Archaeologist Stephen McBride wants to emancipate Jessamine from the Lost Cause. He zeroes in on Camp Nelson, which has nearly disappeared from the county’s memory. Farmers have leveled the earthworks, and developers are eyeing the site. Camp Nelson’s significance has also been buried by racial hostility. Many in the local Black community have been driven off by lynchings, KKK rallies, and backlash to the civil rights movement.

As construction workers begin to widen a state highway that cuts through the site, Jessamine’s best emancipationist memory is under threat of being permanently erased. But this disastrous development becomes the site’s salvation. The state historical commission steps in and gives McBride a year to recover what he can before the bulldozers return. To nearly everyone’s delight, the archaeologist unearths a long-buried narrative that once again tells hard stories about racial violence and inspirational stories about Black freedom. Camp Nelson begins to duel with the statue over the county’s Civil War memory.

Resources

• For pictures of Jenna, Pastor Moses, and the Wilmore march, head to rebelonmain.com/episode5.
• George Wright, A History of Blacks In Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980

Engage

• Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
• To support future creative projects, click here: rebelonmain.com/support.
• Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
• Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 As activists wait for Judge West to act on Jenna’s petition, Camp Nelson rises from the ground.

02:57 Archaeologist Stephen McBride describes his digs at Camp Nelson.

30:09 Calvonia Radford discusses the preservation of Black history.

32:51 Rev. Gates explains why he is suspicious of my interest in Black history. He tells stories of his descendants at Camp Nelson.

46:40 Judge West discusses the significance of Black history and the story of Camp Nelson becoming a national monument.

53:05 A luminaria in lament of the 1864 expulsion is the first event held at Camp Nelson National Monument.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode5.

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 6—A Confederate from Canada—a political activist uses the Confederate statue to win the 2020 election.

Two weeks into the Black Lives Matter campaign, homeschooler Jenna Sparks gets mad. This sixteen-year-old descendant of a Confederate ancestor, whose name was Jeptha Jefferson Davis Sparks, has a Black cousin, and seeing so many people in Jessamine who fly the Confederate battle flag angers her. So does walking by the Confederate statue, located just two blocks from her house.

So Jenna writes a petition to “remove and destroy” the statue. Hundreds of locals immediately sign, and her campaign makes the news. An interracial group of ministers led by Pastor Moses of First Baptist Church circulates Jenna’s petition. Then they write and submit their own to the judge. Jessamine County seems poised to reckon with its sordid record on race and Civil War memory.

Timestamps

00:00 Sitting on her front porch, Jenna explains why she wants to destroy the statue.

07:58 Pastor Moses starts an interracial ministerial committee.

14:00 Pastor Max Vanderpool describes racial conditions in Jessamine County.

18:25 The ministerial committee ramps up.

30:48 A “Black Lives Matter” rally in Wilmore

38:08 Resistance emerges.

47:09 Antistatue activists resolve to continue their campaign.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode4/transcript.

Engage

• Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
• To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
• Email swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
• Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Resources

• For pictures of Jenna, Pastor Moses, and the Wilmore march, head to rebelonmain.com/episode4.
• George Wright, A History of Blacks In Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980
• Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America
• On the Fallen Monuments Park in Moscow, see https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/fallen-monument-park.

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 5—Rival Monument—a very different narrative of the Civil War emerges from the ground.

Built with slave labor, Jessamine County, Kentucky, has a history that includes over a dozen lynchings, Jim Crow codes, and continuing racial inequities—all overseen by a Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn.

Like Confederate defender Brandon, Rev. Robert Gates cares very much about history. But the Confederate statue doesn’t speak for him. From his pulpit at the Historic Camp Nelson Baptist Church, he tells uncomfortable stories about Jessamine’s past that white residents don’t want to hear, violent stories not reflected by the statue on the courthouse lawn.

Gates’s history in Jessamine County goes way back. His grandfather, whose living memory dates back to the 1890s, lived here when the Confederate statue went up. He was here when a young Black man named Tom Brown was lynched. And then he passed on those memories to his son, Gates’s father. To this day, the extended Gates family refuses to walk by the statue. When they need to do business in the courthouse, they enter through the back to avoid the statue and the site of the lynching. It’s as if Jim Crow never ended.

Engage

• Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
• To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
• Email swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
• Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 Reflections on hospitality in Jessamine County

05:56 Maren shows David a graveyard in her backyard

14:00 Pastor Moses calls for some “real history” on the courthouse yard

18:45 At the local historical society, David watches a VCR tape of a 1987 outdoor drama of Jessamine County history

25:31 Maren shows David how to research slavery in the county clerk’s office

34:16 David speaks with historian Carolyn Dupont about racial violence and the Lost Cause

39:21 Back at the historical society, David watches a video of the Confederate statue’s 1995 rededication.

41:35 David heads to the public library to read old copies of the Jessamine Journal on microfilm.

45:36 Standing on site, David describes the lynching of Tom Brown

49:27 A local pastor reads Black poetry about racial violence

50:42 David speaks with Rev. Gates in the Camp Nelson church house

55:25 David travels to Frankfort, the state capitol, to hold a “lynching spoon”

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode3/transcript.

Resources

• For pictures of the graveyard in Maren’s backyard, video of the outdoor drama, and photographs of the lynching spoon, head to rebelonmain.com/episode3.
• The Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative
• Documenting Racial Violence in Kentucky
• George Wright, Racial Violence: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”
• Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
• James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
• https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america/

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 4—Jenna’s Petition—David talks with a local homeschooler who wants to destroy the statue.