I missed this, having not read the paper regularly as of late

Tolerance.org: Lost History in Lexington?

The Herald-Leader dropped this bombshell in the July 4th issue:

It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the Civil Rights Movement. We regret the omission.

This understatement was the beginning of a series of articles hoping to rectify that somewhat. I did see a few of the articles, though, and people's remembrances that were published. I thought it odd timing (usually they do something like that in February, and it was nice to see stories written the 'rest' of the year, and the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. The Board of Education passed in May, so I wasn't sure what prompted it. Apparently a speech given by a former editor on journalism ethics sparked today's editor to start the ball rolling. Now I know--the local paper was coming clean, decades late, but clean nonetheless. Way to go...even though I'm sure some may think it too little, too late, it's at least an acknowledgement, and a start in the right direction.

Back then, of course, it was two papers, the Herald and the Leader. They were both put out by the same publisher even then. And news of the civil rights protests was downplayed as a matter of course, out of fears of inciting violence and a belief that it might all blow over. But in doing so, those editorial decisions excised an important part of Lexington's history, a part has been slowly making its way back to light because scholars and others refused to let it lie dormant. Now, at least the archives of the paper will contain some of those stories, too.

Anyway, this is part of an ongong effort. The paper has set up an e-mail address and has invited people to share their stories. In the meantime, it's getting some national recognition, as evidenced by this story.