D.C. Suggs in Asheville.

The Comet (Johnson City, Tenn.), 17 November 1887.

Of what “college” in Asheville was Daniel C. Suggs president? In January 1888, he began teaching at the newly opened Beaumont Street School. Asheville’s first public city school for African-American children. Why would he leave the presidency of a college to teach fourth and fifth graders?

…

Asheville Citizen-Times, 16 May 1888.

The most likely candidates were the Allen School, a Methodist-affiliated school that opened about 1885, and Beaumont Academy, a Buncombe County school that opened in February 1886 and closed at the end of 1887. Neither was a “college” by any stretch of the imagination,

Signal Boost: The Importance of Telling African American Stories through Genealogy and DNA

What if the missing pieces of your family’s story are already waiting in an undiscovered document or your DNA?
In this upcoming episode of the African American Untold Stories Podcast, our Center for Family History (CFH) team sits down with acclaimed authors Melvin Collier, Michael Willis, Kathy Marshall, and Orice Jenkins. They will discuss how genealogy and DNA testing transform family research into powerful published narratives—from books and stage plays to documentaries and digital media.
If you value reclaiming family legacies and bringing hidden history to light, this will be a essential space to join in on the conversation. Tune in online Saturday, August 15, for the CFH podcast episode “The Importance of Telling African American Stories Through Genealogy and DNA.”

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– How to use DNA testing to uncover African American ancestry
– Ways to turn genealogical research into compelling stories
– Tools for writing or digitally publishing your family history
– Why reclaiming Black stories is essential for future generations

Your family’s legacy deserves to be told – not just discovered and not shared.  Join the conversation and start writing your family’s story today.

This is an ONLINE podcast episode, as part of CFH’s African American Untold Stories Podcast.

🔗 [Link to Untold African American Stories CFH Podcast Playlist]

T/5 Gradis Hines, in England.

In the 1940 census of Woodington township, Lenoir County, N.C.: farmer Joe Hines, 39, farmer; wife Leona, 31; and children Gradis, 18, Bernice, 17, Joseph, 14, Edward, 13, Leora, 4, Jasper, 3, and an infant, 4 months. The family had lived in Wilson in 1935.

In 1945, Gradis Hines registered again for the draft. He reported that he was born 15 September 1920 in Wilson; lived at 812 East Green Street, Wilson; his contact was his father Joe Hines at the same address; and he was “just discharged from Army.”

Image courtesy of Veterans of World War II Wilson County, spiral-bound volume, Wilson County Public Library.

The funeral of Bertha Ayers.

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 20 August 1930.

——

Members of the Ayers family were among a handful of families in the Lucama area who transitioned from black to white racial classification in the early 1900s. Bertha Ayers‘ grandfather Jesse Ayers was described as colored as late as 1914, and her aunt Harriet Ayers‘ had been prosecuted for marrying a white man in 1895. By 1920, however, this set of Ayerses had gained acceptance within the white community.

White girls wanted at the cigarette factory.

Daily News (Wilson, N.C.), 20 September 1900.

Tobacco processing work was divided by race and gender. Tobacco factories employed black men and women as redrying hands and stemmers, low-paying, hot, dusty jobs. Relatively cleaner manufacturing jobs, such as in cigarette factories, were reserved for white “girls.”

619 East Green Street, revisited.

Here is 619 East Green Street, the Charlie Thomas house, in the 1980s when photographed for the National Register application for East Wilson. The small attached cinderblock building, Bea’s Flower Shop, was demolished a few years later.

I photographed the house in 2017 when I first featured it in this series. The photo below, taken in October 2025, shows the toll of eight more years.

Two months later, I photographed 619 again.

I do not begrudge a renovation that returns a decaying house to livable condition, and I understand the hard choices that must be made when updating and making efficient a house more than 100 years old, but I am saddened by the loss of architectural detail here. The original bracketed, turned porch posts replaced by plain four-by-fours are a particular loss, as are the reduced-size windows. 

411 East Green Street.

The two hundred-sixth in a series of posts highlighting buildings in East Wilson Historic District, a national historic district located in Wilson, North Carolina. As originally approved, the district encompasses 858 contributing buildings and two contributing structures in a historically African-American section of Wilson. (A significant number have since been lost.) The district was developed between about 1890 to 1940 and includes notable examples of Queen Anne, Bungalow/American Craftsman, and Shotgun-style architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

In the nomination form for the East Wilson Historic District, described as: “ca. 1922; 2 stories; two-bay, side-hall, gable front house with intact turned porch posts.”

In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Foster Hugh (c) carp h 411 E Green. Also: Foster Maggie (c) dom h 411 E Green

In the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Foster Hugh T (c) carp h 411 E Green

In the 1928 and 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Foster Hugh T (c; Mollie M) carp h 411 E Green

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 411 East Green Street, Hugh Foster, 31, carpenter,

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 411 East Green, Hallie Armstrong, 48, pool room operator; wife Julia, 29; and lodgers Annie M. Brown, 39, of Mooresville, Iredell County, hospital nurse; Jeanett M. Lee, 24, of Mount Olive, Wayne County, hospital nurse; and Lawrence Peacock, 27, of High Point, sewer project laborer.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 411 East Green, widow Julia Armstrong, 39, born in Kentucky, and lodgers Mary Rose, 29; Anne Everette, 2; Herbert Rose Jr., born in July; Edward Harris, 20, construction company bricklayer; McDonald Hayes, 33, electric power company laborer; Josephine Hayes, 28, cotton picker on farm; and Willie Mack Hayes, 15, cotton picker on farm.

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Wilson Daily Times, 23 February 1968.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, May 2024.

Reflections on Samuel Vick’s “unquiet life” in politics.

William T. Bost was the influential political correspondent and columnist for the Greensboro Daily News. Just a few days after Samuel H. Vick died, Bost wrote an editorial about Vick’s “unquiet” political life, reflecting on the aftermath of Vick’s removal from his postmaster position.

Greensboro Daily News, 13 July 1946.

611 East Green Street, revisited.

On 29 October 1892, Hardy Tate purchased for $700 from George D. and Ella M. Green a 1/3-acre lot on Green Street between Green and H.C. Phillips.

The first house Tate erected on this lot burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances shortly after completion in 1896. Tate replaced it with this house, whose number bounced from 610 to 612 before settling at 611.

Tate died in 1938. Undertaker Columbus E. Artis and his first wife, nurse Ada D. Artis, bought the house from the Tate family. In 1951, Artis remarried.

Wilson Daily Times, 28 July 1951.

It appears that C.E. and Ruby Barbour Artis began to take in roomers in the 1960s. Artis, photographed here in the driveway, owned the house until his death in 1973, and Ruby Artis remained for several years after.

Per the 12 April 1975 Daily Times, Ruby Artis was issued a permit to “alter boarding house 611 E. Green.”

This ad for apartments in the house ran in the Daily Times in the early 1980s.

Wilson Daily Times, 3 September 1981.

Wilson Daily Times, 14 April 1983.

Wilson Daily Times, 5 July 1983.

Wilson Daily Times, 5 November 1983.

The house was demolished in the early 2000s.

N.87-12-279-280, Hardy Tate House, 611 E. Green Street, East Wilson Historic District, Wilson, Wilson County, Survey and National Register Branch, State Historic Preservation Office.