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The Kentucky State University Center for Research in the Eradication of Educational Disparities (CREED) received and began implementation of a $20,000 grant from the 400 Years of African American History Commission.

The grant will fund research and produce an educational tool to transmit knowledge of the history and roles played African-Americans in Kentucky’s Appalachian region, including challenges they faced and creative coping and adjustment mechanisms they employed. The project was designed by Dr. William Turner, interim director of CREED, while serving last academic year as distinguished visiting scholar-in-residence for the center. 

The project will include photos, artwork and text in various forms to provide middle and high school teachers educational tools. 

According to Turner, “the model for this important and timely work was produced by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights in 1971, titled ‘Kentucky's Black Heritage.’”

According to Turner, the project will recognize and highlight the resilience and contributions of African-Americans in the Appalachian (coal mining) sectors of Kentucky, and educate students in middle and high school about the arrival and persistence of African-Americans in a region where they have labored and lived since the early times.

The 400 Years of African American History Commission Act established a 15-member commission to coordinate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies.