Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community

Kentucky Remembered: An Oral History Series

by Douglas A. Boyd, W. Fitzhugh Brundage (Foreword)

A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. "Craw's" reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city's Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s.

Douglas A. Boyd's Crawfish Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw's residents as a "rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed." In Crawfish Bottom , the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

Genres: History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Janie Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and I feel generous.Appreciating that when your source material is limited, you can only do so much…I was still very disappointed. I grew up in Frankfort. Born in 1948, I lived there when the Craw was still a neighborhood. I had ties there that are special memories… Not to be confused with the white fragility bias perception of “ nostalgia” referenced in the book however. I would have been considered a fancy little white girl living up on east main hill. My father was a politician…one who worked hard to defeat the Happy Chandler talked about. I remember being in the Craw around the election that year and seeing a car trunk open with men handing out half pint bottles of whisky. It seemed very festive to me as a child. People were yelling and hollering about their candidates and what was right and wrong… and my dad was unhappy/mad and told me this was why he was changing jobs which is another story. I also had a babysitter who lived in a two story house in the Craw. It was well kept and I loved visiting when we spent long periods together. She like others there worked in town. She had a masters degree as did her sister, Patti. Alice was one of the librarians for the colored library in Frankfort as well as a full time employee of The Frankfort State School…a residential facility for the mentally challenged. Patty was the Director of the Rosinwald Experimental School based at Kentucky State College, an all black college also in Frankfort. Most faculty lived up around the college but other staff also lived in the Craw. The issue of redlining was never mentioned in this book…which likely explained why many people of color lived here despite these jobs and circumstance. The strong sense of community was only teased at in the book compared to the vibrant church ladies on the streets on Sundays, the people sitting on porches in evenings fanning and visiting with kids playing in the streets. The professional people as well as the number of custodial help that lived in this area wasn’t mentioned.Wealthy white folk’s maids, butlers, and yard men all lived there. This is a town of 25,000 in its heyday…most everyone knows somebody who knows the other one. This book is very stiff and almost sterile in its presentation and never lets that be known in my opinion. Frankfort is a small town divided by a river …hence the South Frankfort derisions made…as if… It’s a town with southern, Appalachian, unusually political(it’s the capital of Kentucky) and uniquely racial( there is a black college within) components… To write a book about its “ lost community” deserved way more depth, perspective and reflection than it was given… Alice Simpson was correct when she was quoted as saying “these people think something is being done to them, not for them”. And for Alice who helped shape me into the successful woman that I became…I wish to reiterate that fact. More needs to be written to acknowledge this community for all that it was and not just the “ colorful”…pun intended.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the stories but had less enthusiasm for attempts to frame these oral histories in an academic framework. Still, it's a valuable book for Frankfort residents to remember a piece of history that has lost it's visual representation--especially in a town where so much of the history is still represented by stuff sitting around to be looked at.

[Tommy Druen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great look at the history and folklore of a neighborhood within Frankfort, Kentucky. While reading the book, it is easy to become captivated by the personalities within this 50 acre area. It serves as a great reminder that, no matter how a place may be viewed by outsiders, it's always "home" to someone.

[Peter Brackney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched and very interesting, but difficult to quickly maneuver. Still, some of the anecdotes were terrific!