The Dangers of Living in a Black Town

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In the days of passenger trains that meant black folks going home to Barbourville had to use the Corbin station. They would be scared to even get off the train. Mrs. Booze is not afraid of Corbin anymore. On a Saturday and winter, she's sitting in an apartment there while her grand niece gets her hair styled by her friend David Sloan.

In 1919, a white mob forced the entire black population of Corbin, Kentucky, to leave, at gunpoint. It was one of many racial expulsions in the United States. What happened, and how such racial cleansings became “America’s family secret.”

The history of Corbin as presented by the Corbin city government, with no mention of the 1919 racial expulsion.

Elliot Jaspin’s book, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansings in America