45 Jessica Dawkins: historian

Jessica Dawkins, president and CEO of Historic Locust Grove in Louisville, Kentucky, has been a  museum professional and local historian for over 20 years. 

She received a bachelor’s  degree in History from the University of Louisville and a master’s degree in Business  Communication from Spalding University, both of which were fully funded by the Jack  Kent Cooke Foundation in Washington, DC. 

She is also a graduate of the History Leadership Institute, class of 2016.  Her passion lies in 19th century Ohio Valley history, and this focus brought her to work  within historic house museums in the Louisville area. As the southeast regional director  for the Indiana State Museum & Historic Sites, she directed three sites in Southern Indiana:  Culbertson Mansion in New Albany, Corydon Capitol in Corydon, and Lanier Mansion in  Madison. She then served as deputy director of the Kentucky Historical Society and was  most recently the executive director of Liberty Hall Historic Site in Frankfort, Kentucky. 

By taking an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to museum management,  Jessica demonstrates a tangible, authentic commitment to audiences and communities  served. She believes historical organizations are visitor-serving and mission-based, and  they are also local businesses, economic drivers, and cultural generators. 

Through  inspirational storytelling, creative programming, and intentional collaboration, Jessica is a  passionate advocate for history as a crucial tool in the life of the everyday citizen.  She also serves on nonprofit boards and committees, including Louisville Public Media’s  Community Advisory Board and Happy Birthday Park. She was Board Chair for  Farmington Historic Plantation and was named one of Business First’s “20 People to Know  in Tourism & Hospitality.”

https://locustgrove.org

Keep up with @HistoricLocustGrove on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

Kathie’s note: Debra Locker introduced Jessica and me to each other. Instant bonding! Right before our interview, lightning struck the grounds of Locust Hill and every electronic device on the property was out of commission. Lights and computers and everything, so she recorded on her phone.

I thought it was the old house's way of saying, "Enough with your technology!" and Jessica said she has always known that historic homes get what they want. For example, an unlikable employee or a visitor can get invited not to say. "But since I've come to Locust Grove, I realize the land gets what it wants," she said. 

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Jessica [00:00:00]:
Jessica. I'm Jessica Dawkins. I'm a historian, and words are everything.

INTRO [00:00:05]:
Hi. Welcome to the Writers Rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a Writers Rotation.

Kathie [00:00:22]:
Jessica, how are you?

Jessica [00:00:24]:
Hi. Nice to meet you, Kathie.

Kathie [00:00:25]:
You, too. And you are, I would assume, among a rare few individuals across the world who make a living with your history degree.

Jessica [00:00:34]:
Yes, that's true. I received the advice from a mentor, “ think it's great you want to be a historian, but no one will hire you.” And so, much to the chagrin of my academic advisors and professors, I got my graduate degree in business. I got an MBA in organizational leadership as my grad school because I knew I wanted to run museums. I knew I wanted to work in history. And this was, grad school was 2010. I did not like how history was run. I felt I found a lot of walls, and I realized that I needed to be in charge.

Jessica [00:01:18]:
So if I wanted to run the museum, then I needed to know how to do business. So it was after that, it was easy when I interviewed to open doors because I was a historian with a business degree.

Kathie [00:01:32]:
Good for you.

Jessica [00:01:33]:
When this particular job opened up as the president and CEO of Historic Locust Grove, I remember being in community college when the last person was announced. My predecessor, when she got the job, I was in community college when it was announced. And it was 20 years ago. It was 2004, so I remember when she got the job. And then it took 20 years later for the job to open up.

Kathie [00:01:59]:
And the house is how old, the historic house?

Jessica [00:02:01]:
1790s. So 230 years.

Kathie [00:02:05]:
Do you have indoor plumbing now?!?

Jessica [00:02:07]:
Not in Locust Grove. There is no plumbing. No.

Kathie [00:02:10]:
Really? Where’s your office?

