Nov 20, 2024
Leontyne Clay Peck, author, educator, and filmmaker, tells her story of tracing a family’s roots from Englishman John Clay, whose ship arrived in Jamestown Virginia in 1613. Relatives include jazz legend Don Redman, from her hometown of Piedmont, West Virginia, Langston Hughes, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), and influential Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. It was Clay, owner of Ashland estate in Louisville, who made compromises on slavery to try and avert civil war and founded the town Clay-Ashland in Liberia West Africa to relocate emancipated slaves.