A Brief History of Racial Violence in Meade County and Surrounding Areas.
A general overview of historical racial violence in Meade County and the surrounding areas.
This is not to talk about any events that have gone on near the statue. This is to give a brief history of the Black residents of Meade County and the surrounding areas, their struggles, successes, and their resolve. For anyone that thinks that the statue by the river can do anything but celebrate hate and intimidate a certain portion of our county’s population. This is in no way a complete narrative of Black history in our county and I know that what I write here is nothing new to the people in the county that know about it first hand. There are many families in Meade County that surely have a more robust and full history as well as genealogical records that would do a much better job at painting the picture of Black people in Meade. This is just my attempt at boosting stories that are not well-known to the majority of our residents.
The statue cannot be used as an educational tool. It teaches nothing worth learning. It represents hate, it represents the legacy of not only slaveholding Confederates but the legacy of lynching, Jim Crow laws, redlining, systemic racism that prevented families from gaining generational wealth. Mildred Brown, a local resident, has told her story so many times. About a cross being burned in her yard. Her husband being chased out of parts of the county by whites. She has told these very real and true stories in the paper and other places. There was racial violence in Meade County, arguably there has always been.
This county contained and still contains racism. Our leaders, Mayor Ronnie Joyner, the members of the Brandenburg City Council, Judge-Executive Gerry Lynn, the county Magistrates; Thomas Goddard, Donald Eli Dix, Jr., Billy Sipes, Gary Chapman, Steve Wardrip, and Randall Hardesty will all be receiving this piece via Email. As long as that statue remains at the river, and you have this knowledge available to you about what life was like for Black people in Meade County and in many ways still is, you are all racists and will not be able to prove otherwise until you are actively calling for and working towards the removal of the Confederate statue that plagues our riverfront.
The history of African Americans and Black people in our country often, unfortunately, tends to begin and end with slavery. Meade County is generally no different. In a Facebook group that celebrates the history and past of Meade County, a young Black man asked if anyone had any resources on Black families from the county or other history of Black people. He was met with retorts that amounted to, “I just call it history,” “There’s no difference between white and black,” “I’m sure he just wants genealogical history,” and other demeaning and dismissive comments.
There are Black families that have been in the county for generations, much longer than some other families that are of a bit higher status in the county in the present. I had long wondered about the existence of segregation and discrimination in our county. Any time I would ask I would be told that if there was it was a long time ago so we should just forget about it. Clearly, some of these stories I am presenting are not to celebrate the violence of those white folks who are involved but to celebrate the tenacity and determination and courage of those Black citizens of Meade County and the surrounding areas who have been and were the victims of this violence.
A quick refresher on general Meade County history in case those reading need it. In 1823 Meade County was formed out of neighboring Breckinridge County and Hardin County. Named after James Meade who died in the Battle of River Raisin. In 1830 the county had a population of 570 heads of household and by 1860 almost 7,000 white citizens lived in the county. In 1860, the population that wasn’t white looked something like this:
1860 Slave Schedule:
372 slave owners
1,463 Black slaves
468 Mulatto slaves
13 free Blacks
9 free Mulattoes
By 1870, only 1,061 Black citizens and 253 “Mulatto” citizens lived in Meade County. Around 100 more Black citizens than how many live in the county now, based on 2010 census information. Between 1866-1870 there were at least two freedmen schools within Meade County. These schools were given support through the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. In 1870 the Bureau released a report on freedmen schools around the country. In the Kentucky section, it states, “The freedmen in Kentucky have, in a large measure, been left to struggle alone; and it will be noticed that more than half of their schools, as now reported, have been mainly sustained by themselves.” It went on later stating, “The State Board of Education, a voluntary association mainly of the colored people themselves, is still in vigorous operation. Kentucky has so intelligent a people, and the freedmen are in general so thriving and intent upon having their children educated, that the majority of these schools will be sure of continuance.” The Bureau concluded that they were not needed anymore in 1870.
For the freedmen schools around the state, including the two in Meade County, this was a death sentence. By 1870, white citizens of Meade County burned down both of the freedmen schools. Without the protection of the federal government, the local whites decided they had enough with educated Black citizens. 25 years later, in 1895 until 1897 there were a total of nine freedmen schools in the county. Those included log buildings as well as frame buildings. The total freedmen school population at the time consisted of 200 students. Slowly over time, as the 1900s came the “colored” schools were dwindling, there were only six Black teachers through the 1920s. In 1931 the first two-year high school program for Black students appeared at the Brandenburg Colored School with a total of seven students in the program. By 1940 there were only two “Negro” teachers in Meade County and by the 1956-57 school year, Meade County schools had started to integrate beginning at the high school.
