Two weeks into the Black Lives Matter campaign, homeschooler Jenna Sparks gets mad. This sixteen-year-old descendant of a Confederate ancestor, whose name was Jeptha Jefferson Davis Sparks, has a Black cousin, and seeing so many people in Jessamine who fly the Confederate battle flag angers her. So does walking by the Confederate statue, located just two blocks from her house.

So Jenna writes a petition to “remove and destroy” the statue. Hundreds of locals immediately sign, and her campaign makes the news. An interracial group of ministers led by Pastor Moses of First Baptist Church circulates Jenna’s petition. Then they write and submit their own to the judge. Jessamine County seems poised to reckon with its sordid record on race and Civil War memory.

Timestamps

00:00      Sitting on her front porch, Jenna explains why she wants to destroy the statue.

07:58      Pastor Moses starts an interracial ministerial committee.

14:00      Pastor Max Vanderpool describes racial conditions in Jessamine County.

18:25      The ministerial committee ramps up.

30:48      A “Black Lives Matter” rally in Wilmore

38:08      Resistance emerges.

47:09      Antistatue activists resolve to continue their campaign.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode4/transcript.

Engage

Resources

Production team

Next episode: In Episode 5—Rival Monument—a very different narrative of the Civil War emerges from the ground.

Built with slave labor, Jessamine County, Kentucky, has a history that includes over a dozen lynchings, Jim Crow codes, and continuing racial inequities—all overseen by a Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn.

Like Confederate defender Brandon, Rev. Robert Gates cares very much about history. But the Confederate statue doesn’t speak for him. From his pulpit at the Historic Camp Nelson Baptist Church, he tells uncomfortable stories about Jessamine’s past that white residents don’t want to hear, violent stories not reflected by the statue on the courthouse lawn.

Gates’s history in Jessamine County goes way back. His grandfather, whose living memory dates back to the 1890s, lived here when the Confederate statue went up. He was here when a young Black man named Tom Brown was lynched. And then he passed on those memories to his son, Gates’s father. To this day, the extended Gates family refuses to walk by the statue. When they need to do business in the courthouse, they enter through the back to avoid the statue and the site of the lynching. It’s as if Jim Crow never ended.

Engage

Timestamps

00:00      Reflections on hospitality in Jessamine County

05:56      Maren shows David a graveyard in her backyard

14:00      Pastor Moses calls for some “real history” on the courthouse yard

18:45      At the local historical society, David watches a VCR tape of a 1987 outdoor drama of Jessamine County history

25:31      Maren shows David how to research slavery in the county clerk’s office              

34:16      David speaks with historian Carolyn Dupont about racial violence and the Lost Cause

39:21      Back at the historical society, David watches a video of the Confederate statue’s 1995 rededication.

41:35      David heads to the public library to read old copies of the Jessamine Journal on microfilm.

45:36      Standing on site, David describes the lynching of Tom Brown

49:27      A local pastor reads Black poetry about racial violence

50:42      David speaks with Rev. Gates in the Camp Nelson church house

55:25      David travels to Frankfort, the state capitol, to hold a “lynching spoon”

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode3/transcript.

Resources

Production team

Next episode: In Episode 4—Jenna’s Petition—David talks with a local homeschooler who wants to destroy the statue.

On a warm Monday morning, a week after protests broke out in front of the courthouse, a man with short-cropped hair stands beside the statue. Legs astride with an enormous handgun in a holster on his left side, Brandon is guarding “history.” When I approach him, he explains that the statue is not a monument to slavery. Referencing the inscription on the statue’s foundation, he says that it honors “soldiers who have fought and died in this country.”

The second episode of Rebel on Main investigates Brandon’s claim by recounting the bizarre origins of Jessamine’s statue. Initially ordered, but not paid for, by a different town that wanted a Union statue, the unclaimed monument was purchased at a 90 percent discount by the county fathers and then regalvanized into a Confederate identity. Before a raucous crowd of 3,000 supporters shrieking rebel yells, the statue is unveiled. The Lost Cause has won Jessamine County.

A century later, conditions have changed. Brandon still believes in the Lost Cause, but critics are denouncing it as heresy. He feels embattled by gay activists, Black Lives Matter, and woke historians who want to “erase history.” Frustrated and angry that his Civil War narrative is being threatened, he stands vigil, guarding the statue from protesters who want to destroy memories of Confederate courage.

Engage

Timestamps

00:00      David talks with Brandon, armed defender of the statue

05:56      Story of Bennett Young, the model/architect of Jessamine’s statue

09:00      Sam Flora of the Sons of Confederate Veterans tells the story of St. Albans Raid.

25:35      Story of how the statue was conceived, built, and dedicated

39:29      David wrestles with Brandon’s political opinions

40:32      Robert P. Jones analyzes the “end of white Christian America”

42:42      David analyzes the social context of the statue in the 1890s and how it mirrors conditions in the 2020s

51:51      David wrestles with whether his historical analysis is condescending to Brandon—and the architects of the statue

53:30      David, Brandon, and Judge West have a conversation

Transcript: Visit http://www.rebelonmain.com/episode2.

Resources

Production team

Next episode: In Episode 3—Ghosts of Jessamine—David tells excruciating stories of lynchings, rapes, and violence.

In June 2020 a Black Lives Matter protest erupts in Jessamine County, Kentucky. It soon transforms into a campaign to destroy the Confederate statue that looms behind them on Main Street.

As historian and local resident David Swartz covers this effort, he also investigates the history of this beautiful corner of the Bluegrass. He finds lots of hidden stories, including a disastrous expulsion of formerly enslaved refugees from a Union Army camp in 1864. Over 100 women and children die of exposure in a snowstorm. The incident implicates not just enslavers, but also the nation.

150 years later, Americans are still reckoning with violence against Black citizens. As protesters in Jessamine County chant, “Say her name! Breonna was asleep!” big trucks circle the courthouse, revving their engines in protest against the protest. A fierce backlash emerges.

Why, just months after the killing of Breonna Taylor in nearby Louisville, do so many resist the removal of a monument to men who fought to enslave Black people? Why, a full fifty years after the civil rights movement, are so many still so reluctant to say that “Black lives matter”? Why, 150 years after the Civil War, do so many want to maintain a statue honoring the Confederacy?

Engage

Timestamps

00:00      Pastor Moses Radford denounces the statue as sign of hatred, bigotry, and racism

03:24      Physical description of the statue

06:00      David covers Black Lives Matter protests at the courthouse

13:30      Historian Amy Murrell Taylor tells the history of Camp Nelson, a Union supply depot and emancipation center.

27:05      Tracy K. Smith, Emeritus Poet Laureate of the United States, recites her poem about the expulsion.

28:50      Taylor describes the heartbreaking expulsion of refugee women and children.

36:57      Protests turn toward the Confederate statue

44:45      David interviews Judge David West

Transcript: Visit https://www.rebelonmain.com/episode1.

Resources

Production team

Next episode: In Episode 2—Defending History—David recounts the bizarre origins of the Confederate statue—and interviews a man who guards the statue from BLM protests with a big gun on his hip.

It’s a Civil War statue unlike any other—one with a rebel belt and a Union hat. Join historian David Swartz on a podcast investigation of his hometown Confederate statue that stands on Main Street in Jessamine County, Kentucky.