May 26, 1945  –  October 29, 2026

Brent Björkman, Director of the Kentucky Museum & The Kentucky Folklife Program

Photo of Maxine Ray: Courtesy of Brent Björkman

The Kentucky Folklife Program and folklorist professor colleagues in the Folk Studies Program are heartbroken at the passing of our great friend, collaborator and passionate community folklorist Maxine Ray.

Maxine Ray was an exemplary model of a Kentucky folklorist who has made a career of using the intimate tools of cultural engagement to preserve the culture of Kentucky, and more pointedly, her home community of Jonesville, a former African American community demolished as part of mid-20^th century urban renewal.

Photo of Wathetta Bufford [left] & Maxine Ray [right] speaking at a Jonesville Symposium at Western Kentucky University: Courtesy of the Kentucky Folklife Program

Photo of Maxine Ray during Jonesville: When Sunflowers Fall documentary: Courtesy of the WKU PBS & the Kentucky Folklife Program

Over the years her passion has assisted in sharing her local African American culture with the Commonwealth in many ways. A keen observer of local life her whole life, she began her folk studies career after raising her family in the Rockfield, Kentucky community in Warren County. In the mid 1990s classes taken at WKU with folk studies faculty Dr. J.A.K. Njoku and Dr. Camilla Collins helped her to realize and further validate her own powerful story of growing up in Jonesville and spurred her on soon after to pursue a Master of Arts degree in Folk Studies that included further mentorship with her graduate advisor Dr. Michael Ann Williams. Maxine’s exploration and sharing of expressive culture of Jonesville and other African American Communities in the Bowling Green area has resulted in a great body of documentation and ensuing public programs including the following contributions:

• From 1997 to 2000 Maxine organized and conducted a major project entitled: African American Heritage in Bowling Green and Warren County. This body of work, encompassing 50 tape-recorded interviews, continues to be seen as a monumental achievement in preserving the art, culture, and heritage of these communities.
• Over time, Maxine’s tireless work to tell her community’s story has resulted in her establishing the creation of a Jonesville highway marker through the Kentucky Historical Society Marker Program.
• In 2011, after much passionate political work, and several proposals brought to the City Council, Maxine and her local partner Wathetta Buford, established the African American Museum of the Bowling Green Area, a growing institution that further highlights the history and rich traditions of black culture of Southcentral Kentucky.
• Throughout the 2000s and into today Maxine remains a selfless leader in helping to further the educational outreach work of the Kentucky Folklife Program’s Community Scholar’s training efforts aimed at teaching folklife collection techniques to others.
• Most recently, Maxine has been the driving force on a project to create and implement a local community project to design and produce the exhibit “What Happened to Jonesville?” exhibit in 2023 centering on sharing the story of Jonesville, and contributed on many levels to the 2025 documentary, “Jonesville: When Sunflowers Fall”. Acting as both a folklorist and museum exhibit consultant, it was Maxine’s lifelong body of fieldwork and vast knowledge of her community that helped to drive the narrative thread of this exhibit base on the interviews of those residents most affected by this unfair displacement.

I can say without a doubt Maxine’s passion for documenting, presenting and conserving the in-depth community stories that honor artistic expressions of the African American community here in Southcentral Kentucky is beyond comparison. She taught me so much about this community we have lived in together and trusted me (and others in our sphere) as collaborators with this important intimate work. Like with so many engaged by her story and in small ways trusted to help further it along, Maxine and her passion will live on in our research work, but more importantly, in our hearts.

Rest in Peace Maxine

Photo of the Board of the African American Museum, including Maxine Ray, during the official grand re-opening of the building; Courtesy of the Kentucky Folklife Program