Good Monday morning,

If you live in Louisville, Kentucky, there are certain topics that have sparked the incendiary nature of debate for decades. In any room, at any time, “Cats versus Cards” can lead to a family feud. The legalization of casino gambling has been disputed ad nauseam. Urban donkeys and rural elephants are at it every day.

But if you’re looking to start a fire at your next dinner party, there is no topic sure to inspire opinions like the Jefferson County Student Assignment Plan. Since 1974, when JCPS committed to fostering a diverse learning environment through policy, the people have spoken — passionately, and persistently — on various sides of the multi-faceted debate.

Completely aware that new ground is tough to come by, the Frazier is hosting its next Bridging the Divide program on the topic: the January 25 “JCPS & Diversity: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next?” program. Rachel Platt and I are moderating the program; please wish us good luck.

In this week’s issue of Virtual Frazier Magazine, we mark the one-year anniversary of Sippin’ With Stephen. To celebrate, Stephen Yates shares one of his winter favorites, Baker’s Kentucky Straight Single Barrel. In “Curator’s Corner,” Amanda Briede spotlights five books that are helping inform our upcoming exhibition The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall. Megan Schanie previews our January 15 program “Cool Kentucky Teacher Series: Exploring the History of Mammoth Cave Through Literacy and Inquiry.”

You’ll learn about our West of Ninth t-shirts in the museum store, we’ll have a recap of winter camps with Heather Gotlib, and Christopher 2X talks about Future Healers got Zoo Buddies.

I hope you enjoy.

Andy Treinen
President & CEO
Frazier History Museum

This Week in the Museum

Sippin’ With Stephen: Booker’s Small Batch Bourbon Neat

It’s hard to believe I’ve been hosting this program for a year!

In honor of this milestone, Sippin’ With Stephen is saying thank you to you, the viewers — the folks who’ve subscribed to Virtual Frazier Magazine and tuned in to the show, as well as those who have used the information I provide to help plan your Kentucky Bourbon Trail® experience. If you enjoy this show, I encourage you to click the “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons when you view it. When you subscribe to VFM, you not only get Sippin’ With Stephen delivered to you — you also get all the other fantastic content packed in each weekly issue of the newsletter. The year 2021 provided some fabulous guests on Sippin’ With Stephen, and I promise 2022 will be even bigger and better!

This month’s cocktail is simple and one of my all-time favorites: Booker’s poured neat! When winter temperatures set in, there’s nothing like high-proof small-batch Bourbon to warm the bones and impart the fantastic feeling of that Kentucky Hug!

Booker’s Small Batch Bourbon Neat

A healthy pour of Booker’s Small Batch Bourbon 127.4 proof into your favorite drinking receptacle.

Cheers!

Stephen Yates
Community & Corporate Sales Manager

Kentucky Bourbon Distillery Spotlight: Tips for January

The Bourbon Spotlight this month focuses on the fluctuating hours at distilleries in the month of January.

As is a tradition in the Bourbon industry, distilleries will be adjusting their hours of operation and availability for distillery tours in January. This is a combination of cold weather causing the demand for visits and tours to decrease along with the current spike in the Omicron variant of COVID-19. With that being said, if you are planning to visit any of the distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, please contact those distilleries to verify their hours of operation and also to purchase your tickets in advance from their website. Please do not assume the distilleries will be running normal hours of operation, as that is more than likely not the case. Even though January can be a cold time to visit your favorite distillery, the crowds are typically smaller and you can have a fantastic time as long as you do your homework and find out the hours of operation, purchase your tickets in advance online, and make yourself familiar with the health and safety protocol for each distillery you want to visit. Remember, each distillery establishes their own rules, and they are not all going to be the same.

Stephen Yates
Community & Corporate Sales Manager

Curator’s Corner: Five Books Shaping The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall

With our next exhibition The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall opening in May, I have been extremely busy conducting preliminary research. During this process, I’ve come across some incredible books. Since some of you may still be making your beginning-of-the-year reading lists, I thought I should share my favorites with you. What follows is a list of five books — each of which has helped me strengthen my understanding of Kentucky history, and thus informed the upcoming exhibition.

A New History of Kentucky by James C. Klotter and Craig Thompson Friend. 2nd ed. 2018.

