Look Back ... to an address by Dr. David Satcher, 1999

July 4, 1949, in The Star: A Clay County minister who said he had been threatened with an attack by mob violence verbally lashed out at hooded mobs from his pulpit yesterday. The Rev. Frank Ledford, former civilian chaplain at Fort McClellan and now pastor of the Ashland First Methodist Church, ignored the threat and preached on the topic “Christ Or The Klan” at regular services yesterday. He said two men came to his home and warned him not to go to Ashland since the “temper of the town” was allegedly against him. In his sermon, the Rev. Ledford said, “If the Ku Klux Klan or any other group has teachings, actual or inferred, contrary” to the freedoms granted by the Constitution, they are not Christian or American.

July 4, 1999, in The Star: More than 250 enthusiastic graduates of the old Calhoun County Training School in Hobson City listened with attentive respect last night as U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, member of their Class of 1959, spoke about the importance of education and about racial inequality in health care at the seventh reunion of the pre-integration Black school. Satcher’s message was that teachers in the U.S., including Blacks, have lost their focus in the 1990s. “Our teachers taught us as if our own freedom depended on it. Not only were the talented and smart, but they cared about us and our futures,” he said. Satcher, 55, addressed the alumni group at the Oxford Holiday Inn.