Police

Frank Bauer, a retired Jefferson County police officer, discusses food distribution from Eline's Garage in St. Matthews, the Black people in the Harrod's Creek area, and other ways that food was obtained for the flood victims, as well as his work with the Pennsylvania State Troopers.

Chief of Police Department. The narrator discusses life in the St. Matthews area.

Hawkins, retired from the Louisville police force, recounts his work in the old Walnut Street area from 1939 until his retirement. He discusses the businesses and people in the area.

Hobich was the only walking or neighborhood beat policeman left in Louisville at the time of this interview. He is white and has worked in the predominantly Black Parkland area for over ten years beginning in 1967. He relates some of his experiences in the area and the changes in the community over the years.

Mattie Jones was active in the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression for decades serving in leadership roles on several issues including school desegregation, workplace discrimination and police abuse and brutality.

William F. Kern, Junior was thirty-six years old at the time of the 1937 flood. He lived with his wife and four children upstairs over the tavern he ran at Thirty-fourth Street and Michigan Avenue (now called Muhammad Ali Boulevard) in Louisville's West End. When Mr. Kern's home became flooded, he moved his family to Preston Street and Eastern Parkway in Louisville. He then returned to his home where he and two other men operated a dispatching station for police and other officials in boats since his building had the only operating phone in the area. He also was an auixiliary policeman deputized by the City of Louisville and as such went on patrols in boats in the flooded area. He was forced to leave his home when a fire on Fourteeenth Street threatened to set the floodwaters ablaze. Mr. Kern tells of his experiences in the flood such as shooting at rats floating by from the second floor of his home. He also tells of going to Washington, D.C. to meet with government officials about problems in Louisville from the flood. He describes meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office of the White House. Index available.

Discusses the history of the Southern Police Institute and the School of Justice Administration from the time he came to the University of Louisville in 1957 until the time of the interview. This includes his term as Dean of the School of Justice Administration.

Rhonda Mathies was very active in a leadership role in the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in the 1980s and 1990s. Mathies was the organizations spokesperson on many issues including police brutality and abuse.

Former Chief of Police of the city of Louisville remembers preparation of the city police force for school desegregation process and recounts law enforcement activities and incidents.

Howard Owens, born in 1948 in Pambloff, Arkansas, moved to Louisville because of his father's work as a preacher at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at age 5. In this interview, Owens talks about his father's work as a civil rights activist in the city prior to his own work during the 1960s following his graduation from high school as well as his work and activism during the civil rights movement from the end of the 1960s up until the 1980s. Topics include: the nationalist fringe groups participating in Louisville during the civil rights movement, his activism during college in Wilberforce, Ohio, his work as a teacher in Louisville with children with learning disabilities, the groups during the 1970s in Louisville including the Black Workers Coalition and Black Protective Parents, busing and the problems that faced busing within the communities and the city, other groups such as the Jtown Challengers and the Blacks United to Motivate Progress, his experience at a Klan rally that took place off of Preston Hwy, issues that arose after busing including police brutality and equity in hiring of minorities, the Alliance Against Racism and Political Oppression, the Fred Harris case, the Lindsay Scott case, and a case involving the Black Panther Party that all took place in Louisville.