Published: September 05, 2008 12:50 am      

Hinton Black Heritage Festival king

FSU professor honored for his ‘outstanding contributions,’ status as excellent role model

FAIRMONT — When the board of directors of West Virginia’s 18th annual Black Heritage Festival began researching who to recognize as the king at this year’s celebration, Fairmont’s own Greg Hinton was the top choice.

A long-time lawyer, Fairmont State University professor and former Fairmont City mayor, Hinton was chosen because of his dedication to the state and the African-American community, board member Jim Griffin said.

“Each year we try to find a citizen with ties to the state of West Virginia who has made outstanding contributions to the overall life of African-Americans and West Virginia in particular and who is also a role model for other individuals coming along, and Greg Hinton was a good example of that,” Griffin said.

“He has many accolades in his life with the contributions he has made to the state of West Virginia. We were looking at his resume and the things he has done and thought he was a prime candidate for this award.”

For Hinton, who is a Barrackville native and has lived in Fairmont for the majority of his adult life, the news that he will was chosen to reign as this year’s king of the Black Heritage Festival was a pleasant surprise and a “high honor.”

“The Black Heritage Festival is a very, very important part of my life,” Hinton said. “And to be recognized as the king for the heritage festival by people who know you well is a very high honor.”

When Hinton found out he would be crowned king of the festival, he said it actually brought back positive memories from the 1988 Three Rivers Coal Festival, when his father, the now-deceased Nathan Hinton Sr., was crowned the king of that event.

Hinton said he is also honored to be in the same category as the men who have been recognized as Black Heritage Festival kings in the past, which he said includes former supreme court justice Frank Cleckley and Marshall University professor Phil Carter.

Growing up at Mine No. 7 in Barrackville, Hinton moved to Fairmont 38 years ago. In 1978, he graduated from Fairmont State with a degree in history and a minor in sociology and then went on to complete a law degree at West Virginia University. In 1981, he became a lawyer in Fairmont and he still practices general law part-time.

On a full-time basis, he is a professor at FSU, where he said he mainly teaches business law and has been there for the past 19 years. It is around that same time that Hinton said he divorced his wife and moved in with just his three children, two sons and one daughter, and raised them. Today, Hinton’s children are grown up and live in different areas throughout the country.

Hinton is also a mentor for the Fairmont State Falcons football team, which he has done for the past two years, and he has contributed a lot of time and effort to a number of organizations at FSU in his time as a faculty member and as a student.

And in the middle of all of that, Hinton also served on Fairmont City Council for over nine years in the 1980s. And in 1983, he made city history by becoming the first black mayor, a position he filled until 1985.

“I was very actively involved as the mayor. It was time consuming,” Hinton reminisced.

Tonight, the official kick-off of the Black Heritage Festival in Clarksburg is slated to take place with a youth party sponsored by FSU and McDonald’s and featuring a live D.J. and free hot dogs and hamburgers, Griffin said. At the party, recruiters from FSU and Salem International University will talk to young attendees about the perks of enrolling in these two local universities.

And on Saturday, the festival will continue with a coronation ceremony for the king and queen to be held at noon at the site of the former black high school in Clarksburg. Hinton and Queen Ivin B. Lee, a commissioner of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission and chief of police of Charleston, will be crowned during the ceremony.

The festival will continue throughout the day, with entertainment from national and local music groups and food and drink vendors. On Sunday, the last day of the three-day event, local and tri-state gospel groups will begin performing at 2 p.m. and sing throughout the day.

“The festival started 18 years ago and we take this time to recognize some of the contributions in our heritage that we have made since the Emancipation Proclamation,” Griffin explained. “We do it annually in Clarksburg. But it is not a Clarksburg festival; it is a West Virginia Black Heritage Festival.”

He added that the event draws crowds from all over the state and he said anyone and everyone is invited to attend.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.