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On February 21st, for the 17th year in a row, the Metro Council – under the leadership of Councilwoman Dr. Barbara Shanklin – will present our annual Black History Month Program, which celebrates black Louisvillians’ cultural contributions to our community. Each council member has the privilege of nominating one honoree, and this year I have asked Tim Northern to represent District 8. Tim is a comedian. He is a national performer, a local scene leader and the founder of the Tim Northern Comedy Festival, which brought more than 100 comedians together to perform in venues all across Louisville last year. The festival will return in the fall and has big plans for the future.
Tim joins my past nominees Anthony Raspberry (2017) and Stacey Robinson (2018) as both an artist and an impact maker. Moreover, he is a good neighbor – and you can put that on a bumper sticker.
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If I could nominate a place in District 8 to honor for Black History Month, it would be Eastern Cemetery, which I have briefly mentioned in eNews before but deserves a fuller recognition here. Located immediately adjacent to and chartered in the same year (1848) as beautiful and famed Cave Hill, Eastern is one of Louisville’s oldest cemeteries. In 1989, however, it was discovered that the Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries Company had criminally over-buried about 138,000 people in 16,000 graves on Eastern’s 28 acres. (By comparison, there is space for about 142,000 interments on Cave Hill’s 296 acres.) As a result, the company was dissolved, the personnel were charged and the cemetery was abandoned. It fell into disrepair and has remained without professional management ever since. But for the Herculean effort of the all-volunteer nonprofit Friends of Eastern Cemetery to pick up trash and cut the grass for the last six years – which isn’t sustainable – the burial ground would be a jungle.
The story of Eastern Cemetery is a travesty and the people who are buried there and their families deserve better. Just to name a few of the black historical figures interred at Eastern (among notable Louisvillians of many diverse backgrounds): Charles Anderson, Jr. (1907-1960), the first black legislator elected in the entire South post-Reconstruction (Kentucky House of Representatives, 1935); Fannie R. Givens (1864-1947), Louisville’s first black policewoman; Albert E. Meyzeek (1872-1963), education and civil rights leader for whom the middle school is named; Georgia Anne Nugent (1864-1940) and Mamie E. (Lee) Steward (1858-1930), both educators and state and national leaders of black women’s organizations; Dr. William J. Simmons (1849-1890), president of the Kentucky Normal and Theological Institute – later renamed Simmons College in his honor; Washington Spradling, Jr. (1805-1868), real estate entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in Louisville in his time; and Rudell Stitch (1933-1960), welterweight sparring partner of Muhammad Ali and one of only four people to have ever received two Carnegie Hero Fund medals (for efforts to save the lives of men drowning in the Ohio River).
Rudell Stitch’s Hometown Hero Banner hangs from the Fourth Street Live parking garage but in the spring and summer his grave can succumb to waist-high weeds. The Friends of Eastern Cemetery and I are trying to change that. We have a plan that calls for a turf maintenance program, installing security gates and signs, resurfacing the interior road, establishing water service and acquiring the original crematorium building. The good news is that Metro Government and related agencies are cooperating with us – and one anonymous private donor has gifted us $10,000 – but we still need a lot of help. If you’re in the construction or landscape business or otherwise willing to donate your time, talent or treasure to the cause of a just resting place for so many, then please contact me today at the information below.
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For breaking news and information, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you have a question or comment, please call me at: (502) 574-1108 or email: brandon.coan@louisvilleky.gov (and copy jasmine.weatherby@louisvilleky.gov). If you have a service request, please call MetroCall at: 311 or visit MetroCall 311 online. Visit the District 8 Strategic Plan page here.
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