The Bluegrass and Beyond

Kentucky’s new “religious freedom” law sure looks like an attempt by conservative Christians to justify discrimination against gay people and get around local “fairness” ordinances.

That is why many people were puzzled when Jim Gray, Lexington’s first openly gay mayor, was the most muted voice in the choir of opponents who urged Gov. Steve Beshear to veto the bill.

Beshear did issue a veto, but the General Assembly overturned it by a wide margin last week.

Beshear’s veto came at the urging of dozens of organizations and individuals — liberal churches, gay rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Kentucky League of Cities, the Kentucky Association of Counties and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, who said the bill would “take us backwards as a city and Commonwealth, hurting our strategic position in an increasingly global economy.”

Gray, however, issued a tepid statement that stopped short of urging a veto. He has declined to elaborate publicly.

“The legislation’s stated goal is to encourage religious freedom. That’s a worthy goal,” his statement said. “However, many citizens are concerned the bill may unintentionally open the door to discrimination. Last Thursday, I talked to the governor, shared these concerns and urged him to consider these issues carefully.”

Gray took a beating in social media from some gay people and their supporters, but gay rights leaders were more circumspect. Lexington Fairness chairman Roy Harrison, in an interview Friday, avoided any criticism of Gray.

“We are really happy that he brought more discussion to the bill,” Harrison said. “Everyone has their own political calculus.”

The General Assembly’s political calculus was clear. Most opponents of the bill were lawmakers from progressive urban districts. Legislators from more conservative rural, small-town and suburban districts voted for it.

In a conservative district, there is nothing more dangerous in the next election than having an opponent claim you voted against “religious freedom.” Rural Democrats, especially, are feeling the heat.

Gray is seeking re-election to a second term as mayor next year, so he may have wanted to avoid alienating conservatives. But few people expect Gray to get serious opposition. Former Police Chief Anthany Beatty floated a trial balloon about running, but it hasn’t gotten much lift.

Gray seems to be widely popular in Lexington, even among former critics. As mayor, he has had significant accomplishments and has made few missteps.

Besides, voters knew Gray was gay when they elected him to council in 2006 with enough votes to make him vice mayor. His sexual orientation wasn’t really an issue when he unseated incumbent Mayor Jim Newberry in 2010. Since then, Gray hasn’t tried to be “the gay mayor” — just “the mayor.”

Gray’s political calculation may have been that everyone, including the governor, knew where he stood on this subject, so he had little to gain by being vocal on a statewide controversy where he had no real influence.

Gray did come out strong a year ago on a Lexington controversy, when Hands on Originals cited religious objections in refusing to print T-shirts for a gay pride festival, sparking an ongoing investigation by the city’s Human Rights Commission.

A more important political calculation may have been that Gray didn’t want to anger the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bob Damon, D-Nicholasville, an influential member of the Central Kentucky delegation. Rep. Sannie Overly of Paris may have unseated Damron as chair of the House Democratic caucus this year, but the way this bill sailed through the General Assembly showed Damron still has plenty of clout.

For all the huffing and puffing on both sides, nobody seems to really know what this legislation will do. The stated intent is to make it easier for Kentuckians to ignore state laws or regulations that conflict with their “sincerely held” religious beliefs unless there is a “compelling governmental interest.”

Bill supporters such as The Family Foundation, which could be more accurately called the Foundation for Families Just Like Ours, insists it is not a vehicle for discriminating against gay people. But a spokesman also has argued that the Hands on Originals case wasn’t really discrimination.

The law’s uncertainties and unintended consequences were a big reason Beshear said he vetoed it. “As written, the bill will undoubtedly lead to costly litigation,” he said.

Don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars that have been wasted on defending clearly unconstitutional attempts by some local governments to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

Harrison, the Lexington Fairness chairman, said gay rights and civil liberties groups will be watching to see if this new law is used to try to justify discrimination. If so, they will aggressively challenge it.

Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, a Unitarian Universalist minister and opponent of the new law, mused that one unintended consequence of it could be to advance gay rights.

