Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
One of Lexington’s most successful Black entrepreneurs built a health care legacy in town — but left business behind when his pharmacy was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1968.
Zirl Palmer was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1919. After graduating from high school, he attended Bluefield State College and Howard University. At the time, Black people were barred from attending West Virginia professional schools, so Palmer went to Xavier University of Louisiana’s College of Pharmacy in New Orleans, getting train fare and part of his tuition paid by his home state…