From Canton's earliest days, the black population has contributed to the city's, and even the nation's, prominence and prosperity. During World War II, nineteen-year-old Harold White joined the famed Tuskegee Airmen of the Ninety-Ninth Fighter Squadron. Only a few years later, Dorothy White persevered through prejudice to become Canton's first black teacher, paving the way for a long line of dedicated teachers stretching to the present day. Renowned R&B group the O'Jays formed in Canton, and professional golfer Renee Powell is just one of many local athletes to reach the heights of her profession. Collecting never-before-seen photographs and firsthand accounts from local citizens, Nadine McIlwain and Geraldine Radcliffe reveal the celebrated legends, unsung heroes and historic firsts of African Americans residing in the Canton community.

Ghostly diners, violent crimes of passion, phantoms peering from theatre balconies, canal workers who still walk the towpaths the haunted history of Stark County includes characters and legends as bizarre as they are terrifying. Take a bone-chilling journey with Sherri Brake, owner of Haunted Heartland Tours, as she recounts tales of superstitious pioneers and the horrors of the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Stroll along silent corridors of an abandoned asylum and linger among graves of Civil War dead and discover the eerie ends of Stark County s departed souls."

Rendered in painstaking detail, accounts of high-profile killings and courtroom drama filled the pages of Stark County's early newspapers. The triple hanging of three teenage boys in 1880 seized the attention of the entire community. When George Saxton, notorious womanizer and President McKinley's brother-in-law, was shot dead on the front lawn of his widowed lover in 1898, the whole nation looked on. For the brutal slaying of his wife, James Cornelius became the first local prison inmate executed in the electric chair in 1906. Using contemporary local newspaper accounts, author Kim Kenney tells the story of eight Stark County murders, unfolding the grisly details while honoring the lives cut short by violence.

By the early 20th century, Stark County was one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation. The home of martyred president William McKinley had become a major industrial center, with alloy steel as the engine of growth for the booming local economy. To fill the ever-increasing demand for labor, waves of immigrants from Greece and Asia Minor settled in Canton and Massillon. Some sought economic opportunity; others were fleeing the Pontian Black Sea coast, where ethnic cleansing of Greeks accompanied the creation of the Turkish state. For the immigrant earning less than $3 a day, building a church meant making a commitment to a new life. In Canton, St. Haralambos Greek Orthodox Church was founded in 1913 and Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in 1917. In Massillon, St. George Greek Orthodox Church was established in 1931. Churches and mutual aid organizations provided cohesiveness to the dynamic, often fractious, Greek community, which survived world wars, economic depression, and social discrimination and continues to flourish today.