A History of Education in Kentucky

Photos

Robert Jefferson Breckinridge is rightfully given credit as “the father of the public school system” in the Commonwealth of Kentucky for his efforts in the 1850s. (Courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society) A group of South Elkhorn Colored School students with teacher H. G. Owisly, 1901, in Fayette County. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Archives) The faculty of A&M College, 1885. President James Kennedy Patterson is in the middle of the front row. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Archives) Richmond lawyer Jere A. Sullivan helped negotiate passage of the Normal School Law of 1906 and wrote the Sullivan Law of 1908. (Courtesy of the Eastern Kentucky University Archives) A schoolteachers’ conference held at Kings Mountain, Lincoln County, September 1906. (Courtesy of the Eastern Kentucky University Archives) The Central Point county grade school class of Jennie Jeffers Ashby rides an elaborate float during School Fair Day in Greenville, the seat of Muhlenberg County, in 1914. (Courtesy of the Eastern Kentucky University Archives) Students in an early school “wagon” in Fayette County with Superintendent Nannie G. Faulconer and a wagon driver, ca. 1920. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Archives) Athens School, ca. 1920. Nannie G. Faulconer, superintendent of Fayette County Schools (1905–1921), is standing on the extreme right. Note the Colonial style of the building, which was new at the time. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Archives) The opening of a new school for African Americans in Bracktown, ca. 1920. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Archives) Forest “Aggie” Sale, a six-foot, five-inch center, was Adolph Rupp’s first All-American. Sale won the Helms Foundation player of the year award in 1933. (Portrait Print Collection, University of Kentucky Archives) At the Centre versus Harvard game, on October 29, 1921, a Harvard player attempts a pass against the Centre defense. Notice the large Cambridge, Massachusetts, crowd. Centre won by a single touchdown, immortalizing the cryptic “C6-H0” for Centre students. The Centre fight song of the era included the lines, “We’ll bite ’em on the elbow, kick ’em on the shin, Until they want to fight no more . . . Keep up the steam, steam, steam, Old Centre, Give ’em hell.” (Courtesy of the Centre College Archives) Transylvania students and faculty on a trip to Quebec in the early 1930s, with tents for camping in the background. L. P. Howser, fifth from the left in the front row, served as principal and then as superintendent of the Kentucky School for the Blind in Louisville from 1957 to 1974. (Courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society) Students on their way to Church Grove School pause on a dirt road in Marshall County, ca. 1930. (A Kentucky Progress Commission photograph; courtesy of the Jillson Collection, Kentucky Historical Society) An unidentified man sits on the threshold of Dogtown Schoolhouse, a one-room school six miles west of Williamsburg near the village of Jellico Creek in Whitley County, ca. 1930. (A Kentucky Progress Commission photograph; courtesy of the Jillson Collection, Kentucky Historical Society) Rufus Atwood (front row, center), president of Kentucky State, with high school teachers and students after a graduation ceremony in 1931. (Courtesy of the Cusik Collection, Kentucky Historical Society) On High School Day at Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College in 1937, several hundred students fill Hiram Brock Auditorium. (Courtesy of the Eastern Kentucky University Archives) At the unveiling of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker on March 25, 1949, in front of the University of Louisville Administration Building, Louisville mayor Charles P. Farnsley holds the hand of Nancy Speckman, a member of the family that donated the statue. (Photograph by Norris Mode; courtesy of the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center) A graduate of Central High School, Lenny Lyles helped to integrate the University of Louisville football team in the mid-1950s. He still holds the school record with forty-two touchdowns. Lyles went on to a professional football career with the Baltimore Colts (where he joined Johnny Unitas) and the San Francisco 49ers. (Courtesy of the University of Louisville) Left to right: presidents John W. Oswald of the University of Kentucky, Carl M. Hill of Kentucky State University, Robert R. Martin of Eastern Kentucky University, Kelly Thompson of Western Kentucky...