Moneta J. Sleet, Jr.
Owensboro, Daviess County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Moneta J. Sleet, Jr. (1926-1996). Born in Owensboro, Sleet was a graduate of Ky. State College and New York Univ. Beginning in 1955, he worked as photojournalist for Jet and Ebony magazines for 41 yrs. During the 1950s-60s, his photos documented the African struggle for independence and the American civil rights movement. He inspired a generation of photographers. Presented by City of Owensboro and Messenger-Inquirer. (Reverse) Pulitzer Prize Winner - As friend of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Sleet covered the Selma to Montgomery (Ala.) March and later King's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. In 1969, he won Pulitzer Prize for photo of Coretta Scott King at Dr. King's funeral (first African American photographer to receive this award). His work has been part of numerous museum exhibitions.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Born in Owensboro in 1926, Moneta J. Sleet, Jr. became one of the defining photojournalists of the twentieth century, working four decades for Jet and Ebony. His lens captured both the African independence movements and the American civil rights struggle, walking alongside figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. In 1969 his tender photograph of a grieving Coretta Scott King at Dr. King's funeral earned him the Pulitzer Prize — the first African American to win it in photography.
Why it matters
Sleet's images shaped how the nation and the world saw the civil rights movement, proving that a Black photographer's eye belonged at the center of America's most important history.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Moneta J. Sleet, Jr.
- · Martin Luther King, Jr.
- · Coretta Scott King
Related events
- · Selma to Montgomery March
- · 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Photography
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ted Poston, "Dean of Black Journalists"
Hopkinsville, KY
Born in Hopkinsville on the Fourth of July, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt "Ted" Poston became one of the most important African American journalists of the 20th century. After graduating from Attucks High School and Tennessee A&I, he joined the New York Post full-time in the 1930s and covered the major civil rights stories of his era, earning a Pulitzer nomination in 1949 and the George Polk Award. Known as the "Dean of Black Journalists," he later gathered his Kentucky boyhood into the short-story collection The Dark Side of Hopkinsville.
Buchanan v. Warley Civil Rights Victory
Louisville, KY
In 1914 Louisville passed a residential segregation ordinance barring people from moving onto a block where another race was the majority. The NAACP engineered a test case: William Warley agreed to buy a lot from Charles Buchanan, then withheld full payment because the law would forbid him from living there. When the dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1917, the justices struck the ordinance down, delivering the first major legal blow against government-mandated housing segregation.
Thornton & Lucie Blackburn: Fugitives to Canada
Louisville, KY
Thornton and Lucie Blackburn were enslaved in Louisville in the early 1830s, and when Lucie was sold away the couple escaped north by steamboat. Reclaimed by their owners in Detroit two years later, they were freed in the dramatic "Blackburn Riots of 1833" and fled across the border to Canada, where two extradition attempts failed. In Toronto they founded Upper Canada's first taxi service while continuing to aid other freedom seekers.
Rev. William H. Sheppard
Louisville, KY
Born in Virginia in 1865, William H. Sheppard trained at Hampton and Stillman before being sent to the Belgian Congo as a Presbyterian missionary in 1890. His explorations won him a fellowship in London's Royal Geographic Society, and he became an early and courageous voice denouncing the brutal cruelties of Belgian colonial rule. Returning home, he served as a beloved pastor in Louisville's Smoketown community until his death in 1927.