Lights on Main Preview Party, 1893 Louisville Mayor Campaign Brick, First Woman Governor of Kentucky, and More
Happy voting week, y’all!
It has been an unexpected and at times unpleasant runup to the 2024 presidential election. Many of you have already voted and many more will vote tomorrow. If you are registered and not in one of those camps, I encourage you to VOTE.
Voters line up at a polling location in Oldham County for early voting, November 1, 2024.
Who you vote for is your business. It’s true, the pre-election noise can be triggering, and election texts, calls, and commercials are annoying at best. It’s also true that some old friends are no longer friends because of divisive politics. That’s a shame.
On the sunny side, America is engaged, and voter apathy seems to be a thing of the past. As recently as 1996, less than half of voting-age eligible American’s showed up to vote. Same thing in 1920 and 1924. But in the 2020 presidential election there was a 66% turnout, the highest turnout since 1990. If early voting is any indication, we could surpass those numbers this year.
As a reader of this Frazier Weekly, you won’t be surprised to learn there’s a lot of election coverage in this edition, including election day artifacts in our collection, Kentucky’s first and only woman governor, and a guest contribution from the League of Women Voters of Louisville.
We’re also rolling out two new programs, including the kickoff party for this year’s Lights on Main on November 21 and a holiday Bourbon program and barrel selection with our friends at Maker’s Mark on December 4. Plus, Rachel Platt sets up Saturday’s Veterans Day Parade.
I sincerely hope you enjoy.
Andy Treinen
President & CEO
Frazier History Museum
This Week in the Museum
Join Us December 4 for a Jolly Holiday Party with Maker’s Mark!
Spirit of the Season: A Very Merry Night with Maker’s Mark graphic.
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of joining a number of my colleagues for a tour of Maker’s Mark Distillery in Marion County, Kentucky. From the moment we arrived at the Maker’s Mark Welcome Center, they treated us to the best hospitality Kentucky has to offer: a mouthwatering and sustainably farmed lunch, delightful cocktails featuring Maker’s locally produced honey, a curated Bourbon tasting experience, and more. There’s a reason Maker’s Mark has such a devoted fandom!
From left, the Frazier’s Casey Harden and Rachel Platt help select the Frazier’s Maker’s Mark single barrel expression, August 15, 2024.
We are so proud to partner with Maker’s this holiday season to bring you Spirit of the Season: A Very Merry Night with Maker’s Mark. At this event, we will launch sales of our single barrel selection that we named in honor of our twentieth anniversary and the festive season. This is your chance to grab a bottle or two (or three!) of Frazier’s Twentieth Spirit and Spice—our special single barrel selection from Maker’s Mark. This event will feature a lively cocktail hour with a Maker’s Mark Gold Rush cocktail, live screen printing, and wax dipping! We will transition to a tasting room and sip our way through a guided tasting with Rob Samuels. You do not want to miss this opportunity to kick off December and the holidays with food, fun, and our friends at Maker’s Mark.
Leslie Anderson
Membership & Partnership Manager
Lights on Main Returns with Preview Party Tickets Now on Sale!
2024 Lights on Main Preview Party graphic.
Trees on display at last year’s Lights on Main at the Frazier, December 1, 2023.
The Frazier History Museum is ready to deck the halls once again with Lights on Main! We’re turning into a winter wonderland showcasing one hundred uniquely themed Christmas trees, each beautifully decorated by local businesses.
Lights on Main is presented by I Would Rather be Reading and the Frazier History Museum.
The lit trees, which Amazon is generously donating, will be delivered this week—then the decorating begins.
We are going to roll out a lot more information on our late nights, free family day, and activities here in Frazier Weekly, but here is the big headline for this week: LIGHTS ON MAIN PREVIEW PARTY.
It’s happening Thursday, November 21, and tickets are now on sale for you to get a jump on the holiday spirit.
For $25, you get entry into our exclusive party—with a first look at all the trees and those taking home awards such as Most Festive and Most Lou Spirit.
There will be some complimentary tastings, live music from Mrs. Claus and the Stocking Stuffers, as well as a cash bar and food to purchase. Plus, don’t forget to visit the Museum Shop for unique holiday gifts.
