Next up in our popular LexHistory Talks! series is a step back into the wild politics of the Gilded Age in Kentucky.
The title of Dr. Mark Wahlgren Summers’ talk is “Five Dead Equals a Quiet Election: Politics as Unusual in the Gilded Age."
“No matter how sick of modern-day politics we may be, a look at the way it was carried out – often violently – in the past ought to be the perfect antidote,” Summers says. “Threats, intimidation, fraud and even homicide were as normal a part of the Bluegrass as race-track results.” The Gilded Age is the name often given to the period from around 1870 to 1900, a time of rapid transformation--and political corruption-- in the United States.
Summers is the Thomas D. Clark Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, where he has taught for more than three decades. He is the author of The Gilded Age: Or, the Hazard of New Functions.
The program is from 3 to 4 p.m. in the large conference room of the Tates Creek Branch of the Lexington Public Library. As with all our LexHistory Talks!, it is free and open to the public.
