In 1924, Samuel H. Vick, elbowed out of formal political activity, clapped back at a Greensboro, North Carolina, newspaper’s op-ed piece about African-Americans and the state Republican Party.
Wilson Daily Times, 23 September 1924.
Editor Daily Times:
In regard to the editorial appearing [on] the Negro and the Republican party in this state, we wish to state that the “Hog Combine” has no desire to carry North Carolina for the Republican party.
Eating the hog is the thing uppermost in their minds, and they eat so much until they have nightmares.
Control of national Republican patronage is their sole ambition.
The party who wrote the editorial in the Greensboro Daily News is evidently a member of the “Hog Combine.”
If this is not true it is rather strange that he should dictate the policy of the Republican party in North Carolina in regard to the Negro.
The Negro has been politically asleep for the past twenty years, but he is arousing now and will be heard from.
We have no desires or ambitions politically, but we have an interest in our people politically as well as otherwise.
This explains our activity in the matter if the little part we have taken in such things can be called by that name.
Since we were mentioned personally in the editorial, we wish to make this statement: If I have incurred “a legacy of everlasting race rancor and hatred by a temporary (ten years) tenure of a Wilson Post Office” it has never been shown or demonstrated by the people of Wilson. They were my friends then and have shown their friendship ever since. Whatever I may have or possess is due largely to their friendship which this editor calls race rancor and hatred.
In regard to being invited into the party we wish to say that the Anglo-African does not have to be invited into the Republican party. He has no doubt been too loyal. It was the Anglo-Saxon who was invited into the ranks of the party. He came in and took possession and shut the door on the Anglo-African, but the original Republicans are coming back in spite of the “Hog Combine,” believing what is good for the white man is good for the negro with equal intelligence.
Respectfully, S.H. VICK
Hi Mrs. Henderson, I am trying to find some information on my ancestors with the surname Cooper. on the 1870 Census, my GGG-Great Grandfather Samuel Cooper was listed as living in Joyner’s township, Wilson, NC, near Stantonsburg. He was a farm laborer. This is the most recent document I can find on him. In 1880, he lived in Upper Town Creek, in Edgecombe. He had a son Robert, who eventually migrated to Mississippi—in, which I am not able to find any reason as to why. In your research have you come across in black Coopers in this area?
Cooper is relatively common name in adjoining Nash County, and most Wilson County Coopers are offshoots of families from that area. Joyners Township was the area around present-day Elm City and close to Upper Town Creek, Edgecombe County. (Stantonsburg was the post office, but it was not in Joyners Township.) As for migration to Mississippi, Robert may have gone to Arkansas with the second Exoduster migration and then crossed back into Mississippi.