Coming up on Kentucky Life.

Wickliffe Mounds, a native American archaeological site features abundant wildlife, exhibits and attractions.

Kudzu is known as the vine that ate the South because it's so invasive.

Kentuckian Charles Young overcame barriers of his time became a military leader and a century after his death received long overdue recognition.

And while the 127 year old Monte Cassino Chapel may be small in stature, it more than makes up for its size in history.

All that's next on Kentucky Life.

Hey everybody.

And welcome back to another exciting episode of Kentucky life.

I'm your host, Chip Polston.

Now today we're at White Hall in Richmond, Kentucky.

This beautiful mansion has stood tall in the community since 1791, undergoing a number of changes and renovations during its time.

We'll explore more of this historic location a little later on in our season, but for right now let's learn about another historic Kentucky figure.

Charles Young was born into slavery in Mays Lick Kentucky, a writer, musician, artist and one who possessed a keen military mind.

He was the very definition of a renaissance man.

During his military schooling and service he faced bigotry and isolation yet he was able to overcome barriers to attain several high ranking positions.

Young was laid to rest in Arlington cemetery amongst thousands of other heroes who served this country.

And recently the governor of Kentucky saw a chance to finally give Young the long overdue recognition he so deserves.

Chip: History is a living document that must be revised in order to remain true.

Charles Young was a remarkable soldier who was not given the recognition or the rank he deserved.

He should have been the first African American general in the U.S. army instead he was overlooked.

Thankfully, there are people determined to write Charles Young's name back into the history books and maybe the final part of his story will be the story of how we recognized his excellence nearly 100 years after his death.

Brian: So, Young was a renaissance man.

In addition to being a successful professional army officer, he was a writer, published books.

He was a musician, he wrote music, he wrote plays, he was proficient in half a dozen languages.

He was born here in Kentucky.

He was born in the last year of the Civil War, 1864 in Mays Lick Kentucky.

He escaped with his parents from enslavement in 1865.

They went north to Ohio and he grew up in a little town called Ripley, Ohio.

After high school, he competed for an appointment at West Point and he was accepted.

He endured silencing harassment with a combination of intelligence and grit and a sense of humor.

He was the third black graduate of West Point.

Was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the 9th Cavalry.

He served on the frontier in Ohio and in Nebraska before going off to Wilberforce University to be a professor of military science.

As Spanish American war broke out he accepted a commission as a Major Battalion Commander became the first black military attache in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Later served in Liberia, fought with Persian chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico during the punitive expedition was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1917, Charles Young went up for promotion to Colonel, but there were some medical problems that came up during the medical examination.

So, the board found him medically unfit but we were ramping up to fight in World War I.

The promotion board recommended that his medical shortcomings be overlooked and that he be promoted to Colonel.

And the President had gotten complaints from senators from their white constituents who found it hard to serve under a black superior officer and President Wilson just decided to retire him and push him off to the side.

After he was sent home, he wasn't ready to quit so he saddled up his Kentucky horse, Blacksmith and decided he was going to ride from Wilberforce, Ohio to the steps of Washington, D.C. to prove his fitness.

Rode about 30 miles a day showed up in Washington, D.C., had an interview with Secretary of War, Baker.

Baker promised he would find him a command and of course he sat on it and they didn't give him a command.

Andy: And Charles Young should have been a general.

He broke through so many ceilings, but this was one that because of his race, he was denied when he was so worthy.

And about 100 years later, I had a chance to change that.

Brian: Governor Beshear provided then Colonel Young an honorary promotion in the Kentucky National Guard that got some publicity.

Andy: And I know it wasn't getting all the way to federal recognition, but we thought it was an important step.

And just when in your life do you get a chance to write a historic wrong?

General Young devoted his life to serving his people and his country.

A century after his death I'm proud that us honouring him continues because Charles Young will still serve as a source of inspiration to Americans for generations to come.

Brian: Finally, young family members contacted the Secretary of the Army provided information.

The secretary of the Army did the research signed the paperwork, giving him an honorary promotion in the U.S. Army.

Andy: There's something special that I saw once this decision was made federally by President Biden, where you could tell those in the U.S. Army were also seeing this as righting a wrong.

I think it's a remarkable American story that a man who was born enslaved in Kentucky during the Civil War can achieve greatness.

Andy: And now given that promotion, you know, the first African American general in the U.S. army was from right here in Kentucky.

If you've ever driven past Thomas Moore University in Northern Kentucky, you've probably wondered about the little church nestled on its campus.

Monte Cassino Chapel once heralded as the world's smallest church is still believed to be the smallest church in America and as it turns out, this tiny church has had quite the journey.

Judy: To give you a little bit of the history of the chapel.

You almost have to know something about the Benedictines, which were an order that came over from Italy and established at least a dozen different monasteries.

