# Kentucky

Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Originally a part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Although it was in the Southern United States and allowed slavery, it ultimately sided with the Union over the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Kentucky is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the major regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky which houses two of its major cities, Louisville and Lexington. Its state legislature is currently controlled by the Republican Party, while its current governor is the Democrat Andy Beshear

## Quotes

* Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.
** Muhammad Ali, As quoted in Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (1999) by Mike Marqusee; also quoted in the International Socialist Review Issue 33 (January–February 2004)
* We got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the race track and the stables at once. Then we knew we were all right.
** Sherwood Anderson, "I Want to Know Why", in The Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories (1921)
* Westward lay the march of American Empire. Within thirty years of the establishment of the Union nine new states had been formed in the Mississippi valley, and two in the borders of New England. As early as 1769 men like Daniel Boone had pushed their way into the Kentucky country, skirmishing with the Indians. But the main movement over the mountains began during the War of Independence. The migration of the eighteenth century took two directions: the advance westward towards the Ohio, with its settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the occupation of the north-west forest regions, the fur-traders’ domain, beyond Lake Erie.
** Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Volume IV: The Great Democracies (1958), pp. 102-103
* The colonisation of New England and the eastern coastline of America had been mainly the work of powerful companies, aided by the English Crown or by feudal proprietors with chartered rights. But here in the new lands of the West any man with an axe and a rifle could carve for himself a rude frontier home. By 1790 there were thirty-five thousand settlers in the Tennessee country, and double that number in Kentucky. By 1800 there were a million Americans west of the mountain ranges of the Alleghenies. From these new lands a strong, self-reliant Western breed took its place in American life. Modem American democracy was bom and cradled in the valley of the Mississippi. The foresight of the first independent Congress of the United States had proclaimed for all time the principle that when new territories gained a certain population they should be admitted to statehood upon an equality with the existing partners of the Union. It is a proof of the quality and power of the Westerners that eleven of the eighteen Presidents of the United States between 1828 and 1901 were either bom or passed the greater part of their lives in the valley of the Mississippi.
** Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Volume IV: The Great Democracies (1958), p. 103
* When I was a kid back in Kentucky, we went to this church where my uncle preached. It was kind of a weird Baptist, full-on kind of place. People kept running up to the pulpit and grabbing his ankles and being saved. Lots of crying. Even then, at six or seven, I questioned how pure the emotion could be if it were on such display.
** Johnny Depp, Quoted in Kevin Sessums, "Johnny Be Good," Vanity Fair (February 1997)
* I met Colonel Sanders' wife in the State of Kentucky; said I brought some chicken if you'd just fuck me. I came in her mouth, it was a crisis. I gave her my secret blend of herbs and spices.
** Joseph Foreman, "Crazy Rap" (2000)
* I'm gonna fuck me, a girl from Kentucky. Right before I cum, I'm a make her sucky-sucky.
** Joseph Foreman, "Kentucky" (2008), Waiting to Inhale
* The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 't will never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:— Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
** Stephen Foster, My Old Kentucky Home. As quoted at Anthology of American Poetry, by George Gesner, (1983).
* The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart, With sorrow where all was delight; The time has come when the darkies have to part: Then my old Kentucky home, good night!
** Stephen Foster, My Old Kentucky Home. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
* The song birds are the sweetest In Kentucky; The thoroughbreds are fleetest In Kentucky; Mountains tower proudest, Thunder peals the loudest, The landscape is the grandest— And politics—the damnedest In Kentucky.
** James H. Mulligan, "In Kentucky," stanza 7; reported in John W. Townsend, "In Kentucky" and its Author, "Jim" Mulligan (1935), pp. 8–9
* It’s so strange coming to Kentucky from California. Like I'm visiting another country. Your secret histories. Social taboos. Folk garb.
** Rudy Rucker, Quantum Telepathy in Ed Finn & Kathryn Cramer (eds.) Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (2014), ISBN 978-0-06-220469-1, p. 454

## See also

* Mitch McConnell
* Rand Paul

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Kentucky on Wikipedia
* The dictionary definition of kentucky on Wiktionary
* Kentucky travel guide from Wikivoyage