Month: September 2023

Harper’s Weekly: at the country store.

Harper’s Weekly was famed for its lithographs. Though none are known to depict Wilson County scenes, several feature tableaux that would have been typical of the area. This engraving from a sketch by Mary L. Stone, published 20 April 1872, shows two African-American women at the counter of North Carolina country store. One wears a head wrap and large gold hoop earrings and a short jacket over layers of skirt. She is barefoot. The other woman, who appears to be handling cloth or some other merchandise, is bare-headed and wears a long, full dress and boots.

Thanks to J. Robert Boykin III for sharing this image.

Lane Street Project: response to the 23 July 2023 records request, part 4.

On a lighter note, this is an interesting one:

So, Rodger Lentz reads Black Wide-Awake! I love to see it.

The post he linked to is here. The book is Joan L. Howell’s Wilson County Cemeteries, Vol. V: The Two City-Owned African-American Cemeteries, containing alphabetical listings of 11,472 burials in Rest Haven cemetery and 650 presumed burials in “Rountree-Vick” cemetery.

As I’ve noted repeatedly, Volume 4 is a valuable resource. However, it perpetuates inaccuracies by conflating Rountree, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemeteries — all separately owned — into a single “Rountree-Vick” Cemetery. Despite the engraving on the large granite pillars at the entrance to the parking lot, there is no such thing as Rountree-Vick Cemetery. The names listed as burials in Rountree-Vick are actually presumed burials in the three cemeteries. (A handful are actually in Rest Haven Cemetery.)

I’m glad City Hall has purchased a copy of Volume 4. And I hope the City will support our request to establish a digital database to track the names (and other vital stats information) of people likely buried in Vick Cemetery.

Lane Street Project: Bravo, Elm City!

Look at Elm City, y’all — modeling progressiveness, cooperation, and public spirit!

While Wilson is throwing stones at the messenger, Elm City’s leaders have been working with a descendant group holding title to Heritage (formerly Elm City Colored) Cemetery to seek a $93,000 federal grant for restoration of Elm City’s historic African-American burial ground.

Drew C. Wilson’s story posted yesterday at the Wilson Times online:

Happy birthday to a daughter of East Wilson!

My uncles moved North; my father and his sister cast their lots in Wilson. Both had two daughters, born in age-matched pairs. Monica Ellis Barnes was born exactly nine months before I was and was my very first bestie. Here we are, with her little sister, in front of their house on Faison Street. Happy milestone birthday, cousin! May it be filled with laughter and all the love your heart can hold!

Lane Street Project: response to the 23 July 2023 records request, part 3.

On 4 June 2023, I posted views held at that time on a proposed fence around Vick Cemetery. As I had during my remarks at the open forum, I urged caution concerning the fence and invoked Rev. Carlton Best‘s reminder that we must not lose sight of Vick’s dead as plans are made to move forward.

Two days later, Wilson Communications Director Rebecca Agner reached out to New South Associates with an ask: “We would like NSA to mark the property where we can place the fence as a beginning step.” A series of emails followed in which Agner and NSA’s Sarah Lowry hashed out the scope of the additional work.

Why is it so hard for the City, which has a whole spokesperson, to keep the public informed about what is happening at Vick? What part of transparency and accountability is so hard to comprehend and/or comply with? Agner communicated with the Times about the City’s plans to bring NSA back, but not reaching out to private stakeholders seems to be an affirmative strategy. (In fact, in an email Agner sent Assistant City Manager Rodger Lentz on May 31 at 9:35 A.M., she made this clear: “The city hasn’t been officially responding to anything related to Vick except during public meetings.” Why not?)

Lane Street Project got wind of this when NSA returned to Vick on June 29 to mark anomalies on two sides of the cemetery. LSP observers watched the work and immediately noted that numerous graves lay on or outside Vick’s present-day property line. NSA’s little orange blocks and the map Lowry produced in August demonstrate how thickly graves lie along the boundaries. (And do not even take into account the unscanned graves in the right-of-way.)

So three months later, what is the City’s unrevealed plan for this fence?

Lane Street Project: response to the 23 July 2023 records request, part 2.

First, let me show you the public records request I submitted on 8 September 2023.

The request goes to my attempts to find out what happened to the headstones removed from Vick Cemetery circa 1995-96. My 2019 records request to the City yielded nothing helpful. The calls by me and others for an investigation into their disappearance has fallen on deaf ears. I’ve heard bits and pieces though. Second-hand and third-hand accounts of their removal and storage in a city warehouse, possibly near Maplewood Cemetery. A recent rumor describes the warehouse being damaged or flooded during a hurricane, perhaps Floyd, perhaps some other.

I screenshot this image from the Wilson County GIS website.

It shows the “city lot” adjacent to Maplewood. The superimposed blue shaded area is the “Flood Hazards” layer. There are faint outlines that appear to have been left by demolished buildings. Is this flood-vulnerable area where the headstones were stored? Or were they in some altogether different location?

My public records request is an attempt to determine where the headstones were and when and h0w they left the City’s custody. In the total absence of information from the folks charged with caring for these relics, I crafted my request in the broadest terms.

Here’s what City Manager Grant Goings had to say about that:

A few thoughts:

(1) No, Mr. Goings. Not “one individual.” I’m seeking the truth as a descendant of the dead of Vick Cemetery and a representative of everyone who wants to see a terrible wrong righted.

(2) In other words, we are too busy trying to get the Mudcats to come to Wilson to go on wild-goose chases for dusty documents related to embarrassing chapters in recent city history?

(3) “It is unfortunate that the law allows an individual to use up so many tax-payer resources and further harm the City by taking so many hours of staff time away from current opportunities.” North Carolina has had a Public Records Act since 1935. What’s “unfortunate” is that the highest-ranking administrative manager of the City of Wilson views as a nuisance a law fundamental to good governance and an informed public.

(4) “One (non-resident) attorney.” I was born and raised in Wilson. I don’t have to prove my bona fides to anybody at City Hall. Moreover, anyone may make a public records request.

(5)  I’ve responded to FOIA requests in my day. If we received one that seemed overly broad or vague or burdensome, we would contact the requestor to ask a few questions aimed at clarifying or narrowing the scope of the request. Simple as that. In fact, both the City Attorney and the City Clerk have reached out to me before concerning requests I’ve submitted. One time resulted in my withdrawal of the request. The second time resulted in a fine-tuning of the request to make more clear the information I was seeking. I have to assume that Grant Goings understands how public records requests work. Why he chooses to cavil and complain to council rather than contact me for clarity is a question only he can answer. As soon as I read his email, however — or, rather, as soon as I picked my jaw up off the floor — I emailed the City Attorney and others: “Mr. Cauley, given Mr. Goings’ concerns about my exercise of rights afforded under NC law, if there are questions about the scope of any request I submit, including that submitted on September 8, please let me know and I will do my best to clarify or even narrow said request.”

Lane Street Project: $50,000 mystery solved.

Much as I suspected, that $50,000 state appropriation for private Herring-Ellis Cemetery caught the City off-guard. Here’s how the Wilson Times described the exchange when State Representative Ken Fontenot appeared before council to tout state budget details:

A quick yes. Kudos to Mayor Carlton Stevens for nipping that stunt in the bud and securing authorization to devote the entire amount to Vick Cemetery, a historic city-owned burial ground. I look forward to discussions about how this generous appropriation can best be utilized.