To Northwest Neighborhood Alliance Chair Rafe Buckner, the focal point of the Black experience in Daviess County can be traced to Kendall-Perkins Park — from its early days as Douglas Park to its rename in 1973 to present day.
Buckner said that when he was a kid, growing up in the early days of integration, Black people from across the county — from Sorgho, Pleasent Ridge or just the east side of town — congregated at the park.
The jointly named park was a symbol of service and in some ways groundbreaking work by two men, Joseph Kendall and Joseph Perkins, Sr.
Kendall at his time in Owensboro was excelling in basketball and baseball but poured his time into football. He would switch from quarterback to halfback to fullback often during games.
Taking his knowledge of the field further, he was able to make it to the Negro High School All American team in 1933 and then attend Kentucky State Industrial College — now known as Kentucky State University.
At KSU he took the team to the 1934 Championship game and the Alumni bowl and Orange Blossom Classic in 1935.
It was in 1935 that he cemented himself in NFL history without even being allowed in the league due to segregation. As the story goes, Kendall was picked for an African American All-Star team at the professional level.
The 6’2” athlete alongside his team of all-stars would compete against the Chicago Bears in 1935 — marking the first time a Black team had played against an NFL team in history.
After his time as a professional athlete, he became a teacher at Rosenwald High School in Harlan, Kentucky, and would return to his alma mater in 1948 as a football coach eventually assistant coach when integration started in the mid-1960s.
As for Joseph Perkins, Sr. he was a man of three full-time jobs to supplement his income when Black teachers were paid less than other teachers.
To some, he was the deacon at Fourth Street Baptist Church. As a deacon, he recorded the church’s history. Fourth Street was a product of the removal of slaves and freedman from the previous congregation with their slave masters, he said in an interview with Edward Owens in 1979.
Outside of his time as Deacon, he served in the schools as well. He was at one point a teacher, assistant principal and basketball coach all at Western High School. He eventually taught at Foust Middle School — now Foust Elementary.
During his time at the city school system, he would serve 43 years; later he would be receiving the Liberty Bell Award from the Owensboro-Daviess County Bar Association for such service.
He eventually would leave Owensboro to live in Cincinnati where his family resided.
Both would come to pass; Kendall in 1965 due to a blood clot after a car crash; Perkins in 1988. However, their legacy wasn’t lost with their death.
With the official name change of the park in both their honors in 1973, the Owensboro Dust Bowl began celebrating them with homage to a sport both loved dearly: Basketball.
Now as the Dust Bowl nearing its 50th anniversary in 2023, the park is almost different from what it was in the 1970s. Buckner recalls the basketball court and tennis court were switched sides, there were croquet boxes and a swimming pool that cost 50 cents where the spray park was.
One thing that has remained the same is the wall on its northern border.
Through the years, it has looked different, some paintings even to the point of vandalism last January.
This time around, Buckner wants to be able to showcase the history of Owensboroans. Paintings of Josiah Henson currently don the wall and more plan to in the future.
And to continue their legacy of the work the two put on in the community Buckner plans to bring the stories of people like Perkins and Kendall off the minds of the family stories we recount and onto the walls of the mural.
“I want the youth to understand that there are trailblazing people in Owensboro, and that could be you,” Buckner said. “You look at Joseph Kendall, you got a guy that was performing at professional level invited to play at the NFL caliber. Representation is huge.”