Unitarians support gay marriage. Could not they use this law to challenge Kentucky’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions as an infringement of their “sincerely held” religious beliefs? Might the state then be forced to show a “compelling governmental interest” for banning gay marriage?

One thing is for sure: this bad law will keep the culture warriors battling for years to come.

When I was a child, many white Americans, and most of them in the South, considered Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists to be radicals and trouble-makers. Some even called them “communists.”

Almost everyone now considers them heroes. Ideas about racial equality and justice that were then controversial are now common sense.

Segregationist leaders such as George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus are now remembered with contempt, when they are remembered at all. We pity the average people who enabled the bigots, either with their actions or their silence.

On Monday, we mark the 27th annual holiday honoring King, as well as the second inauguration of the nation’s first president of African descent. Looking back, it is amazing how much changed in so short a time. Racism still exists, to be sure, but it is no longer acceptable in mainstream society.

It makes me wonder: What controversial ideas today will seem like common sense in just a few years?

The first that comes to mind is gay rights. It is today’s most controversial civil rights issue, yet the nation has clearly turned the corner. You can tell it the same way you could tell by the early 1960s that we had turned the corner of black civil rights. The groundswell of support wasn’t just coming from the victims of discrimination, but from others who realized it was wrong and found the courage to say so.

If there has been a consistent theme of social progress during my lifetime, it is this: discrimination against any group of people because of who they are is un-American.

We saw an example of that last week when the small Perry County town of Vicco became the fourth municipality in Kentucky to ban discrimination against gays, joining Lexington, Louisville and Covington. Vicco officials said they weren’t endorsing homosexuality; they just thought discrimination was wrong.

Most opposition to gay rights comes from religious conservatives. During King’s lifetime, many white Christians found Biblical justification for segregation and discrimination, just as their great-grandfathers had for slavery. Everyone is entitled to their religious beliefs. What is problematic is when they try to impose them on others.

Wendell Berry, the renowned Kentucky writer and lifelong Baptist, made that point and many others to Baptist ministers meeting at Georgetown College on Jan. 11. Coverage of his talk has attracted a lot of attention. (Read more about what he had to say on my blog.)

When I think of other controversial issues that will seem like no-brainers in a few years, the reasons for our clouded judgment have more to do with economics than religion.

Kentuckians’ disregard for the environment reminds me of our willful ignorance about the health and social costs of tobacco just two or three decades ago. Only after the price-support system that made tobacco an economic mainstay of family farms was abolished did we stop trying to deny the obvious and defend the indefensible.

More than 30 local governments in Kentucky now have public smoking bans, and some legislators are pushing for a statewide version to curb soaring health-care costs. Restricting smoking in most public places is now common sense, yet it would have been unthinkable in Kentucky a generation ago.

Sit back for a moment and try to imagine conventional wisdom a few years from now. For one thing, I think, discrimination based on sexual orientation will be as unacceptable then as discrimination based on race, gender or national origin is now.

I also can imagine hearing comments like these:

Why did people back then allow the beauty and future economic viability of Eastern Kentucky’s mountains to be destroyed just so coal companies could extract the last measure of profit in return for a declining number of short-term jobs?

How could people back then have denied the scientific consensus about climate change and refused to act when the signs — melting glaciers, the increasing frequency of killer storms and droughts, year after year of record-high temperatures — were so obvious?

What were they thinking?

As we honor civil rights heroes Monday, and pity the bigots and their enablers, let us also give some thought to the future. Who will people honor then, and who will they pity?

And ask yourself: which side of history will I be on?

Discrimination has a price, and Hands On Originals, the Lexington T-shirt printer, could pay dearly for it.

The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization of Lexington filed a complaint against the company last week with the city’s Human Rights Commission. It alleges that Hands on Originals bid to print shirts for the 5th annual Lexington Pride Festival in June, then refused the job because it is “a Christian organization.”

The T-shirt design shows a stylized number 5 and the words “Lexington Pride Festival” on the front and the event’s sponsors on the back.

