Helen LaFrance, ‘Church Gathering w/ Helen ‘Easter Egg.”
Paducah Historical Preservation Group, Inc.
The unknown, but should be known minority equivalent of this famous white thing. The Louvre of the Desert. The Picasso of American Indian art. The Grandma Moses of African American art.
If you must.
These comparisons are generally given to provide context. They’re typically meant as compliments. Backhanded at best upon deeper introspection. These comparisons perpetuate entrenched hierarchies that the white thing is the right thing. The white thing is the standard. The white thing came first and the BIPOC thing is mimicry.
Similar, but secondary.
That last comparison, “the Grandma Moses of African American art,” refers to Helen LaFrance. LaFrance was an artist from Mayfield, KY in the western part of the state best known for her folksy, rural, generally bucolic, happy depictions of 20th century life there. Not unlike Grandma Moses’ artistic vision of New England.
Remarkably, both artists lived to the age of 101. LaFrance passed in 2020, Grandma Moses in 1961. By the end of her life, LaFrance would have known who Grandma Moses was thanks to the nickname and the millions of calendars, postcards, and other reproductions of Grandma Moses’ artwork distributed over the past 50 years, but she had zero influence on LaFrance’s production.
Her parents were landowning farmers, a rarity in the Jim Crow sharecropper South. She displayed a skill and interest in painting as a child, but didn’t begin formally painting until her 40s, and didn’t focus on it until 1986. The story of women from the 20th century picking up art careers in mid or later life is a common one, shared by Grandma Moses.
LaFrance was a self-taught folk artist primarily focused on memory paintings—vivid depictions drawn from her recollections of the daily life she observed: river baptisms, church picnics, traveling circuses, and Southern agricultural scenes. In this respect, the more accurate comparison of her work is to Louisiana’s Clementine Hunter (1886/7-1988). LaFrance’s work is celebrated for its authenticity, storytelling, and emotional depth, qualities resonating far beyond her native home, offering a window into the everyday experiences of the Black community, capturing scenes of community gatherings, local landmarks, and family life with a sense of dignity and reverence.
Helen LaFrance, ‘County Fair.’
Paducah Historical Preservation Group, Inc.
The Paducah Historical Preservation Group raised over $100,000 in a matter of weeks to acquire 14 of 26 LaFrance paintings being offered at a May auction. The artworks belonged to Bruce Shelton, a collector from Nashville, who befriended LaFrance and bought dozens of her paintings over the years. The organization was tipped off to the sale by a Mayfield resident.
The paintings are now on display through August of 2025 at the Paducah School of Art & Design, 30 miles north of Mayfield.
“What you’ll see in this collection is a way of life in rural Kentucky, in rural America, Americana itself, of almost 100 years,” Rhonda McCorry-Smith, president of the Paducah Historical Preservation Group, told Forbes.com. “She lived to be 101, she started drawing at the age of four, so 90 years of life. She went from covered wagon to mule pulled wagon, oxen pulled wagon, to cars and sitting in restaurants, integration–she was just shocked that she could go in a restaurant and sit down at a point in time. All of that is reflected in her art.”
What is not reflected is the racism she would have been exposed to. The widespread racial terror violence across the South she lived through. The Civil Rights Movement. LaFrance’s images exclusively shared the best of times.
The Paducah Historical Preservation Group is not an arts organization. Remarkably, a community member the organization asked for a donation to help purchase the LaFrance artworks was friends with Alvin Hall, one of the most esteemed private art collectors in New York.
“He helped us narrow down out of the 26 what he thought would make a good collection. He said most people buy art based on what it makes them feel, a reminder of their life, but what I’m recommending to you, these 14, (they’re) a reflection of Helen’s life, how she lived, from the baptism, to sleeping in the bed with her sister and her cousin, the way of life on the farm and some of the fun,” McCorry-Smith said. “What you see in our collection is actually a reflection of Helen herself.”
Paintings of a county fair, historic Graves County churches, community gatherings, renderings of downtown Mayfield. Scenes lost to development and a 2021 tornado that obliterated the small town.
