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[Audio] MSU's Wrather WKY Museum Opens "Kennedy Comes to Kentucky"

Library Special Collections, WKU

Today, Catholics are a prominent part of Kentucky politics.  Current State Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, former U.S. Representative Anne Northup, and former U.S. Senator Jim Bunning are just a few examples.  But in 1960, for only the second time in U.S. history, a Catholic topped a major presidential ticket and Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy confronted the same issue that defeated fellow Democrat Al Smith in 1928: his religion.  Some Kentuckians feared Kennedy's faith, believing he would follow the Vatican over the U.S. Constitution.  That's one of the issues that prompted his campaign swing through the Commonwealth, a swing that's the subject of a new exhibit, titled "Kennedy Comes to Kentucky," opening this evening at five with a MSU Town and Gown reception.  The exhibit features photographs, correspondence, and campaign materials and will be free to the public through March 14.  Todd Hatton speaks with the exhibit's curator, Dr. Sean McLaughlin.

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.
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