“Hands On Originals both employs and conducts business with people of all genders, races, religions, sexual preferences, and national origins,” owner Blaine Adamson wrote in a statement. “However, due to the promotional nature of our products, it is the prerogative of the company to refuse any order that would endorse positions that conflict with the convictions of the ownership.”

Since 1999, city law has forbidden discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation — including the sale of goods — on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, old age, sexual orientation or gender identity.

This complaint is unusual, both because it involves sexual orientation and because it was made by a group, said Sandra Canon, who chairs the commission. Most complaints come from individuals and involve gender or race discrimination in employment or housing.

The Human Rights Commission will thoroughly investigate the complaint and, if it is substantiated, offer to mediate a resolution, Canon said. If mediation fails, the commission could take the company to court for violating city law.

“I’m against discrimination. Period,” Mayor Jim Gray said in a statement after the complaint was filed. “It’s bad for business and bad for the city. I support the Human Rights Commission in a full and thorough investigation.”

City government has done more than $53,000 in business with Hands on Originals since June 2010, most of it related to downtown festivities during the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. The law prohibits the city from doing business with companies that discriminate.

Another big customer also has expressed concern about the complaint. A University of Kentucky spokesman said the school was reviewing the matter before deciding whether to renew a contract with Hands on Originals that recently expired.

I am sure Hands on Originals will have plenty of support from Kentuckians who either don’t like gay people or believe that homosexuality is a sin. Others will argue that a private business should be able to choose or refuse customers at will, regardless of what civil rights laws say.

Christianity’s view of homosexuality is open to broad interpretation. The way I read the Gospels, Jesus Christ never specifically addressed homosexuality, although he had a lot to say about self-righteous people who are eager to condemn others.

People have always tried to use religion to validate their beliefs, desires, prejudices and economic interests. With enough twisting, you can justify almost anything with scripture. Before the Civil War, many Southern ministers used the Bible to justify slavery.

Despite what many politicians say in campaign speeches, this is not a Christian nation. It is a nation where people have freedom of religion and freedom from religion. In recent decades, this nation has developed a strong tradition of protecting the rights of minorities.

Lexington, Louisville and Covington are the only places in Kentucky where anti-discrimination laws specifically protect gay people. Attempts by other cities to pass similar laws have been blocked, often by church folks.

Opposition to equal rights for gay people was at the heart of legislators’ shameful refusal last month to pass a law that would strengthen protections for children who are bullied at school.

Equal rights for black people was controversial in the 1950s and 1960s. Equal rights for women was controversial in the 1970s. Equal rights for gays and lesbians is controversial today, although legal support for anti-gay prejudice is rapidly disappearing.

When you look at this 235-year-old experiment in democracy that we call the United States of America, a couple of things are apparent. One is that discrimination of all kinds has become less acceptable with each passing year. Another is that history has not looked kindly upon those who discriminate, no matter how they justify it.

The nation has begun commemorating a series of 50th anniversary milestones from the civil rights movement.

Looking back, it is hard to imagine an America where citizens could be denied a job, a home or service in a restaurant or hotel because of their race, sex, ethnicity, religion or disability. But that was acceptable until anti-discrimination laws were passed in the mid-1960s.

Those laws didn’t just happen. People were beaten, jailed and even killed while fighting for them — and it wasn’t just the people who suffered discrimination. Things didn’t change until enough other people found the courage to speak out.

I offer this history lesson because Kentucky’s civil rights law remains incomplete. In most of this state, citizens can still be denied a job, a rental home or service in public accommodations based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Berea is now debating whether to join Louisville, Lexington and Covington as the only places in Kentucky that prohibit such discrimination through so-called fairness ordinances.

Berea’s suggested ordinance would protect gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace, housing and public accommodations. Still, there might be exceptions for employment at small, private businesses and faith-based organizations. The ordinance also might create a local human rights commission to investigate allegations of discrimination.

At a crowded public meeting in May, called by a three-member city council committee studying the issue, many citizens, including some Christian pastors, spoke against a fairness ordinance. “That was sufficient evidence to me that the possibility of discrimination exists,” said Jason Howard, an ordinance advocate.

