From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)

William Webb Banks, who was born in Winchester, KY, was the son of Catherine and Paducah Banks. He was the husband of Anna B. Simms Banks. W. W. Banks was a graduate of Simmons College (KY) in 1885 and became head of the African American School in Winchester, KY. Banks found that teaching school was not his calling and left the school before the term ended. He was the first Sunday School superintendent at Broadway Baptist Church in Winchester.

In 1891, Banks created the first African American newspaper in Winchester, The National Chronicle. He sold the paper in 1892 and moved to Indianapolis. He returned to Winchester in 1896 and opened a grocery store. His earlier attempt at operating a grocery story was unsuccessful. Banks was also a correspondent for both white and African American newspapers.

Banks issued the first call for the organization of the Negro Businesses League in Kentucky. He made a formal protest before the Kentucky Legislature on the anti-separate coach movement. Banks was very politically active in Kentucky and beyond; in 1891, he was the Republican Party candidate for recorder in the U.S. Land Office in Washington.

In 1907, Kentucky Governor Beckham named Banks a special representative to the Jamestown Exhibition [KY]. Banks was also the commissioner to the Emancipation Exhibition held in 1913 in New York, and he was a delegate to the Half-Century Anniversary Celebration of Negro Freedom held in Chicago in 1915.

W. W. Banks was employed as a janitor when he died September 14, 1928 in a hospital in Winchester, KY [source: Kentucky Certificate of Death Registered No.194 (Ancestry)]. 

For more see the William Webb Banks entry in Who's Who of the Colored Race, 1915 [available full view at Google Book Search]; "W. Webb Banks." The Winchester Sun, 19 September 1928, p.6; "Winchest to have a Colored paper." The Winchester Sun, 10 November 1922, p.6; "Colored Column." The Winchester Sun, 30 July 1919, p.4.