Civil Rights and Restorative Justice-Kentucky Legal Clinic (CRRJ-KY) and the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky have entered a joint partnership to research the history and legal outcomes of the 1919 racial removal in Corbin, Kentucky.
Initiated in the Spring 2025 semester, students from both programs collaborated on annotating legal documents from the 1920 court case which followed the violent removal of approximately 200 Black residents from Corbin on Oct. 30, 1919.
Law students within CRRJ-KY, a collaborative project at UK between the Legal Clinic at the J. David Rosenberg College of Law and the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, provided contextual and legal insight into the case files, including annotating indictment records, bench warrant and sworn statements related to the eventual criminal conviction of the leader of the violent mob.
"This is an excellent opportunity to bring together creative, interdisciplinary work focused on Appalachia that betters the entire Commonwealth," said Austin Zinkle, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar and co-director of CRRJ-KY.
These collaboration efforts for broader truthtelling go beyond the university. Under the direction of Kathryn Engle, Ph.D., the Appalachian Center has worked with the Sunup Initiative, a coalition of community members working to support racial justice in Corbin.
"Since late 2018, the Sunup Initiative has worked to promote constructive conversations about race in the community," Engle said. "Learning about the history of the 1919 events and the facts from the court case helps shed light from a different angle on this historical event."
Some of the findings from this collaboration were presented by students at the 49th Appalachian Studies Association Conference, March 19-21 in Huntington, West Virginia.
Cierra Ledford, a UK anthropology and Appalachian studies alum and incoming J. David Rosenberg College of Law student, convened "Reckoning with the Past: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Racial Violence." Third-year law student and CRRJ-KY alum, Claire Gussler, presented "Law, Memory, and the Construction of Justice: A Legal Reading of the Corbin Expulsion of 1919," which examined the 1919 Corbin case documents and explored the concept of justice within the legal system. Micah Lynn, a second-year graduate student in the UK Department of History, also shared his work as co-founder of the Woodford County Remembrance Project, in conversation with community leader Dee Parker of the Eastern Kentucky Remembrance Project.
"We see this partnership as the perfect opportunity to advance our own research, but, more importantly, to engage students in experiential, academic work with real-world impact to Kentuckians," said D'lorah Hughes, an associate clinical professor of law and co-director of CRRJ-KY. "We are so grateful to our departments for helping us realize UK's mission in this way."
Further collaborative efforts are already in the works, including Gussler sharing her legal research on the removal with residents in Corbin through a special meeting of the Sunup Initiative later this spring.