But at a second public meeting last Thursday, speakers for an ordinance outnumbered opponents by three-to-one. The committee must eventually recommend that the council draft and vote on an ordinance, or not, or put the issue up for a public referendum.

Fairness laws have faced significant opposition across Kentucky. Henderson city commissioners adopted one in 1999, only to repeal it two years later amid voter backlash. Louisville’s ordinance failed several times before it passed in 1999.

Most opposition to fairness laws comes from Christians who consider homosexuality to be a sin. Other Christians disagree, or they believe laws shouldn’t be based on religious views.

Berea’s debate over a fairness ordinance has gained special attention because of the town’s progressive history. Berea College was founded in 1855 by the Rev. John G. Fee based on what he considered the Christian principles of fairness and equality. At the time, many other Christians quoted the Bible to justify slavery. The college was the first in the South to admit African-Americans and women. It is best known now for educating students of modest means who work in return for full scholarships.

A fairness ordinance is supported by two Berea churches Fee founded: First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Church of Christ, Union. Berea College hasn’t taken a stand on the issue, although it prohibits such discrimination on its campus and offers same-sex partner benefits to employees.

Christians have differing views on homosexuality. Many point to a few Bible verses that condemn it. But the Bible also prohibits divorce and says adulterers and non-virgin brides should be stoned to death.

Other Christians note that Jesus didn’t mention homosexuality in the Bible, but he did talk about loving your neighbor, treating people as you would want to be treated and being careful about judging others.

Homosexuality will always be subject to religious debate, because each Christian interprets the Bible to fit his or her own conscience and understanding. But that’s not really the point.

Freedom of religion — even freedom from religion — is a core American value. The same goes for equal protection under the law. Gay, lesbian and transgender people deserve the same legal rights and protections as everyone else. It won’t happen easily, though, so long as elected officials can get more votes by pandering to some people’s fears and prejudices.

The people of Berea have long set an example for the rest of Kentucky by treating society’s marginalized people with fairness and justice. The right thing to do in this case should be obvious. And it might even help other Kentuckians find the courage to speak out.

One of the most remarkable people I got to know as a young reporter in the 1980s was Myles Horton, whom Rosa Parks called “the first white man I ever trusted.”

Horton helped start the Highlander Center in Tennessee, which became a cradle of the civil rights movement. He was a confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he told me he first met when King was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

As Horton and I sat outside his hilltop cabin at Highlander one afternoon, enjoying a view of the Great Smoky Mountains in the distance, he talked about King and his legacy.

In focusing on King’s work for racial justice, Horton said, many people ignore the fact that he was equally passionate about economic justice. “What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter,” Horton quoted King as saying, “if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and cup of coffee?

Economic justice was at the heart of King’s career as an activist, from the Montgomery bus boycott that thrust him into the national spotlight in 1955 to the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike where he was assassinated in 1968.

Conservative extremists last year called President Barack Obama a “socialist” for pushing through what had been a Republican plan for healthcare reform. But some of the things King advocated five decades ago, such as a government-guaranteed minimum income, really did approach socialism.

The public was scared of communism in King’s day, so his enemies often called him a “communist” for challenging America’s status quo. A photograph of King with Horton at Highlander was posted on billboards around the South with the headline, “Martin Luther King at Communist Training School.”

“I’m not talking about communism,” King later replied. “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.”

Many of King’s proposals for achieving economic justice seem quaint, even far-fetched, today. He was a minister, not an economist. A half-century of history since then has underscored the power of entrepreneurial capitalism to improve society. But it also has shown the pitfalls of corrupt, monopolistic capitalism and unchecked corporate power.

This is a good time to review some of King’s thoughts about economic justice. The King holiday Monday comes at a time when Wall Street has recovered from the Great Recession, but Main Street still has a long way to go. Meanwhile, politicians talk about making drastic cuts in America’s social safety net.

“The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst,” King said in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. “The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. … In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent.”