Click here to purchase your tickets to help us “light up” the holidays.
Your support also helps not only the Frazier, but I Would Rather Be Reading, which provides equitable literacy supports to children and families.
’Tis the season!
Rachel Platt
VP of Mission
From the Collections: H. S. Tyler for Mayor of Louisville Campaign Brick, 1893
H. S. Tyler for Mayor of Louisville campaign brick from 1893.
Hello Frazier friends! As we get ready for election day, we wanted to look at something election-related from our collections.
Born in Louisville in 1855, Henry S. Tyler first ran for the office of Mayor of Louisville in 1891, winning the election. Then, because of a new city charter, he ran again in 1893 and won. This made him the first mayor elected for a four-year term in Louisville. Another fun fact for Henry S. Tyler is that Tyler Park and the Tyler Park neighborhood are named for him.
This miniature brick, which is stamped “1893 H. S. Tyler for Mayor,” is a new addition to our collections. What an interesting campaign piece! We are used to seeing posters, flyers, buttons, pins, pencils, and pens. But this is truly a first for me and for our collections.
Tish Boyer
Registrar & Manager of Collections Engagement
Highlights of 120: Shelby County: Martha Layne Collins
120: Cool KY Counties graphic.
As we head to the polls, we wanted to remind you of a milestone in the Commonwealth that happened back in 1983. Martha Layne Collins was elected as the state’s fifty-sixth governor, becoming the first woman to hold the office and the only woman to do so to date. Her story is represented in our 120: Cool KY Counties exhibit. Keep reading to learn more.—Rachel Platt, VP of Mission
Martha Layne Collins, c. 1983. Credit: University of Kentucky Portrait Print Collection.
Martha Layne Collins was born in Bagdad, Kentucky, in 1936. Growing up in Shelby County, Collins’s parents were active in local politics and Martha assisted any way that she could. Collins started her career as a schoolteacher but shifted to politics in the 1970s. She spent several years working her way up the political ladder. After running a successful campaign, Collins became governor of Kentucky in 1983. She was the first woman to be elected governor of the state and was the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the United States.
During her time as governor, Collins worked to increase funding for educational reform. She incentivized Japan to bring a Toyota plant to Kentucky. The state saw huge economic growth under her command. She left the office of governor in 1987 at the end of her term. Collins remains the only woman governor in Kentucky’s history. Since retiring from politics, Collins continues to be a prominent figure in Kentucky.
20th Anniversary Photo: Suffrage Exhibition, 2020
Civil rights section of the What is a Vote Worth? Suffrage Then and Now exhibition presenting the 1964 March on Frankfort, Kentucky, July 27, 2020.
On August 7, 1965, Congress signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The work of civil rights activists from around the country led to the historic legislation. Civil rights activism in Kentucky was one of the subjects of the Frazier’s suffrage exhibition What is a Vote Worth? Suffrage Then and Now.
Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist
Bridging the Divide
Dee Pregliasco on League of Women Voters of Louisville
Empowering voters: that’s the mission of the League of Women Voters of Louisville, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works tirelessly in civic engagement. And an organization the Frazier History Museum has partnered with on several projects, including our suffrage exhibition a few years ago. And speaking of suffrage, that’s really how the organization began.—Rachel Platt, VP of Mission
League member Judy Lippmann registers a Seneca High School student at a Hispanic Student Association voter education event, September 2024.
From left, Joanne Beeler and voter services chair Jeanine Ashley.
The League of Women Voters of Louisville is a 104-year-old civic engagement organization founded in November of 1920—the year women received the right to vote through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Registering voters and educating them was the goal of the national and local leagues. Often, women had no information about the process of registering and making decisions about their voting choices, whether on issues or candidates.
As our history teaches us, not all women actually got to vote in 1920 because of racial prejudices and Jim Crow laws, particularly in the South which discriminated against women and men of color. Not until the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was voting for all more protected—though even today, there are attempts to suppress voting by qualified voters.
The Louisville League and its members have a storied history that includes the protests and marches that led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. The League has been active in other civil rights issues, including affordable housing, disabilities issues, criminal justice reform, merger of city/county government, desegregation of public schools, environmental issues, and, more recently, reproductive health issues and funding for public schools.
