Tyler C.

Morgan
Professor Goan
His 240
23 March 2016
Memorial Hall has been one of the most recognizable building on the University of
Kentucky campus since it was first constructed in 1929, built as a tribute to those who died in
battle during World War I and it is primarily used for lectures and performances. Shortly after it
was built, recent University of Kentucky graduate Ann Rice OHanlon was hired to paint a mural
in Memorial Hall, the topic was senses of early Lexington and central Kentucky. The mural in
Memorial Hall as well as other statues and scenes around Lexington have recently become seen
as controversial due to some of the scenes on the mural. In this paper I will discuss why the
mural is controversial today, why the mural was not scene as controversial when it was being
painted, and what we should do about controversial statues all over Lexington and the state out
of Kentucky.
The purpose of the Memorial Hall mural was to always illustrate Kentuckys early
history, but those images today can be seen as very racist. Ann OHanlons goal when
constructing the mural was to always capture the early history of Lexington and central
Kentucky. Harriet W. Fowler describes what Ann OHanlon was trying to illustrate in the mural
in her article Ann OHanlons Kentucky Mural. Fowler states that the mural represents a
pictorial history of important central Kentucky events and landmarks (p. 58). During the time
she was constructing the mural, OHanlon certainly did not intend for any of the images to be
racist, she was simply trying to illustrate early central Kentucky the best she could. So why do so

many people today think the mural is racist? There are a few examples from the mural that some
people may look at it as history, and others see it as racist. One of this scenes of the mural
pictures a train full of white people driving through what appears to be a slave plantation. The
African Americans pictured are working in what appears to be a tobacco field. In my opinion it is
easy to see why people would be offended by this image today and I think for pretty obvious
reasons. The mural also shows a group of African Americans playing music for a group of
dancing white men. Slavery is the United States one big asterisk today people hate to even
mention the despicable time in American history where it was legal for white men to own
African Americans, and it truly was an awful period of time. Ann OHanlons assignment was to
illustrate early Lexington and central Kentucky. Unfortunately slavery and overall racist images
in the mural was a big part in early central Kentucky history, but only a small portion of the
scenes have racial undertone. The majority of the scenes shown on the mural feature things that
were true to the early history of Kentucky such as frontiersman building log cabins and forts that
have the likeness of Fort Boonsboro, what appears to be a wife morning over her dead husbands
body, and a man training a horse. In my opinion, OHanlon very accurately portrayed early
central Kentucky history in the mural.
Before you judge Ann OHanlon for including racist images into the mural you must first
think about when the mural was created. OHanlon completed the mural in Memorial Hall in
1934, around thirty years before the civil rights movement gained popularity. During the time
OHanlon was working on the mural African Americans and Caucasians could not even attend
the same schools, eat at the same sections of a restaurant, use the same restrooms, or drink from
the same water fountains as one another. The racial relations in the 1930s were completely
different than they are today. With all that being said when the mural was first completed and

really up until the last five to ten years no one thought there was anything wrong with some of
the images on the mural. Even though the painting came at time in United States history when
people did not consider African Americans and Caucasians to be equal, OHanlon including
images of slaves working tobacco fields was still bold. Wendell Berry illustrates this point in his
article Censors on the Flagship by saying Ann painted the Memorial Hall fresco in 1934,
when it took some courage to declare so boldly that slaves had worked in Kentucky fields.
Nobody would have objected if she had left them out. (p. 1). As you can see even though the
time period when the mural was created was way less racial sensitive than todays United States
it still did not change the fact that including African American slaves in the mural was not a little
bit controversial. I personally believe that OHanlon did not paint the images of the slaves to be
deliberately racist, personally I believe she was hired to show scenes of early central Kentucky
and she did just that, good things about that time period and bad.
The mural without a doubt has senses included in it that can come across as racist, the
mural at Memorial Hall is not alone in this. In fact it is not even the only controversial image in
Lexington. In down town Lexington there is a statue of Confederate army general John Hunt
Morgan, in the capitol rotunda in Frankfort there is a statue of Jefferson Davis who was president
of the Confederate States of America. These are all controversial in todays society, all of them
are being suggested to be removed. In my opinion, the mural in Memorial Hall should not be
removed, I can see where you can make a case where the statues should be removed, but there is
a big difference between the statues of Davis and Morgan and the mural in Memorial Hall. The
statues immortalize men who turned their backs on the United States of America and wanted the
Union to fall, whereas the mural just provided scenes of what life was like in early central
Kentucky. We as American citizens cannot change our history, we can only learn from it.

Removing these statues would be like saying forget that this era in American history ever
happened and that to me is a crime. Wendell Berry provides his view on the subject in Censors
on the Flagship, Berry states Do students, then, study history at our flagship university in
order to forget it? (p. 1). I agree with Mr. Berry one hundred percent, if we are removing the
mural because of the few images of African American slaves then are we trying to pretend like
that part of Kentucky history just didnt happen? Slavery was a terrible thing, but that does not
change the fact that it did happen and it was an important part of the era the OHanlon was
assigned to illustrate. I think that we as a university should not try and run from what happened
right here in Lexington two hundred years ago, in order to come to terms with what happened in
the past we must learn about, and then we must learn from it so that it does not happen again.
History has a way of repeating itself, thats why I believe it is very important we as citizens of
Kentucky remember the atrocity of slavery so we make sure nothing like slavery ever happens in
this great state again.
In conclusion, I believe the mural in Memorial Hall should not be removed because it
illustrates an important part of Kentucky history. While it is controversial, I believe that the
mural illustrates where we as a city of Lexington came from, and it shows just how far we have
evolved since then.

Works Cited
Berry, W. (2015). Censors on the Flagship. The Lexington Herald Leader , 1.
Fowler, H. W. (n.d.). Ann O'Hanlon's Kentucky Mural . The Kentucky Review , 57-68.