In a 1967 speech, King said: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”

Because King was a Christian minister, his words often echoed those of the Biblical savior worshipped by both liberals and conservatives. In a speech only days before he was murdered, King had this to say: “One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power.

“It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, ‘That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.’ That’s the question facing America today.”

While much has changed since King’s time, much else has not. That is why his words remain so powerful and relevant. King had a gift for bringing America’s strengths and weaknesses into sharp focus and inspiring us to do better than we have.

A famous African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” For many African-Americans in Lexington, that village was the Oakwood subdivision.

Some Oakwood children are now in their 40s and 50s, and they will return this weekend to the subdivision off Georgetown Road that they credit with helping to shape their lives and success.

The reunion begins at 5:30 p.m. Friday with a tour of Bryan Station High School, where three years ago a new building replaced the one where many of them excelled in athletics and academics. On Saturday, a block party is planned from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. A memorial service, dinner and party begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Lexington Hilton Downtown.

“I always thought Oakwood was a special place,” said Angela Duerson Tuck, an editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who helped organize the reunion with a Facebook page. “All of the adults looked after all of the children. Everybody knew each other. Everybody helped each other.”

Oakwood was special from the beginning. When the 106-home subdivision opened in 1964, it was only the second development in Lexington where African-Americans could buy a new house. The first, St. Martins Village, had opened a few years earlier, about a mile down Georgetown Road.

Oakwood opened the same year that Congress passed landmark civil rights legislation that prohibited housing discrimination. Before that, such discrimination was not only legal but widely practiced.

The subdivision was carved from farmland near the factories of IBM, Square D and Trane. Those employers were willing to hire African-Americans and pay them enough so they could afford an Oakwood home, which then sold for about $20,000.

The 1960s were the heyday of suburbia, and Oakwood was a place where African-Americans could live the suburban dream. The neighborhood’s popularity led to the development five years later of the adjacent Oakwood Estates, with 139 homes.

Many Oakwood homeowners had grown up together in Lexington’s East End or were classmates at the old, all-black Dunbar High School. Some worked together and many went to church together.

“We became very good neighbors,” said Julian Jackson Jr., 78, the first black director of the Kentucky Cabinet for Human Resources.

“It always seemed like an extended family,” Tuck said of Oakwood, where her parents moved in 1965 from Winchester. “We used to joke that if you did something you weren’t supposed to and one of the parents saw you, they’d correct you and then call your parents, so more discipline would be waiting for you when you arrived home.”

The 1964 marketing brochure for Oakwood subdivision

The Jacksons were the third family to buy a home in Oakwood, in August 1964. Jackson and his late wife were in a hurry to enroll their son, Jarold — now supervisor of field operations for Kentucky American Water — in first grade at Linlee Elementary School.

Lexington’s schools were being peacefully integrated, but Linlee’s principal made a point of calling several Oakwood parents to tell them their children would be welcome.

Those former Oakwood children remember how their parents emphasized education and hard work. “There was just no tolerance for not achieving,” Tuck, who began her career at the Herald-Leader, said with a laugh.

Others returning for the reunion include Randall Johnson, a Chicago attorney who graduated from Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, and Greg Fields, a former WKYT-TV meteorologist who works for WFAA-TV in Dallas.

But some of their friends won’t have to come far — they still live in Oakwood.

Most of the homes belong to their original owners or their heirs. Jarold Jackson and his brother, Jonathan, have homes in the neighborhood. And Jarold’s son, Brian, 27, lives in the Oakwood home that once belonged to his great-grandmother.

The neighborhood now includes several white families.

As I photographed Julian, Jarold and Brian Jackson at the Oakwood entrance Sunday evening, the occupants of every passing car waved to them. Julian Jackson’s dentist stopped and rolled down his window so he could tease him.

“This,” Julian Jackson said as his dentist drove away, “has been a pleasant place to live.”

Three generations of Oakwood homeowners: Jarold, Brian and Julian Jackson.

Former state Sen. Georgia Powers of Louisville was interviewed last week. Photo by Tom Eblen

In a darkened former courtroom on ground where slaves were once bought and sold, Georgia Powers sat in front of a video camera and told her story.

