Jenna's Petition

Rebel on Main

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.

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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.