Our next story revisits a place that once lit up summers for families across Kentucky, Joyland Amusement Park in Lexington.

Now for decades, Joyland was a hub of rides, music, swimming and memories, but it was also a place shaped by the segregation of its time.

Let's meet some of those who remember firsthand the joy, the hurt and the legacy that still lingers to this day.

[music playing] There was a time when summer joy had an address.

Just beyond the city's edge, where laughter echoed through the trees and carousel music drifted on the breeze, stood Joyland Amusement Park.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was Lexington's playground, filled with rides, rhythm and memories that never faded.

[music playing] [splashing] The first official day was May 30th, 1923.

So, Memorial Day, right?

That typical opening of the summer season.

And it was a huge attraction for family outings, that you'd have a picnic, the kids could swim, they would get a few tokens and be able to go on rides or play in the arcade.

[music playing] I was very young the first time we went, but I loved Joyland.

Our family would go, I know at least once every summer.

It was a packed day when we were there.

We stayed busy going all the time.

[music playing] My sister was older when we got there, she disappeared and went to the pool.

I never went to the pool.

And it was a huge, what the first public pool in Fayette County, but it was a huge, almost like a lake.

[children chattering] Right as you would park and walk in, of course, you'd see the roller coaster, and then there was the space thing that you would ride, but then you would walk on, and it would be like the kiddie park, and the boats were in water, and they would go around in a circle.

[music playing] You also had the carousel.

That was a big part of Joyland.

It was a very classic carousel with horses that go up and down and other animals.

The kiddie roller coaster or the kiddie railroad and the carousel, and then the wildcat are sort of the big attractions that were rides.

The park itself was unique because of the club, and it became sort of the place to be in the 30s and 40s.

My mother would talk about it all the time.

She had gone as a teenager, as a child, and her mother, my grandmother, had gone.

And it had been this big concert place where the big bands had played and big dance place.

And our family, going back two generations, had all enjoyed that for years.

And the whole time it all being segregated just for White people.

[music playing] But while Joyland delivered carefree summer days to many families, it also stood as a painful reminder of who was left outside the gate.

Segregation was the rule, not just in policy, but in practice.

And for Black Kentuckians, Joyland wasn't a place of joy.

It was a symbol of exclusion.

I remember in that time in my life, I was pretty naive and I really thought people would do the right thing and for the right reasons, as we see nowadays.

So, this particular 4th of July, and I think I was in the perhaps the 8th grade, my brother and I persuaded our parents to take us to Joyland.

Now that the presumption was that we could go to Joyland.

So, we get over there, get to the gate, there's a nice young lady.

She said, “I'm sorry, but I can't sell you any tickets.

You will need to go to the office.” Good old naive, unsuspecting me.

Oh, they sell them in the office.

So, we went to the office, and when my mother asked there, there was again a reasonably nice lady who said, “I'm sorry, but you can't use the park.” That was understatement, that was a downer.

For some Black families, the heartbreak wasn't just being shut out.

It was discovering they'd never been let in to begin with.

Many children believed they could go, that the gates were open to all.

Unfortunately, the truth of segregation often revealed itself through silence.

So, for a lot of folks, it was just what was expected.

For African-American individuals, it was very frustrating.

I think what the ensuing conversation is going to say is that we didn't know what was going on racially about who could come and who couldn't.

It was just a nice park.

And I think a bit of that naivete also, that it goes both ways.

I just assumed we could go.

My friend just assumed that we could go because he was going and his family, and so on.

And I tell you, this is a big moment in my life because I was crushed that this park was segregated, that Black people, Black children were not allowed.

And of course, when we were going there, we didn't think about people.

We thought about rides and seeing things, and then you stop, and you piece that together, and you realize, yes, it was just White people.

And then when you research it the park suddenly burns down when integration, the Civil Rights Act is passed.

And so, I believe, and many people in the area believe that it was burned down intentionally so that Black families could never come.

And so, it killed and destroyed the whole park for everybody.

And that really is the end to that moment and that period of Lexington's amusement, and in shapes and pushes sort of the development of that neighborhood.

Some still drive by the old spot searching for signs.

Others feel its shadow even with nothing left to see.

Oh, yeah.

Drive by and try and find anything that was a remnant of it.

But there was nothing except the bowling alley.

And then we would try and in our mind place things this is where this was, and this was where.

And yet you couldn't really figure it out because there was nothing left.

Even now [clears throat] when I'm headed to Paris and go that way, I get this eerie feeling as I go through.

[music playing] Folks come in and talk about Joyland still every day, their memories of it and how much they enjoyed being there and how much it was a part of their childhood or conversely, how frustrating it was that that park was there and because they weren't allowed to be a part of the joy that they could hear.

[music playing] This is what interests me, though, too, about this whole dynamic.

I want to hold on to this memory of it being fun.

[people chattering] But how can it be fun and how can it be good when you realize that it's excluding other people?

There's a context for that thing.

And the context was in those early 60s that that kind of public accommodation wasn't available, wasn't open to Blacks.

That was the context.

That was the setting at that time.

It's not like the nice little girl up front or even the lady in the office.

It's not that they were really out to do anything.

That was the way it was at that time.

Joyland is long gone now, its laughter turned to ash, but echoes remain both joyful and unjust, carried in memory and passed on through story.

[music playing]