A podcast about Hopkinsville, titled “Been Pastoring Through Some Hard Times,” was launched earlier this summer by three men wanting to learn more about the community through the lens of race and history.
The men, all pastors and relative newcomers to Hopkinsville, framed the podcast around their reading of “Been Coming Through Some Hard Times: Race, History, and Memory in Western Kentucky,” a book about Hopkinsville that was published 10 years ago.
Friday evening I went to the Pennyroyal Area Museum to watch a live recording of the final two episodes of the podcast featuring three Christian ministers, Kamarr Richee, Brandon Boone and Richard Dixon. The book’s author, Jack Glazier, joined them remotely through a live video feed.
The audience of roughly 25 people included several members of the Nance family. At one point, when the podcasters were speculating about trauma that author bell hooks experienced growing up in Hopkinsville, Paulette Nance Robinson stood and spoke about her own family’s experience.
In the early 1960s, Robinson said, she and other Black children were sent to a former white school in southern Christian County. The shift was controversial because many white families did not want to give up their building for a newer school that had been constructed nearby. Robinson recalled seeing a noose hanging from a tree and a shot being fired at her school bus one day.
“Can you imagine how my Momma would be feeling knowing that they’ve got to send us to school,” Robinson said.
In 1966, the Nance family moved from a share-cropping farm in the county to a house in Hopkinsville.
“We had white friends in the country,” Robinson said.
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But when they moved to town, they were among a small number of Black children attending Westside School. Every day walking to and from school, they heard people yelling a racial slur at them, she said.
It was as if they had become different people just because they moved into Hopkinsville, she said.
Robinson’s sister, Shirley Shelton, said moving to Hopkinsville caused them to see color for the first time. They were not welcome. A teacher would not call on her when she raised her hand in class.
“When I became a teacher I made sure I did not do any of those things,” Shelton said.
Because Friday’s recording occurred before an audience, it provided the first opportunity for this kind of direct feedback since the pastors launched the podcast.
Another audience member, Wynn Radford, said Glazier was at the forefront of “digging into some issues the community didn’t want to talk about …” He commended the three podcasters for using humor at times to ask tough questions that needed to be asked.
“I think it’s ironic, maybe, that all four of you are not from Hopkinsville,” Radford said. “And I think there’s something to that. So I want to thank you.”
Richee, who is pastor of youth and community engagement at Edgewood Baptist Church, sometimes brings levity to the conversations, poking fun at the other men and himself to ease his way into topics that could be difficult to discuss. Boone, lead pastor at Edgewood, and Dixon, lead pastor at Restoration House, share a camaraderie with Richee that comes from months of talking about the community and their ministries. Dixon and Richee are Black. Boone is white. They meet weekly in a group of eight or nine men who are all local pastors.
They describe the podcast as, “One book, one community, three pastors, and a whole world of thoughts, opinions, experiences and emotions. Listen as three friends who pastor in the same community talk about the issues of race as it relates to serving and loving the community of Hopkinsville, Kentucky.”
They view Glazier’s book as a “springboard” for discussions that could help Hopkinsville overcome a range of problems. Current topics they discuss include the controversy over a Hopkinsville police officer’s TikTok videos, the condition of local rental properties and city government funding for former Inner-City REZ programs.
Friday’s recording will be split into two podcast episodes. The first one will be available on Monday and the second one will come a week later on Sept. 18.
You can find the podcast here. YouTube recordings are also available.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
