This afternoon outside the Pennyroyal Area Museum, Hopkinsville native Francene Gilmer read excerpts from a handful of personal stories from formerly enslaved residents of Christian County.
These accounts, collected after the Civil War, were spoken aloud in the heart of Hopkinsville to celebrate emancipation. It was part of the Eighth of August commemoration organized by the Hopkinsville-Christian County Human Rights Commission the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County.
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, and slavery ended in Kentucky in December 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
Gilmer, executive director of the Christian County Literacy Council, first read the following:
“I was born May 15, 1856. My mother was the property of Mr. Bob Scott, in this county. I was a little fellow only 6 or 7 years old when set free with my mother. I can’t remember much about it, but I recollect my mother told me, ‘Now you is just as free as anybody.’”
Another account begins, “My mother was owned by Jarred Crabbe and when I was a little child she was sold to Mr. George Cayce and I never saw her no more until I was 35 years old. She was living in Brooklyn, New York, and advertised for me.
“I was her only child and my father was a white man — and after I found her she told me who he was. I lived in Christian and Todd counties after the war and now live in a little home of my own at Herndon.”
These two accounts are included in a Hoptown Chronicle article that Alissa Keller, executive director of the Hopkinsville museum, wrote for Black History Month in 2023. Headlined “After enslavement: Christian County stories of survival,” it focuses on 25 formerly enslaved residents who had brief biographies published in the Kentucky New Era newspaper in 1934.
Today’s museum gathering was the first of three Hopkinsville events planned to celebrate the Eighth of August. You can read here about the Supper Club happening Thursday and the Taste of the Town on Saturday.
And here’s more from our archive of Black history stories.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