In the past year alone, the League achieved the following: distributed voting information at over seventy-five community events, planned and helped celebrate Women’s Equality Day, registered over 1,100 high school students in seventeen schools, performed get-out-the-vote canvassing, collaborated with community organization and held nine Democracy in Action programs on critical voting issues, registered almost 300 other voters, held thirteen candidate forums, participated in Lobby Day in Frankfort at the General Assembly, worked for voting rights restoration efforts and with our Observer Corps, began attending Metro Council committees and meetings to both understand and be alert citizens about how our government works and when we should speak out on certain issues.
So we are busy every day making democracy work. With the help of our 250-plus members, who are all volunteers, we continue to register, educate, and sustain voters who make democracy thrive and succeed for all Americans.
Please check out our website and we are members of the Kentucky League and the US League, also. Our address for the Lang House is 115 S. Ewing Ave, Louisville, Kentucky, 40206.
Come join us.
Dee Pregliasco
Member, League of Women Voters of Louisville
Guest Contributor
Charlotta Bass, the First Black Woman to Run for Vice President of the US
Most of us have heard the name Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 became the first Black candidate for a major party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Her slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.” Despite her loss, she said she always wanted to be a catalyst for change. Did you know there was another Black woman who made history about twenty years before Chisholm with the office of Vice President? The Frazier’s Susan Reed has her groundbreaking story.—Rachel Platt, VP of Mission
A 1952 Bass campaign flyer. Credit: American Labor Party.
The story of Charlotta Spears Bass is a combination of a promise made, personal integrity, and a belief that one person could make a difference.
Born in 1874, possibly in Sumter, South Carolina, Bass never spoke of her early life and began her memoir on the day she moved to Los Angeles in 1910. After high school, Bass found her way to Rhode Island and lived with her brother. She sold newspaper subscriptions for the local Black newspaper, the Providence Watchman, while attending Pembroke College. Suffering with arthritis and asthma, Bass decided to move to Los Angeles for a “two-year health recuperation stay.” Her two-year plan would last for sixty years.
Bass and local businessmen outside the offices of the California Eagle, 1930s. Credit: Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
A portrait of Bass believed to have been taken in Rhode Island. Credit: Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
When Bass got to Los Angeles, she found a job working for the California Eagle newspaper, selling subscriptions. The newspaper was owned by John Neimore, who viewed his newspaper as a “watchtower,” pointing the way for progress for people of color. In declining health, Neimore relied increasingly on Bass to document the racial inequality in Los Angeles and in America. Neimore called Bass to his bedside and made a deathbed request: “I am dying . . . but I don’t want the Eagle to die. You are the one in whom I have confidence. Will you promise to keep it alive?” Later, Bass would write: “I stood there, looking down on a dying man, trying desperately to compose my feelings and thoughts, and to weigh my words. How could I refuse? Yet, how could I promise?” After a pause, she responded: “I will do my best.” This promise would become a defining moment in her life.
For the next forty years, Bass was the owner, editor, and publisher of the California Eagle. With 60,000 subscribers, it was the largest and oldest Black newspaper. Bass is believed to be the first Black woman to own a newspaper in America. The paper did not shy away from difficult topics. Along with articles on the need for good jobs for people of color and the issue of redlining, Bass repeatedly exposed the Ku Klux Klan. This resulted in the Klan visiting her office late at night. Bass pulled a pistol out of her desk and ran them off. This event caused her husband to say: “Mrs. Bass, one of these days you are going to get me killed.” Bass’s response was: “Mr. Bass, it will be in a good cause.”
Outside of the newspaper, Bass worked on political issues in the community. She believed in organized labor, redirecting military budgets to social needs, and universal healthcare. In the 1930s, she endorsed a campaign known as “Don’t Spend Where You Can’t Work,” urging readers to boycott stores that refused to hire Black employees. She helped found the Independent Progressive Party of California in her response to her belief that both the Republican and Democratic Parties had neglected Blacks’ and women’s rights.
