The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage is the result of a collection of African American educators, artists and historians who have collaborated to give the long dormant history of African Americans in the region the voice and platform it deserves. This group evolved from the Louisville and Jefferson County African American Heritage Committee into its current mold, with a single unifying goal of promoting the Kentuckiana region’s black heritage.
In 1994, The African American Heritage Foundation (AAHF) had the initial goal of encouraging the preservation of African American sites, communities and culture. This began with the preservation of historic structures in the African American community, and the recognition of important sites through its historic marker program. Now, the AAHF has opened a Center, located at 18th and Muhammad Ali Blvd. in Louisville, Kentucky. The center is dedicated to the sole purpose of showcasing these triumphs. Here, African American history has the platform to share its monumental achievements with the community in which it took place.
DID YOU KNOW
Kentucky African American Achievement
Russell Neighborhood
Named for influential resident Harvey C. Russell, this section of Louisville which ran along Walnut St. (now Muhammad Ali Blvd.) was home to a number of aggressive Civil Rights innovators. Many accomplishments of the neighborhood’s residents accelerated the area’s Civil Rights movement years before it gained national steam. The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage now stands in the heart of this neighborhood, appropriately enough.
Harvey C. Russell
Russell, along with the help of his wife, established two of Kentucky’s first extra-curricular organizations, the parent teacher association, which is now commonly recognized as the P.T.A. and the Inter-High School Sports Associations, which evolved into modern day intra-mural sports programs. To honor his outstanding accomplishments, the City named the area in which the Center is located in his honor.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
1870s
Nearly a century before Rosa Parks was removed from a bus for her famous sit-in, Russell neighborhood native and protester Mary Cunningham Smith was expelled from a Louisville public trolley after refusing to move from the “Whites Only” section. Mrs. Smith sub-sequentially filed and won a lawsuit, desegregating Louisville public transportation before the turn of the 20th century.
1908
Our Nation’s first “colored” library opens in West Louisville, at 10th and Chestnut. The West Branch Library was the first U.S. library operated by African American Management, and laid the foundation for future African American Librarians. It was the only Louisville library open to African Americans in the days before the Civil Rights movement.
1917
Louisville native William Warley and the NAACP win a monumental U.S. Supreme Court decision on desegregation, giving African Americans the right to choose where they live. Warley, who served as editor of The Louisville News, a black newspaper of the time, was one of the first to challenge segregation nationwide.