As Derby approaches, Kentucky battles over removal of Confederate monument
By Travis M. Andrews, WASHINGTON POST
May 3, 2016
Racial disparity and the Kentucky Derby have long gone hand-in-hand, and this year is no different. As the famed race prepares to burst out of the starting gate in its 142nd year, issues stemming from race relations gallop along with it. The races, which begin on Saturday, generally draw around 266,000 visitors every year. But nearby, playing out in courtrooms, a battle over a Confederate monument is underway ...
In many ways, that strife is at the center of Hunter S. Thompson's famous 1970 piece of Gonzo journalism about the Derby titled "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." The story contains all the traditional characteristics of a Thompson piece - rampant alcohol and drug use, biting commentary, larger-than-life characters - but at its center is the fear of a race riot occurring at the event and an anxious sense of the strained racial relations in America at the time ...
Toward the end of his Derby piece, he wrote, "So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is" ...
"The old South, and the antebellum schtick that Louisville has sometimes attached to is not constructive," co-chair of Louisville's new historic panel Keith Runyon told the Courier-Journal. "This is a dynamic monument, a 'we'll rise again' sort of thing.' And just over time some things become outdated, and I think this one is."
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/nation-world/nation/article/As-Derby-approaches-Kentucky-battles-over-7391509.php