Offering a huge and comprehensive look at Kentucky’s history, this book has served as an incredible resource for me as I begin to build the exhibition. If you want to know a little about everything Kentucky history-related, this is the book for you. It covers everything from the native peoples of Kentucky through 2015. I am especially impressed by the attention paid to the stories of women and African Americans throughout the book.

Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology by Stanley Hedeen. 2008.

This book focuses on Big Bone Lick, a fossil site located in northern Kentucky at a natural salt lick that once attracted mammoths and other prehistoric creatures. Of particular interest to me in this book are the descriptions of how native peoples utilized the site and their myths about how the lick was created. Having wanted to be a paleontologist since I was a kid, I really enjoy the tales of amateur paleontologists such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Daniel Boone, all of whom came to visit this small site in Kentucky.

Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past by Ana Lucia Araujo. 2020.

While not specifically about Kentucky’s history, this book is still an incredible resource, and has help me conceptualize how we might approach issues surrounding slavery in the exhibition. Published in 2020, Slavery in the Age of Memory presents several contemporary examples of how slavery is addressed in history museums, monuments, artworks, and more, to examine what was successful and not successful about each of the examples. If you are interested in in-depth discussions of public history and cultural memory, you’ll want to add this one to your reading list.

I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad by Karolyn Smardz Frost. 2008.

Here at the Frazier, we reference this book a lot. It has become a staff favorite because of Smardz Frost’s ability to tell history in a way as engaging as fiction, bringing in additional historic details to create a fuller picture. I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land tells the story of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, two enslaved African Americans in Louisville who make a daring escape, finally finding freedom in Toronto and opening the city’s first taxi business. With several twists and turns along the way, this book is simply a great story that is fun to read.

Kentuckians Before Boone by A. Gwynn Henderson. 2013.

A. Gwynn Henderson and Tressa Brown are two incredible archaeologists that we have the pleasure of working with as advisors for the Native American content in the exhibition. They are passionate advocates who make sure we are telling an accurate account of Kentucky’s native peoples. I love Kentuckians Before Boone because it uses archaeological data to tell the story of the everyday lives of a native family in central Kentucky. At its heart, The Commonwealth is about Kentuckians and this book provides the perspective of the native peoples that are often left out of the story.

I hope these books will provide you with some insight into Kentucky’s history and preview some of the things to come in The Commonwealth. Stay tuned to Virtual Frazier Magazine for more updates on the exhibition as we approach the opening!

Amanda Briede
Curator

Museum Store: West of Ninth T-shirts and Magnets

Created by Walt and Shae Smith, West of Ninth is a photography and personal narrative blog that features residents of the nine neighborhoods of West Louisville. These narratives give residents a voice and strive to create a sense of understanding to those within and outside of the West Louisville community. In partnership with Walt and Shae Smith, the Frazier’s exhibition West of Ninth: Race, Reckoning, and Reconciliation uses the blog as a jumping off point to explore the historic roots of Louisville’s Ninth Street divide, delving into issues of race, segregation, and redlining. Sold in the Frazier’s museum store, the t-shirts are $20 and the magnets are $6.

How Does Inquiry Engage Students in Kentucky?

Many of us remember the days of memorizing names, dates, and basic facts in our social studies classrooms — and, perhaps, thinking history was a boring subject on which to spend even an ounce of our time and energy. If you’re anything like me, you may not have discovered a love for history until you were an adult. Technology and access to information have changed in leaps and bounds since I sat in a classroom. And if you walk into many social studies classrooms in Kentucky today, you will notice teaching strategies are evolving, as well.

Many educators and organizations in Kentucky have been working for some time to explore, explain, fine-tune, and promote inquiry education in the social studies classroom. Instead of memorizing information to share back on a test, students are learning to consider compelling and supporting questions, investigate and utilize a variety of sources, and communicate conclusions based on their research.

The Frazier education team is continually working to hone techniques for teaching through inquiry and utilizing questions to inform our programs, including “How does where you live affect how you live?” for students exploring our West of Ninth: Race, Reckoning, and Reconciliation exhibition and “How can you have authority, but not power?” during our upcoming teacher professional development on January 15, which will focus on the enslaved guides of Mammoth Cave.

