Middle of Everywhere

Black Overseer of a Confederate Monument

By Austin Carter,

Published May 29, 2025 at 11:42 AM CDT

How do you feel about confederate monuments and what they represent? Does your race influence the emotions you have toward these things? Can you separate your feelings from historical facts? In this last episode of our season, we’re going to talk with the only Black person ever to have managed the Jefferson Davis Historic Site in Fairview Kentucky. Ron Sydnor managed the park until 2017 and had programming at the site that taught the diversity and nuances of the people behind the civil war. But teaching confederate history forced him to separate his feelings from what he was teaching.

Presenting Middle of Everywhere

Austin Carter

Austin Carter is a Murray State grad and has been involved with WKMS since he was in high school. Over the years he has been a producer for WKMS and has hosted several music shows, but now calls Morning Edition his home each weekday morning.

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Ariel Lavery

Ariel grew up in and became disenchanted with suburbia early on. Since childhood, she yearned for rural farm life and has now made a chance landing in rural Murray, KY. She holds a BFA and MFA in Studio Art.“ I am driven to collect the stories and histories of rural folk, the people who , in some ways, have the most immediate connection to our history as a country. ” -Ariel

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