Jessica [00:02:10]:
We have a visitor center. We actually have 13 outbuildings total. So the smoke house, the wash house, the dairy, the hearth kitchen, you know, the corn crib. There's all sorts of buildings outside, but the visitor center is the only modern well. And a pavilion. It's the only modern one on the property. It's a lot to take care of, but it's gorgeous. When I applied, I found that I was the only applicant from the city of Louisville.

Kathie [00:02:44]:
Really?

Jessica [00:02:45]:
Yes. There are a few that came from Kentucky. Many came from out of the state or out of the region. It's a site of Revolutionary War history, so there were a lot of Revolutionary War scholars and people in the industry in the field of history who applied. But I was the only Louisville applicant. And you are very correct in that we are a small group of people. But when you're dealing with historic house museums and historic sites, you have to have an additional skill set of historic preservation and home care.

Jessica [00:03:25]:
How to recognize where water runs, how to recognize when wood or plaster is failing, how HVAC systems run. These are not things you get in a history degree. And when you're a doctor of Revolutionary War history, you have your doctorate, you’re a school scholar in the field, you don't necessarily have the experience of running a house. So my path was, I chose to know a little bit about a lot rather than knowing a whole lot about one little thing. Very interdisciplinary, like Ben Franklin. One of my favorite founding fathers. Of all the patriots, he is my favorite, for sure.

Kathie [00:04:10]:
Okay, history. When you were a little kid, were you, like, taken to a museum or read history books? How early is your love of history?

Jessica [00:04:18]:
I was born in D.C. in Bethesda, Maryland, actually, at the National Naval Medical Center. My father was in the Navy and He lived in D.C. My mom lived in Indiana on a hog farm. So I spent half of the year in a very monochrome, monocultural, you know, hog farms in Indiana in the ‘80s is a very unique situation. But every summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day, I was playing on the Capitol grounds. I was running through Arlington because my stepmom worked at the annex. Smithsonian visits, White House visits.

Jessica [00:04:57]:
A lot of cultural things we would take part in for summertime. But honestly, I didn't know that I liked history. I mean, it was like something that we did, but I was a nontraditional student. I tried and failed miserably at going to college right out of high school. I was interested in other things, you know, as most are. And it didn't really work out. And then I couldn't afford to go. But when I was 26, I had a young daughter and I decided to enter community college.

Jessica [00:05:32]:
And because I had a dependent, I was eligible for financial aid. And once I got in, I was like, oh, learning! This is the coolest. And it was my first class, my first semester, I found a book that was the History of Louisville. And I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world. And it wasn't even that I loved history. It was that I loved Louisville history. I loved local history.

Jessica [00:05:59]:
I loved learning about all the different lives this city has seen or been through my block. And then I started to learn more about Kentucky history. I had a good foundation in American history, but when it comes to, like, I don't know, World Civ or some histories, my brain just turns off. Like,  I'm not interested in World War II history. You know, I'm not interested in European history. I should be, but. I know a little bit about it, but that was not what I chose to fall into. It was really the tangible sense of place that local history gives you.

Kathie [00:06:41]:
Also, it sounds like there were some good stories, good storytelling.

Jessica [00:06:45]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. While I was in community college, I won a national scholarship. And the scholarship was through the Jack Kent Cook foundation in Washington, D.C. He was a media mogul and owned a football team now known as the Commanders. When he died, he left his fortune to scholarships. And they had a very specific scholarship called the Undergraduate Transfer Scholar. You had to be a student going from community college to a four-year.

Jessica [00:07:19]:
You had to demonstrate need, of course. And then we had to write so many essays. And I won. Out of 1,500 applicants, they awarded 30. A full ride to any school I wanted to go to for my bachelor's and my graduate degree. So my entire education, start to finish, was scholarship-funded or financial aid. When I first started community college, the foundation took all the scholarship winners to D.C. every summer.

Jessica [00:07:51]:
And we all had like a week together. I remember asking them, why me? There were neuroscientists and brilliant minds, and, I mean, every discipline you could imagine, just these brilliant minds. I had such imposter syndrome because I was just from a hog farm in Indiana, you know, And I said, why did you choose me? And they told me that it was because of my essays, that it was the most honest writing they had seen. I told the truth of my life experience. And as a 26-year-old and a single mom, I had a lot to write about. So I learned very early. I was like, dang, you know, I got my entire college education through my master's degree because I told the truth.

