Winchester apologized for past racial wrongs. Will the county court follow suit?
Joyce Morton grew up in Winchester and remembers a time when the county seat of Clark County was strictly segregated.
“I’m 73 years old, so I remember that I had to sit upstairs at the movie theater,” she said. “When I went to the corner drug store to get ice cream, I had to leave. I had to drink from the colored fountain.”
She is now part of the Winchester Black History and Heritage Committee, which has developed its own Black Heritage trail in Winchester. That group is also supporting a resolution that would allow city and county officials to acknowledge Winchester’s racist past.
The resolution, which passed the Winchester City Commission unanimously earlier this summer, will be brought up at the Clark County Fiscal Court meeting on Thursday, July 28. This is what it says:
“WHEREAS, thousands of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in Winchester and Clark County from 1775 through 1865; WHEREAS, in 1860 just prior to the Civil War, forty-two (42) percent of the population in Clark County was enslaved, and black people were bought and sold at the Clark County Courthouse; WHEREAS, following Emancipation, injustices against African Americans continued with outbreaks of violence, lynchings, racial segregation and discrimination;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Clark County Fiscal Court that
(1) We are committed to the principle that all people are created equal;
(2) We acknowledge the fundamental inhumanity and injustice of slavery and segregation;
(3) We regret the wrongs that were committed against African Americans in our community in the past;
(4) We recognize that much progress toward racial equality has been made in our community; and
(5) We express our continuing opposition to all forms of racial discrimination.
Simple and fact-based. Although much of the attention to Black Lives Matter centered on large, urban areas, small towns like Winchester are doing their own grappling with these issues.
“This is a liberating act for all of us,” Morton said. “The county judge and magistrates, because they act as guardians of this community, will their conscience let them renew the commitment to justice and peace that will allow us to move forward together? This is what we need.”
The resolution has been in the works for several years, said community organizer Harry Enoch, but the process was slowed down by rewrites and COVID. But when they finally brought it to the city commission in front of a big audience, there was little dissent.
“It had gone through multiple drafts,” said Winchester Mayor Ed Burtner. “We thought about it and there was nothing in it that wasn’t factual. We had a good many individuals present for the discussion and the vote that night — about half African-American — and it was an appropriate thing to do for Winchester at this moment.”
Several magistrates reached by email said they had not seen the resolution and declined to comment. Clark County Judge Henry Branham said he’d followed the discussion at the city level.
“From listening to the conversation, it seems like a very fair resolution that basically states the community’s position of recognizing the past and maybe some things that have happened in the past that the community is not so proud of but would like to reconcile,” he said. “We realize we can’t change those things but we don’t want to forget them — I think that’s a very fair thing to ask for.”
It does seem fair, and really a small but important step in our national journey toward racial reconciliation. The resolution is not asking for reparations, it’s not asking for a racial justice commission like Lexington has created, it’s not asking for an overhaul of the police department. It’s simply an acknowledgment that even in the most bucolic small towns, there was great injustice toward a segment of the population, and that moving forward they need to do better.
Let’s hope the Clark County magistrates agree, and that other communities follow suit.