Bass was under surveillance for most of her life. The FBI saw Bass as a threat and restricted her travel. CIA agents attended her overseas conferences. The California NAACP would tear up her membership card for being “disloyal.” Even her sorority, Iota Phi Lambda, revoked her honorary membership. None of this would dissuade Bass from working toward making positive changes in her community.
In her late seventies, Charlotta made her boldest move yet: she accepted the nomination for Vice President of the United States of America. Running on the Progressive Party ticket, she would become the first Black woman to run for this office. On the day she accepted her nomination, the Voting Rights Act would not exist for another decade. It would be another two years before school segregation would be ruled unconstitutional. With her running mate, Vincent Hallinan, they ran on the platform of “peace and posterity.” The odds were against winning, but to Bass, winning was not the only goal of her campaign, stating: “win or lose, we win by raising the issues.” Dwight D. Eisenhower would win the 1952 election, but Bass would make history, and for a brief time her lifelong fight for equality would enter the national spotlight.
Bass would live until the age of ninety-five, turning her garage into a community reading room and voter registration site.
Bass wrote in her memoir, “I asked myself why I had promised Mr. Neimore to keep the Eagle going. In all the years since then, I have realized that my reason was very simple: I have always believed that this great charter of human rights was conceived and written by men who advocated freedom and liberty for all Americans, even for those who were once slaves. They sought liberty for all. It was this belief and the knowledge, learned from Neimore, that these rights must be defended, yes, and extended, that induced me to assume the responsibility of the editorship of the California Eagle.”
Bass summed up her life by describing her calling: “In public, in private, wherever I have heard the challenge, the call for a greater effort, the need for further struggle . . . I have continued to this day to work and fight and struggle toward the light of a better day.”
Charlotta Bass, the first Black woman to run for the office of Vice President of the United States, was an American citizen of integrity, conviction, and action.
Susan Reed
Stories in Mind Facilitator
History All Around Us
Kentucky Veterans Day Parade and Celebration on November 9
Last year’s Kentucky Veterans Day Parade and Celebration, November 11, 2023.
A veteran poses at last year’s Kentucky Veterans Day Parade and Celebration, November 11, 2023.
2024 Kentucky Veterans Day Parade route map.
Veterans Day isn’t until Monday, November 11, but this Saturday, November 9, is your chance to pay tribute at the Kentucky Veterans Day Parade and Celebration.
Organizers say it’s a heartfelt event to salute the brave men and women who have served our nation, offering a day of unity, gratitude, and remembrance.
It all starts with Operation Rendezvous, a traveling convoy from all corners of the area and converging in downtown Louisville.
The traditional parade starts at noon, proceeding east on Jefferson Street from Seventh to Fourth Street.
You’re asked to line the street to make the event extra special for our veterans.
There will also be a static display of vehicles along Sixth Street after the parade, giving you a chance to meet our heroes until 3 p.m.
And a heads up: just in case you can’t make it, the parade will be streamed live to Louisville MetroTV’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
Here is a link to the parade route if you’re heading downtown.
Metered parking is free all day on November 9 for the parade, and the Riverfront Garage is $3 all day.
Thank you to all our veterans.
Rachel Platt
VP of Mission
Dodgers Win World Series with Kentucky-Native Pitcher and Catcher
From left, pitcher Walker Buehler and catcher Will Smith celebrate after the final out in Game 5 as the Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series, October 30, 2024. Credit: Los Angeles Dodgers.
It’s one for the history books in Kentucky.
I’m talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers winning the World Series last week. The final out of the World Series had two Kentucky natives working “hand in glove.”
Pitcher Walker Buehler was on the mound for the Dodgers, and Will Smith was catching.
Buehler grew up in Lexington, and Will Smith grew up in Louisville and played at the University of Louisville.
The pictures of the two celebrating together after the win was priceless, as was Smith making sure that ball got authenticated and then into the hands of Buehler for his trophy case.
Will Smith bobblehead on display in Rachel Platt’s office at the Frazier, November 1, 2024.
In all transparency, the Smiths are friends of ours, and our older son played youth baseball with Will. I have Will’s bobblehead in my office and smile every time I look at it.
Way to go Dodgers—and way to rep, Walker and Will!
Rachel Platt
VP of Mission
