It is important for you to know that I did not travel to Mammoth Cave National Park to meet Stephen Bishop.  I went for the same reason most visitors travel to Mammoth Cave.  I was seeking a respite from my routine; I was seeking a respite from the pandemic.  I wanted to be around some natural beauty that I had not encountered before.

Mammoth Cave delivers on all those things.  The Green River snakes its way through the park surrounded all around by mountains.  The river lives up to its name – it’s the greenest river you’re likely to look upon.  The landscape is fascinating.  When you arrive at the park full of hills and hiking trails, you are presented with the mystery that half the park is buried underground.  The park map lays out the trails and roads, but it also comes with an underside, a negative of sorts – a map of the underworld.  The River Styx even flows from the Green River into this netherworld.  The caverns are impressive and rise to one’s expectations.  In addition to their beauty, they have their history – the site of a one-time tuberculosis hospital, a recitation of Hamlet’s soliloquy by Edwin Booth (the brother of the assassin), and church services at the height of summer. 

Yet like much of American history, Mammoth Cave is marked by slavery and its attendant silence.  The caves were known to indigenous peoples who pursued animals into the caverns, but the first explorer who mapped extensive parts of the caves was Stephen Bishop, an African American slave, and the first known person to cross the Bottomless Pit.  Bishop was one of many African American guides.  He is buried in the Old Guides Cemetery.  You will find his marker there.  His tombstone originally intended for a union soldier as the martial imagery suggests.  He died in 1859 aged 37, a life ended too soon – six years before emancipation. 

Bishop of course was not the only slave to work in the caves.  In fact, the caverns first became prominent in the early 1800s as a mine for calcium nitrate, an ingredient for gun powder.  Slaves worked the mines to deliver the necessary resources to win the War of 1812.  They don’t teach us that in our history books much.  We learn about the Battle of Lake Erie and the Battle of New Orleans, but we never hear that those battle were won in part because of the forced labor African Americans working in the saltpeter mines of Mammoth Cave.  They’ve largely been erased from the record.  Of course, if you travel to Mammoth Cave, you will now see markers to their labors and contributions, but there are no statues to them in our city squares; we do not know their names.

It is important for you to know that I did not travel to Kentucky to see the Breonna Taylor Memorial in Jefferson Square, Louisville.  I could have travelled there any time after her violent death at the hand of Louisville police officers on March 13, 2020, but I did not.  I waited until an autumn Sunday morning on my return from a vacation.  The first thing you notice is that the Breonna Taylor Memorial is in the heart of the city in Jefferson Square, and yet the day when I visited it was entirely isolated.  No one would have found it if they were not looking for it.  Not because the memorial was abandoned or forgotten – no, there were those who were keeping the watch, remaining vigilant.  Rather police cars had cordoned off the area for blocks around.  Municipal trucks blocked intersections, so that I had to park and walk several city blocks to get to the heart of a beloved community so dangerous and radical that it threatens all the barricades we have built to maintain the status quo.  Yes, I know that city centers are typically empty on Sunday mornings, but the blocks surrounding Jefferson Square were too quiet. 

Until one reached the memorial.  The speakers were blasting Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” as I entered the square, an anthem from my youth that welcomed me into the square where all manner of activities were going on – folks were selling t-shirts, a prayer service was being prepared, food was being distributed.  Most of all people were just there, being present and bearing witness.  I sat down and let it seep into me.  The music was matched by a silence you had to listen to hear.  It was my first visit to one of these memorials marking a black life taken too soon by law enforcement.  I walked around the memorial reading the signs and the names on the markers to the many others who have lost their lives to our white supremacist justice system, a justice system established to protect me and my privileges. 

I arrived there just days after the decision not to charge the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her home.  Officer Brett Hankison was indicted with wanton endangerment and was fired from the Louisville police force. 

Breonna Taylor was 26 years old, a life taken too soon.  In the court proceedings that surrounded her death, Breonna Taylor was erased from the record. Her life and death did not enter the equation of the grand jury.  The charge of wanton endangerment against Officer Hankinson had nothing to do with Breonna Tayler; Hankinson was charged because the ten bullets he fired entered the neighboring apartment.  The occupants of the neighboring apartment, including a pregnant woman and a 5-year old, were fortunately unharmed by this barrage of bullets.  No charges were made against the other two officers, and no charges have been announced for the murder of Breonna Taylor.  As far as the grand jury was concerned, Breonna Taylor was incidental to what happened the night of the March 13^th.

Stephen Bishop and Breonna Taylor lived in two different worlds separated by time and place, but they lived in the same America.  An America that devalues the lives of Black people.  America left to its customs would erase their lives.  It is up to us to remember them, but even more importantly it is up to us to bring about a justice that will value their lives.

Resources

Black History at Mammoth Cave

Joy Medley Lyons.  Making Their Mark: The Signature of Slavery at Mammoth Cave.  Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 2006.

For information and resources on the movement to ban No Knock warrants, visit End All No Knocks