Rebel on Main – Details, episodes & analysis

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Rebel on Main

David Swartz

Society & Culture

History

Religion & Spirituality

Frequency: 1 episode/44d. Total Eps: 9

A podcast investigation about a rebel statue in Kentucky’s Bluegrass. His belt buckle is Confederate, but he wears a Union uniform. Is he a monument to heroism? Or a symbol of treason and racism? Rebel on Main chronicles this statue’s bizarre biography—and the haunting story of the community that now decides its fate.

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http://www.rebelonmain.com
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http://www.rebelonmain.com/support
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http://www.rebelonmain.com/episode2
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Score global : 48%

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The Gettysburg Address

Episode 8

Tuesday, December 2, 2025 • Duration 15:44

I'm delighted to bring you a guest episode from History Daily. November 19, 1863. In the midst of a bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most famous speeches in American History.

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Change Is Gonna Come

Episode 7

Monday, February 10, 2025 • Duration 53:48

Jenna’s petition stalls. Blue Lives Matter outpaces Black Lives Matter. But in 2023 a new surge of activism reignites the controversy. What will happen to Jessamine County’s Confederate statue? And what does the statue’s fate reveal about the soul of the divided southern community?

Resources

For pictures of the courthouse square, First Baptist Church, and Jessamine County during the Spanish-American War, head to https://www.rebelonmain.com/episode7.
David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in America

Engage

Check out our website at www.rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, click here: www.rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.

Timestamps

00:00 David describes the courthouse lawn.

01:51 Locals say what they think should happen.

16:25 David talks with Judge West in their first—and only—sit-down interview.

19:53 A new surge of activism begins at the 2023 MLK Day observances.

31:04 Activists confront the county magistrates at a public hearing.

37:20 David finds an archival gem and reflects on the meaning of “reconciliation” during the Spanish-American War—and again in our times.

44:36 David walks from the statue to First Baptist Church for a final conversation with Pastor Moses.

47:08 Pastor Moses reflects on his disappointments and hope that change is going to come.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode7.

Production team

Writer and Host: David R. Swartz
Original Music, Sound Design, and Mixing: Barry Blair
Story Editor: Stephen Smith
Artistic Design: Josh Smith and Lisa Weaver Swartz

Thanks for listening!

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A Confederate from Canada

Episode 6

Monday, February 3, 2025 • Duration 49:24

Bob doesn’t care at all about the statue—until he does. A Canadian transplant to Jessamine, his ancestry traces back to abolitionist New England. But as the 2020 election approaches, Bob sees a political opening. For months prior to the election, he spends three hours a night working through a list of 13,500 Democrats conducting a telephone survey.

The work is arduous and often dispiriting. It takes fifteen phone dials to get one person to talk, and sometimes that person just hangs up or refuses to answer Bob’s questions. Nevertheless, he is able to convince many pro-statue Democrats to switch parties. Confederate controversies cement the Republican takeover of Jessamine.

Timestamps

01:38 David walks two doors down from his house to interview Bob

15:22 Bob describes his telephone survey and how he’s using it to defeat Democratic candidate Carolyn Dupont.

20:45 Pastor Moses responds.

25:03 Carolyn Dupont responds.

31:54 Blue Lives Matter rally at the courthouse

39:00 November 2020

43:52 David reflects on local politics and his relationship with Bob.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode6.

Engage

Check out our website at www.rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, contribute here: www.rebelonmain.com/support
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.

Resources

A Rival Monument

Episode 5

Monday, January 27, 2025 • Duration 01:01:40

Archaeologist Stephen McBride wants to emancipate Jessamine from the Lost Cause. He zeroes in on Camp Nelson, which has nearly disappeared from the county’s memory. Farmers have leveled the earthworks, and developers are eyeing the site. Camp Nelson’s significance has also been buried by racial hostility. Many in the local Black community have been driven off by lynchings, KKK rallies, and backlash to the civil rights movement.

As construction workers begin to widen a state highway that cuts through the site, Jessamine’s best emancipationist memory is under threat of being permanently erased. But this disastrous development becomes the site’s salvation. The state historical commission steps in and gives McBride a year to recover what he can before the bulldozers return. To nearly everyone’s delight, the archaeologist unearths a long-buried narrative that once again tells hard stories about racial violence and inspirational stories about Black freedom. Camp Nelson begins to duel with the statue over the county’s Civil War memory.

Resources

For pictures of Rev. Gates and Camp Nelson, head to rebelonmain.com/episode5.
George Wright, A History of Blacks In Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980

Engage

Check out our website at www.rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, click here: rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 As activists wait for Judge West to act on Jenna’s petition, Camp Nelson rises from the ground.

02:57 Archaeologist Stephen McBride describes his digs at Camp Nelson.

Jenna's Petition

Episode 4

Monday, January 20, 2025 • Duration 52:23

Two weeks into the Black Lives Matter campaign, homeschooler Jenna Sparks gets mad. This sixteen-year-old descendant of a Confederate ancestor, whose name was Jeptha Jefferson Davis Sparks, has a Black cousin, and seeing so many people in Jessamine who fly the Confederate battle flag angers her. So does walking by the Confederate statue, located just two blocks from her house.

So Jenna writes a petition to “remove and destroy” the statue. Hundreds of locals immediately sign, and her campaign makes the news. An interracial group of ministers led by Pastor Moses of First Baptist Church circulates Jenna’s petition. Then they write and submit their own to the judge. Jessamine County seems poised to reckon with its sordid record on race and Civil War memory.

