Month: April 2018

Historic African-American neighborhoods.

A running list of African-American communities and place names in Wilson County:

  • Daniel Hill — Living community northwest of downtown, between Hines, Walnut, Warren Streets and Park Avenue. Most of original housing stock cleared in Warren Street Urban Renewal Area Project of the mid-1960s. The neighborhood’s grid also somewhat altered by the closing of certain streets and removal of alleys during project. Population augmented by residents pushed out of other neighborhoods, including Grabneck and New Grabneck.

“Delay on New Housing Measure May Snag Urban Renewal Plans,” Wilson Daily Times, 29 February 1964.

Vacated Daniel Hill Area, “Urban Renewal Voted Top Wilson Story During 1964,” Wilson Daily Times, 2 January 1965.

  • East Wilson — Broad term for all of the city of Wilson “below the railroad.” Also known until mid-20th century as “the colored section.”
  • Grabneck — Former community located along West Nash Street for several blocks north of Cone Street from late 19th century to early 1920s. Centered around land belonging to the Orrin Best family.

Excerpt from “He Misses ‘Grab Neck’ Most of All,” Wilson Daily Times, 28 October 1938.

  • Happy Hill — Area around South Lodge Street, south of Hines Street.
  • Little Richmond — Mill village erected by Richmond Maury Tobacco Company in the vicinity of its stemmery at Railroad and Stemmery Streets. Developed in mid-1890s. Area ceased to be known by the name perhaps as early as World War I.
  • Little Washington — Known only from a reference in the 11 March 1897 Wilson Advance to a fight in that neighborhood. Location unknown, but likely in East Wilson. (Unless this brief article actually concerns an event that took place in Goldsboro’s well-known African-American neighborhood of Little Washington or the city of Washington, North Carolina, which is colloquially called “Little Washington.”) [Update, 24 April 2018: Little Washington was the area around South and Lodge Streets, west of downtown Wilson.]

  • New Grabneck — Community formed by relocated Grabneck residents, west of downtown and just above Tarboro Street on what are now Jefferson Street and Forrest Road. African-American residents pushed out in the 1960s to make way for white public housing development at Starmount Circle.
  • The Schoolyard — Area around the Wilson Colored Graded School, later known as Sallie Barbour School. South of downtown along present-day Black Creek Road near intersection with Pender Street.
  • Stantonsburg Heights — Real estate designation for an area south of the Colored Graded School, probably the same area as Vicksburg Manor.
  • Suggs Heights — A subdivision south of downtown, probably along the western side of Stantonsburg Street. Primarily a real estate designation rather than a name used by residents.

Wilson Daily Times, 17 December 1925. (Effie May Lewis was the daughter of Whit and Effie Harper Lewis. Per his death certificate, the family was living at 1013 Stantonsburg Street when her father died in 1927.)

  • Toad Town — perhaps an African-American community, perhaps northwest of the town of Wilson.
  • Vicksburg Manor — Living community southeast of downtown, developed by Samuel H. Vick in the 1920s. (Note: Real estate designation. I have never heard the name used colloquially.)

 

  • “Short Viola” — Former section of Viola Street west from Pender Street. Now an unpaved alley running alongside 307 North Pender and through to Hackney Street.
  • “Short Carolina” — Former informal continuation of Carolina Street across East and Narroway Streets to Ashe. Closed off when Carolina was paved in the 1970s.

The disgraceful condition of Stantonsburg road.

Wilson Advance, 16 March 1893.

Into the early years of the twentieth century, Stantonsburg road started at Nash as the continuation of Pender Street and continued past the Colored Graded School along what is now Black Creek Road. Its neglected condition alarmed the paper not so from concern for the African-Americans who crowded its neighborhoods, but for the threat they posed to white Wilson if cholera broke out.

 

For sale, the following public schools, pt. 1.

In the fall of 1951, having opened several modern — or modernized — brick buildings across the county, the Wilson County Board of Education moved to auction off its old colored school houses, some of which had been built with Rosenwald funds. For several weeks, the Wilson Daily Times ran lengthy notices identifying the properties by name and metes and bounds. Schools set for sale included New Vester, Jones Hill, Sims, Farmer’s Mill, Howard’s, Brooks and Minshew’s Colored Schools in Old Fields, Taylors and Black Creek townships.

Wilson Daily Times, 23 October 1951.

Where was Toad Town?

Where was Toad Town? Was it an African-American community?

This brief article suggests that it lay somewhere between Wilson and southern Nash County.

Wilson Times, 3 October 1911.

In the 1910 census of Wilson township, Wilson County, a handful of families were reported living along Toad Town Path, which was in the vicinity of County Line Road and Finch Mill Road, perhaps west and north of Grabneck.

I have found a couple of cryptic references to Toad Town in pseudonymously penned opinion-editorial pieces published in Wilson newspapers. A piece in the 12 April 1893 Wilson Mirror warns that the “Toad Town syndicate is in danger of collapse” from the expense of improvements and the failure of the electric company to extend lights to the area. Was Toad Town, then, a speculative real estate development? And if so, was it intended to displace an older community? “Toad Town” is not a name to attract well-heeled investors. In the 3 February 1911 issue of the Wilson Times, a writer queries whether a man could “distinguish the difference between the milky way and a Toad Town hog path.” If Toad Town had been a planned garden suburb, it certainly failed.

Slapped a colored girl.

Slapping black women was epidemic in Wilson in the first few decades of the 20th century. Here, W.D. Ruffin was ordered into court for slapping a “colored girl,” known only by her surname Reid, who allegedly pushed ahead of him in a line at the post office. Clerk W.O. Flowers complained that “the older colored people are more respectful and will wait their turn but that a number of negro boys and girls make themselves obnoxious by endeavoring to shove their way ahead of some one else.” He claimed he was waiting in line when Reid pushed in. He told her he was in front; she argued that she had a right to be there. Ruffin: “Be quiet.” Reid stood her ground, and Ruffin “brushed her cheek with his hand.”

Wilson Times, 9 July 1919.