- Grade Levels:
- 7-12
- Length:
- 60 minutes
- Taping Rights:
- Unlimited
- MARC Record:
- Downloadable
- Teaching Materials:
- See Below
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During the late 19th century, thousands of people attended Chautauqua tent shows, which featured itinerant companies of actors, musicians, lecturers, and orators presenting programs of entertainment and education. The Kentucky Humanities Council revived the idea in 1992 to celebrate the state’s bicentennial, sponsoring a series of traveling stage shows in which actors portrayed characters from Kentucky history. This KET production offers five of those performances:
- Nancy Sherburne as Belle Brezing, the notorious Lexington madam who inspired the character of Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind.
- Laura Lee Duncan O’Connell as Cora Wilson Stewart, the adult education pioneer who opened the “Moonlight Schools” for adults who wanted to learn to read and write.
- George T. Vaughn as the Rev. Elisha Green, a former slave who became a Baptist minister and fought for civil rights.
- Jimmy Lowe as author Jesse Stuart.
- Vic Hellard Jr. as Edwin Porch Morrow, Kentucky’s Republican governor from 1919 to 1923, who championed women’s rights, fair tax assessments, governmental accountability, and, above all, education reform.
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