Editor’s Note: We are returning to the summer of 1891, as Kentucky prepared to vote on whether to adopt the new Kentucky Constitution, which resulted from the debates of the Constitutional Convention held in Frankfort. The people accepted the new Constitution, and it remains the one in effect today, governing our Commonwealth. For historical purposes, we reprint the Clippings “warts and all,” and so derogatory and racist stereotypical words are reprinted in an effort to combat any attempts to “clean up” history for modern eyes or assuage modern consciences. Below are two particularly awful examples of racism from the July 16, 1891, edition of the Sun.
The Woodford Sun
July 16, 1891
[NEW CONSTITUTION] Hon. James Blackburn of this place addressed a large audience at Mortonsville last Saturday, and placed before the voters the reasons why they should vote for the new constitution in a forcible and convincing manner. He will speak at Millville next Saturday. Messers. Tobias Gibson and Samuel Pinkerton will engage in a debate on the new constitution and political issues at te Court House in Versailles, next Saturday afternoon, and a large attendance is expected and a lively debate may be relied upon. Hear them! Congressman William Breckenridge of this district will address the citizens of Woodford at the Court House on court-day, Monday, July 27, and ought to be given a large hearing.
[CLIFFORD BERRYMAN] now of Washington, will be home for a visit soon. Cliff is one of the few Democrats to retain his position in the Parent Office under the Republican administration. He has got a good place, and as a divertisement is writing and illustrating articles for the Washington Daily Post. He had a very readable article of two columns length last Sunday on “Summer Scenes in Washington.” And, nearly all the fancy illustrated headings in the Post have the word “Berryman” down in the corner. Cliff is a sketch artist of extraordinary talent and a ready writer and has several flattering offers from big daily papers. If he don’t win fame in this world ‘tiz his own fault. [Ed. Note: Berryman went on to become one of the country’s most famous editorial cartoonists, including winning a Pulitizer Prize in 1944, and also contributed cartoons to the Sun].
[CAMP MEETING] I made my a visit to the High Bridge camp meeting last Sunday. As a frolic or kind of picnic, it was a howling success, but as an institution for disseminating the Gospel it is about the rankest farce I’ve ever witnessed. There were 8,000 people present – excursionists from Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, etc. A few of them went to hear the preaching but 80 percent of them were out for fun. After promenading the ground and hearing hucksters, I was ready to believe that I was laboring under the hallucination in thinking it was Sunday.
[THEY SAY] There will nbe 5,000 additional “coons” in town next Sunday, as its ‘ssociation day for the negroes, you know. Several of the jail prisoners re earning their bread by the sweat of their brow on the rock pile these hot days. A negro will work for his town when he won’t work for himself.
[A NEW GAME] One of the newest things in outdoor games is progressive hammocks. A lot of pretty girls swing separately in several hammocks. A bell is rung, and young fellows pay so much to get in, and every time a bell rings the fellow is obliged to move to another hammock. The young men then vote on who was the best conversationalist. This game may have its good points, but will never achieve the popularity of the combination formed bbby a single hammock, a single “spoony” couple, and a full moon.
[FOUR EXECUTIONS BY ELECTRICITY] Last week four men were killed by electricity at Sing Sing prison in New York. This was done swiftly, secretely, and without pain. This is all that the general public may care to know about the matter, but the Sun and other papers in New York are now seeking to organize a popular movement in position to the statute which substitutes death by electricity for hanging, and which prohibits the publication of particulars when prisoners are electrocided, Kemmelered, blasted or whatever else it may be called.