Saving Stories Features Ezell Blair, Jr: Remembering the Greensboro Sit-Ins

This episode of Saving Stories reflects on a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement documented in a powerful oral history interview archived at the Nunn Center. This episode features an oral history interview with Ezell Blair Jr., one of the young college students who, in 1960, defiantly demanded service at a Woolworth’s Department Store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  While this was not the first time a sit-in was conducted as a means of social protest, media coverage of this particular event sparked similar sit-ins around the country.  The Greensboro lunch counter sit-in created the model for local, nonviolent protest movements against discrimination with regard to public accommodations.

In this episode, Blair discusses the origins of the idea, their motivation behind the protest, as well as the aftermath of the sit-in.

Listen to the Episode

To hear the entire oral history interview, go to SPOKE, the Nunn Center’s online catalog of oral histories.

Saving Stories: Interviews with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

The latest edition of Saving Stories on WUKY features Dr. Doug Boyd and Alan Lytle discussing one of the Nunn Center’s premiere collection of interviews with leaders of the  Civil Rights Movement. These oral history interviews were conducted by Kentucky native, author, and first poet laureate of the United States, Robert Penn Warren in 1964 as research for his book Who Speaks for the Negro? (New York, Random House, 1965).

In this episode, Warren interviews, on separate occasions,  both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and explores their divergent philosophies toward leadership and their responses to racial oppression.   Martin Luther King Jr. describes his philosophy regarding  non-violence and Malcolm X discusses his advocacy for fighting oppression “by any means necessary.” Robert Penn Warren engages each one of these leaders with an intellectual curiosity that sparks inspiring and fascinating conversation.

Listen to Interview on WUKY  (subscribe to the podcast as well!)

If you want to access the entire oral history collection online, visit the Nunn Center on the  Kentuckiana Digital Library.

Nunn Center Puts Governor Breathitt Oral Histories Online

Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Kentucky

This week the  Nunn Center has uploaded oral History interviews with former Kentucky Governor Edward T. Breathitt.  Governor Breathitt served as Governor from 1963-1967, a pivotal time in Kentucky’s as well as this nation’s history.  The major accomplishment of his administration was the passage of the 1964 Kentucky Civil Rights Act which was the first to be passed by a southern state.  Edward T.  Breathitt was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1924.  In 1951 he won the first of three consecutive terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives.  During Governor Bert Combs’ administration (1959-1963) he was Commissioner of Personnel.  He defeated former Governor Albert Chandler in the 1963 state primary and then went on to defeat Republican Louie Nunn to become governor.  He served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1963 to 1967.  Breathitt discusses his work as governor as well as his life before and after the governorship and the circumstances that surrounded his initial involvement in politics.

The Breathitt interviews are full-text searchable on the Kentuckiana Digital Library and can be accessed here.