On the evening of Dec. 10, 2021, a catastrophic EF4 tornado churned through Tennessee and Western Kentucky, carving a 165-mile path across 11 counties and claiming the lives of 74 people. Damage concentrated in Mayfield, Kentucky, where more than 4,000 structures were impacted. A candle factory was flattened, killing nine workers, and many historic downtown buildings were destroyed, including the Graves County courthouse and eight historic churches, among which were two Black churches built shortly after the Civil War.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 2, 2021) On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that established the Peace Corps as a volunteer agency in the U.S Department of State. Sixty years later, as the agency celebrates its diamond anniversary, University of Kentucky Libraries’Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History is continuing its work with local and national partners to preserve many of the stories and experiences of the more than 241,000 Americans who have served in the Peace Corps.
From stories of volunteers evacuated from their host countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to accounts from some of the first groups to volunteer with the agency, the Nunn Center has helped the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) collect and preserve a wide array of interviews with former volunteers from 1993 to the present.