Union College News Release 3-30-05: UC Freshman, Kentucky Chautauqua Performer to Appear on Union's Campus

Union College Freshman and Youngest Ever Kentucky Chautauqua Performer with the Kentucky Humanities Council Scheduled to Appear on Union’s Campus

Union College freshman and Kentucky Chautauqua historical impersonator, Haley S. Bowling from McKee, Kentucky, will be presenting the Kentucky Chautauqua performance of Anna Mac Clarke on Union's campus next week. Bowling is an historical impersonator with the Kentucky Humanities Council.

Bowling is the youngest ever Chautauqua performer. She performs throughout Kentucky by request through the Kentucky Humanities Council. Her performance at Union College will be held on April 5, 2005, at 7:00 p.m. in the upstairs lounge of the Patridge Campus Center (student center) on campus. The Union College chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, an internationally recognized honors society, sponsors the event.

The historical Anna Mac Clarke, whom Bowling is impersonating, was a native of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky who graduated from Kentucky State College in 1941. She rejected the usual domestic work that most black women were employed to do in the 1940’s and moved to New York to work in a Girl Scout camp.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Clarke volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (renamed Women’s Army Corps in 1943). During officer’s training in Iowa, she led the successful opposition to a proposal to segregate black soldiers into their own regiment. At Douglas Army Airfield in Arizona, Lieutenant Clarke made history when she became the first black WAC officer to command a white unit. And she made national news after her protest against segregated seating in the base theater convinced the commanding officer to ban segregation on the base. Just a few weeks later, the 24-year-old Clarke died of complications from a ruptured appendix.

Kentucky Chautauqua is an exclusive presentation of the Kentucky Humanities Council, Inc. with statewide support fro the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels and regional funding from Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America, Inc., People’s Bank & Trust Company of Hazard, National City banks in Lexington, London, and Owensboro, and the Brown-Forman Corporation.