And one of those was called Monte Cassino, which is where the name came from for the chapel and the monastery that was developed in Covington, Kentucky.

The first monastery in the United States for the Benedictines was in Latrobe Pennsylvania and that was in the early 1800s.

They had an issue where they could not get enough wine for the monastery and then also for the different parishes that they served.

So, the arch area at the time decided I'm going to find a vineyard and we're going to do it ourselves.

And he did, he found one post Civil War in Covington Kentucky it was the Thompson winery.

They took it over.

He sent monastics in and they started working that monastery.

The chapel itself was developed right after the turn of the century in 1900.

The chapel is made out of fields stone from the original vineyards of Monte Cassino Monastery.

They were handcrafted.

There's arches above the windows, there's arches above the doorway to go in.

The back part of the chapel is arched.

The roof is actually different field stones that were hand crafted and piled on top of each other to create that roof.

There is a little steeple that comes out of the roof.

So, really a lot of care and effort and time and craftsmanship was put into the making of the chapel.

Actually, the monastery itself, it thrived and we all know what happened.

Prohibition hit and their stream of revenue was by selling sacramental and also commercial wine.

So, that totally killed their revenue stream.

The monastery shut down, the vineyard shut down, the vineyards themselves went into ruin, which of course in the chapel also went into ruin.

Things disappeared, the stained glass windows, the door, the steeple, things were in disarray.

The monastery had leased the property to the Burkhart family.

They started working it later in the '30s after prohibition was over, but they were gone by the late '50s.

The little chapel really took a beating between vandals and just time it started to disintegrate.

So, in the mid 1950s a local historian took it on as a personal interest to figure out who owned that property and that chapel.

There was a suburban neighborhood that grew up around the chapel.

So, you had this stone structure in the middle of these people's backyards.

You had kids playing in it, you had vandals coming through it.

He made it his own personal mission to find out who owned that area.

He did find that it had been purchased in the late '50s by the Readenour family and that they had retained the ownership of the chapel.

Mr. Readenour decided he was going to donate the chapel and he came upon the fact that he wanted to donate it to Thomas Moore University, which at the time was Villa Madonna College.

Problem there is that they were just in the midst of moving from Covington out to Crestview Hills.

So, where was the chapel going to go?

It had to come out to Crestview Hills to be on the new campus property.

How do you move a 50 ton structure from a residential neighborhood out to essentially the country.

It was farmland as far as you could see.

Builder Matt Tobin was called by the Knights of Columbus.

They said come out and take a look at this little chapel, see what we have to do to get it moved.

He came out, looked at it, fell in love with it.

Matt Tobin is a master craftsman himself.

So, as soon as he saw all the hand work that went into the chapel.

It was kind of like his personal mission to get that chapel moved out of there restored and on the Thomas Moore property.

They had went in, found a huge drag.

They had less than a foot on each side of the drag as they brought this out between houses.

It took hours and hours.

It was 50 tons.

There was national, there was local press coverage, people lined the streets taking pictures.

They brought it out to the property and then they deposited onto the footers.

It was just an incredible sight.

At some point in time, it also held the Guinness World Book of Records as the littlest church.

It does not hold that title now, there is another chapel that is in Spain that is a little bit smaller.

We still believe it is the smallest chapel in America.

While traveling the southern half of Kentucky odds are you've come across a patch of Kudzu on the side of the road, climbing over trees or other man made structures.

Various mitigation efforts have helped slow the growth and spread of Kudzu but in the end, there's really no stopping it.

Utilization of the plants had the best intentions.

However, it didn't take long for it to become a menacing invasive species that we're still dealing with today nearly 150 years since it was initially introduced to the U.S. What's interesting to me about Kudzu is its ability to grow fairly rapidly and produce those long trailing vines that can grow up and over obstacles, whether it be a tree or abandoned cars or even abandoned homes and structures.

And as it grows over particularly vegetation, it crowds out the other vegetation for sunlight and nutrients that they need for their growth as well.

So, it kind of dominates an area in which it becomes established.

As a lagoon is like a lot of lagoon plants and is pretty unique in the fact that it has unknown to a lot of folks because they see the large leaves that has actually three leaflets that makes up a single leaf.

These are pretty broad, large leaves that are leaflets that often are lobed.

And another characteristic about Kudzu is it has these real hairy stems.

It can flower and typically it will flower in late summer.

It has a beautiful purple bloom, purple to bluish bloom in which it creates.

And it can sometimes produce seed or seed pie that looks a little bit like a bean, relatively flat, that's hairy.

But one of the forgiving things about Kudzu is that they reproduce from the seed very viably.

So, it does reproduce as well from seed as it does from its root stock.

It has a very interesting history in regards to how it was initially introduced into the U.S.

In fact, Japan had brought it to the U.S. for the centennial expedition that was in Philadelphia.

