Project Summary

This is a series of interviews with alumni of Lexington, Kentucky's Lafayette High School (LHS).

Lafayette High School (LHS) opened in 1939. The original building was constructed by the WPA where once an orphanage had stood. In 1940, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, LHS expanded the vocational program into a national defense trade school. In 1955, LHS became the first white school in Lexington to integrate, graduating its first African American alumni in 1958. Today, LHS campus hosts Fayette County’s art magnet program School for the Creative and Performing Arts (SCAPA). LHS has numerous academic and athletic successes to its credit. Among them are six Kentucky Boy’s Basketball Championships, matched only by rival Lexington school Henry Clay High, and two Suddler Shield awards for Marching (band) Excellence. The school is also home to successful alumni like former Governors John Y. Brown, Jr. and Ernie Fletcher as well as perennial candidate, author, and attorney Gatewood Galbraith; professional athletes Tyson Gay, Dirk Minniefield, Gay Brewer, Austin Kearns, and Chaz Roe plus well-known sportscaster Tom Hammond; Actors Harry Dean Stanton, Farah Fath, and Jim Varney, and the first openly gay Anglican Bishop Gene Robinson to name just a few. LHS has an active Alumni Association that spearheads the oral history project.