Records stored in the Hickman County Courthouse tell story of indentured children

With post Civil War Reconstruction unpopular in the South, including the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Legislature came up with a clever idea to answer a labor shortage caused by losing 20% of its unpaid labor force. The answer was reviving and expanding the system of indentured servitude to orphans and poor children. State law created a system (complete with fill-in-the-blank forms) that empowered the County Judge to "bind out orphans, and children whose parents are incapable of bringing them up in moral courses."

A president, facing a radically right-facing United State Supreme Court, goes to the American people calling for reforming the Court. This is President Joe Biden following the bombshell decision revoking the rights of women to have an abortion, right?

In fact, this was equally true of President Franklin D. Roosevelt eighty-five years ago in 1937. Led by a group of conservatives, referred to as the Four Horsemen, the Supremes had repeatedly overturned New Deal legislation designed to pull the nation out of the Great Depression in favor of private corporations...

If having the power of state government as center of all (like the Sun), then modern Kentucky politics has revolved around two planets (Democrats and Republicans) with the always rising and waxing moons of far left progressives and far right conservatives.

Ivan and Mary Potter shopping in Hazel KY

Meet the husband and wife team responsible for West Kentucky Journal.

Editor's Note: Updated - Ivan Potter retired from the Clinton City Council as of January 1, 2017.

WKJ now has over 6000 articles and 2.5 million yearly views.