Constitution.Īnd according to James Bond, who was director of the Interracial Commission of Kentucky, “Negroes and white people had reached a mutual understanding which tends to foster good will and interracial cooperation."īut Bond, who was born to an enslaved mother and her white master 60 years earlier while the Civil War raged, may have been overly optimistic. Women in the state could finally vote, after the Kentucky General Assembly ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. The scourge of the influenza pandemic that claimed 20 million lives worldwide and 11,852 in Kentucky was over. Others stayed in town for fireworks and a 48-gun salute at Tyler Park, or to watch the Boy Scouts stage a “sham battle” at Harrods Creek or ride in a “10-mile automobile parade through the beauty spots of Louisville.”įive years after the end of World War I, peace and prosperity ruled the land. In so doing, they made it Kentucky’s first state park. Thousands flocked to Bardstown to celebrate the transfer of the Federal Hill estate to the state of Kentucky, which rechristened it “My Old Kentucky Home" after the famed song written by Stephen Foster.
Most Kentuckians had different entertainment in mind on July 4, 1923, as they celebrated the nation’s 147th birthday. As the July Fourth weekend kicked off 100 years ago in Louisville, under the cover of darkness 53 robed members of the Jefferson Realm of the Ku Klux Klan burned a fiery cross before boarding a train to Kokomo, Indiana, for what turned out to be the biggest KKK rally ever.Ī Courier Journal reporter mocked them as “Klownsmen” and wrote that if “they expected to create a furor, they were disappointed.” Three police officers who stood across the street yawned and then directed their attention to more important matters, the reporter observed.
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