Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliot Jaspin

Author:Elliot Jaspin [Jaspin, Elliot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781598870794
Google: 7204DgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2008-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

A Dog Named Nigger

Laurel and Whitley Counties, Kentucky

1919

Some things are just meant to be. How else to explain the fact that, when a mob was rampaging through Corbin, Kentucky on the evening of October 30, 1919, it stumbled across the municipal band marching through town? The result was the first racial cleansing with musical accompaniment.1

The band’s fifteen unsuspecting members, who had just finished playing at a political rally in the high school, had decided to end the night with a brisk march through town. But moments after they struck up the unwittingly prescient “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” they were overtaken somewhere between Main and Depot streets by a crowd of 125 gun-toting men. “This man, right out of a clear sky . . . here he come with this gang, with his six shooter,” said Blake Killenger, one of the band members. “They were just, was just a-blazing on all sides and stopped us and told us they’re running the blacks out of town.” The bandsmen were ordered to serenade the gunmen as they rounded up the town’s blacks and marched them to the railroad depot.2

CORBIN, KENTUCKY

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