Africa

The Reverend Hodge discusses his early family life in Texas, his experiences in Civilian Conservation Corps, college, a brief history of the Fifth Street Baptist Church in Louisville, the Civil Rights movement in Louisville and and his position on the Louisville Board of Realtors.

The president of Simmons Bible College (born 1913 in Orville, Alabama) discusses his childhood and efforts to obtain an education. After running away from home at age eighteen, Holmes attended the Louisville Municipal College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. After receiving the B.D. in 1954 Holmes taught at Simmons Bible College and later became president of the school. He discusses his efforts to obtain a formal education; the role of Simmons and its relationship to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and the current offerings of Simmons Bible College.

Houston discusses his childhood in a segregated Alcoa, TN childhood neighborhood during the decades after World War II, emphasizing the importance of good schools and sports on his life. He describes in some detail his recruitment in 1962 to the University of Louisville to break the school’s color barrier in basketball, noting instances of lingering segregation and hostility. Houston tells of his courtship of Alice Kean, his life as a successful Louisville high school coach, and his long career as a UofL assistant, primarily responsible for recruiting. (As an aside, he compares the simpler efforts in the past to attract and keep successful athletes to the challenges of modern, big-time collegiate sports.) He then explains why he helped form the Black Coaches Association and recalls his five years as head basketball coach at the University of Tennessee. (Those years, he remembers, allowed strengthening bonds with his children, themselves successful college athletes.) Before his return to Louisville to head a successful trucking company in partnership with old UofL athlete\friend Charlie Johnson, Houston reveals that Rick Pitino offered him a basketball assistant coaching position at rival University of Kentucky. Finally, Houston reflects on continuing racial bias even when playing by the rules and warmly recalls his year or so early-on playing pro-ball in France, the basketball camps that he and his son, Allan, held in Uganda, and his abiding appreciation for the University of Louisville.

Hudson discusses the history of the Black Student Union at the University of Louisville during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His narrative stresses events leading up to and following the occupation of two university offices by BSU members and others during April and May, 1969.

A native of Louisville who has achieved some notoriety as a jazz musician, Helen Humes discusses her childhood and parents; Bessie Allen's Sunday School at Ninth and Magazine Street in Louisville, the childhood training ground for many local jazz musician

This interview covers Hyde's memories of her childhood in Sheppard Square. Outside of school, her days were spent doing chores, playing with friends, participating in activities sponsored by neighborhood churches, the Presbyterian Community Center and the nearby public library. She recalls a strong attachment to the senior citizens in the community. She was influenced by her mother's commitment to communtiy volunteer work. She noticed a change in the neighborhood in the later 1970s attributing that to a reduction in services to children, the departure of senior citizens from the communtiy and a decrease in two-parent families.

Irvin discusses her childhood in Hopkinsville, Kentucky; her primary and secondary education there; her move to Louisville in 1950, a city she found to be "friendly to blacks, but very segregated"; involvement in open housing demonstrations in Louisville's south end, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and work in Democratic politics as a precinct co -captain, captain, and committee woman.

Mrs. Jackson has been very active in the Louisville community especially with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AME Zion) Church in Louisville. She discusses her church activities, both local and national; her own lifetime, her family's role in desegregation and her family history.

Jin, a native of New York City, talks about her move to Louisville in 1996 and the circumstances that brought her to Sheppard Square. She describes the first two years as "rough." Shootings and illegal drug activity were prevalent. Jin served on the Sheppard Square Resident Council but became frustrated with the process and resigned. Generally speaking, Jin talks in survival language about her and her daughter's experiences in Sheppard Square. She believes that people outside of public housing unfairly characterize its residents. She adds, however, that there are people who seem to perpetuate the stereotypes. Her reaction to the Hope VI project is mixed.

Johnson, who was over 100 years old at the time of the interview, discusses his personal history, including his experiences as a soldier in the Spanish-American War. He also talks about his experience as a black man in America.