The State Chronicle, 3 May 1884.
Another account of Daniel Vick‘s appointment as mail carrier in 1884. (Note that Vick’s job involved transporting mail from the train station to the post office, not delivering it from house to house.)
Darden ’49 celebrates!
Darden High School’s Class of 1949 celebrated its 50th anniversary with a jam-packed program staged at Tom Woodard‘s Center east of Wilson. I found this program among my late father’s papers and, to my astonishment, I am listed on the program under “Discussions.” I can assure you, had I actually been invited, I’d have been there, and it pains me that I was an apparent no-show for what sounds like an epic event. It’s nice to know, though, that as far back as 1999 I was considered to have something to say worth hearing about Wilson’s African-American history.
Tucked into the night’s agenda was this priceless copy of the 1949 commencement program.
Father Robert J. Johnson gave the invocation; Charles E. Howell delivered the class address; Saint Augustine’s College president Dr. Harold L. Trigg was the featured speaker; and Gloria Haskins performed “Morning” (a poem?)
We’ve met some members of this class before, including Jacobia L. Bullock, Ray J. Dancy, Earl L. Zachary, Lorena Davis, Minnie Doris Ellis, Marie Everett, Levolyre Farmer (who’s still representing!), Elroy Jones, and Margaret Reid,
And look at these prizes and awards — all (except the first three) sponsored by African-American organizations and individuals. (Beauticians Local No. 12? I need to look into that.)
Recommended reading, no. 22: One Third of a Nation.
In the early 1930s, journalist Lorena Hickok traveled across the United States investigating the plight of Americans struggling through the Depression. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression. is an annotated compilation of Hickok’s contemporaneous letters, composed as she moved from state to state.
Hickok passed through Wilson in February 1934 and duly filed a letter to Harry L. Hopkins, head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the agency charged with doling out relief to millions of unemployed and needy. She arrived in the midst of a farming crisis, as reductions in crop acreage forced hundreds of farm families off the land.
“As they move to town, they apply for direct relief. The intake office in Wilson today was so crowded you could hardly get into the place. Every house, every abandoned shack, is filled with them. They even break the locks off empty houses and move in.
“Members of the relief committee, two clergymen, the administrator, and the case work supervisor in Wilson today told me that 300 of these displaced tenants and their families have moved into Wilson — a town of about 13,000 population — in the last three years, and of that 300 families, 200 have moved in this winter. The case work supervisor told there were AT LEAST FIFTY CASES in which the landlord, to get rid of them, had moved them in himself and had paid their first week’s rent!
“Seventy-five percent of these families that have moved into Wilson, they told me, are Negroes. Most of them are illiterate. They are afflicted with tuberculosis and the social diseases. Of the white families many have pellagra and hookworm, although hookworm isn’t so common up here as it is farther South. They are a dead weight on the community, both from the social and the economic standpoints. They don’t even want to live in town. The administrator and the case work supervisor both said that there is a constant stream of them in and out of their offices, begging for a chance to ‘git a place on some farm.’
“They’re NOT all bums, either. They HAVEN’T come to town to get work in the mills or on CWA. They’ve come because there’s no place for them to live in the country. Every abandoned shack in the countryside is filled up.”
One of the greatest educators and orators of our race.
“He was so smart in school that in 1871 he was ready to teach at Wilson, North Carolina. He taught for four years.” Negro History Bulletin, February 1942.
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Joseph C. Price‘s pupils at Wilson Academy included Samuel H. Vick and Daniel C. Suggs. For more about him, see here and here.
Finding light on this bitter anniversary.
Rederick C. Henderson, about 1951.
I was talking to a friend a few days ago, and she said, laughing, “I never once spoke with your dad, but I swear I can hear him.” I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was some pithy aphorism or another, and Rederick C. Henderson was the king of same, so she paid me the ultimate compliment.
I miss this man mightily and can hardly believe today marks two years since he left. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel him with me, and I am grateful for all he was in life and beyond.
She believed she had been conjured.
Norfolk Virginian, 9 July 1891.
Millie Smith Sutton‘s murder of her sister-in-law Lucy Smith made regional newspapers.
Happy Mother’s Day!
My mother, me, and my sister soon-to-arrive, Easter 1967, 1401 Carolina Street.
Honoring and remembering all our mothers, past and present, this Mother’s Day.
Consider this splendid investment.
Wilson Daily Times, 23 October 1919.
George A. Barfoot & Company, the busy Wilson realtors, offered nine investment properties for sale in October 1919 — six were designated “for colored,” three “for white.”
Historic Black Business Series, no. 21: Robert Kearney’s grocery.
The 500 block of East Nash Street is justly remembered as the 20th century epicenter of Wilson’s African-American-owned businesses. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black entrepreneurs and tradespeople also operated across the tracks. As Wilson’s downtown experiences a resurgence, let’s rediscover and celebrate these pioneering men and women.
Check in each Sunday for the latest in the Historic Black Business Series!
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The 1912, 1916, and 1920 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories list Robert Kearney as proprietor of a grocery store at 330 South Street. The site, at the corner of South and Lodge, is now a vacant lot.
The 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows Kearney’s store in the Little Washington neighborhood near a church we’ve studied before and across Lodge Street from Imperial Tobacco Company. Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church and school stood across South, off this map.
Detail from 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, N.C.
A student at A. & M. Greensboro.
His obituary does not mention it, but Arthur N. Darden attended North Carolina A. & M. College [now North Carolina State A. & T. University] from 1904 to 1908. A World War I veteran, Darden was a founder and long-time officer of Henry Ellis Post 17 of the American Legion.
