Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 23 May 1953.
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Revolutionary love.
Slavery was not built for love.
Nonetheless, despite caprice and cruelty, love endured.
In 1866, when the State of North Carolina created a path for recognition of marriages made before Emancipation, thousands of couples found their way to a justice of peace. The cohabitation register for Wilson County shows a column for the groom’s name and a column for the bride’s and a column that recorded the years they had been together.
Arch Daniel and Rena Daniel. 35 years.
Bob Rountree and Tempy Horne. 30 years.
Amos Taylor and Amy Barnes. 33 years.
Champion Simms and Deura Simms. 40 years.
Living miles apart, without bodily autonomy, under constant threat of sale and separation, disrespected and denigrated, these men and women chose to love — and whom to love. Today, we recognize these revolutionaries and honor their memory.
My great-great-grandparents, Willis Barnes and Cherry Battle, registered their six-year cohabitation in Wilson County in 1866.
Happy Valentine’s Day 2026!
We moved into 1401 Carolina Street just before my first birthday and left just before my tenth. I haven’t been inside this little brick house in nearly 50 years, but I can describe its every detail, inside and out. My deep connection to my community and its people was forged in those first ten years. Safe in the nest of my knowledge-seeking, passion-encouraging family, I flourished — a sensitive, inquisitive, observant child.
Today, Black Wide-Awake celebrates foundational love! Cheers to Beverly and Rederick Henderson and the East Wilson that made me!
Help for the road to the Negro cemetery.
In the aftermath of complaints by “prominent Negroes of the city” about the impassable condition of roads leading to Vick Cemetery, City Manager W.M. Wiggins appealed to the Wilson County Board of Commissioners to request the state highway commission to make “the road to the local negro cemetery” a state highway. The “town and state” had made some improvements to try to make the road passable in winter, and Wiggins believed the state would take over if asked.
…
Wilson Daily Times, 26 November 1937.
When I first posted about the complaints, I concluded that the road in question was what we now know as Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway/US Highway 264. I’m now revising my thoughts.
The eastward extension of Nash Street past town limits was already a paved state road by 1937 as shown on this 1936 Wilson County road map.
US 264 and NC Highway 58 were already 264 and 58. But there’s a tiny spur, a little dashed set of parallel lines, that represents the road that turned off 264 at Rountree Missionary Baptist Church and ran several hundred feet back to three cemeteries. This — now the eastern end of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street — was the muddy road to the Negro cemetery. It’s not clear whether City Manager Wiggins’ appeal was immediately successful, but a 1968 N.C.D.O.T. map labels this as S.R. (“state road”) 1546.
Is Bishop L.N. Forbes Street still a state road?
Saint Alphonsus School celebrates Negro History Week.
Wilson Daily Times, 13 February 1947.
Sallie B. Howard School honors Samuel H. Vick.
I love Sallie B. Howard School’s elevation of local black history, and I love that they use (and cite) Black Wide-Awake as a resource!
Colored members of the medical staff of Lincoln Hospital.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 9 January 1937.
This photo collage appears in a full-page article titled “Hospital Is Built Where Monument Intended; Lincoln Hospital at Durham Has Unusual History and Record; Duke Family’s Plan To Honor Negro Slaves Changed To Erection of Much Needed Hospital.”
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- Dr. Walter D. Hines
Fire in Oakland Cemetery.
Wilson Daily Times, 1 September 1932.
Firemen allowed a grass fire at “a negro cemetery” to “burn over” the field. Alarm boxes at two locations on Stantonsburg Street indicate that the cemetery was Oakdale, which the Town of Wilson had abandoned in favor of Vick almost two decades earlier.
Black History Month Throwback: Wilson’s black baseball history.
A recent Facebook post by Wilson’s new Minor League baseball team, the Warbirds, reminded me of the city’s deep black baseball roots. Check out the links below.
homestead-grays-at-spring-camp
pop-eye-leonard-and-the-wilson-braves
homestead-grays-play-the-new-york-black-yankees-in-wilson
elm-city-negro-giants-were-not-boasting-but-we-believe-were-the-best
Figuring this family tree thing out.
Lane Street Project has enriched my life in many ways, among them introduction to wonderful people I would not otherwise have gotten to know. Portia Newman is one. Though we are both graduates of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and, it turns out, both among the unnumbered thousands of Adam T. Artis‘ descendants, more than two decades separate our paths through Wilson. Nonetheless, we share an unshakeable sense of family and place and a deep commitment to paying forward our gratitude for both. I was not surprised, then, to see this morning that Portia was giving us gifts on her birthday.
Here, in four parts and a dope video, are Portia Newman’s reflections on the importance of documenting family history and her plan for doing so. All of us can be, must be, preservationists. Save your stories.
And, here, listen to Portia’s grandfather, Donald Lee Woodard Sr. talk about his life in the Red Hill area near Stantonsburg. “You just got to live your life. By being 98*, I have seen a lot and been through a lot.” (Be sure to watch to the very end!)
Happy birthday, Portia!