Timestamps

00:00 Sitting on her front porch, Jenna explains why she wants to destroy the statue.

07:58 Pastor Moses starts an interracial ministerial committee.

14:00 Pastor Max Vanderpool describes racial conditions in Jessamine County.

18:25 The ministerial committee ramps up.

30:48 A “Black Lives Matter” rally in Wilmore

38:08 Resistance emerges.

47:09 Antistatue activists resolve to continue their campaign.

Transcript: Visit www.rebelonmain.com/episode4/transcript.

Engage

Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.

Ghosts of Jessamine

Episode 3

Monday, January 13, 2025 • Duration 01:09:27

Built with slave labor, Jessamine County, Kentucky, has a history that includes over a dozen lynchings, Jim Crow codes, and continuing racial inequities—all overseen by a Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn.

Like Confederate defender Brandon, Rev. Robert Gates cares very much about history. But the Confederate statue doesn’t speak for him. From his pulpit at the Historic Camp Nelson Baptist Church, he tells uncomfortable stories about Jessamine’s past that white residents don’t want to hear, violent stories not reflected by the statue on the courthouse lawn.

Gates’s history in Jessamine County goes way back. His grandfather, whose living memory dates back to the 1890s, lived here when the Confederate statue went up. He was here when a young Black man named Tom Brown was lynched. And then he passed on those memories to his son, Gates’s father. To this day, the extended Gates family refuses to walk by the statue. When they need to do business in the courthouse, they enter through the back to avoid the statue and the site of the lynching. It’s as if Jim Crow never ended.

Engage

Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 Reflections on hospitality in Jessamine County

05:56 Maren shows David a graveyard in her backyard

14:00 Pastor Moses calls for some “real history” on the courthouse yard

18:45 At the local historical society, David watches a VCR tape of a 1987 outdoor drama of Jessamine County history

25:31 Maren shows David how to research slavery in the county clerk’s office

Defending History

Episode 2

Monday, January 6, 2025 • Duration 56:59

On a warm Monday morning, a week after protests broke out in front of the courthouse, a man with short-cropped hair stands beside the statue. Legs astride with an enormous handgun in a holster on his left side, Brandon is guarding “history.” When I approach him, he explains that the statue is not a monument to slavery. Referencing the inscription on the statue’s foundation, he says that it honors “soldiers who have fought and died in this country.”

The second episode of Rebel on Main investigates Brandon’s claim by recounting the bizarre origins of Jessamine’s statue. Initially ordered, but not paid for, by a different town that wanted a Union statue, the unclaimed monument was purchased at a 90 percent discount by the county fathers and then regalvanized into a Confederate identity. Before a raucous crowd of 3,000 supporters shrieking rebel yells, the statue is unveiled. The Lost Cause has won Jessamine County.

A century later, conditions have changed. Brandon still believes in the Lost Cause, but critics are denouncing it as heresy. He feels embattled by gay activists, Black Lives Matter, and woke historians who want to “erase history.” Frustrated and angry that his Civil War narrative is being threatened, he stands vigil, guarding the statue from protesters who want to destroy memories of Confederate courage.

Engage

Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to let me know what you think of this episode of Rebel on Main.
Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 David talks with Brandon, armed defender of the statue

05:56 Story of Bennett Young, the model/architect of Jessamine’s statue

09:00 Sam Flora of the Sons of Confederate Veterans tells the story of St. Albans Raid.

Hidden Secrets

Episode 1

Monday, January 6, 2025 • Duration 58:05

In June 2020 a Black Lives Matter protest erupts in Jessamine County, Kentucky. It soon transforms into a campaign to destroy the Confederate statue that looms behind them on Main Street.

As historian and local resident David Swartz covers this effort, he also investigates the history of this beautiful corner of the Bluegrass. He finds lots of hidden stories, including a disastrous expulsion of formerly enslaved refugees from a Union Army camp in 1864. Over 100 women and children die of exposure in a snowstorm. The incident implicates not just enslavers, but also the nation.

150 years later, Americans are still reckoning with violence against Black citizens. As protesters in Jessamine County chant, “Say her name! Breonna was asleep!” big trucks circle the courthouse, revving their engines in protest against the protest. A fierce backlash emerges.

Why, just months after the killing of Breonna Taylor in nearby Louisville, do so many resist the removal of a monument to men who fought to enslave Black people? Why, a full fifty years after the civil rights movement, are so many still so reluctant to say that “Black lives matter”? Why, 150 years after the Civil War, do so many want to maintain a statue honoring the Confederacy?

Engage

Check out our website at rebelonmain.com.
To support future creative projects, contribute here: rebelonmain.com/support.
Email david.swartz@asbury.edu to offer your thoughts on Rebel on Main.
Please give a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Timestamps

00:00 Pastor Moses Radford denounces the statue as sign of hatred, bigotry, and racism

03:24 Physical description of the statue

06:00 David covers Black Lives Matter protests at the courthouse

Trailer

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 • Duration 05:03

It’s a Civil War statue unlike any other—one with a rebel belt and a Union hat. Join historian David Swartz on a podcast investigation of his hometown Confederate statue that stands on Main Street in Jessamine County, Kentucky.

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Rebel on Main – Details, episodes & analysis

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Rebel on Main – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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RSS feed quality and score

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Latest published episodes

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Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

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