834 SLAVERY the growth of figure skating, ice hockey, and speed skating. Northern Kentucky’s first indoor ice rink was the Dixie Gardens Ice Bowl in Fort Wright, which opened in the early 1960s and closed in the late 1980s and was located next to the Dixie Gardens Drive-In Theater (see Drive-Ins). The Northern Kentucky Ice Center opened in 1990 at the former home of the Northern Kentucky Racket Club, in Crescent Springs. However, much of the ice-skating in the region continues to be done on lakes and ponds and on parking lots that have been flooded for the purpose. In Fort Thomas, before the recent renovation of the mess hall at the old fort, the tile floor was flooded during the winter, the windows opened, and the heat turned off, allowing indoor ice-skating. Ice hockey was added to the Summer Olympic Games at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920, and figure skating was moved to the winter games in 1924. During the 20th century, choreographed iceskating shows became a popu lar form of entertainment throughout the world. The fi rst recorded use of roller skates was in a play on the London Stage in 1743. John Joseph Merlin invented a three-wheel in-line roller skate in 1760, primarily to allow ice-skaters to skate during warm weather. The fi rst patent for roller skates was issued to a Frenchman, Monsieur Petitbled, in 1819. However, those early roller skates proved to be difficult to control. To correct the problem, in 1863 James L. Plimpton invented a four-wheel roller skate, which he called the quad. His skates had rubber cushions between the plate and the front wheels, which permitted skaters to maneuver easily, by shift ing their weight from side to side. His innovation made it possible for roller skaters to perform moves previously made only by ice-skaters. In 1866 the fi rst public rollerskating rink opened in the United States, in the ballroom of the Atlantic House Resort Hotel in Newport, N.J. Within a short time, improvised roller-skating rinks began appearing in ballrooms, town halls, and similar buildings across the country. In later years, many portable skating floors were also set up at events like carnivals and county fairs. One of the fi rst Northern Kentucky roller skating rinks was opened in 1886, at the old Masonic Hall (see Masons) on York St., in Newport. Shortly thereafter, another opened in the ballroom of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall, at Fift h St. and Madison Ave. in Covington. In the late 1800s, there was also a combination skating rink and dance hall operated at Berlin Beach in Dayton, Ky. That building was later sold and moved to Tacoma Park, where it continued to operate into the 1950s. A large combination roller-skating rink and bowling alley, called the Roll and Bowl, opened in Florence, Ky., during the early 1970s but closed about two years later, when the entire building was made into a bowling alley, the Super Bowl. Currently the largest roller rink in Northern Kentucky is the Fundome, located off I-75 (see Expressways) and Ky. Rt. 18 in Florence. Jimmie’s Rollerdome has been operating in Elsmere since 1948, and
Reca Roller Rink in Alexandria has been serving Campbell Co. skaters since 1960. In Maysville, the Princess Skatorium on E. Second St. opened to much fanfare in 1907; later the Americana Rink operated for many years in the mid-1900s. In Maysville today is the Maysville Roller Rink, at the corner of Lexington St. and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad; it is open on weekends. South of town, Rudy’s Roller Rink has operated since 2001 near Lewisburg along Ky. Rt. 3071. In 1959 the Coasters skating club was formed in Maysville at the Maysville Roller Rink; several of its Maysville members participated that same year in the less-than-12-hour skate run from nearby Aberdeen to Portsmouth, Ohio, eastward along U.S. 52. Over the years, family-run roller-skating rinks have appeared in most Northern Kentucky cities; however, few survive today. Roller Derby in the 1950s and 1960s, skateboarding in the 1980s, and the in-line skating craze of the 1990s have hurt attendance at most indoor rinks. Large nationally or regionally owned conglomerates have taken over much of the industry. Those corporations often operate huge, glitzy rinks that offer restaurants, game and party rooms, exercise classes, and child care; and small family-owned rinks cannot compete. Also, high admission prices, caused partly by soaring liability insurance costs and other operating expenses, have contributed to the demise of many rinks. The first U.S. Speed Roller Skating Championships were held in 1937, at the Arena Gardens in Detroit, Mich. Dance and figure skating championships were added in 1939. Roller-skating competition was included in the Pan American Games in 1979 and in the Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain, in 1992. Speed Roller Skating is scheduled to appear for the first time in the Summer Olympic Games in 2012. The Diagram Group. Enjoy Skating. Edinburg, Scotland: Morrison and Gibb, 1978. “Healy Building in Newport Has New Owner Now,” KTS, August 11, 1921, 25. “Kids on Wheels,” KP, March 20, 2001, 8K. National Museum of Roller Skating. “John Joseph Merlin-Monsieur Petitbled.” www.rollerskating museum.com (accessed July 2, 2006). “Skating,” local history fi les, Kentucky Gateway Museum, Maysville, Ky.