Born in the “Jim Crow Town” section of Springfield, she grew up in Louisville. Powers first realized African Americans were being treated as second-class citizens when she and a white friend had to attend different schools.

Powers grew up to be a community organizer and civil rights activist. When a state senator she was trying to lobby blew smoke in her face, she decided she needed a seat beside him. Powers became the first woman and first African American elected to the Kentucky Senate. There, she sponsored and fought for passage of the South’s first laws guaranteeing blacks equal rights to home ownership and public accommodations.

“I saw a need for someone to speak out for women, for African Americans, for children,” said Powers, now 85. She described a time that seems so long ago, but wasn’t, and the skillful political maneuvering it took to secure rights and freedoms Kentuckians now take for granted.

Powers’ story says a lot about the Kentucky experience — and the American experience. It is one of many stories that will be featured in a documentary film being made by five University of Kentucky professors, Academy Award-winning director and producer Paul Wagner and composer Kinny Landrum. The film will be narrated by the Kentucky-born actress Ashley Judd.

Filming for Kentucky — An American Story began last week with Daniel Blake Smith, a UK historian and the film’s executive producer, taping several interviews on UK’s campus and at the Lexington History Museum in the former Fayette County courthouse.

In addition to Powers and fellow civil rights activist J. Blaine Hudson, Smith interviewed journalists Al Smith and Maryjean Wall and historians Ron Eller, Tracy Campbell, Stephen Aron and John Mack Faragher.

Full-scale filming will begin in the spring, and Smith expects the documentary to be finished by mid-2010. The film will be either one or two hours, depending on how much more money the filmmakers’ non-profit corporation can raise. And it will be only one piece of a project that will include a companion book and a Web site with supplemental content that schools can use to teach Kentucky history.

Smith said the filmmakers want Kentuckians to learn more about their history — and take pride in it.

“We think Kentucky’s history is very revealing of the American experience,” he said. “So many people think that American history only happened in places like Washington and Philadelphia and Boston. But a lot of it happened in Kentucky. We want viewers to be surprised about what has happened in Kentucky and feel connected to it.”

Kentucky — An American Story won’t cover everything, and it won’t be a dry history lesson. Both Smith and Wagner, also a Kentucky native, have significant filmmaking experience. Their collaborators include two historians and authors, Campbell and Eller, who know how to tell a good story.

The film will focus on Kentucky people, land and politics, telling stories both familiar and surprising. Those stories include Kentucky’s pioneer settlement and early prosperity; how racial and religious conflict gave way to pioneering civil rights progress; the blessing and curse of coal and tobacco; the planning and marketing that created the thoroughbred horse industry; and even the rich history of girls’ basketball.

In his interview for the film, journalist Al Smith, the founding host of KET’s weekly public affairs program Comment on Kentucky, discussed the state’s many contradictions and challenges.

Kentuckians have long been stereotyped by outsiders as feuding mountaineers and poor hillbillies. Yet, Kentucky has produced some of America’s most acclaimed authors and intellectuals, people such as Robert Penn Warren, Harry Caudill, Harriett Arnow, Wendell Berry and Elizabeth Hardwick.

Many Kentuckians once rejected the science that shows tobacco causes cancer just as they now reject the science that shows burning coal causes global warming, Smith noted. And not far from one of the nation’s most remarkable collections of prehistoric fossils, fundamentalist Christians recently built the Creation Museum.

The Kentucky of 1784 was described by pioneer author John Filson as the “New Eden,” yet many parts of the state have since been despoiled by strip mining, excessive logging and overdevelopment.

For two and a half centuries, Kentucky has always seemed to be at the center of America — not only its geography, but its people’s successes and failures, challenges, hopes, dreams and cultural conflicts. Author Jesse Stuart described it this way: “If these United States can be called a body, Kentucky can be called its heart.”

For more information

For more information about Kentucky — An American Story and to see video clips of sample segments narrated by actress Ashley Judd, go to the film’s Web site: www.kentuckyanamericanstory.org