Constance Alexander: Frank X Walker discusses discusses what’s fake, what’s real, what’s history

During a recent presentation at Murray State University, Frank X Walker promised not to make the audience too uncomfortable. Then the award-winning poet paused and leaned into the microphone, adding the word “Yet” in a conversational coda.

“There are things about history we don’t know,” he said, reflecting on his own public education, growing up in Danville.

He remembers being taught that slavery was somehow different in Kentucky, not like other southern states. He refuted that myth by reading his poem entitled, “Ain’t no plantations in Kentucky,” which begins with the phrase, “…unless you count…”

The list that followed started with Alexander Plantation House and then skipped through the alphabet to include familiar names like Ashland, Fern Hill, Maplewood, Oxmoor, Rocky Hill, Slead Hou