Cheri Bryant Hamilton, Longtime Chickasaw Neighborhood resident, former Alderman and Metro Councilwoman, member of the Chickasaw Book Committee

Cheri Bryant Hamilton 

Meet Cheri: I have been involved in my community, public service, and electoral politics since participating in the Open Housing movement as a teenager. That experience shaped my values, educational goals, and career path through employment with Jefferson County Public Schools Adult Education and state and local government. I enjoy reading, music, family, travel, genealogy, writing, and working to preserve and educate about the importance of history, particularly the contributions of women and Kentucky’s African American trailblazers. The Chickasaw Book Committee is producing an enlightening historical coffee table book about the impressive and perhaps unknown history of the people, places, organizations, institutions, events, and activities that built and sustained generations of African American middle- and working-class families in the Chickasaw Neighborhood during the 1940s-1970s. Our book will serve as a source of pride, a teaching tool, and a community education reference about the history, resilience, values, unity, and accomplishments of the Chickasaw Neighborhood. Our neighborhood is a place where people fought on many levels to break through barriers, combat racism, and dismantle discriminatory policies, practices, and laws in Louisville before and during integration. 

Cheri’s Community History Project: Celebrating the Chickasaw Neighborhood’s Legacy (1940s-1970s) 

Organized in August of 2019, the Chickasaw Book Project Committee—a group of 21 individuals co-chaired by Cheri Bryant Hamilton and Leborah Goodwin—set out to capture the legacy of the Chickasaw neighborhood through crowdsourcing and collaboration. The Committee is compiling information, images, and memories of their neighborhood into a book!  

From the Committee: “A neighborhood is more than just a location or a group of houses. It is a collection of people, each with their own unique experiences and recollections, who together form something greater. The collective memory of a community can be a powerful thing, and it can tell important stories. Family, work, school, sports, church, and community will be recorded in the most ambitious historical book about Chickasaw this city has ever seen.”

On October 9, 2022, the Chickasaw Book Committee hosted an open house at the Shawnee Park Golf Course. Over 100 Chickasaw neighborhood residents, supporters, and friends gathered to reconnect, learn about the different chapters of the book, and share more names and stories for inclusion. Please enjoy the photos from this event below. 

The book is underway and expected to be published by Butler Books in late 2023.  

The full list of committee members: Elmer Lucille Allen, Carol Ray Bottoms, Milton Corbett, David Cooper, Myra Friend Ellis, Milton Fant, Rhonda Ramsey Finney, Reginald Glass, Leborah Goodwin, Charnel Easton Grey, Claudia Geurin, Cheri Bryant Hamilton, David Kimbrough, Lynn McCrary, Michelle McCrary, Marsha Moorman, John Parrent, Susan Hurd Rhodes, Ralph Shelburne, Donovan Taylor, and DeVon Turner.