Everyone wants to tell his story

HOW A FESTIVAL HONORS OWENSBORO’S BIGGEST HISTORIAN

WRITTEN BY JOSH KELLY

Owensboro hosted the first step in honoring Moneta Sleet Jr. with the Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival geared at providing a focus on the first Black man to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first Black winner of a Journalism Pulitzer.

What started as an idea in Festival Chair Emmy Woosley’s mind, eventually grew into a weekend-long celebration, a documentary and a few more things in the works, she said.

“We want to as a community lift up our heroes and lift up the good stories and just shout them out so that they drown out any negativity,” she said.

Woosley told her Leadership Owensboro class that by creating an event or art display, people will come together to enjoy history and take pride in Sleet’s successes by educating everyone on them.

Immediately after hearing about it, NAACP President and fellow classmate Rhondalyn Randolph said that immediately she knew it was a fantastic idea and opportunity to share with the community.

“This was something that should have been done a long time ago and we just went on and on and on about how great of an idea it was,” Randolph said.

And the community agreed.

Over 40 local businesses and organizations — and even more outside of Owensboro — came together to help the festival tell the accomplishments of Sleet and shine a light on his story.

“There’s a lot of people outside Owensboro that already know the magnitude that is Moneta,” Woosley said. “Everybody just wants to be a part of telling his story.”

And his story is that of Owensboro origins. Born in Baptist Town in 1926 — just across the street from the newly named Moneta Sleet Jr. Park — he graduated from the segregated Western High School and enrolled in Kentucky State University.

After graduating with his degree in business, he went on to New York University to obtain his master’s in Journalism and from there, he stayed in the Big Apple, eventually reporting for Johnson Publishing.

Through working with Johnson Publishing, Sleet spent lots of time flying overseas to document scenes in Norway, Ethiopia, South America and more.

But he is most known for his many photos of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Sleet is also widely recognized for his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Coretta Scott King and her daughter at the late King’s funeral.

Throughout his journey documenting the last

- Candance Castlen Brake

half of the 1900s, he had many colleagues and peers join him along the way. Many of whom, still to this day, want to talk about the impact Sleet had on them.

Owner of Wonder Boy Media Drew Hardesty traveled across the nation interviewing Sleet’s peers and documenting the stories they had to tell in a documentary titled ‘A Fine Remembrance.’

“I’ve noticed that as time has gone on, I’ve fallen more in love with the man that I’ve never met, and because the people we interview just exude this great joy and happiness and love for him as well, you can’t help buy into it,” he said.

News of the documentary and the festival traveled quickly throughout the state and some parts of the nation as people wanted to know how they can also celebrate Sleet’s legacy.

“I think the support we’ve received is a testament to him as an individual and the character he embodies as a person. Also, the imprint that he left on individuals that he worked with that talk about his work ethic or his dedication, or the heart behind the work,” Randolph said.

Now as the festival is in the rearview, Woosley said she knows this isn’t where the shutter closes on Sleet’s story.

A painting of Sleet has traveled through the community over the past year and is now heading to its home at H.L. Neblett Community Center. After traveling for so long, Woosley said it will finally land among young students who are able to daily admire Sleet’s story.

“That painting allowed thousands of people in the Owensboro-Daviess County area to not only know who Moneta Sleet is but also to know who K.O. Lewis is as a painter,” she said. “I was told a little girl at Girls’ Inc heard Moneta’s name and she said ‘Oh I know him, he was the guy in the picture at my school.’ Stuff like that shows how meaningful what we’re doing is.”

In addition, Hardesty said that oftentimes, photography is an unheralded industry as they work to instead tell the story of their subject. So Hardesty and Woosley set out to tell Sleet’s story by adorning downtown with a bronze sculpture of Sleet to forever commemorate his contributions to American history.

The board is seeking funding to commission the sculpture, but even if they do not receive funding, they don’t plan to stop until they are able to permanently tribute Sleet.