Thursday, Oct. 14th in Louisville, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights will celebrate its 50th Anniversary Civil and Human Rights Conference. John Trasviña, assistant Secretary of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity for the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, will announce the launch of a new HUD Fair Housing Innovative Education Program at Kentucky State University. The program is called The National Fair Housing Collegiate Partnership and is a practical concept designed to promote fair housing and educate students about their rights under the U.S. Fair Housing Act. This law prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, disability, sex, national origin and families with children. The HUD partnership program at Kentucky State University will also provide information for students who have interests in pursuing civil rights related careers.

If you are planning to be in Chicago on November 12th, register for this terrific seminar on Sophonisba Breckinridge. Anya Jabour, an excellent historian, will be presenting a paper for discussion about a campaign by this innovative professor to reform the way the police and the court treated women of color.

Betsy Brinson, Civil Rights in KY project director for KY Oral HIstory Commission, interviewed Audrey Grevious of Lexington at her home in Fayette County, April 13, 1999. A powerful storyteller and great educator, Grevious is generous in her oral history interview though she tries to downplay the fact that she played a major role in the local civil rights movement here in central Kentucky. From KHS catalog "Audrey Grevious speaks of her early education in Black schools which led her to become a teacher. She also became an activist, and, as President of the Lexington NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) together with Julia Lewis, President of Lexington CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) led a movement to challenge segregation in employment, and public accommodations. She notes the involvement of maids and non-profession people and the scarcity of ministers, with the exception of Rev. W.A. Jones, Historic Pleasant Green Baptist Church. When school integration came to Lexington, she tells how the Black students and teachers lost out."

This link is where your terrific research journal entries reside - invite your community members to sign up and join the site so they can participate in the process... and keep it going after the semester is over!

This site hosted by the Kentucky Historical Society was created by oral historian and archivist Doug Boyd (now at the University of Kentucky) - it offers open access to the transcripts and the video clips of the original interview of Jennie Wilson. The video clips were then edited and used within the KET production, "Living the Story" - see that version at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_jwilson.htm

Short notification of the AASRP race dialogues series starting on Sept 16 - the video is online at http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_jwilson.htm. The note would have been more useful if it included the KET website information and some description of expectation of the attendees, i.e., to discuss openly and respectfully very difficult issues regarding race, gender, sexuality, segregation and Kentucky's violent past (and present).

Professor Isenberg offers a powerful argument that the first organized US women's rights activists can be traced to the antebellum period, long before the 1920 milestone of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Powerful video about a woman who lived during the violence of segregation and how everyday activities we take for granted today took great courage then. For more information about this time period in Kentucky's history, see George C. Wright's ground-breaking book _Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings."

This KET video will serve as the focus for the first of the UK AASRP Race Dialogues (www.uky.edu/AS/AASRP) held in the UK Student Center on Sept 16th 4:30-6 p.m.

A Kentucky woman politician, the first state librarian, and first woman to be appointed to a statewide public office in Kentucky - takes it upon herself to write a how-to manual ... just like all the cookbooks and how to get an education and other womanly things that a New Woman in the 1920s should educate themselves about.