In November 1944, a mail carrier found an eleven year-old African-American boy crying in ditch. The child’s leg was broken, and he revealed that he had been chased and knocked by several drunken white men. The mail carrier took him to a white doctor in Stantonsburg, who recommended that he be taken to Mercy Hospital in Wilson.
I have not been able to find more about the incident.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 November 1944.
I suspect that “Rosette” Artis was actually Roselle Artis, a well-known African-American farmer in the Stantonsburg area. However, as best I can determine, Roselle and Rencie Bynum Artis did not have a son who was 11 years old in 1944. The closest was their son Milton R. Artis, who would have been 9 years old.
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In the 1940 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County: on Old Wilson Road, farmer Roselle Artis, 27; wife Rencie, 20; son Milton, 4; mother Frances, 60, widow; nephews Marion Jr., 10, and Thomas S., 9; lodgers Jimmie D. Barnes, 21, and Miles Warren, 60.
In May 2019, Dr. Joseph H. Ward‘s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, both born and reared in the Midwest, came home to Wilson. Zella Palmer FaceTimed me as she and her mother Alice Roberts Palmer stood outside David G.W. Ward‘s house near Stantonsburg, the house in which Joseph Ward’s mother Mittie Ward and grandmother Sarah Ward toiled while enslaved. D.G.W. Ward was the father of at least three of Sarah Ward’s children, including Mittie. Joseph Ward’s father, Napoleon Hagans, who lived not far away in Wayne County, was my great-great-grandmother’s brother, and thus Cousin Alice and Zella are my people. I was so grateful to be able to share, even if remotely, the tangle of emotions the Palmers felt as they stood on ancestral ground. But who knew there was more to come for Zella in Wilson?
This week, Zella announced that the cookbook she wrote with Wilson’s own barbecue pitmaster extraordinaire Ed Mitchell and his son Ryan Mitchell is now available for pre-order on Amazon, with a publication date of June 2023! Zella is chair of Dillard University’s Ray Charles Program in African-American Material Culture in New Orleans and passionately committed to preserving Black foodways. Who better to capture the family stories and recipes of my father’s old friend Ed Mitchell? And who better than I to provide source material and to introduce the world to Black Wilson at the book’s opening?
My gratitude goes to Ed Mitchell, who has long stood in the gap for the preservation of eastern North Carolina food culture (and respect and recognition for its practitioners and purveyors); to Ryan Mitchell, whose True Made Foods embodies the spirit of sankofa; and to my cousin Zella Palmer, who drew me into this project and showed love and grace when I missed deadlines as I struggled to find words during my father’s illness.
“In his first cookbook, … Ed explores the tradition of whole-hog barbeque that has made him famous. It’s a method passed down through generations over the course of 125 years and hearkens back even further than that, to his ancestors who were plantation sharecroppers and, before that, enslaved. Ed is one of the few remaining pitmasters to keep this barbeque tradition alive, and in Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, he will share his methods for the first time and fill in the unwritten chapters of the rich and complex history of North Carolina whole-hog barbeque.”
Lower Black Creek Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1783, was the second church organized in what is now Wilson County. (It closed its doors in 2010.) The church’s nineteenth and early twentieth-century records include names of enslaved and freed African-American members, who worshipped with the congregation as second-class Christians even after Emancipation.
This page records baptisms “under the Care of Elder Reuben Hays” from 1803 and 1808 and includes references to nine enslaved African-Americans. (Don’t let “servant” fool you.) As Primitive Baptists did not practice infant baptism, the nine were, if not adults, then nearly so, and thus were all born in the 1700s. Some may have lived to see Emancipation, but even if they remained in Wilson County, I have no way to identify them further.
Dick, a servant
Lewis, a servant
Jane, a servant
Dick, a servant
Will, a servant
Harry, a servant
Beck, a servant
James, a servant
Salath, a servant
Copy of documents courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III. Originals now housed at North Carolina State Archives.
Residential segregation did not happen organically. By the early 1900s, specific areas of Wilson were designated colored (white was default), and realtors like George A. Barfoot sold the houses within them accordingly. (Barfoot, C.C. Powell, and other white realtors came to own large swaths of housing in East Wilson as a result of wide-scale loan defaults by Black property owners during the Depression.) By the 1920s, several pockets of African-American settlement west of the A.C.L. railroad and north of Hines Street were deliberately cleared to make way for upscale white neighborhoods, creating strict residential segregation patterns that held for much of the rest of the 20th century.
This triple-A cottage is not within the bounds of East Wilson Historic District. However, South Lodge Street — below the warehouse district — has been an African-American residential area since the turn of the twentieth century.
For much of the twentieth century, the house was owned and occupied by Oscar B. Green, his wives, and their descendants.
In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 South Lodge, Oscar Green, 35; wife Josie, 22; children Willie, 6 months, and Eva, 2; and sister-in-law Mattie Walls, 20.
In the 1922 and 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Green Oscar (c) tobwkr h 606 S Lodge
Josephine Green died 21 October 1927 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 37 years old; was born in Henderson, N.C., to Joseph Ward and Francis Rawls; was married to Oscar Green; lived at 606 South Lodge; and worked as a day laborer at Export Tobacco Company.
In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Green Oscar (c; Essie M) lab h 606 S Lodge
In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Green Oscar (c; Essie M) factorywkr h 606 S Lodge
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 South Lodge, tobacco cooper Oscar Green, 44; wife Essie M., 26; and children Eva L., 12, Willie O., 10, Hattie M., 6, and Lucile, 4; Mary Barnes, 48, dressmaker, and her children Alma, 20, servant, Elizabeth, 16, Lalla R., 12, and Elois, 8.
In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 South Lodge, Oscar Green, 53, redrying laborer at tobacco factory; wife Essie May, 36; and children Eva L., 22, Willie Oscar, 19, Charles B., 16, Hattie Margaret, 15, and Lucille, 14.
In 1940, Willie Oscar Green registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 16 June 1919 in Wilson; lived at 606 South Lodge Street; his contact was Beulah Sutton Green, 606 South Lodge; and he worked for R.P. Watson Tobacco Company, 410 South Street, Wilson.
Eva L. Green died 6 April 1941 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 15 May 1917 in Wilson to Oscar Green and Essie Winstead; was single; worked as a tobacco factory laborer; and lived at 606 South Lodge.
In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 South Lodge, Arthur [sic, Oscar] Green, 64, loads truck at tobacco company; wife Essa Mae, 40; daughter Lucy, 24; grandsons Dona Roy, 1, and Jessie, 3; son Willie, 30; granddaughter Marie, 8; grandson Willie M., 7; daughter Hattie M., 26; granddaughter Margaret, 4; and son Charlie, 26.
Essie Mae Green died 5 September 1953 in Wilson. She was born 1 July 1904 in Wilson to Junius Walker and Louise Hyman; lived at 606 South Lodge Street; worked as a laborer; and was married to Oscar Green.
Wilson Daily Times, 19 September 1953.
Carrie Coleman Green died 23 July 1972 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 23 December 1902 in Alabama; was married to Oscar Green; was retired; and lived at 606 South Lodge.
Oscar Bell Green died 26 September 1975 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 14 September 1897 to Nelson [Neverson] Green and Isabella Thorp; was a widower; lived at 606 South Lodge; and was a tobacco factory laborer. Lucille Tillery was informant.
