to be a fully saturated field.

Few of this new volume’s more than one thousand subjects have been covered in these earlier publications. For example, while The Kentucky Encyclopedia has an entry on the town of Winchester, that entry contains no mention of Bucktown, Winchester’s African American community. This new encyclopedia also brings to light for the first time the case of Rankin v. Lydia (1820), in which an enslaved woman sued for her freedom because she had been registered by her owner as an indentured servant in Indiana, where the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. Another entry on the Fayette County community of Coletown describes the efforts of its African American citizens to have a school.

Before the actual entry writing began, Gerald L. Smith and his coeditors, Karen Cotton McDaniel and John A. Hardin, had to define their goals and then accept the challenge of addressing both inclusion and exclusion. The editors traveled across the state giving talks and soliciting subjects and stories in an effort to make sure that the final project reflected the state’s geographic diversity. Along the way, they enlisted the support of the state’s colleges and its network of public and academic libraries. The encyclopedia received both monetary and in-kind support from a diverse array of sources. Undergraduate and graduate students alike who were interested in Kentucky history embraced the project and joined the team. The editors recruited writers and over a four-year period collected, edited, and illustrated the entries. As more people learned about the project important sponsorships increased. The Thomas D. Clark Foundation honored the project by naming the encyclopedia as a Thomas D. Clark Medallion Book.

This encyclopedia’s biographical entries and wide-ranging topics, such as sports, artists, churches, communities, organizations, schools, and court cases, fill many important gaps in the state’s historical narrative. Its inclusion of additional source material with each entry and its comprehensive index promote additional study. The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia will undoubtedly generate increased interest in an important part of the state’s history that has largely been overlooked.