Ghosts of Jessamine

Rebel on Main

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.

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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.