The night the singing started at dawn

David McAtee died steps from his own restaurant

David McAtee ran YaYa's BBQ Shack a few steps from this spot, in Louisville's West End. He fed people who could not pay. He fed police officers for free when they were short on money. Neighbors called him a calming presence, a man who talked down fights before they started.

That night, a curfew was in force. Protests over the murder of George Floyd and the killing of Breonna Taylor had spread across the city. Police and National Guard troops moved to clear a crowd gathered near a gas station across the street from McAtee's restaurant. Witnesses said the crowd was not protesting. They said it was a regular Sunday night gathering, people buying food and talking.

Video later reviewed by The New York Times showed officers firing pepper balls toward McAtee and his family, against department policy. One shot nearly struck his niece in the doorway. McAtee grabbed a gun and fired. Two police officers and two Guard soldiers fired back. Investigators counted at least 19 shots. A single round, fired by a Guard staff sergeant, killed him instantly.

His body stayed on the ground for twelve to fourteen hours while police investigated. Hundreds of people gathered nearby and waited. When the coroner finally took him away, Sadiqa Reynolds brought in a gospel singer. Reynolds heads the local Urban League. The singer performed "Amazing Grace" over the spot where he died.

Mayor Greg Fischer fired Police Chief Steve Conrad the same week, after learning the officers involved had not turned on their cameras. In May 2021, the state announced no charges would be filed against any of the officers or soldiers who fired that night.

A jail's corridors kept races and sexes apart

The Jefferson County Jail (Louisville, Kentucky) went up in 1905, its corridors built for one purpose beyond holding people. Architects split the building into two wings. They ran separate hallways through them. Male prisoners never crossed paths with female ones. Black prisoners never crossed paths with white ones. The walls decided who could see whom before anyone inside ever spoke. That system ran for most of the century. Only in 1983 did the county convert the jail into offices, its cells emptied out for law clerks and court staff.

A beheaded king's statue was later defaced nearby

Four hundred feet from McAtee's restaurant stands a bronze figure of a king who lost everything to the state. Louisville installed the statue of Louis XVI in 1967, a gift marking the city's namesake, the French king executed by guillotine in 1793. During the unrest that followed Breonna Taylor's killing in 2020, protesters damaged the statue, and it has needed repair since. A monarch whose own body was claimed and destroyed by his government stood watching, defaced. A new generation argued over whose body the state still owned.

A bishop was buried inside the cathedral forever

A different kind of ending waited inside the Cathedral of the Assumption (Louisville, Kentucky), a block from where McAtee died. Benedict Joseph Flaget, the first Catholic bishop of Louisville, died in 1850 and was buried inside its walls. His remains rest there still, sealed into consecrated ground the church chose to protect forever. No twelve hours on pavement, no crowd standing watch outside. Just a marble floor and a name carved into it, permanent from the day he was laid down.

A flash flood put downtown under four feet of water

Only weather, once, made this ground answer to nobody. A flash flood tore through downtown Louisville on August 4, 2009. It dumped several inches of rain in under an hour. It broke every one-hour rainfall record the city had on file. Water reached four feet deep in places. It did not check badges or deeds. It drowned the university library's basement and the courthouse steps alike. This was the one time in these records that the ground itself decided what happened next. No one standing on it did.