Beargrass Celebrates Black History’s Influence on the Arts, An Exhibit
Effie Waller Smith (1879-1960) – Effie was born to formerly enslaved parents Frank Waller and Sibbie Ratliff Waller in the rural mountain community of Chloe Creek in Pike County, on a farm a few miles from Pikeville. Waller Smith began writing at the age of 16. She attended Kentucky Normal School for Colored Persons in Frankfort (now Kentucky State University) from 1900-1901.
She trained to be a teacher, and she was known to have taught school off and on for several years in Kentucky and Tennessee. Despite her short academic experience, Waller Smith captivated her readers and became one of the first female African American poets to be published in a national literary magazine. During her prolific writing career, Waller Smith authored three poetry books that achieved notoriety despite her challenges with racism.
Alice Allison Dunnigan (1906-1983) – From a very young age, Alice Dunnigan knew that she wanted to be a writer. She was born near Russellville, Kentucky and started writing for the Owensboro Enterprise when she was just 13 years old, and after high school went on to teach Kentucky History in the Todd County School System. In 1942, she moved to Washington DC and started writing for a black-owned newspaper. She sought and received press credentials to cover Congress and the Senate, becoming the first African-American woman to gain the accreditation. In 1948, she became the first black journalist to accompany a president, Harry S. Truman, on his campaign trip.
Moneta J. Sleet Jr. (1926-1996) – Moneta was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in photography. His major contribution to photojournalism was his extensive documentation of the civil rights movement. Born in Owensboro, Sleet’s interest in photography began as a child. He pursued photography at Kentucky State College and received his master’s degree in journalism from New York University in 1950. He later joined Ebony magazine as a staff photographer.
In 1956, Sleet met Martin Luther King Jr. just as he was emerging as the leader of the civil rights movement. He later covered King’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. When King was assassinated in 1968, Sleet covered the funeral, resulting in the Pulitzer-winning photograph of King’s grieving widow, Coretta, and youngest daughter, Bernice.
His early career covered the period of African national independence in the 1950s. Sleet photographed in Liberia, Libya and Sudan, and photographed Kwame Nkrumah at the moment of Ghana’s independence. Over the years, his work has appeared in exhibitions at numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Sleet received awards from the National Urban League in 1969 and the National Association of Black Journalists in 1978.
Nellie Conley (1873-1959) – Nellie Conley’s stage name was Madame Sul-Te-Wan – she was a pioneering stage and film actor who became one of the most prominent black performers in Hollywood during the silent era, with a career that spanned more than seven decades. The Louisville native is best known as the first African American actor who in 1915 was contracted to appear in one of the most controversial films in American cinematic history, D. W. Griffith’s groundbreaking “Birth of a Nation.”
Throughout the 1920s, Madame Sul-Te-Wan would establish herself as a publicly recognizable character actress. Despite the motion picture industry’s limitations for African American performers, Conley worked consistently throughout the ’30s and ’40s. The successful actress once defended what some critics said were demeaning roles for African Americans: “I’d rather play a maid than be one,” she said.
Mary Ann Fisher (1923-2004) – Mary Ann Fisher was born in Henderson, Kentucky. During her childhood, Fisher and some of her eight siblings were placed in the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children in Louisville. Fisher was adopted after her first year at the orphanage. Her musical career began in the 1940s when she entered talent contests at Louisville’s old Lyric Theatre and the convention center, which later became Louisville Gardens. She won several contests, developed her act and was soon the headliner at the old Orchid Bar downtown. She was 32 and working as a dishwasher in 1955 when she met Ray Charles at the USO club at Fort Knox. She toured with him from 1955 until 1958.
Later, she became a solo act and often performed in revues with such legends as B.B. King, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Percy Mayfield, Bobby Bland and many others.
Lionel Hampton (1908-2002) was raised by his mother in Louisville. During Hampton’s teenage years, he began to play the drums and took xylophone lessons. Hampton became a renowned jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist and bandleader.
Lionel Hampton (1908–2022) – Lionel began his early career playing drums professionally while still a teenager living in Chicago. He moved to California, where he worked with Louis Armstrong, which launched Hampton’s career as a vibraphonist. Hampton performed with other jazz legends from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and Quincy Jones, to name a few. Hampton’s resume of musical collaboration is endless. Benny Goodman invited Hampton to join his trio, which soon became the Benny Goodman Quartet, the first racially integrated jazz group to perform before audiences.
