New portrait honors Clyde Kennard, forgotten civil rights pioneer

After the terrorist attack on 9-11 and the nation’s response, anger and grief overwhelmed artist Robert Shetterly.

“It finally occurred to me that if I stopped obsessing about (then-Vice President) Dick Cheney and began surrounding myself with Americans I admired, I’d feel better,” he said. “I painted Walt Whitman, our essential democrat, then Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.”

His latest portrait is of an American he never knew before  — Clyde Kennard, whose portrait was unveiled Thursday night in the nation’s capital at an event sponsored by Teaching for Change and Americans Who Tell the Truth....