Archives

Cost: $30 for Filson members, $35 for non-members.

Vibraphonist Dick Sisto presents a tribute concert to the legendary masters of vibraphone, Bobby Hutcherson and organ Joey De Francesco. Both musicians have set a high standard, especially performing together in their vibraphone/organ collaborations. Performing with Sisto will be the Organic Vibe trio in the current incarnation. Over the years the OVT has played festival concerts in Nashville, Cincy, Indy, Lexington and World Fest in Louisville. Leader and music director Sisto has very high praise and appreciation for this trio. Joining Sisto’s vibes are Kendall Carter on Organ and Mike Hyman on drums. The concert at the Filson will be high flying with everything from originals by Hutcherson and other Jazz greats And funk, groove, blues and ballads. Join us for this summer fun fest celebrating these legendary masters of vibraphone and organ!

Sponsored by the Society on Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the General Society of Colonial Wars.

Cost: Free to Members and Non-members

It is one thing to draw a line in the sand but another to enforce it. This talk will follow the Native peoples and the newcomers who crossed emerging boundaries surrounding Indigenous towns and developing English plantations in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake Bay. In a riverine landscape defined by networks, Algonquians had cultivated ties to one another and into the continent for centuries. Their networks continued to define the watery Chesapeake landscape, even as Virginia and Maryland planters erected fences and forts, policed unfree laborers and Native neighbors, and dispatched land surveyors. At the same time, escaping indentured and enslaved people resisted subjugation fueled by Native networks and their own alternate visions of freedom and connection in the colonial Chesapeake.

Jessica Taylor is an assistant professor in the history department at Virginia Tech. As a public historian, she collaborates on projects across the Southeast as diverse as oral histories with boatbuilders, augmented reality tours of historic sites, and reconstructed maps of pre-colonial landscapes. Her current work connects graduate and undergraduate students to history firsthand through fieldwork experiences in oral history, and an ongoing project documenting escape attempts of indentured servants and enslaved people in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake.

Cost: Members Free; Non-members $15

Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy—one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans—drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement.

Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built between 1912 and 1937 across fifteen southern and border states, only about 500 survive. While some have been repurposed and a handful remain active schools, many remain unrestored and at risk of collapse. To tell this story visually, Andrew Feiler drove more than twenty-five thousand miles, photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists, and community leaders in all fifteen of the program states.

The book and exhibition of this work is A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America. The exhibition is on view at the Filson through August 4, 2023. Author, photographer, and exhibition curator Andrew Feiler will share images and stories from his extraordinary journey into the history of Rosenwald schools.

This program is made possible by the Jewish Heritage Fund.

Sponsored by Dinsmore Family Wealth Planning

Free but registration required.

Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr (1861-1949) was an educator, author, and community builder who devoted his life to advocating for equitable education and fair and proper housing for Black Louisvillians. His authorship illustrates early twentieth century Black resistance by refuting Jim Crow stereotypes and white supremacist cultural forms..

Join Filson Community Engagement Specialist and Public Historian Emma Bryan, Kentucky writer Bernard Clay, and the Manager of the Western Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, Natalie Woods as they share more information about the life and legacy of Cotter and the digitization of his papers, which are among other important Black Louisvillians' housed in the archive of Western Library.

Emma Bryan is a public historian and cultural worker based in Louisville, Kentucky. She currently works for the Filson Historical Society as the Community Engagement Specialist. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History and Philosophy from Bellarmine University and her Master of Arts in History from the University of Louisville. Additionally, she works as a community-based oral historian and is a member of the 2022-2023 Kentucky-Rural Urban Exchange Cohort.

Kentucky native Bernard Clay, hailing from Louisville, is an artist deeply connected to the state's natural and urban realms. With an MFA in creative writing, he's a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective and has been featured in various publications. He now resides in Eastern Kentucky where he tends to his garden, writes, and works a remote day job.

Natalie Woods has served as Branch Manager of the historic Western Library since 2017. She serves on several committees in the Russell neighborhood, including acting as consulting party for the Redevelopment of Beecher Terrace, and the Greater Russell Equity, Education Equity and Economic and Self-Sufficient Equity Task Groups.

The Western Library is the first public library in the U.S. staffed fully by African Americans, for African American patrons. Natalie’s passion for showcasing Western Library’s history is the driving force behind her work. She aims to continue the pioneering work of Rev. Thomas Fountain Blue, who considered Western a pillar of the neighborhood, serving the community as a place for advancement and strong connections. In her tenure at Western, relaunched the Western Block Party and the Cotter Cup, a storytelling contest first established by Joseph Cotter in 1913, led an initiative to digitize the African American Archives held at the Western Library, as well as been featured in many newspaper articles and television features stories. In 2022, she worked with the Friends of the Eastern Cemetery, Frazier History Museum, and city officials to dedicate a headstone honoring Rev. Thomas Fountain Blue and his wife Cornelia at Eastern Cemetery, calling attention to Rev. Blue’s career and legacy.

Sponsored by Dinsmore Family Wealth Planning.

Free but registration required.

2023 marks two full decades since Louisville and Jefferson County merged to form Louisville Metro. This restructuring, which radically expanded the geography, diversity, and workings of local government, took effect in early 2003 but only after many years of debate and compromise. In fact, the movements for and against merger began in the early 1980s, amid tensions about suburban growth, school desegregation, and urban redevelopment. Where proponents of unification envisioned efficiency and prosperity, opponents feared dilution of political representation and loss of local identity. For decades, the question of merger highlighted personal and communal concerns related to race, education, business, and politics. This anniversary provides an opportunity to begin studying the long and complex history of merger, before, during, and after. Join us for an opening conversation with Louisville “Mayor for Life” Jerry Abramson, whose lengthy career in local politics has encompassed the creation of Louisville Metro.

Dr. Abby Glogower is the curator of Jewish Collections and Jewish Community Archives at the Filson Historical Society. Jerry Abramson, formerly the Mayor of Louisville, Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, and Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, currently serves as Executive-in-Residence at Spalding University and on the Board of Trustees at the University of Louisville.