By JAMES BROWN
Glasgow News 1
The sign has been mounted to the Luska J. Twyman Municipal Building in downtown Glasgow.
The Glasgow City Hall was officially named in honor of the city’s former mayor in January of 2025. On Tuesday morning, Nov. 18, the sign commemorating that name change was mounted to the building.
Luska Twyman was the first black person elected to the city council that now has three black members. A few years later, in 1968, his fellow council members chose him to take the helm as mayor after Robert A. Lessenberry stepped away from that role two years into a four-year term. The following year, Twyman won the first of his mayoral races, becoming the first black person elected to a full term as mayor in Kentucky and he continued as the city’s top government official until 1985.
The work he did and the respect Twyman earned in his government roles were a significant part of a larger life story that, as a whole, inspired a current councilman to sponsor a resolution to rename the city’s government building.
Twyman was born in 1913 in Hiseville and was graduated from Kentucky State University, a public institution for which he would later serve on the board of regents. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Philippines. For many years, Twyman was the principal of Ralph J. Bunche School in Glasgow and played an integral role in achieving integration for Glasgow Independent Schools.
Twyman was also the first black Kentuckian to serve on the U.S. Commission of Agriculture. He also served on the Kentucky Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He died in 1988.
Read the initial story on the renaming of the building here.
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