Owensboro, and more specifically the group putting on the Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival to honor Moneta Sleet Jr., was recently recognized in a feature story on Ebony.com. While working for EBONY Magazine, Sleet won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow and child at Dr. King’s funeral.
According to the EBONY story, “At Mr. Sleet’s own service in 1996, Johnson Publishing Company founder John H. Johnson called the photo ‘perhaps the greatest photograph ever made of the grief of a widow.'”
With that photo, in 1969 Sleet became the first Black man, first Black person in journalism, and first and still the only person working for a Black publication to win the Pulitzer Prize, according to Ebony.
For more 40 years, Sleet worked for Johnson Publishing (which owns both EBONY and JET magazines). In addition to photos of the Civil Rights Movement, Sleet took pictures of Muhammad Ali, Harry Belafonte, African leaders Haile Selassie and Kwame Nkrumah, and more.
In 1998, Johnson Publishing released the book, Special Moments in African American History 1955-1996: The Photographs of Moneta Sleet, Jr., EBONY Magazine’s Pulitzer Prize Winner, celebrating his work.
Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival in Owensboro is set for Feb. 24-25, and Festival Chair Emmy Woosley said it marks the first iteration of honoring Sleet in his hometown.
She noted that when the idea began back in Leadership Owensboro, several people learned who Sleet was after her pitch for a class project.
“Several of them hadn’t heard of him, which was a little disheartening because his story is so incredible, and Leadership Owensboro is the best and brightest of the community,” Woosley told EBONY.
Woosley detailed the lengths that she and the board have gone to in order to ensure this event is both enjoyable and a fine remembrance of Sleet. There will also be a documentary shown at the festival on Saturday.
Woosley and colleague Drew Hardesty said that working alongside each other, they have been able to film several of Sleet’s colleagues and even some family members to help commemorate his legacy.
“We have seen from doing the documentary and reaching out to people that have connections to the Commonwealth or even reaching out to groups like EBONY Magazine, there’s a lot of people outside of Owensboro that already know the magnitude that is Moneta, and everybody just wants to be a part and tell his story,” Woosley told Owensboro Times.
For more information on the Through Sleet’s Eyes Festival, visit the tsefest.org.
