With the aid of the Kentucky Historical Society’s Kentucky Oral History Commission (KOHC), two new books, “Freedom on the Border: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky” and “This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak” have been published by the University Press of Kentucky.

Inspired by The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky, a four-year project led by KOHC, “Freedom on the Border” was written by Catherin Fosl and Tracy K’Meyer. The book is based on interviews conducted during the KOHC project. The stories of 103 civil rights activists recalling their struggles to bring an end to legal segregation in the commonwealth are featured in “Freedom on the Border.” The KOHC Civil Rights project also resulted in an online database of interviews, the documentary “Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky,” more than ten thousand pages of transcripts and several symposia.

Through the support of KOHC and the United States Holocaust Museum, author Arwen Donahue conducted interviews with 14 Holocaust survivors living in Kentucky. The interviews, which are housed at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort and the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C, resulted in the publication of “This is Home Now,” the development of an exhibit and a symposium. Through interview excerpts and photography, Donahue and Rebecca Gayle Howell tell the stories of nine of the 40 living Holocaust survivors in Kentucky in “This is Home Now.” The focus of the book, like the interviews that inspired it, was not the Holocaust experience, but the story of the lives of the survivors after liberation and their time in the commonwealth.

For more information on KOHC grants, which made both of these projects possible, visit www.history.ky.gov/oralhistory. To learn more about the books or the commission, contact Sarah Milligan, KOHC program coordinator, at Sarah.Milligan@ky.gov or 502-564-1792, ext. 4434.

An agency of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Kentucky Historical Society, since 1836, has provided connections to the past, perspective on the present and inspiration for the future.  KHS operates the Old State Capitol, the Kentucky Military History Museum and its headquarters, the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.   Since 1999, the thirty-million-dollar Center has welcomed more than one million visitors.   For more information about the Kentucky Historical Society and its programs, visit the Web site at www.history.ky.gov.