The eleventh in a series of posts highlighting the schools that educated African-American children outside the town of Wilson in the first half of the twentieth century. The posts will be updated; additional information, including photographs, is welcome.
Minshew School
Per a 10 January 1950 Wilson Daily Times article, “Black Creek Is Oldest Incorporated Town Between Wilmington, Weldon,” one of the early free schools for white children was “a Minshew school located near the Wayne County line.” When rural white schools consolidated circa 1920, Minshew school building was turned over to educate black children. Thus, it was not a Rosenwald school.
Location: A 1936 state road map of Wilson County shows “Minshew” school located on present-day Jaycross Road, just east of Frank Price Church Road. [There is a house standing at that location that resembles a converted school building. It warrants a closer look.]
Per sale advertised for several weeks in the Wilson Daily Times in the fall of 1951: “MINSHEWS COLORED SCHOOL in Black Creek Township, more particularly described as follows: BEGINNING at the junction of the New Road with the Goldsboro and Wilson Road, thence in a Northerly direction with the Goldsboro and Wilson Road 175 feet to a stake, thence at right angles with the road in an Easterly direction 210 feet to a stake, thence in a Southerly direction 268 feet to the New Road, thence in a Northwesterly direction with said New Road 210 feet to the beginning. Being the identical land described in a deed recorded in Book 49, at page 549, Wilson County Registry.”
Description: Per The Public Schools of Wilson County, North Carolina: Ten Years 1913-14 to 1923-24, Minshew School was a one-room school seated on one acre.
Known faculty: principal Maggie Walker Bryant; teacher Beatrice A. Jones.
Wilson Daily Times, 16 May 1949.
My grandmother attended Minshew School as a young girl. She is now in her 80’s..
Wow! Can she confirm that the school was on Jaycross Road? I’d love to feature her recollections of attending Minshew in a blog post!
I will talk to her and let you know. I took her out there last year and she showed me where it was and it was a house there and I asked her if she was sure and she said yes chile, I know what I’m talking about 😂 But I’ll have to ask her about the name of the road because I can’t remember.
Great! I’m pretty sure that house is the old school renovated for use as a residence. That’s the case with Bynum School.