Freedom on the Border Part 1

Books like Freedom on the Border are why I’ve developed an affinity for history. I’m not so much into major figures and dates as I am people’s lived experience, and the collection of oral histories in Catherine Fosl and Tracy K’Meyer’s book provide just that. African Americans and whites in Kentucky share their experiences with segregation and the fight for integration in education, public accommodations, and housing.

Because of my work in the Braden Institute, the incidents the Louisville residents recounted weren’t new to me, but the personal experiences with them were. Most poignant for me were people’s  recollections from childhood. “I knew it was wrong” was a common refrain throughout the narratives in which people recalled some of their early experiences with segregation. It wasn’t until adulthood that Robert A. Coleman understood how much an “unequal playing field” had “severely handicapped” young blacks, but as a child he knew segregation was wrong. Whites, on the other hand, accepted it as normal, not realizing until later and sometimes with assistance from people outside of their home towns, that segregation shouldn’t be the standard.

Like other oral history collections, Freedom on the Border’s greatest strength is in its ability to offer nuance and detail. For example, I had never thought about black janitors in white schools being able to report back to their communities about the quality of facilities and education in white schools. I never thought about how the disregarded books literally were dropped off (from the back of a truck no less) to black schools and how the teachers worked to clean them up. I also knew little about the differences between rural and urban life in Kentucky post World War II. The narrators (or the editing) are effective  in demonstrating contrasts between rural and urban communities in how segregation was lived out, without putting degrees of misery between the two communities. Some people interacted more than others and got along better than others, but segregation is shown as wrong and the fight against it shown as necessary, no matter where it occurred.