Helen Humes (1913–1981) – Helen was born in Louisville to Emma Johnson and John Henry Humes. She grew up as an only child. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was the first black attorney in town. Humes started as a teenage jazz and blues singer, then a vocalist with Count Basie’s band, and later became an R&B diva. Along with other well-known jazz singers of the swing era, Humes helped to shape and define the sound of vocal swing music.
Her career began with her first vocal performance in an amateur contest, where her talents led to multiple album recording contracts. At the age of 14, Humes went to St. Louis and began recording albums singing the blues. She went on to New York, where she performed and became known all over the world. She toured Australia and performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and the Monterey Jazz Festival. She toured Europe with the first American Folk Blues Festival.
Count Basie approached Humes while she was performing at the Cincinnati Cotton Club, an important venue in the city’s music scene. He asked her to join his touring band to replace Billie Holiday. Humes eventually joined Count Basie’s Orchestra and gained acclaim as a singer of ballads and popular songs, while she was also recognized as a talented blues singer.
Jonah Jones (1909-2000) – Jonah was one of the most popular jazz trumpet players of all time, and he blew his first note in the Louisville orphanage that he called home. He was born in Louisville in 1908, and it was Bessie T. Allen, the orphanage director, who encouraged him to nurture his outstanding talent. Allen founded the old Booker T. Washington Community Center at Ninth and Magazine Streets.
Jones got his start playing cornet in the community center band before quickly transitioning to trumpet, where he excelled. As a young man, Jones left Louisville to begin his career playing with big bands and jazz groups, which would propel him to stardom throughout the classical jazz era of the ’30s until the ’60s.
He played on Mississippi riverboats with smaller triad jazz ensembles and ended up a big-band star early in his career. Jones and bop legend Dizzy Gillespie were both members of the trumpet section of the Cab Calloway Orchestra.
Jones won a Grammy in 1959 for the album “I Dig Chicks.” He was sometimes referred to as “King Louis II,” a reference to Louis Armstrong.
William Benjamin Ray Sr. (1925-2019) – Mr. Ray Sr. was born in Lexington. He began singing at age 6 at the First Baptist Church of Lexington and graduated from Dunbar High School. Ray became a world-renowned opera and concert singer, music educator and civil rights advocate.
Ray followed in the footsteps of so many other African American performers when he moved to Europe to escape racism in the United States. Ray achieved star status as the leading baritone with Cuivillies Theater in Munich. A rich baritone who was fluent in German, Italian and French, Ray appeared in 14 different German-language roles onstage and on German and Austrian television. He performed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Rigoletto” and many other productions, which led to television acting roles and music recording contracts.
Ray founded Black Theater Productions, which performed sketches highlighting racial prejudice and the dismal treatment of people of color in Stuttgart, Germany. Ray received the National Opera Association’s “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award, honoring the contributions of African American artists to opera. After retiring from his illustrious career, Ray moved back to the United States and became a professor of voice at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and eventually became the head of the voice department at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Mary Cunningham Smith (1842-1919) – Mary was the daughter of dance master/bandleader James C. Cunningham. Mary became a widely known pianist and organist throughout Louisville.
Louisville’s civil rights movement was happening as early as 1870, when Smith and her 6-year-old stepson, Gustavus, boarded a streetcar on Eighth and Broadway, eight blocks from their house on Green Street. The streetcar operator removed them from the streetcar owned by the Louisville City Railway Company. Mary Cunningham Smith and her husband, Early Smith, a barber and saloon owner, filed a lawsuit against the Railway Company, indicating the company had removed them from the streetcar because of their race. The Smiths were represented by three white attorneys.
The Smiths won the lawsuit two years later, sparking continued protests by hundreds of African American demonstrators who gathered after church services at Quinn Chapel on Walnut Street in the heart of the Russell neighborhood. These demonstrations led to court cases that resulted in the African American community securing the right to sit and ride on streetcars in Louisville in the 1870s, more than seven decades before 15-year-old Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks refused to surrender their seats to a white passenger on a segregated bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.
Fabric Installation, An Exhibit
Last year’s vibrant display was so well received that we’re bringing it back for 2025! One of the ways Beargrass celebrates and pays homage to Black History Month is through a striking fabric installation in the sanctuary, honoring African American history and achievements.
Each color in the display holds deep significance:
- BLACK represents resilience
- RED symbolizes the blood of Black lives shed through history
- YELLOW signifies optimism, justice, and equality
- GREEN reflects Africa’s natural resources and lush greenery
Come, reflect, and celebrate the rich legacy of Black history with us.