Month: April 2023
Everett is given as a gift.
State of N.C. Edgecombe County } Know that I Jesse Barnes of the County and State aforesaid do give unto my son in law Orren Bulluck of the County and State aforesaid one negroe boy by the name of Evarett about Eighteen years old. The above named negroe I give for the natural Love and affection that I Bare unto my son in law Orren Bulluck. July 27th day 1835 In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal. Joshua Barnes Jesse Barnes
——
In July 1835, after daughter Edith Barnes Bulluck’s death, Jesse Barnes gave his son-in-law Orren Bulluck an enslaved man named Everett. Jesse Barnes’ son Joshua Barnes wrote out the deed of gift and signed it as a witness. The Barneses lived in what is now Wilson County; Bulluck, on Cokey Swamp in Edgecombe County.
Perhaps: in the 1880 census of Lower Fishing Creek township, Edgecombe County, farm laborer Everett Bullock, 65, and wife Venus, 60.
Dempsey and Jesse Barnes Papers, Hugh Johnston Collection, North Carolina Memory, lib.digitalnc.org.
Charges on the docket.
News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 6 September 1908.
This rundown of Superior Court cases reveals crazy times in the streets of Wilson. It’s not easy to determine which defendants were African-American, but:
Jack Rountree was charged with setting fire to the house of Jesse Howard (whose honorific “Mr.” was unusual for an African-American at the time.)
Josephine Blount and white madames Cora Duty, Mallie Paul, Rosa Holland, Gladys Moore, Nan Garrett, Fannie Burwell, Willie Bright, and Maud Kelly were charged with “maintaining ‘red light’ houses.” Blount, who operated from Samuel H. Vick‘s Orange Hotel, was already in jail, awaiting trial.
Gladys Moore, seated wearing boater, and Mallie Paul (or, perhaps, Paul and Moore). Arguably, Paul, who operated for decades, was the doyenne of Wilson’s red light district madames. Photo courtesy of Jim Gaddis.
The first of two “squads of blacklegs” charged with gambling — Jesse Taylor, Mid Farmer, Dock Atkinson, Wiley Dupree, John Lancaster, and Bud Bynum — was comprised of Black men.
George Rountree, probably. I have not been able to identify Abner Renfrow. Was this serial rapist white?
Penny Lassiter buys 106 acres.
On 15 October 1853, Penny Lassiter paid Hilliard Thomas $242 for 106 acres of land on “the Tarboro road,” i.e. today’s N.C. Highway 42. To date, this is the earliest found purchase of land by an African-American woman in what is now Wilson County.
Deed book 26, page 258, Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Office, Tarboro, N.C.
Lane Street Project: Preserving African American Cemeteries, a webinar.
The obituary of Alforna R. Barnes, age 6.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 March 1948.
I have not been able to find Alforna Ruffins Barnes‘ death certificate.
Is the Negro loyal?
In which Rev. Halley B. Taylor both defends the loyalty of African-Americans during World War I and makes pointed observations about the importance of Black soldiers having something to fight for, in other words, a stake in America’s security and prosperity.
Wilson Daily Times, 26 April 1917.
Lane Street Project: another thanks.
Special thanks to all who donated to our headstone restoration fund! All donations go directly to pay a local company for their care and expertise in cleaning, stabilizing, and resetting grave markers, and are always welcome!
Among the stones recently cleaned was Joseph S. Jackson‘s white marble marker, which was partially buried and badly stained.
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In the Oates family section, Billy Foster unearthed these two hand-lettered markers, which appear to be foot stones.
As you see, the grass is starting to grow quickly at Odd Fellows. Please come out for our April 15 and 29 workdays!
Photos courtesy of Foster Stone and Cemetery Care, April 2023.
Happy Easter!
My sister, me, and my cousins, Newport News, Virginia, circa 1970.
My mother grew up in Newport News, Virginia, and Easter often found us at my grandmother’s house and their family church, Saint Paul A.M.E.
Little did I know that on our drives from Wilson to Tidewater, we were traveling a reverse migration route. Hundreds of Wilson County family were drawn to the docks and shipyards of Newport News and Norfolk or the lumber mills of Suffolk in the early to mid-twentieth century. In fact, my mother’s childhood best friend had Wilson County roots.
Wishing all who observe a Happy Resurrection Sunday!
The 105th anniversary of the school boycott.
Today marks the 105th anniversary of the resignation of 11 African-American teachers in Wilson, North Carolina, in rebuke of their “high-handed” black principal and the white school superintendent who slapped one of them. In their wake, black parents pulled their children out of the public school en masse and established a private alternative in a building owned by a prominent black businessman. Financed with 25¢-a-week tuition payments and elaborate student musical performances, the Independent School operated for nearly ten years. The school boycott, sparked by African-American women standing at the very intersection of perceived powerless in the Jim Crow South, was an astonishing act of prolonged resistance that unified Wilson’s black toilers and strivers.
The school boycott has been largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes have gone unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9, I publish links to these Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.
we-tender-our-resignation-and-east-wilson-followed
the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school
a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings
what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers
lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks
photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools
a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city
And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.