If you’re interested in learning more, Dr. Kathy Swan, professor of social studies education at the University of Kentucky, tackles the question “Why Inquiry?” on the Making Inquiry Possible website. And to see inquiry in action in a Versailles, Kentucky classroom, click here.

Megan Schanie
Manager of School and Teacher Programs

Museum Coffee and Pet Rocks Round Out Winter Break Camps

December was a whirlwind month for kids and families at the Frazier, from our Holiday Family Day to the first Winter Break Camp since 2019! We loved having kids back in the door for festive fun.

We tried big things, including opening our own business, Museum Coffee… historical, but fresh! After learning all about the caffeinated philosophical conversations of eighteenth century Europe, we applied those lessons to an immensely successful enterprise. We’re proud to announce that we completely sold out of our (free) products in a mere thirty minutes.

We ended the first week of camps with a bang, celebrating all things 1970s. From taking advantage of the warm weather to pick “pet” rocks off the banks of the Ohio River to taking advantage of the clean architectural lines of graham crackers to make mid-century modern “gingerbread” houses, we learned history with a Frazier twist! “I loved making Rocky, my pet rock,” camper Marley said. And indeed, our pet rocks were well taken care of that day.

Camper Dolly shared that “I like that the lessons are always interesting and we get to do fun activities after!”

Don’t miss out on the fun: Sign up to be the first to know about future camps!

Heather Gotlib
Manager of Youth and Family Programs

“Changemakers” to Feature Sadiqa Reynolds and Rev. Dr. Jamesetta Ferguson

Transformational projects, and transformational thinking.

Did that get your attention?

It has certainly gotten mine, and led me to organizing an upcoming program in our “Let’s Talk: Bridging the Divide” series, this one titled “Changemakers,” slated for February 17 here at the Frazier.

It came to me after visiting the new indoor track facility, the Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center, championed by Urban League president Sadiqa Reynolds and attending the ribbon cutting for The Village @ West Jefferson, championed by Rev. Dr. Jamesetta Ferguson of MOLO Village.

Sadiqa was at the event, and I remember saying to her, “I have to get you and Jamesetta in the same room for a program. What vision, what tenacity, what lessons we can learn.”

So from those two pillars, I added a few more names who are making their mark as well, breaking barriers and bringing a new lens to some major organizations.

Andre Guess, Adria Johnson, and Jean West will round out the panel. I can’t wait to see how these Changemakers will continue to make a difference in our community.

Please join us February 17 at 6 p.m. here at the Frazier. You can register here.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement

History All Around Us

Notable Kentuckians: Representative Darryl Owens

So many are paying tribute to former state Representative Darryl Owens, calling him a giant among public servants and a civil rights icon.

Friends call him a Smoketown Original: He was born in Louisville and graduated from Central High School before attending Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.

Owens would break barriers, becoming the first Black elected official to join the Jefferson County Fiscal Court in 1983. He was also Kentucky’s first Black Assistant Attorney General.

He would serve in the Kentucky House for more than a decade, retiring in 2018.

Metro Council issued a statement saying in part he broke barriers and earned respect from people across the political spectrum. We are forever grateful for his service and dedication.

In 2014, journalist Betty Bayé interviewed Owens as part of the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame Oral History Project.

Owens was eighty-four years old.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement

Bridging the Divide

Christopher 2X on Future Healers got Zoo Buddies

Who doesn’t want to be a Game Changer, right?

But to do it for children, and children who have been in impacted by secondary trauma from violence — well, that just takes it to another level.

My shout-out is to Christopher 2X, and his program Game Changers, that keeps expanding its mission with Future Healers, and now, Future Healers got Zoo Buddies.

Those who support his mission call Christopher 2X a champion for the marginalized.

Future Healers is a partnership between U of L Hospital’s Trauma Institute, University of Louisville Medical School students, and Christopher 2X’s Game Changers organization.

The goal is to help children who have been impacted by violence in their neighborhoods build a better future, with this particular program focusing on personal health, safety, and wellbeing.

And now the program has expanded again with the announcement last week of Future Healers got Zoo Buddies.

Those same fifty children are exploring the healing and therapeutic power of animals.

I talked with Christopher 2X about Game Changers, how it continues to grow, and how everyone can help change the game.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement