In 2023, Anastasia Curwood, Ph.D., and Le Datta Grimes, Ph.D. applied for a National Parks Service grant to produce a comprehensive study of Black life and history at Mammoth Cave National Park and its environs.  

The project seeks to humanize and tell the stories of Black Kentuckians in the context of Black history and life surrounding Mammoth Cave. Three key principles guide this inquiry: Black agency, agenda, and desire. We examine Black Americans’ lives through the lens of power, will, and aspiration. Before and after emancipation, Black Kentuckians worked underground in the caves mining saltpeter and giving tours, and above ground in the transportation, hospitality, and agricultural industries. At least as important, Black Kentuckians also raised families, founded churches, and built communities. They were/are not only stakeholders in the social, political, and cultural life in Mammoth Cave and its surrounds but also its shapers. By extension, their intelligence, labor, and ingenuity informed Kentucky’s economy making them an integral part of the Commonwealth’s founding and growth. 

This three-year CESU Special History Study - African Americans at Mammoth Cave will produce a special history study that will examine the African American experience at Mammoth Cave to help guide future research and interpretation.  

About Le Datta Grimes, PhD

Dr. Grimes earned a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2021 and serves as the Co-Principal Investigator for this project. Her scholarship on Rosenwald Schools and the Black communities who built them includes research on free Black people in Western Kentucky, and Black land ownership, entrepreneurship, and wealth in the antebellum and postbellum periods. Dr. Grimes examines Black American’s lives through the lenses of power, will, and aspiration. Her work demonstrates that Black Americans are not only stakeholders in the socio-political identity of America, but its shapers.