Kathie [00:08:40]:
Cool.

Jessica [00:08:41]:
I thought then I learned the lesson then that being honest and authentic was a key to success. And I've always been able to say the hard parts out loud to address the elephant in the room. I make decisions based on the authenticity of the conversation. I have to know all the parts. I can tell when I was like, so say what you're not saying. You know,  I'll pull that out. So that was something I learned through that experience at the beginning of my college career was to always be honest in my writing and let my own authentic voice shine through.

Jessica [00:09:25]:
One of the other things I'll say about that is that every summer when they would take us to D.C., we had keynote speakers. The first one was Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor, author. And we all got, there's 30 of us, 32 of us, we all got to ask him one question. And so my question was, what is your advice for someone who wants to make a career out of local history? Out of history.

Jessica [00:09:57]:
He thought about it for a second, and he said, “In order to understand a people, you have to know their language, because the soul of a people lives within their language.”

Kathie [00:10:10]:
That's fabulous.

Jessica [00:10:11]:
And when someone like Elie Wiesel is giving you advice, you take it. When I was in school, I learned the language of my professors because they were the key to my success.

Jessica [00:10:28]:
When I got a business degree and I come out and I'm interviewing boards and leadership teams, I know the language of business. In order to relate to them, I learned the languages of each access point. I guess now they would call it code switching. It's not really code switching if you understand it, but I've just kind of taken that to heart, because obviously, a global humanitarian is the one that said it to me. The second year I was there, this brilliant poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, was our keynote speaker. And I learned from her that words give hope, give inspiration, remind people of the humanity, of the work that we do, and to always kind of, there should be art in everything we do.

Jessica [00:11:24]:
The access to beauty is a basic human right. So I was a sponge in those early years, and so I just took these lessons that I learned. Be honest. Be authentic. Understand who you're talking about by knowing their language. And remember to always keep in mind that my work is for others. My work is not to be, it's not to be successful, it’s not to enhance.

Jessica [00:11:50]:
It's certainly not to enhance my bank account. It's that, you know, a site like Locust Grove, it's a national historic landmark and a Louisville Metro park. So this place belongs to the people. It does not belong to me. My job is to care for it and make sure that people know it's theirs. I don't like calling people visitors or guests because this is not our house.

Jessica [00:12:21]:
It's their house. I don't want people to feel welcome here. I want them to feel like it belongs to them, and there's a difference.

Kathie [00:12:31]:
What a beautiful way of saying know your target audience. To say, understand the language of the people. I'm going to use that now instead of know your target audience.

Jessica [00:12:44]:
That's a good point when you bring up audience. So we're a site of enslavement, like every other inch of Jefferson County, like every inch of Kentucky. We're a historic site that people see as a place of enslavement different than they see others, because we're still a stark reminder of those lives. It's difficult to help folks in the African American community understand that this place has meaning or value to them.

Jessica [00:13:18]:
You know, we're very serious about education. And so when we reach out to the Black community, we have to understand that words mean very different things to them.  US250 is a great example. People will say the Declaration of Independence is a living legacy of freedom against oppressors. But there are many people who feel like that's an oxymoron, that that same sentence can have two totally different meanings depending on the audience.

Jessica [00:13:52]:
And so my job is as a connector between the past and the future, specifically regarding audience, because there are so many incredible lessons to learn. But really, I think it was Robin Wall Kimmerer that said in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, you have to share the stories of a place before it can heal.

Kathie [00:14:14]:
Oh, that's good. Have you all been able to find names and stories of some of the enslaved people?

Jessica [00:14:22]:
Absolutely. And honestly, it was because we were called out for not doing so. This is before I was here, during 2020, after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Locust Grove kind of had a reputation for not fully, as I say, truth telling. Not that they were lying by any means, but, you know, after 2000, museums were kind of called to task for not telling the whole story. The great white rich man narrative had played out, and so Locust Grove had been called out for that behavior publicly.

