Author: Lisa Y. Henderson

History. Genealogy. Culture.

H. Farmer leads Negro Farmers Advisory Committee.

Wilson Daily Times, 14 November 1942.

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Missing teens believed to have left home to seek work.

Though the Great Depression had ended, poverty ground on for many Wilson County families in the early 1940s. Like boys of the era, who regularly left home to seek better opportunities, girls were drawn by rumors of good money to be made in big cities further North. Many lucked into good positions, but others, as vulnerable runaways, were drawn into sexual exploitation.

Wilson Daily Times, 23 November 1942.

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  • Ethel Robbins
  • Eula Parnell — Parnell appears in the 1940 census in a Factory Street household in which no one was employed.
  • Ida Mae Reville

The obituary of Fred Woodard.

Wilson Daily Times, 18 November 1950.

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On 29 September 1934, Fred Woodard, 45, of Wilson, son of Bettie Woodard, married Lucy Bynum, 27, of Wilson, daughter of Cooper and Willie Ann Bynum, in Wilson. Rev. M.T. Lewis performed the ceremony.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 111 East Street, Fred Woodard, 46, and wife Lucy, 33, both tobacco warehouse laborers.

Spellman loses radio show after speaking out against injustice.

Erudite agricultural extension agent Cecil L. Spellman not only editorialized about the Scottsboro boys in the Norfolk Journal and Guide, he spoke of the case during his weekly program on Wilson’s WGTM radio station. He was immediately dropped.

His was not the only African-American programming impacted by “radical revisions” in station policy. The Laddie Springs Orchestra (who were they??) had been booted from the main studio to Studio B, a space so small that a quartet would have felt squeezed. The orchestra cut ties “rather than suffer further indignities.” Handel’s Chorus, Hartford Bess‘ widely acclaimed singing group, was directed to limit their vocal offerings to “old spirituals.” No classical pieces or solo numbers. Chorus president Jack Sherrod announced they would leave the station, too, as they preferred variety.

In response, businessmen Daniel McKeithan, William F. Potts, Spellman, and Sherrod made plans for a 15-week half-hour weekly show to start in September. (On WGTM??? How would that work? Did it work?)

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 14 August 1937.