Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community

Notes

189 Notes Introduction 1. Anthony Pearce-Batten, “Old ‘Craw’ Area of Frankfort Revitalized by Capital Plaza,” press release, Kentucky Department of Public Information , Nov. 22, 1974, copy in “Franklin County History,” Kentucky Historical Society Library Vertical Files. 2. In later times, certain definitions of Craw would incorporate more addresses on Madison Street adjacent to the Old State Capitol, St. Clair Street, and Buffalo Alley, and out as far as Anne Street. “Long Lane Alley” was also known at different times as Petticoat Alley, Center Street, Gaines’ Alley, and Gashouse Alley. 3. Carl E. Kramer, Capital on the Kentucky: A Two Hundred Year History of Frankfort and Franklin County (Frankfort: Historic Frankfort, 1986), 342. 4. “Dark Rows of Shanties to White Tower,” Frankfort State Journal, Feb. 1, 1970; James E. Wallace, “This ‘Sodom Land’: Urban Renewal and Frankfort’s Craw” (master’s thesis, University of Kentucky, 1991). See also Scruggs and Hammond, “Structure and Family Survey,” Frankfort Slum and Redevelopment Agency, Family Survey Files, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Frankfort, KY, Sept. 8, 1956. 5. Scruggs and Hammond, “Structure and Family Survey.” 6. “Games Children Played,” Frankfort State Journal, Dec. 28, 1975. 7. Charles W. Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), xvi–xvii. 8. [Douglas A. Boyd], “Introduction,” in Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Kentucky, ed. Winona L. Fletcher et al. (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 2003), xvi. 9. Eviatar Zerubavel, Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 81. 10. Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,’” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 105–40. 11. Amos Funkenstein, “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness ,” History and Memory 1, no. 1 (1989): 6. 12. John Bodnar, “Public Memory in an American City: Commemoration 190 Notes to Pages 7–16 in Cleveland,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 75. 13. “Urban Renewal Project Will Be Finished in Two Years,” Frankfort State Journal, Jan. 17, 1965. 14. Benedict Anderson, “Memory and Forgetting,” in Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1991), chap. 11. 15. Maggie Knott, interview with James E. Wallace, July 1, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort. 16. Henry Sanders and George Simmons, interview with James E. Wallace , May 29, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission. 17. Henry Ellis and Margaret Ellis, interview with James E. Wallace, Aug. 1, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission. 18. Mary Helen Berry, interview with James E. Wallace, July 2, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission. 19. Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 8. 20. “Overflow Crowd Hears Facts and Arguments . . . ,” Frankfort State Journal, Jan. 30, 1958; Wallace, “This ‘Sodom Land.’” 21. “Negro Delegation Says Many Opposed to Bottom Development,” Frankfort State Journal, Feb. 9, 1958; Wallace, “This ‘Sodom Land.’” 22. M. H. Berry, interview, July 2, 1991. 23. Charlotte Linde, Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 12. 24. Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories : Form and Meaning in Oral History, Series in Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 56. 25. E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways (New York: Devin-Adair, 1957), xiv. 26. William Lynwood Montell, The Saga of Coe Ridge: A Study in Oral History, 1st ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970). 27. Henry H. Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, Publications of the American Folklore Society, n.s., 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 664. 28. [Boyd], “Introduction,” xvii. 1. The “Lower” Part of the City 1. “Crawfish Bottom,” “Craw,” or “the Craw” was also called “the Bottom ,” or just “Bottom.” However, my investigation demonstrates that “the Bottom” seems to emerge after the 1920s and is an esoteric label bestowed by inside members of that particular community. 2. Jennie Chinn Morton, Frankfort Ledger, May 3, 1897. 3. Frankfort Capital, centennial edition, Oct. 9, 1886; Mary Verhoeff, Notes to Pages 16–25 191 The Kentucky River Navigation (Louisville: John P. Morton and Company, 1917), 78. 4. Sara Prewitt Olcott and T. E. Adams, Historical Jottings of Kentucky ’s Capital (Frankfort: n.p., 1951), 78. 5. Kramer, Capital on the...