It has a little bit of popularity from naturalist and others who saw it as a very interesting plant that could be used as a natural shade to be planted around landscapes or even near front porches.

In fact, one of the names for this particular plant is called the Porch Vine.

Kudzu is a plant that gets a lot of notoriety because of where you see it.

And a lot of times most people see it driving down the road or in areas where we have a lot of visibility.

But one of the other pieces about Kudzu that most people don't realize you will not find Kudzu in the deep areas of the forest.

It does like sunlight in order to thrive.

So, it's mostly along the edges of forested areas or other open areas where you get plenty of sunlight.

The introduction probably occurred on railroad rideaways and other roadside rideaways where were they making cuts through the mountainous areas or on steep slopes and field areas where they wanted to create some quick cover.

Kentucky is sort of on the northern edge where Kudzu has a more desirable habitat for growth.

The largest concentration of it is in Southeast Kentucky, but you can find patches of Kudzu in most of the 120 counties.

J. D. Green: Areas where you have Kudzu it is a significant problem because of the difficulty of control.

Well, our number one method of control for Kudzu is mowing.

We also do quite a bit of spraying for Kudzu.

Mostly what we're doing is suppressing the Kudzu try to keep it back.

Of course, that's a temporary solution because it literally grows a foot a day and quite often it actually requires multiple seasons of spraying where you have to go back and spray it the next year, sometimes even a third year in order to get full control.

And I've seen areas that have been completely burned off and then the next spring it just comes back with a vengeance.

One of the quicker ways to reduce the population would be by grazing.

In fact, where you have grazing occurring, the animals are continuously removing top growth, forcing the plant to use up its root reserves.

But the problem with grazing in Kentucky is most of our Kudzu is on steeper slopes or in areas that are not accessible to animals, even for goats and other livestock animals.

A Kudzu vine typically may be 100 ft long from the end of the vine back to the actual root system.

It's very persistent.

It has a root system like a tree very deep roots.

Once it's there it's going to stay there J. D. Green: Kudzu is a poster child of a plant that illustrates how plants that are introduced for meaningful purposes can sometimes be one of our bigger menaces.

Our next story takes us back in time into the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Western Kentucky holds a chronicle of ancient Mississippi and Native American culture through earthworks and artifacts found on the site.

Wickliffe Mounds State Park gives us a glimpse into one of the earliest records of farming and living in Kentucky.

Randy: Wickliffe Mounds here is a very important spot.

It has to do with our culture.

It has to do with the first farmers in the Bluegrass state.

When you're standing near these mounds, you're actually standing on history and you can learn a whole lot and it's important.

Wickliffe Mounds is an archaeological site of a native American village of the Mississippian culture.

They're earthen mounds and they were built for various functions, various purposes.

Mississippian culture is a time period and a group of people with similar artifact types, village layouts.

They had a lot of common iconography and symbols.

They were primarily farmers and corn was their main staple crop.

They lived in hermit style houses in villages year round and they built and maintained these platform style mounds with central plazas in these villages.

Randy: They picked this region basically for two reasons.

The river produces commerce.

There have been items found at this spot from several different locations throughout the country.

And as far as the other reason, the height, it was just easier to defend if that need did arise.

Carla: These platform style mounds, they were to elevate important public buildings.

And so, we have two flat topped pyramids style four sided mounds, that one of them is a ceremonial mound.

It's for special ceremonial or temple, religious activities and purposes.

But we also have a smaller platform mound that would have been a residence of someone elite.

We call it a Chief's Mound, but someone important lived on top of the other platform mound.

The other significant mound here on the site was the burial mound.

The burial mound was a low mound made by the basket load of dirt but in various stages.

At about the 1200s and the people of the Mississippian culture, they buried their dead in this mound I'm sure with dignity and respect.

Randy: These folks were the first farmers in the Bluegrass and the things that happened here at this particular spot affect us today.

These were the first tribes in the area that actually settled in to permanent structures and field farming.

We know that corn come from them,/i> that was a primary vegetable that they grew.

So, their society back then was really structured kind of like ours with the central location and agriculture that went around it.

Carla: The reason that it's important to preserve these types of historic sites, it tells part of our history as Kentuckians, as Americans.

What we learn about the past helps us as people today learning about ourselves.

This is a native American story, a Native American site that we want to preserve and protect and provide the information that we glean from the archaeological scientific research that is still ongoing here for future generations.

Randy: It's important that we do what we do, the study of it, the research of it, security of it because we owe people that respect.

And if they say that your public spaces are a reflection of your society, I think Kentucky is doing a pretty good job.

Many, many thanks to you for joining us for another great episode of Kentucky Life.

And also want to thank the great folks at White Hall Historic Site for letting us be here today.

Now we're going to come back again a little bit later on in the season.

So, be sure you join us for that as well.

In the meantime, we'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston cherishing this Kentucky Life.