By Linda Blackford | Editor
There is so much to say about Juneteenth, and I will have more to talk about next week after a Juneteenth-filled weekend. You may not know one strange connection that Kentucky has to the end of chattel slavery … Union General Gordon Grainger gave the famous Order #3 in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. It had been issued in 1863, but Texan enslavers had not bothered to obey the law. Grainger is actually buried in Lexington Cemetery. That’s because his wife, Marie Letcher, was a Lexington native.
Of course, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to the enslaved people of Kentucky because the state had not officially seceded. A newsletter is not the place to delve into all these complications, but I highly recommend a trip to Camp Nelson National Monument if you want to know more.
Our parent group, States Newsroom, gives us Juneteenth off, and I hope you have it off as well. We’ll leave you with some different Kentucky stories to read today, and over the weekend. We’ll see you back here on Monday.
Jamie Madden found solid footing for her recovery from addiction at The Hub, a community center in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that offers services ranging from peer support to canned food and sterile syringes. (Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News)
By Taylor Sisk, KFF Health News
Over the past two years, the state of Kentucky has sent hundreds of thousands of opioid settlement dollars to the rural eastern region of the state to help minimize the ramifications of drug misuse. The Hub, a program that oversees a network of community centers offering a range of services from recovery peer support to canned food to sterile syringes, is part of that effort.
A photo of James Bruggers. (Courtesy of Chris Bruggers)
By Liam Niemeyer
James Bruggers, a longtime Kentucky environmental and energy journalist whose groundbreaking coverage spanned from the hazards of coal mines to scrutinizing polluters, died Tuesday. He was 68.
COMMENTARY
By Bill Bishop
Purdue Pharma introduced the painkiller OxyContin in late 1995 – and we are still learning of the harm it has caused. A new paper shows how it affected outmigration.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
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