Jack Wessling
SLAVERY. The American form of slavery had already been codified by constitutional provisions, legislative acts, and municipal ordinances in Virginia and other English colonies when Dr. Thomas Walker in 1750, Christopher Gist in 1751, and James McBride in 1751 began to map the eastern and northern regions of Kentucky. As prescribed by these laws in the colonies, slaves were, for the first time in history, defined as chattel, as property; slavery was perpetual, that is, slave status was inherited; and legal racism was embedded in slavery, because slaves were defined as being black and of African descent. The economic benefits to white slave owners in the United States through chattel
slavery developed over the next 100 years through the transatlantic slave market and the domestic buying and selling of slaves. As the Civil War neared, in 1860 nearly 4.5 million people of African descent were working for white landowners for free or for a pittance and millions more had died in servitude. There were counterforces. By the time Kentucky became a state in 1792, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts had already abolished slavery in various forms. The Northwest Territories had also been declared free of institutional slavery, making Ohio and Indiana free states as they entered the Union in 1803 and 1816, respectively. And earlier, in 1795, France had declared all slaves free both on its native soil and throughout its colonies. At the Kentucky Constitutional Convention at Danville in 1792, Rev. David Rice and other ministers fought against Article 9, which would legalize slavery. Their efforts met with defeat, however, and slavery was permitted within the new commonwealth of Kentucky’s boundaries. Sixteen men voted against Article 9, including Northern Kentuckians Miles Withers Conway and George Lewis of Mason Co. and John Wilson of Woodford Co. (which then covered all of Boone, Campbell, Grant, Kenton, and Owen counties). Later, by virtue of a provision in the 1799 Kentucky Constitution, slaves became perpetual chattel, and the importation of slaves subsequently began in earnest; 165,213 slaves had entered the commonwealth of Kentucky or had been born into slavery in the state by 1830. By 1860 there were 225,483 slaves, 11,483 of them living in Northern Kentucky. Put into perspective, Northern Kentucky had 0.2 percent of the nation’s slaves and the state of Kentucky about 5 percent. The human misery of those enslaved is recorded in hundreds of slave interviews, now accessible in collections and books. Historians, sociologists, novelists, and poets have published the stories of individual slaves and slave families, creating fully dimensional people from the myths, stereotypes, and cartoon figures of recent memory. And several of Northern Kentucky’s slaves have been immortalized in books, music, poems, and even, in the case of Margaret Garner of Boone Co., recently in an opera. Active slave trading occurred in Northern Kentucky at slave markets in Maysville and Washington. Slaves in the region built houses and fences, cleared fields, planted, harvested, took produce to market, and worked the steamboats and river craft, all through forced slave labor. Even though the counties of Northern Kentucky had just 6 percent of the state’s slaves, institutional slavery played its part in this region’s history. In 1833 the Kentucky General Assembly banned importation of slaves into Kentucky except by emigration, inheritance, or marriage. This new law was generally ignored. In 1849 the advocates of slavery in Kentucky, flush with their victory at that year’s State Constitutional Convention, gained yet another victory when the Kentucky legislature re-