Spring 2014 Kentuckykentucky Humanities Council, Inc
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
$5 Spring 2014 KentuckyKentucky Humanities Council, Inc. humanitieshumanities INSIDE: The Graves County Boys I 17 KYHUMANITIES.ORG Your source for: • Kentucky Chautauqua® • Speakers Bureau • PRIME TIME Family Reading Time • Kentucky Humanities magazine and all programs and services offered by the Kentucky Humanities Council, Inc. Telling Spring 2014 Kentucky’s Story Kentuckyhumanities Board of Directors Chair: William G. Francis, JD Prestonsburg Vice Chair: Aristofanes Cedeño, Ph.D. 10 Louisville James Still, Born in a Cotton Patch, Secretary: Brenda L. Wilson He Said He Was: An Appreciation Dry Ridge By Frederick Smock Treasurer: Howard V. Roberts, Ed.D. Pikeville James Duane Bolin, Ph.D. Murray Brian T. Burton Lexington Sara Walter Combs, JD Stanton 17 W. David Denton, JD The Graves County Boys Paducah A Tale of Kentucky Basketball, Susan Dunlap Louisville Perseverance, and the Unlikely Mary Hammond Paducah Championship of the Cuba Cubs David V. Hawpe By Marianne Walker Louisville Elise H. Luckey Columbia Tori Murden McClure, JD Louisville Nathan Mick Lancaster Minh Nguyen, Ph.D. 25 Richmond The Search for Something Sweet Phillip R. Patton, JD Glasgow Sorghum Molasses in Kentucky Reed Polk By Dr. Marshall Myers Lexington Dr. Judith L. Rhoads Madisonville In this issue John Michael Seelig, JD Morehead Campbell Greenup Owen Aaron Thompson, Ph.D. Richmond Daviess Harlan Scott Matisa D. Wilbon, Ph.D. Fayette Jefferson Trigg Louisville Fulton Kenton Whitley Mark Wilden Garrard Knott Lexington Elaine A. Wilson Graves McCracken Somerset Staff Ben Chandler Executive Director © 2014 Kentucky Humanities Council ISSN 1554-6284 Kathleen Pool Kentucky Humanities is published in the spring and fall by the Kentucky Humanities Council, Inc., 206 E. Maxwell St., Lexington, KY 40508-2613 Associate Director (859.257.5932). The Kentucky Humanities Council is an independent, non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Marianne Stoess Washington, D.C., and provides more than 500 public humanities programs for Kentuckians every year. Supporters of the council’s programs Assistant Director, Editor receive Kentucky Humanities by mail. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Kentucky Humanities Council board and staff. For information on story content or advertising rates, contact Marianne Stoess at [email protected] Wilma L. Riddle or 859.257.5932. Fiscal Officer Catherine Ferguson SpringChautauqua 2010 Coordinator1 Spring in the Commonwealth fter a long, brutal winter, we have finally turned the page to spring, the time when Kentucky shines its brightest. Spring brings some of Kentucky’s greatest passions to the forefront. From horse racing to basketball to community festivals throughout the Commonwealth, we Aget the chance to experience some of the best Kentucky has to offer. A sure sign of spring in the Bluegrass is the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Boy’s Sweet Sixteen at Rupp Arena. Marianne Walker shares the journey of the Cuba Cubs and their trip to the state tournament, then held at the University of Kentucky’s basketball palace Memorial Coliseum, in her new book The Graves County Boys. You can read about the small-town team that took the state tournament by storm on page 17. Springtime also marks the beginning of hundreds of annual festivals throughout the state. Festivals dedicated to everything from fried chicken to apples to bluegrass music are the pride and tradition of Kentucky communities. For more than 40 years, Morgan County has hosted the Sorghum Festival. Although it is not as commonly used today with sugar and other sweetners widely available and inexpensive, Marshall Myers gives a glimpse of how Kentucky pioneers used sorghum as a sweetner in place of sugar, and how sorghum could play a part in the future production of biofuel. One of the most commonly asked questions I get in my work as the executive director of the Kentucky Humanities Council is, “what are the humanities?” A new, hopefully recurring, column in the magazine by Murray State professor Dr. James Duane Bolin examines the often asked question of what are the humanities and why they are so important. You can find his column, In Search of the Humanities, on page 8. Lastly, Frederick Smock shares with us an appreciation of Kentucky author James Still. Still lived at the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, where he spent time writing and working as a librarian for nearly seven decades. He lived in a cabin on Wolfpen Creek, making the name Wolfpen a landmark in literary circles. Still Ben Chandler incorporated his experiences in Knott County and the area dialect for his novels, Executive Director poems, and stories. Kentucky Humanities Council We hope that you enjoy this issue of Kentucky Humanities and the stories we tell. We want to hear your Kentucky stories as well. If you have a story to share, please contact our magazine editor, Marianne Stoess, [email protected]. 