Of course, school integration was not always enforced, even in Kentucky. After the decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, issues arose because Kentucky had a state law called the “Day Law”. This law, put into effect in 1904, prohibited white and Black students from going to the same school or attending schools that were less than 25 miles apart. It had not been immediately struck down as unconstitutional until the federal law was enforced in the schools. This law was used as a last defense against school integration in Kentucky.
The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown came at a time when Superintendant James R. Allen was leading the Meade County school system. Only 83 Black school children lived in the county at the time. Of those, five went to school at Lincoln Ridge Institute in Shelbyville. This was a boarding school for Black students that operated from 1912-1966. Six attended Brandenburg Colored School and 72 went to Zion Grove School. The white school population totaled 2258 students.
James R. Allen in the May 20th, 1954 edition of the Meade County Messenger made it clear that Meade County schools would cooperate with the ruling as soon as they knew when the ruling was to take effect. Although the ruling came in 1954 it would take until the 1956-57 school year for Black students to integrate Meade County High School. The Meade County Messenger noted that four “Negro pupils” had enrolled for the first time at Meade County High School.
The history of lynching Black folks in this country is one of the darkest, bloodiest, and most unforgivable sins that this country has committed on its people. Meade County has had its share of lynchings, unfortunately. These are generally avoided and not talked about when discussing the history of the county, but it is important to understanding the county today and understanding how Black citizens in this county have been treated for over a hundred years.
Racial agitation in Meade County has been an issue since the county was formed. There are three confirmed lynchings, that took place outside the powers of the court or typical law enforcement, of Black men in Meade County. All three men lived just outside of Guston where a large number of the Black population of Meade County lived after slavery. Richard and Edward Moorman were accused of a murder that neither was convicted of, in 1893. The Messenger does not have the 1890s archive digitized online at the moment. The other was a man of the name Ernest Bewley. The Meade County Public Library has a digital copy of the May 7th, 1902 edition of the paper which detailed Bewley’s lynching. Content Warning: lynching, racial violence.
The front page of the paper was adorned with a photograph of the tree that Bewley was hung from. His body is still hanging from the tree, just barely off the ground. The headline above the photo reads “WORK OF A MOB”. The photograph was taken by a J.S. Hutchinson of Brandenburg. The caption read “The above is a picture of what greeted the eyes of the early comers to Circuit Court last Wednesday at the State road about one mile from town. A full account of the lynching will be found on another page of the Messenger.” As readers flipped to the 7th page of 8, they could read about the details of the murder.
The article was very harsh not only to Bewley, but towards the Black community of Meade County as a whole, using an example of murder to paint the Black community as out of control, violent, and disrespectful towards whites.
“Bewley lived at Guston. The negroes of the place have not been as law-abiding as they should. Recently Ess Broadway, in a jealous rage, killed his sweetheart with a butcher knife, fearfully mutilating her...Tuesday when Bewley was guilty of a wanton offense, the white people of the town decided to make an object lesson of him. Hence the lynching.”
The article goes on to smear Bewley as being a drunk and a nuisance, hardly charges worthy of execution let alone a violent and racist lynching. After being kicked from a saloon a few times for being drunk, Bewley had apparently wanted to take revenge on the owner. He drunkenly shot from the cover of ambush and missed his intended target, causing a “painful wound,” to the leg of Harvey Dowell. After the sheriff took Bewley to the jail in Brandenburg, a lynching party was rounded up and took to the county jail at midnight. The jailer, by the name Thornberry, was not very protective of his prisoner and let the mob take him. After a half-mile march, they found a tree to hang Bewley from. The attempted hanging was unsuccessful, leading to Bewley suffering and choking in front of the crowd until someone shot or stabbed him in the back to bleed out. The next day the paper said, that hundreds had seen the body before it was cut down from the tree. No one cared to find the leaders of the unruly and illegal mob.
There were other tragedies that were narrowly avoided in and around the county. In Stephensport, Breckinridge County, a group of Black girls, one noted as the “sister of the Daniel boys,”, were harassed for not moving on the sidewalk as a group consisting of white children and a white man walked by. The man, “brushed against the Daniel girl.” After the young Daniel girl told her brother and “sweetheart” that the man had apparently tried to hug her, a confrontation near the train depot resulted in a white man being cut “ear to ear,” after brandishing a pistol. Wallace Blaine and a group of whites took after the young Black men and ran the rest of the young Black residents out of town that night. The article ends saying that just three Black residents remain, all old men.. However, the mob would run the three old men out of town by the next day.
