Recognized as the dean of Black journalists in America, Ted Poston covered major stories on civil rights, politics and Black culture as a staff writer at the New York Post from the mid-1930s until his retirement in 1972.
The portraits are an expression of the community's care for families who lost loved ones to the virus, said one of the painters who helped organize the project for the Hopkinsville Art Guild.
Bill Falls had heard his grandfather was a good basketball coach. But until he came across a Hoptown Chronicle article, he didn't know that Coach William Falls of Attucks High School had been inducted posthumously into a hall of fame.
Patterson Tilford Frazer Jr. was born on a tenant farm at Allensville in 1889. He earned his medical degree in Nashville and later practiced medicine in Hopkinsville, where he installed a swimming pool for black residents.
Gail McHenry was 19 years old when she served as the youngest delegate at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Ebony magazine carried a three-page story about her that fall.
The collection features fictionalized accounts of Poston's childhood, growing up in the 1910s in segregated Hopkinsville. The author and his buddies play the heroes, often outwitting the white community, but also their black elders.
