by Michael Sean Winters | National Catholic Reporter

Earlier this year, a former plantation in Bardstown, Kentucky, named Anatok, was demolished. It was the birthplace of Daniel Rudd, who had been born into slavery at the plantation, and who went on to start the nation’s first Black Catholic newspaper, the American Catholic Tribune. A report about the demolition in the Black Catholic Messenger by Nate Tinner-Williams noted the effort to raise funds to restore the property had fallen short, and that a protracted legal battle over the historic building had begun in 2012, “shortly after the release of the first Rudd biography.”