By Steve FlairtyNKyTribune columnist
I have a personal library filled with hundreds of historical books about Kentucky. One of my favorites is Kentucky Women: Their Lives and Times, edited by Melissa McEuen and Thomas Appleton, Jr. In researching a story about a brave African American community activist who lived in Lexington and, for a while, in Covington, I found my most comprehensive coverage of her in this book.
Her story starts with a death that didn’t have to happen. A little over a hundred years ago, Mrs. Gertrude Boulder, an African American citizen living in Lexington, was found unconscious by police on a downtown street. She was charged with drunkenness, arrested, and placed in a jail cell. Reports were that she appeared ill, but no medical attention was sought on her behalf. Boulder died by what was later determined to be a “severe gastrointestinal condition.”
After the victim’s funeral, on April 5, 1925, city officials were presented with a signed petition from a group of black women from the Lexington area regarding the police’s Boulder handling. According to Kentucky Women, the victim was a highly respectable citizen, religious, and a community servant. That, and the petition stated that the signers “wish here to enter our protest, disgust and indignation against such treatment toward our law-abiding citizens.”…