“It’s not my job to:
Fix people.
Save people.
Chase people.
Change people.
Make them happy.
Prove them wrong.
Control how they feel.
Agree with everything.
Control anyone’s perception of me.
Help someone who didn’t ask for it.
Make them see what they cannot see.”
~ Brittney Cobb
Remember I said Lexington has offered haven to a variety of flag-waving people? That’s true for practically everyone except blacks. What is today Tandy Park used to be known as Cheapside. Cheapside is rumored to refer to the cheap side of the slave market that was in this general location beside the Fayette County Courthouse. What is not rumor is the whipping post for naughty slaves that was indeed in this location, and by naughty I mean an infraction as benign as being on the street after 7pm could get a black man or woman tied to the post and whipped. Let that sink in for a minute. Lexington was one of the largest slave markets in the midwest before the Civil War. During the Jim Crow Era, Daughters of the Confederacy with funding from the State erected two Confederate statues at the courthouse square. These statues were important in reminding everyone that came through Lexington that the South with her vile enslavement policies, though she lost, remained dangerously sulking just beneath the sheets, as it were. In 2020, the city council unanimously voted to remove the Confederate statues to the Lexington Cemetery (after much community engagement) and rename the park after Henry Tandy, the accomplished stonemason who built the adjacent courthouse. Tandy happened to be African American and one of the richest men in the state during his hay day. The courthouse is just one of several prominent buildings in Lexington to bear his craftsmanship. Today, Tandy Park hosts the Lexington Farmer’s Market, Thursday Night Live entertainment during warm months, and a variety of other multi-cultural activities year round. It’s hard to fathom that anyone anywhere in the world was enslaved to another human being, in the past or now (hello, sex trafficking), but it is the truth. It’s critical we understand one another and our shared history. It might be uncomfortable, but nothing worth building was ever easy. [steps off soapbox] Finally, as garish as the blue building is, it makes for some nice photographic compositions.
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