James Graham

Henrietta Gill discussing the legacy of urban renewal in Frankfort. Interview conducted by James E. Wallace, May 8, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY.

Henrietta Gill

Berry, Mary Helen discussing the neighborhood’s reputation.  Interview by James E. Wallace, July 2, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY.

Mary Helen Berry

Berry, Mary Helen talks with Jim Wallace about how the community held together during times of flood.  Interview by James E. Wallace, July 2, 1991, Kentucky Oral History Commission, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY.

Mary Helen Berry

1870-1880: Between 1870 and 1880, the black population rose from 2,335 to 3,199.

1877-1880: The name “Crawfish Bottom” begins to emerge as references in newspapers. Later shortened to “Craw.”

1880: Flood threatens residents of Craw.

1883: Flood devastates neighborhood

1891: Dr. Underwood establishes medical practice in the neighborhood

1909: Riot in Craw between Soldiers and residents.

1912: Prostitution in Craw captures attention of Federal Government.

1913: Prostitutes are relegated to Gas House Alley forming an unofficial red-light district.

1920: 19th Amendment ratified (Prohibition)

1928: Mayo Underwood School built

1929: John Fallis, “King of Craw” is shot and killed.

1937: Flood devastates neighborhood

1955: League of Women Voters conducts study provoking slum clearance efforts.

1956: The 1956 “Structure and Family Survey” conducted by Scruggs and Hammond, a Lexington city planning firm

1958: City commences purchasing and clearing of properties making up the North Frankfort Urban Renewal Area.

Mid 1960s: Mayo Underwood School, American Legion Building, homes and churches are torn down. Residents are scattered throughout the city.  Housing promised to residents falls far short of slum clearance promises.

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• Book Review by Barbara J. Shircliffe, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Volume 110, No. 1, Winter 2012.(may require subscription to access)
• Book Review by Brian L. Hackett,  West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies, New Series, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2012. (may require subscription to access)
• Crawfish Bottom wins the Clay Lancaster Heritage Education Award given by the Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation in June 2012.
• Kentucky Historical Society, “Food For Thought: Crawfish Bottom,” May 16, 2012.
• Symposium on Urbanization in the US and China, Shanghai, China, March 29, 2012: Participated on a panel made up of scholars from the US and China discussing research on Crawfish Bottom and oral history’s role in the documentation of urban change.

• “Using Oral History to Document Urban Change,” Beijing, China, March 26, 2012: Participated in a public roundtable discussion at the US Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Office.
• Filson Historical Society, January 18, 2012: Author of Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community, Douglas A. Boyd comes to speak at the Filson Historical Society
• Kentucky Book Fair: There’s Still Something About a Hardback, Frankfort State Journal, November 13, 2011.
• Book review: ‘Crawfish Bottom’ a fascinating subject, Bowling Green Daily News, November 6, 2011.
• Regional Author day at Joseph Beth Books in Lexington Kentucky
• Presentation/Book Signing at the Orlando Brown House on Friday, November 11, from 5-6 p.m. on Friday, November 11th as a precursor to the Kentucky Book Fair and part of Downtown Frankfort’s Candlelight Tour.
• Kentucky Book Fair, November 12, Frankfort, Kentucky.

• Symposium on Community, Race and Memory, Grand Theatre, Frankfort, Kentucky
• Book Shows Another Side of Frankfort’s Crawfish Bottom, Lexington Herald Leader, September 4, 2011 by Valarie Honeycutt-Spear
• Crawfish Bottom Featured on C-Span’s BookTV
• Crawfish Bottom featured on WUKY’s Saving Stories

Reviews

“Crawfish Bottom is a fascinating story well told. By combining narrative skills with sound theory and original methodology in his use of oral and archival sources, Boyd revives the memory and narrative of a community that was wiped out in the name of progress.”

—Alessandro Portelli, author of They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History

“Urban planners seldom listened to the communities they bulldozed, but oral history can recapture the historical memory of what has been lost. Crawfish Bottom provides a vivid and layered history of the colorful community that once existed on the banks of the Kentucky River, in the words of its inhabitants and in a critical analysis of their interviews.”

—Donald A. Ritchie, author of Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide

“This captivating book conveys a portrait of a community physically lost to urban renewal. As important, Crawfish Bottom contributes to our understanding of the nature of popular memory. Boyd goes beyond generalizations and uses the skills of the historian and folklorist to document the process by which community identity and self-understanding are created, challenged and reshaped in both past and present, and most interestingly by the very intervention of the oral historian. This book will be of great interest to all those interested in the nature and study of community.”

–Tracy K’Meyer, author of Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945-1980

Doug Boyd is the author of the Saving Stories blog on Kentucky Oral History, the Nunn Center, and digital technologies and co-hosts the Saving Stories radio program and podcast on Lexington’s NPR station WUKY featuring Kentucky oral history and various Nunn Center initiatives. Boyd also regularly writes, lectures, and consults on oral history and digital technologies, archives, and digital preservation having recently consulted for the University of Colorado, the University of Alabama, and the Navajo Nation.  He regularly teaches archives and oral history courses for the University of Kentucky’s School of Library and Information Science.

He is currently managing the IMLS grant project Oral History in the Digital Age establishing current best practices for collecting, curating and disseminating oral histories.  The grant is directed by MATRIX at Michigan State University and partners the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Oral History Association, and the American Folklore Society.

Previously, Doug Boyd established and administered Digital Programs for the University of Alabama Libraries, served as the Director of the KentuckyOral History Commission and prior to that worked as the Senior Archivist for the oral history collection at the Kentucky Historical Society.   Boyd was elected in 2008 to the Oral History Steering Committee for the Society of American Archivists and to the Executive Council of the Oral History Association in 2010.  Doug Boyd received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Folklore from Indiana University and his B.A. degree in History from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Interview excerpts courtesy of : Kentucky Historical Society

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