LaFrance was known to friends and family as “Ms. Orr,” her maiden name.
“Her mother wanted her to have a grand name, her dad said, ‘No, Helen is good enough.’ She named her Helen so he would be pleased, but she gave her the middle name LaFrance because she wanted her to be bigger than life,” McCorry-Smith explained.
Black History In Paducah
Hotel Metropolitan in Paducah, KY.
Paducah Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Paducah is full of surprises. It’s a UNESCO Creative City, so honored for its role in the connectivity of cultures through creativity. The city of just over 25,000 residents on the Ohio River is known as a global capital for quilting–Quilt City USA–and fiber arts, with an annual April quilt festival.
The area is rich in African American history as well. Keeping that history alive led to the formation of the Paducah Historical Preservation Group in 2022.
“There’s a lot of things that we’ve lost,” McCorry-Smith said. “I’ve lived away, everybody on this group pretty much has lived somewhere else, come home, and buildings are missing, people have passed, and you don’t have memory, and the children have no clue sometimes when we’re talking about certain places and spaces.”
McCorry-Smith leads Black History tours around town and encourages would-be guests to email her directly to arrange one (rhondasmithphpg@ gmail.com). An additional self-guided driving African American Heritage Tour around the area allows participants to gain a comprehensive understanding of the people, places and events that played a significant role in the advancement of equality. Some of its 26 stops include Burks Chapel A.M.E church, the MLK Jr. monument, and the enslaved plots at Oak Grove cemetery.
Another of Paducah’s most important Black History places is the Hotel Metropolitan. Paducah received a $1.34 million grant from the Mellon Foundation in 2024 to support the preservation of the Hotel Metropolitan, the first Black-owned hotel in the city. The restored 1908 historic hotel was formerly part of the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” a circuit of Southern venues for popular Black entertainers including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and B.B. King during segregation–they all stayed at Hotel Metropolitan. It was later listed in the Green Book, serving as a sanctuary for African Americans.
The hotel was founded by Maggie Steed.
“It wasn’t unusual for African Americans to have businesses, but for a female to own a hotel, something of that caliber, now that was something,” Betty Dobson, executive director of the Hotel Metropolitan and director of the Upper Town Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization overseeing the historic site, told Forbes.com. “Maggie was truly before her time. She knew how to market her building. In 1908, the Golden Jubilee of Colored Baptists in Kentucky stayed at the hotel and they were so elated because it was the first time they were able to stay at a venue like that in Paducah because otherwise you would have to stay at the church or with some of the church members. They were so excited that they asked her to send a picture of herself, and instead of sending a picture of herself, she sent a picture of her beloved hotel, and that’s how we knew what to take the hotel back to.”
No photos of Steed exist.
The 12-room hotel fell into disrepair and shuttered in 1996. It was eventually condemned and scheduled for demolition. Dobson rescued it.
“I come from a long line of Black ladies that have accomplished things that you wouldn’t think could be done,” she said. “My mom and grandmother had a church built, and I remember people were saying they’ll never get it done, they’ll never accomplish that, but they did, and when I started working with this project, that was one of the first things my mother told me. She said, ‘You probably won’t find a lot of help because it’s a Black project and so you’re going to have to do things that may not be the way the other folks do.’”
Dobson has been putting her blood, sweat, and tears into Hotel Metropolitan for over 20 years along with other community members. Cooking, cleaning, fixing. The funding will be used for building improvements, expanded programming, and preserving the hotel’s rich cultural history. A director and curator will be hired.
Now primarily a museum and cultural space, the Hotel Metropolitan continues welcoming guests as a bed and breakfast.
“It begins with somebody, and if you want to do something, if something is not right in your community, and here was this hotel full of history that they had condemned and was ready to tear it down, and to tell you the truth, before I knew the history, I was right along with them because I could see someone getting inside there and setting in on fire, but after I learned the history, I couldn’t let that go,” Dobson said.
