In collaboration with Preservation of Wilson, where she now serves as Director, and North Carolina Greensboro Field School program, Monica T. Davis presented this in-depth discussion of shotgun (locally known as “endway” houses) in East Wilson Historic District.
I remember shotgun houses on Nash Street . And All over Wilson. We lived in one on Carroll Street
out freaking standing
With all due respect to the research done by the presenter, shot gun houses being found in East Wilson and maybe in other parts of the world are not to be celebrated as something GREAT for those like me and my family who HAD TO LIVE in them from @1897-1968
SPOILER ALERT:
Colonizers built/used this type of degradated living quarters ALL OVER , including Africa and the Carribeans, to house black workers and their family to do slave labor be it sugar plantations, cotton or tobacco plantations / factories, warehouses ( i.e., Wilson, NC)
Moreso, often 5-8 ( or more) parents and children slept CRAMPED UP literally in 1 bed room because the 2nd room was often the living room, and the 3rd was the kitchen.
For those who never lived like this, maybe this history is nostalgic.
For me , and thousands of others, it was daily reality of oppressive living conditions that we endured as follows in these ALL WOODEN structures:
-plastic to the windows to keep out the cold
– newspaper stuck to the wooden walls and in the cracks of the wood inside the house..all which served as insulation
-water pipes freezing up and bursting EVERY winter which often meant no water for days
-HAVING to sit out on the porch
(day and night) which served as extra space to live
– pot belly stoves that you had to shovel coal into throughout the night to keep warm and to roast sweet potatoes in the hot ashes
(in addition, IF POSSIBLE, you wanted to get the kind of stove that had a flat surface which could then double as your cooking stove (there was no extra money for “appliances” , plus they took up living space)
MORAL OF THIS STORY:
Everything that glitters , for some, ain’t gold to others.
Oh yes, we made it; just needed to tell the first-hand WHOLE STORY …..which is the WHOLE TRUTH.