Jessica [00:15:00]:
And a woman that worked here, she had just started working here, and her job overnight changed to focusing on a new interpretation, and she's now created a biography of, I want to say, I know it's over 70 names, but I think it's about 100 people that have been identified. Some people we know as “child of,” whose names we never knew. But each person that exists in the historical record has been named. There's a plaque on site with their names or a reference to who we know they were to be. And some of the stories are so incredible. I'm thinking of Sam Croghan, for example. Sam was a man enslaved by the Croghan family, so he bore their last name.

Jessica [00:15:52]:
Sam did most of his work in the hearth kitchen as a cook after he was emancipated from the family. The family emancipated different people at different times over a course of about seven years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Somewhere in the 1850s, after emancipation, he opened a series of restaurants in downtown Louisville. And then he goes down to New Orleans and opens a famous restaurant in New Orleans. In the late 19th century, he was known for oyster dishes. He was known for ice cream. But the site that his restaurant was on, the building, no longer remains, of course, but the site of his restaurant in New Orleans is now the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. And the curator of the Kentucky exhibit at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is about to be our board chair.

Kathie [00:16:49]:
Oh, wow.

Jessica [00:16:50]:
I just think about Sam Croghan and how his work began in a hearth kitchen on the property. And we have the opportunity to share young Black people and the work they're doing in food and culinary and chef in Kentucky on the same site where he found his success. Those kinds of stories are beautiful to me because Sam had a life, right? So I love learning those stories about people. Louisa Brown is another one. There's an outbuilding on site known as Louisa's House that we have interpreted as her living quarters. Although it wasn't the original. She was the matriarch of a family that was enslaved here.

Jessica [00:17:41]:
Her descendants visit. They were just here last, last summer. I could not find the house that my three times great grandmother lived in. You know, the Croghans could live the life that they lived because of her. But for centuries later, for her descendants to be able to come onto this property and see the halls that she walked, understanding of course the situation that she was in. But it's just, it's a connection that makes everything worth it.

Kathie [00:18:14]:
250 for 250. What is this? And it's your brainchild?

Jessica [00:18:18]:
Sort of. It's an annual campaign. I will back up about 12 or 13 years in at the Culbertson Mansion in New Albany. Every third grader goes to the house on a field trip to the historic site on a field trip. Mr. Culbertson, his interpretation had always been as a philanthropist, he was the richest man in Indiana. And everyone, you know, again, dead rich white guy, success, mansion still intact. 

Jessica [00:18:47]:
So when I got there, I realized because of his Presbyterian faith, he was not a philanthropist. He was benevolent. And there is a difference, okay? Benevolence is a virtue. And so when the third grade would sit down and I would give them an introduction about what house they were in and the stories that were there, I tried to impart the idea of benevolence to them. And the only way that they could really make a connection to what that meant was Christmas spirit, about how you just do something for the good of it and without expecting anything in return. And I would ask the kids to define honor. And when I began in the field trips in 2012, they could define honor. And in the spring of 2020, when I left, they no longer could.

Jessica [00:19:41]:
Children in the third grade could no longer define or express the words for what a person's honor meant. It made me realize that we tell young people the importance of voting and the importance of citizenship and that there are rights that come along with being a citizen. But along with rights come responsibilities. And those responsibilities are basic tenets of productive citizenship. It's things like engaging in the democratic process, of course, but also responsible use of resources. You know, you don't just leave the lights on all day.

Jessica [00:20:19]:
There are things that you do for the good of the whole as a person, and these are all rooted in virtue. First of all, Louisville is a city of vice. We are built on gambling, bourbon, lots of ways that we encourage vice without also finding a way to ensure the next generation is rooted in virtue. In every place that I have worked, I just keep going back to because of the historical record of the families of the homes that I've been responsible for. Virtue shines through their letters, through their practices. Even in the words that they write, they will say virtue. And then I look at our founding documents and our founding ideals. America is the first nation built on ideals, not geographic location or an ethnicity of people.

