In Person - at the corner of 1000 S. Hurstbourne Pkwy and Linn Station Rd.
Presented by: Randy Runyon
On June 8, 1883, Rev. Elisha Green was traveling by train from Maysville to Paris, Kentucky. At Millersburg, about forty students from the Millersburg Female College crowded onto the train, accompanied by their music teacher, Frank L. Bristow, and the college president, George T. Gould. Gould grabbed the reverend by the shoulder and ordered him to give up his seat. When Green refused, Bristow and Gould assaulted him until the conductor intervened and ordered the assailants to stop or he would throw them off of the train. Friends advised Green to take legal action, and he did, winning his case against his assailants in March 1884, though with only token compensation. The significance of this case lies not only in the prevailing justice of the 1800s, but also in the fact that a black man won a lawsuit against two white men.
Randy Runyon, originally from Maysville, Kentucky, taught at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for 35 years, and now lives in Paris, Kentucky. Three of his books on Kentucky history have been published by the University Press of Kentucky: Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad; The Mentelles: Mary Todd Lincoln, Henry Clay, and the Immigrant Family Who Educated Antebellum Kentucky; and The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community.