honoring jonesville: our people, our community, our legacy
SPEECH BY AKISHA TOWNSEND EATON “HONORING JONESVILLE” SYMPOSIUM • APRIL 14, 2023
April 14, 2023
Event: Honoring Jonesville: Our People, Our Community, Our Legacy Symposium
Akisha Townsend Eaton is a Jonesville descendant and current member of the Jonesville Reconciliation Workgroup at WKU. She is also a community advocate and attorney.
The following are excerpts from the lunch address at the symposium.
Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for coming. And thank you to each and every person in the WKU community, past and present, to the historians, academics and community scholars, and to those in the larger community who had any role in making today a possibility. Most of all, I want to give thanks to my Jonesville forbears who came before me. I want to thank them for building, sustaining, and fighting for the preservation and recognition of the community that we are recognizing today.
In a recent interview for the New Yorker, Elizabeth Alexader, an African American woman, current President of the Mellon Founation, and honorary doctorate holder of the Historically Black Simmons College in Louisville said that communities of color often have to, “carry around knowledge and stories in our bodies,” becuse too often the resources were not devoted to preserving the spaces that held those stories. Even though Jonesville was destroyed well before I found my place on this earth, it is because of those who came before me and bestowed up on me the privilege of the stories of Jonesville in their bodies, that I continue to carry its story in my own.
I especially thank my mother, Angela Townsend, a retired English teacher who earned an honorary doctorate from WKU last year for her contributions to the field of education in Kentucky. Born and raised in a home that was untimely razed to make way for the university expansion, the stories she told me about Jonesville are some of the first stories of my I can remember of my childhood. All of my life, I’ve heard these stories retold through her oral recollections, poetry and prose occasionlly intertwined with song. I’ve carried them with me everywhere I go.
I carry these stories in my body.
I carry in my body the story and knowledge of my great great grandmother Lizzie Taylor, known to our family as Mama Lizzie, believed to have been born just a year after the end of slavery, who laid the foundation for generational success, developing the knowledge and skills to acquire farm land that would eventually house, feed, employ and sustain not only her own family, but the larger community. Her example is one of resourcefulness and ingenuity.
I carry in my body the story of my Great Uncle Harry Taylor, who had a keen accuity and love of music, so much so that he played at least one instrument in every family- percussion, woodwinds, brass and keyboard. Though he passed before I could meet him in person, I met him in spirit through the piano he left behind. With each keystroke, I could almost feel him in the room.
I carry in my body the story and knowledge of my great grandmother, Ellen Alexander, known to our family as Mama Ellen, who was known throughout the community as a person of great generosity, As a widow, she raised six successful sons on her own. But what I’m most impressed by is her courage. Alongside her brothers (my uncles), Harry and Will Taylor, and two other residents, Mrs. Ida Belle Johnson and Mrs. Linnie Cox, Mama Ellen refused to sell her property despite the demands of the university. She instead chose to defend it through a legal system that she likely knew was unlikely favor the interests of a colored person at the time. There are so, so many questions that I’d love to ask her if she were living today. Because if I were in living in her time, I can’t say I would have had the same level of courage when weighing the risks and benefits. I can only imagine that she fought for Jonesville because of the principle for what she knew in her heart was right.
I don’t want us to think that her story, and the stories of other Jonesville residents as one of that ended in defeat. Even though they ultimately lost their community, it was because these residents willngness to fight that, we can sit her today, analyzing the question of the significance and morality of forced takings through dialougue and scholarship. It is because of their courage, exposed and documented through open proceedings, that we can place what happened in Jonesville, in the larger context of nationwide urban renewal. Indeed, according to a report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, between 1949 and 1973, the time in which Jonesville was destroyed, government officials executed more than 2500 projects in 992 cities, displacing one million people. Two thirds of these people were African American, and Jonesville residents are undoubtedly included in these numbers. We often hear about the thriving community that Jonesville once was. We hear less often about the residents struggle to fight for Jonesvile, and moreover, how that struggle is connected to modern day struggle of African American citizens to deal with the lasting impacts of redlining, exclusionary zoning, blockbusting, and other discriminatory housing practices.
Mama Ellen’s actions no doubt inspired one of her sons, Henry Keel Alexander to become a plaintiff in the litigation that integrated Bowling Green City Schools. And both of their actions ultimately helped inspire me to pursue a career in law, to help continue their spirit of justice through the legal system.
I carry their stories and wisdom in my body.
Last but not least, I carry the story of Vanessa Marshall Alexander, whom I’m dedicating this talk to… in my body. A former Jonesville resident, and descendant, Vanessa was Henry Keel’s daughter. She no doubt would have wanted to be here today with us. But sadly, she lost her battle to cancer and was just buried this past Wednesday. As I gathered with family at the Fort Knox Cemetery, where she is buried, a couple of things dawned on me. First, almost every single one of us there were either former Jonesville residents or current descendents. It is a myth that Jonesville can merely be dismissed as a vestige of the past that has little to no ties to the present day. Indeed, Jonesville lives in so many people who live locally, but also throughout the country. In the spirit of the words of fellow Millenial and award winning journalist and community activist, Orlando Bailey, it is incumbent on us, the former residents and descendants, to put our stories on the record because the record shapes how we document history.