4 Kentucky humanities Yes, they too were Kentuckians A look at some well-known, and not-so-well-known, people in Kentucky history Henry Stanbery By James C. Claypool 1803-1881 • Fort Thomas, Kentucky enry Stanbery, who resided for many years in Nonetheless, Stanbery and Johnson soon became a powerful Fort Thomas, Kentucky, was thrust upon the alliance consistently thwarting attempts by Senate Radical stage of history by a bizarre set of circumstances. Republicans to introduce new stringent policies toward the Stanbery was an experienced lawyer with South. When Johnson was impeached by the Senate in 1868, Himpressive credentials when President Andrew Johnson Stanbery resigned his office and readied himself to defend the appointed him attorney general of the United States in 1866. president. Despite the fact that Stanbery was 63 years old and Stanbery had earlier been made the first attorney general of Ohio quite ill throughout the impeachment proceedings, he mounted a in 1846 and participated in the drafting of Ohio’s constitution in brilliant defense, much of which had to be delivered to the Senate 1851. After serving as Ohio’s attorney general, Stanbery moved in writing. Stanbery was even too sick to attend and witness the to Cincinnati, where, in 1853, he returned to the private practice high drama of Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate chambers by a of law. One year later, he moved across the Ohio River to the single vote. nearby District of the Highlands in Kentucky. In 1866, Stanbery Afterward, when Johnson tried to reappoint Stanbery as drafted the paperwork of incorporation to convert that district attorney general, the Radical Republicans in the Senate, into the city of Fort Thomas, Kentucky. smarting from their loss, blocked the reappointment. After Initially a Whig, Stanbery switched to the Republican Party having helped preserve Johnson’s presidency, Stanbery when his former party was dismantled during the 1850s. remained in Washington for the next few years, often arguing After the Civil War, he was drawn into the political conflicts on strict constitutional grounds cases that challenged the and controversies surrounding Andrew Johnson’s presidency. government’s criminal prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Johnson, a southern Democrat who supported the moderate mid-1870s, Stanbery returned to his home in Fort Thomas, policies of healing and reconstruction that had been advocated where he briefly served as president of the Cincinnati Bar by the assassinated president, Abraham Lincoln, clashed Association. Afterward, he devoted his time to managing his throughout his term in office (1865-1869) with the Radical substantial property holdings in Fort Thomas and writing Republicans in the Senate who were determined to punish the about political and legal subjects. Henry Stanbery died in New South. When Johnson’s first attorney general, James Speed, York in June 1881. resigned in 1866 because he could no longer support Johnson’s In a sense, Stanbery’s role in fashioning the successful defense policies, Henry Stanbery was thrown into the political fires as of Andrew Johnson’s presidency remains only a sidebar to the Speed’s replacement. higher drama that saw that presidency so narrowly preserved. President Johnson had first taken note of Stanbery’s abilities in In their recounts, historians most often have focused on the 1866 while Stanbery represented the federal government in its deciding vote cast by an ailing senator from Kansas to sustain successful defense against allowing military courts to preempt the president. But as popular radio commentator Paul Harvey civil courts and to suspend a citizen’s right of habeas corpus. might have concluded, it is only after one understands the role Although nominated by Johnson in 1866 for the Supreme Court, played by Henry Stanbery in these events that one can actually Stanbery was left hanging on this matter when the Senate refused understand and appreciate the rest of the story. to act on his nomination. Instead, fearing that a Johnson court nominee would support the president’s moderate reconstruction Adapted from James C. Claypool’s book, Our Fellow policies, the Senate voted to reduce the number of justices from Kentuckians: Rascals, Heroes and Just Plain Uncommon Folk, and ten to seven, thereby depriving Johnson of the ability to appoint the subject of a talk offered by Claypool through the Kentucky new justices during his presidency. Humanities Council’s Speakers Bureau. Spring 2014 5 telling kentucky’s story council pages Three new members elected to Kentucky Humanities Council Board James Duane Bolin, Judith L. Rhoads, and Matisa Wilbon were elected to the Kentucky Humanities Council board of directors at the December, 2013 Board Meeting. They will each serve a three-year term, with a second three-year term optional. As members of the twenty-three-person volunteer board of directors, Bolin, Rhoads, and Wilbon will help set council policies, award project grants to community organizations, and participate in fund-raising to help the Council meet the growing demand for its programs.