civil rights

Tuesday March 5th will be a historic day in Frankfort as hundreds are expected to gather at the State Capitol to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the 1964 Freedom March for Civil Rights. WUKY’s Alan Lytle spoke with Frankfort community organizer Katima Smith Willis and film producer/historian Joanna Hay, two members of the group Focus on Race Relations, which is helping to organize the day’s events, including a march and commemorative program featuring several guest speakers and an appearance by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

In this Black History Month edition of WUKY's award winning history series Saving Stories, Doug Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries highlights an extraordinary interview with Malcolm X from June of 1964. The conversation with Robert Penn Warren was part of a series of interviews the Kentucky author and poet conducted as part of his book “Who Speaks for the Negro.” The Muslim minister provides his opinions of the white race and the lasting effects of slavery and oppression on both the white race and African Americans. Malcolm X also questions the effectiveness of integration as well as non-violent tactics, like those advocated by Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. Less than a year after this interview was conducted Malcolm X would be assassinated on February 21, 1965.

WUKY is participating in this year’s Public Media Day of Action on Thursday November 10th. It’s a movement led by Public Media For All; a diverse coalition of public media workers of color, whose purpose is to raise awareness of the negative effects of a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in public media while sharing solutions for individuals and organizations. To provide a historical perspective of the media landscape, Doug Boyd from the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries is here with a segment of Saving Stories looking at how Lexington's daily mainstream newspapers handled coverage of African American communities. In 2004 the editor of the Lexington Herald Leader apologized for the newspaper's failures in covering the 1960's Civil Rights Movement.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights has approved a resolution calling for the repeal of capital punishment in the Commonwealth. The…