LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On a good day with comfortable weather, Jason Williams and his friends may be playing dominoes at Chickasaw Park.

It’s the neighborhood they all grew up in.

They’ve seen the park undergo changes throughout the decades as the only park tailor-made for Black people during a period of ongoing white flight.

“That's when it became the West End," Williams said. "It was mostly white people down here. Then I came out, a 9-year-old kid. I thought the whole world was for sale; it was ‘For Sale’ signs everywhere.”

That kind of history is why the news of a $5 million donation was that much more important to them.

For 94-year-old Elmer Lucille Allen, the first Black chemist to work at Brown-Forman in 1966, the donation came as a major shock. She was at the park Saturday when the

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