That brings me to why I, a descendant who never got to see my family’s land, businesses, as they existed in Jonesville, am standing here at this podium today. You see, I feel the great weight of responsibility to represent the voices of those who came before me who never had the opportunity to speak, whenever given the opportunity. One way to continue their legacy was by accepting the invitation to serve on the Jonesville reconciliation workgroup. In addition to facilitating symposiums like these, the work group's main charge is to appropriately address the issues that remain from the dismantling of the Jonesville neighborhood. In order to address those issues, we must first understand what they are and how they developed. And we cannot understand what they are without examining, as best as we can, the full spectrum of impacts on the Jonesville residents and descendants. And we cannot examine the lingering socioeconomic, psychological, and even physiological impacts across generations that result from displacement, without fully attempting to include and consult with those who experienced or continue to experience them.
With respect to economic trauma, a mid 1980s study examining the impacts of urban renewal in the 50s found that 86% of those relocated as a result of the use of eminent domain were paying almost double the amount of rent at their new residences than they would have been if they’d stayed put. And with respect to mental and physical well-being, as one paper about Jonesville noted, Reverend J.H. Taylor, a fervent and open advocate for the preservation of Jonesville, and also my mother’s pastor, wrote in a plea to the members of city council, that twelve widows in the community would essentially become homeless because they wouldn’t have the income to secure a loan to purchase or rebuild a home, and drew small social security checks.” Such impacts are not only financially stressful, but could arguably lead to poorer quality of life, extreme stress, and possibly even premature death for an older person. The charge to address the impacts of the dismantling of Jonesville is serious.
It is my belief that only until we examine the myriad of impacts as they apply locally, can we truly reach our ultimate goal of reconciliation. So perhaps we can consider today’s symposium and the events that preceded it as the beginning of a much larger effort that intertwines with so, so many subjects connected to Jonesville– each of which quite honestly could make up their own day-long symposiums.
In his comments on the formation of the Jonesville Reconciliation Workgroup, which happened in a larger conversation about what role the university played in acts of exclusion, segregation, racism and slavery, President Caboni stated that though such actions did not represent the current values of the university, they were unfortunately products of earlier times. He also stated the following: “The decisions we make today, also will meet with the scrutiny of future generations. “ Thanks to the preservation of historical documents by residents, historians, scholars, and journalists, we can now examine, sometimes in excruciating detail, just how the dismantling of the Jonesvile, and the injustice to its residents was a product of its time.
We can see it in the definition of “blight” to be so broad as to include inadequate off-street parking when it came to citizens of color in an effort to displace residents.
We can see it in the meager sums paid to those, wouldn't be able to purchase similar properties elsewhere in the city.
We can even see it in university documents that explicitly sought to devalue the amounts given to property owners, because they were “simply colored residential property”. As a Millennial, one of the most shocking hings about this particular document was that it was written only 24 years before I was born. For comparison’s sake, 9/11, which seemed like it was just yesterday, happened 22 years ago.
But one thing is certain. It’s no longer 1958. It is 2023. So what does it mean to be a product of our time, today? I think Dr. Mead helped set the stage for this question. Her university is one of so many across the country who are working to critically address question of equity and reconciliation, as an academic community broadly, but, also specifically in response to racial injustices that occurred the name of the university. In fact, almost every university community that I’ve attended has dedicated substantial resources to correcting past wrongs, including but not limited to wrongs connected with urban renewal and displacement in connection with university expansion.
I think President Caboni was right. Any decisions we make to appropriately address the impacts of the Jonesville community, will be scrutinized within the context and landscape of what other institutions across the country did. WKU is a world class, top-notch institution that prides itself in standing out in so many disciplines and initiatives. I think we can stand out here, too. The current charge is to appropriately address the issues that remain from the dismantling of Jonesville. Future generations willl examine just want the university believed to be appropriate redress in the context of everything we’ve learned about today. And my hope is that this redress will be a symbol of a commitment to never repeat, and to encourage other universities, cities, towns, and other bodies to never repeat the type of devestation that happened in Jonesville. I’m encouraged that it is already happening throughout the country.
Being a product of our time means acknowledging difficult truths with transparency, even at a time when the truthful and transparent teaching of history, especially with regard to racial discrimination, is under threat– even in institutions of higher education. I appreciate that the moving exhibit does this in many ways, thanks to the Community Scholars.
I think most importantly, being a product of our time means that we can ask ourselves, if an opportunity for expansion were to happen today at the expense of a community, what if anything would be done differently?
And that is the question I’ll leave you with for dialougue today. If done well, that dialougue will continue long after we’ve left this room, impacting all of us, as well those from generations we will never meet. And it will be one many important ways that we can continue to honor the legacy of Jonesville. Thank you.
