In July 2022, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced a $75 million grant from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to boost the Commonwealth’s post-pandemic tourism climate.
Two years later, six county tourism departments launched Kentucky Black Trailblazers, a first-of-its-kind augmented reality (AR) project honoring Kentucky’s Black heroes with American Rescue Plan funds. Today, there are 19 locations, from Nelson County to Shelby County, where all you need is a smartphone to scan a QR code and watch history come to life.
The initial inspiration for the project? A bottle of wine. To be exact, a 19 Crimes bottle of wine, which allows drinkers to scan the label to view an AR story about infamous criminals whom the British banished to what then was the penal colony of Australia. The brand later expanded its labels to include high-profile criminals and besties Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart.
ShelbyKY Tourism President and CEO Janette Marson said the goal of creating the project was to honor Kentucky’s Black history but not necessarily with a traditional tourism trail.
“There are a lot of Black history trails across America, and what would make this one different? And then I remembered that wine bottle,” Marson said. “There was one [that included] a full scene of a jail, and you could see the digitized actors from head to toe. I thought, ‘That’s what I want. I don’t want just the talking heads. We want drama. We want something more.’ ”
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The trail developers brought in NIMBUS, Louisville’s largest Black-owned advertising agency, to guide the project. They worked with California-based Tactic, the creators of 19 Crimes, to bring the actors’ stories to life each time a person scans the QR code at a site. The developers also consulted several local Black historians, who wrote the scripts for each AR location.
Shelby County historian Sanda Jones was one of them. Jones, who was the first Black president of the Shelby County Historical Society, provided the research about the Harlem Hellfighters, a World War I African American combat unit that served 191 days on the front line, gaining international military acclaim. Five members of the unit are buried at Shelbyville’s Calvary Cemetery. Kentucky Black Trailblazers brought them back to life with just a scan of a QR code.
“You don’t have to collect any brochures; you don’t have to go to a museum,” Jones said of the experience. “You are literally standing at a museum that’s right there in front of you.”
Marson said the team was committed to ensuring the stories were correctly told. “We don’t want a misstep to cause people not to see the transformational value that this project brings forth,” she said. “Even when we were in California … and they were doing augmented reality filming, the film crew and the technical folks were very intentional about hiring Black actors, Black costuming people and Black makeup people. They were very intentional about who was hired to work on this, and that was wonderful to see.”
In addition to the Harlem Hellfighters, Shelby County has sites dedicated to civil rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr. and Elijah P. Marrs, a pioneering educator and clergyman who co-founded the Kentucky Normal and Theological Institute, now known as Simmons College, in Louisville.
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The other 16 markers are spread across Nelson, Bullitt, Hardin, Jefferson and Oldham counties and feature prominent figures such as Muhammad Ali, Oliver Lewis and Mattie Owens.
The mission is “to highlight stories of hope, maybe forgotten stories, stories of [those who] … have done incredible, incredible things to move Kentucky forward or just move humanity forward,” Marson said. “Although the history is dark in many ways—sad or depressing. We didn’t want to make light of that or ignore that, but as we were talking to the living Black historians in our area, most all the stories that they were telling were very hopeful, very positive.”
Jones said that it’s the hope and positivity that will make a lasting impact. “It’s giving the young generation heroes to look up to, to investigate more,” she said. “That’s somebody in Shelby County walking in the same shoes that you’re walking [in]. This happened in your community, not somewhere else, or these people lived in your community, not somewhere else … These markers, in general, will make such an impact on how young people perceive history.”
Marson said the Kentucky Black Trailblazers is the first project of its kind in the United States, but word has spread. “It got so much media attention across the country,” she said. “We kind of feel like we’ve started something new, a new way to see history come alive in a moving way.”
Marson said they have no immediate plans to add to the list of markers, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. “It would take a destination with a larger budget, probably, to be able to add on to it,” she said. “We’re still getting through the documentation phase, and I want to get that done. Then we’ll look to the future. We’ve got a variety of different ideas and things to talk about. So, it’s not out of the question for it to expand.”
For each marker visited, the app automatically highlights the location, with the hope that it motivates users to visit all 19 markers.
“It’s just a fun and interesting way to see history, to find out about things that maybe you didn’t know about before,” Marson said. “It’s Black history, but it’s history for everyone. These people made an impact on everyone, no matter if you’re Black or white, and that’s important to know. It’s also fun and a really, really cool way to see history come alive.”