Jessica [00:21:14]:
And then I look at our founding ideals, and they are also rooted in virtue. As many letters as we can find, it talks about a virtuous citizenry is required for a democracy, a democratic republic, to work. And then that just kind of explained everything to me. So coming to Locust Grove, I knew I had to pull the trigger because 250 was coming up, the US 250, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But another thing that happened that day was that the Second Continental Congress declared “e pluribus unum” our nation's motto.

Kathie [00:21:54]:
Out of many, one.

Jessica [00:21:57]:
And what that means, why they chose that was because. And this is again, thinking about colonists at the time, the 13 individual colonies who saw themselves as separate from each other. It takes each individual person to create the whole. And the beauty of each individual person is what makes America a new experiment, in that you're not living under a monarchy. You can be anyone and anything in this place. And that's what makes up the whole.

Kathie [00:22:34]:
Yes.

Jessica [00:22:36]:
So on top of that, Locust Grove had never had a really large fundraising campaign. They have done some capital campaigns, for sure, to create capital improvements around the property. But I knew I wanted to give something for people to believe in, to reach that US250 milestone with intention. There's an entire audience that doesn't feel like celebrating because they have been oppressed throughout the years of the America. It's everything that we know our nation to be. So I had to go back to the basic idea of being a good person because it's the right thing to do.

Jessica [00:23:19]:
And children need it more than ever. And adults know that, and they're willing to support that. So we came up with the 250 for 250. We were going to raise $250,000 by July 4, 2026. We started this campaign in October of last year. And as of right now, we have $30,000 left to go. The money for that annual campaign is funding an education specialist that we hired specifically to create an educational program for Louisville's youth.

Jessica [00:23:54]:
We're thinking of a summer intensive. It's being developed now to bring kids from all over the city together to not only learn about virtue, but learn about where it lives within our democracy, to be paired up with mentors who can help in real time when children have to make choices on virtue or vice, and to create a service project for them somewhere in the community.

Jessica [00:24:24]:
The program is called LouisVirtue. So it's a portmanteau between Louisville and Virtue. You know, I love a portmanteau because we're talking about words.

Kathie [00:24:33]:
I do. I love my portmanteaus. Can I think of an example right now? No.

Jessica [00:24:37]:
Nabisco.

Kathie [00:24:38]:
Oh, do I know that? Well, CO would be company.

Jessica [00:24:42]:
National.

Kathie [00:24:42]:
National Biscuit Company. Stop it.

Jessica [00:24:45]:
I love portmanteaus.

Kathie [00:24:47]:
I love learning and talking about learning and writing and talking about writing.

Jessica [00:24:54]:
I'm going to write a book someday. Kathie,  I'm saying it now on this podcast. So it will be.

Kathie [00:24:59]:
Do it.

Jessica [00:25:00]:
It will be in the future. But who has time to write books? I can't even check my email.

Kathie [00:25:05]:
I don't know.

Jessica [00:25:06]:
I'm gonna have to, like, dictate the whole, you know.

Kathie [00:25:09]:
You can dictate the whole thing. You can do it immediately in Google Docs and in Word Docs. You can record it. You just click the little microphone icon.

Jessica [00:25:19]:
I can see it in my mind. I already know what the book is going to be like, so I just got to get it out.

Kathie [00:25:25]:
Do it.

Jessica [00:25:26]:
I hope I will.

Kathie [00:25:27]:
I can't wait for them to invent the Brain Scan 3000, where you just (think it and it appears formed).

Jessica [00:25:30]:
Well, you know,  I can't believe I didn't mention this. Locust Grove’s number one fundraiser is our book sale. People donate their books all year round. Paperbacks are a dollar, hardbacks are two. We have some markups, but we resell donated books and our facility turns into like a library by genre three times a year. This past year we made $105,000 on reselling donated books. And being in a room full of people that just love books. It's a palpable feeling.

Kathie [00:26:11]:
I know.

Jessica [00:26:11]:
It's beautiful.

Kathie [00:26:12]:
Thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing your love of history and your Locust Grove. I just hope we stay in touch.

Jessica [00:26:19]:
Thank you so much for having me. See ya.

OUTRO [00:26:22]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Writers Rotation. Like and subscribe for more. And remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.