In June 2020 a Black Lives Matter protest erupts in Jessamine County, Kentucky. It soon transforms into a campaign to destroy the Confederate statue that looms behind them on Main Street.

As historian and local resident David Swartz covers this effort, he also investigates the history of this beautiful corner of the Bluegrass. He finds lots of hidden stories, including a disastrous expulsion of formerly enslaved refugees from a Union Army camp in 1864. Over 100 women and children die of exposure in a snowstorm. The incident implicates not just enslavers, but also the nation.

150 years later, Americans are still reckoning with violence against Black citizens. As protesters in Jessamine County chant, “Say her name! Breonna was asleep!” big trucks circle the courthouse, revving their engines in protest against the protest. A fierce backlash emerges.

Why, just months after the killing of Breonna Taylor in nearby Louisville, do so many resist the removal of a monument to men who fought to enslave Black people? Why, a full fifty years after the civil rights movement, are so many still so reluctant to say that “Black lives matter”? Why, 150 years after the Civil War, do so many want to maintain a statue honoring the Confederacy?

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Timestamps

00:00       Pastor Moses Radford denounces the statue as sign of hatred, bigotry, and racism

03:24       Physical description of the statue

06:00       David covers Black Lives Matter protests at the courthouse

13:30       Historian Amy Murrell Taylor tells the history of Camp Nelson, a Union supply depot and emancipation center.

27:05       Tracy K. Smith, Emeritus Poet Laureate of the United States, recites her poem about the expulsion.

28:50       Taylor describes the heartbreaking expulsion of refugee women and children.

36:57       Protests turn toward the Confederate statue

44:45       David interviews Judge David West

Transcript: Visit https://www.rebelonmain.com/episode1.

Resources

• For a similar podcast investigation about a Confederate symbol in Kentucky, check out Rebel Spirit by Akilah Hughes.


• Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps


• Tracy K. Smith, Wade in the Water: Poems


• For more on Camp Nelson, see https://www.nps.gov/cane/index.htm.


• For photos of Pastor Moses, the protests, and the statue, head to rebelonmain.com/episode1.

Production team

• Writer and Host: David R. Swartz


• Original Music, Sound Design, and Mixing: Barry Blair


• Story Editor: Stephen Smith


• Artistic Design: Josh Smith and Lisa Weaver Swartz

Next episode: In Episode 2—Defending History—David recounts the bizarre origins of the Confederate statue—and interviews a man who guards the statue from BLM protests with a big gun on his hip.