Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 11 May 1954.

When I first saw “Hinnant,” “jazz,” and “church organ,” I thought this was the obituary of one of the hundreds of African-American natives of Wilson County that migrated to Washington, D.C.

However — no. The clue: Carl Hinnant learned to play piano from “his old colored mammy and helped him sound out ‘Coonshine.'”

Carl Hinnant was born in Wilson in 1896. No “colored mammy” is listed in his family’s household in 1900 or 1910, and we may never know the name of the talented African-American woman who launched his musical career.