This mural, located at the local VFW Post 4075 reflects the role that veterans played in the national civil rights movement and reflects local history, specifically the 1964 March on Frankfort. On March 5, 1964, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson (who served in the U.S. Army during WWII), many of Kentucky’s civil rights leaders, and numerous Frankfort natives marched with an estimated 10,000 people down Capital Avenue to peacefully demonstrate against segregation and discrimination. The march contributed to the passage of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act in 1966 that made discrimination illegal in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Kentucky was the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line to pass its own civil rights act. The portrait on the right is of Anna Mac Clarke, a Lawrenceburg native and Kentucky State University graduate who, during World War II, was the first African American to command an integrated Women’s Army Corps unit.
This mural is commissioned artwork by the City of Frankfort in partnership with Josephine Sculpture Park and VFW Post 4075, with federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Find more information about the march here.
Find more information about Anna Mac Clarke here.
