Sniffles echoed, tears dried and hums of agreement rippled through the audience in the dim Jody Richards Hall auditorium Thursday evening while the documentary “Jonesville: When Sunflowers Fall” screened.
Jonesville was a Black community in Bowling Green established in 1881 along Russellville Road, whose residents were displaced by the expansion of WKU’s campus in the 1960s. The university justified purchasing the property through urban renewal, a city program of seizing and demolishing property to address aging infrastructure, according to the documentary.
WKU PBS, the Kentucky Museum, the Jonesville Reconciliation Workgroup and community producers collaborated to create the 55-minute documentary. The showing was free and open to the public. Residents of Jonesville and their descendants were invited.
The Jonesville Reconciliation Workgroup was founded in 2022 by WKU President Timothy Caboni as part of the Naming and Symbols Task Force. One of the workgroup’s objectives is to recognize the neighborhood’s importance through honorific naming of campus spaces, according to its website. Caboni attended the Thursday showing.
According to the documentary, 300,000 households were displaced by urban renewal programs from 1950 to 1966.
“It happened all over the country in the 50s and 60s, Peggy Crowe, the chair of the Jonesville Reconciliation Workgroup, said. “It’s just this is our story.”
At the time, the Federal Housing Administration passed appraisal guidelines that lowered the property values of “inharmonious racial groups.” Jonesville residents whose houses were appraised and sold did not receive fair compensation for their property.
The documentary included records from the Urban Renewal and Community Development Agency of the City of Bowling Green detailing the budget value and approved price of 10 Jonesville properties, all approved for below $10,000.
“It tells you just what people were thinking at that time and what little regard they gave to Black people,” Alice Gatewood Waddell, a former Jonesville resident and community producer of the documentary, said.
Cornelia Jones, Waddell’s sister, said in the documentary that her family home was sold for $1,200 in 1965 when she was 15 years old.
David Greer, another community producer, wrote the poem “When Sunflowers Fall.” He read the poem in the epilogue of the documentary.
“When I first saw the mural over at the Kentucky Museum in 2023, I started writing,” Greer said.
Waddell and Professor Mike Nichols created the fresco as a commemorative mural for Jonesville. Sunflowers are a main component in the artwork.
A Q&A session and a reception followed the screening. Community producers, Waddell, Greer and Akisha Townsend Eaton, answered questions from audience members.
Josh Niedwick, director and editor of the documentary, led the Q&A. The producers discussed cut content, the importance of documentation, the workgroup’s future plans, and the reality that Jonesville families likely relocated multiple times.
The Kentucky Museum placed its state-wide traveling exhibit titled “What happened to Jonesville?” outside the auditorium.
The workgroup plans to build a permanent honorary marker for Jonesville on campus, as well as hold future showings of the documentary and create educational opportunities.
“We have a partnership with the National Education Television Association,” Niedwick said. “They hire someone to write curriculum for the content that goes on to media school teachers and other education organizations.”
“It’s really finally getting the recognition, the understanding, that it deserves,” Greer said. “And the people of Bowling Green deserve to know the story.”