Another near tragedy occurred just over a year later. A Black train porter was chased by a group of drunk white men, including Wallace Blaine, and had almost been cut with knives before shooting one of the attackers in self-defense. As the Messenger tells it, the white men got on at Hawesville in Hancock County, intending to head home to Stephensport. Upon entering the train, they refused to allow the porter to take up tickets which caused the white men to become agitated. They used, “abusive language” towards the porter, John Huelbank, when he got to their car and then began their assault. When Huelbank went back towards the “negro” car the men began chasing Heulbank and the four Black passengers in the car. Huelbank’s clothes were torn from head to toe and a preacher had his trousers cut from his body. There was an attempt to form a lynching party. The article recounts the incident in Stephensport from the year before, reiterating that, “[E]very negro in Stephensport was ordered to leave the town; which they did.” Huelbank was put in jail for murder.
Amid all of this hate and racist violence, none of these white men were held accountable except for the ones that were killed by their victims. Police, jailers, sheriff officers, not one held any white man or tried to hold any white man to account. However, there are great success stories of Black residents succeeding DESPITE the violence and hatred. The most harrowing story I could find comes from what is referred to as the “Free Negro Farm,” or “Free Slave Farm,” but I will be referring to it here as the Freedman’s Farm.
The Freedman’s Farm was near Flaherty and the Fort Knox area close to the Hardin County line. The almost 300-acre farm was bought on February 24, 1847, by Pleasant Moreman for $225. Pleasant was one of just 16 free Black people and five free “mulattoes” in the county at the time. The land came from the estate of Robert Oliver who was a wealthy land developer before he died. Pleasant lived with his wife Jemima who preferred to go by Mima and their daughter Catherine. That was according to the 1850 census. There are stories of multiple families living on the farm, and the majority of the free Black people may have live on the land. They made their livings by subsistence farming. That is they produced almost everything they needed to live on the farm.
Textile crops were grown such as flax to make clothes, there were many outbuildings on the property that are assumed to be for various animals that lived on the farm. They would have had sheep, hogs, chickens, and other low maintenance livestock they could raise and occasionally sell. After the 1860 census, no other residents were listed as living there, since Pleasant and his wife passed away before 1870. However, this is probably due to census workers not recognizing Black residents as citizens if they didn’t own any land. The farm would continue to live on though.
In 1918, while Camp Knox was being upgraded to Fort Knox a large group of Black workers from Louisville arrived just outside of the camp in Stithton, a town that would be absorbed by Fort Knox. Stithton was a sundown town known for its very real sign that told Black people to not let it get dark while they are in town. A large group of armed white people came with rifles and shotguns and told the workers they had to go to the Freedman’s Farm or risk violence.
The great thing about the Freedman’s Farm is that in a state that has such a grey area, purposefully, surrounding race relations, slavery, and other social issues surrounding race, the farm was a beacon of light and hope for Black residents in Kentucky. This state has played the “neutral” card too long regarding these matters, but there wasn’t really a place quite like the Freedman’s Farm anywhere else in Kentucky or the surrounding regions. A place that was safe amid all of the violence and hatred that followed the Black residents of this area everywhere. It showed that despite what happened to Richard and Edward Moorman, what happened to Ernest Bewley and what surely happened to others that did not get an article in the newspaper or have their stories told, that they would not be run out of their homes.
When Black residents tell you they don’t feel comfortable going to the riverfront because of the statue, they aren’t saying it to be difficult. They aren’t saying it to make you feel bad. They say it because they mean it. They say it because they know how Black people are treated in this county. They know about being chased and called slurs and having your family hurt or killed just for the color of their skin. They are told they don’t have their own unique history and they should just celebrate the collective white history of the county.
There is wonderful Black history here in Meade County. It isn’t wonderful in the sense that this has been a welcoming place, a tolerant place for Black people, but it is wonderful because, in spite of everything, the Black community here in Meade has shown superhuman resolve and tenacity. Zion Grove has so much great history that I did not mention here, there are families that have been here generations and have told countless people of their struggles only to have words fall on deaf ears. Don’t let these events fall on deaf ears or blind eyes.
As long as that monument remains there, the leaders of this county who I hope have read this, are racists, racist sympathizers, and do not care about their Black constituents, I will let them choose how to identify themselves. They show it every day they ignore the issue that is the statue. Prove me wrong. Remove the statue.
The historical information here was found online from the University of Kentucky, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, the Meade County Public Library’s online records of the Messenger, and Kentucky Humanities magazine Fall 2019 edition.