City of Wilson

B.W.A. Historical Marker Series, no. 2: Vick Cemetery.

In this series, which will post on occasional Wednesdays, I populate the landscape of Wilson County with imaginary “historic markers” commemorating people, places, and events significant to African-American history or culture.

We been here.

VICK CEMETERY

8-acre public African-American cemetery est. 1913. Cared for by families with scant city funding. Allowed to decline; closed in 1950s. After denying ownership for decades, city removed headstones and graded land circa 1995; installed single monument. Utility poles placed in 1997. In 2022, ground-penetrating radar disclosed 4224+ graves. Reconsecrated by community 5 August 2023.

Howard Law degree conferred.

Fresh off his successful decades-long campaign to strip African-Americans of basic rights in his home state of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels delivered the commencement speech at Howard University’s 1916 graduation. No doubt without irony, Daniels spoke of “progress made by the colored race.”

Who received his juris doctor degree that day? Glenn S. McBrayer, who passed the North Carolina bar the following spring and hung his attorney shingle in Wilson around 1920. He hit the ground running, hosting the first annual convention of the Negro State Bar Association  and getting elected that organization’s corresponding secretary in December 1921. McBrayer practiced in Wilson through 1929.

…

The Washington Herald, 8 June 1916.

Darden ’49 celebrates!

Darden High School’s Class of 1949 celebrated its 50th anniversary with a jam-packed program staged at Tom Woodard‘s Center east of Wilson. I found this program among my late father’s papers and, to my astonishment, I am listed on the program under “Discussions.” I can assure you, had I actually been invited, I’d have been there, and it pains me that I was an apparent no-show for what sounds like an epic event. It’s nice to know, though, that as far back as 1999 I was considered to have something to say worth hearing about Wilson’s African-American history.

Tucked into the night’s agenda was this priceless copy of the 1949 commencement program.

Father Robert J. Johnson gave the invocation; Charles E. Howell delivered the class address; Saint Augustine’s College president Dr. Harold L. Trigg was the featured speaker; and Gloria Haskins performed “Morning” (a poem?)

We’ve met some members of this class before, including Jacobia L. Bullock, Ray J. Dancy, Earl L. Zachary, Lorena Davis, Minnie Doris Ellis, Marie Everett, Levolyre Farmer (who’s still representing!), Elroy Jones, and Margaret Reid,

And look at these prizes and awards — all (except the first three) sponsored by African-American organizations and individuals. (Beauticians Local No. 12? I need to look into that.)

Recommended reading, no. 22: One Third of a Nation.

 

In the early 1930s, journalist Lorena Hickok traveled across the United States investigating the plight of Americans struggling through the Depression. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression. is an annotated compilation of Hickok’s contemporaneous letters, composed as she moved from state to state.

Hickok passed through Wilson in February 1934 and duly filed a letter to Harry L. Hopkins, head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the agency charged with doling out relief to millions of unemployed and needy. She arrived in the midst of a farming crisis, as reductions in crop acreage forced hundreds of farm families off the land.

“As they move to town, they apply for direct relief. The intake office in Wilson today was so crowded you could hardly get into the place. Every house, every abandoned shack, is filled with them. They even break the locks off empty houses and move in.

“Members of the relief committee, two clergymen, the administrator, and the case work supervisor in Wilson today told me that 300 of these displaced tenants and their families have moved into Wilson — a town of about 13,000 population — in the last three years, and of that 300 families, 200 have moved in this winter. The case work supervisor told there were AT LEAST FIFTY CASES in which the landlord, to get rid of them, had moved them in himself and had paid their first week’s rent!

“Seventy-five percent of these families that have moved into Wilson, they told me, are Negroes. Most of them are illiterate. They are afflicted with tuberculosis and the social diseases. Of the white families many have pellagra and hookworm, although hookworm isn’t so common up here as it is farther South. They are a dead weight on the community, both from the social and the economic standpoints. They don’t even want to live in town. The administrator and the case work supervisor both said that there is a constant stream of them in and out of their offices, begging for a chance to ‘git a place on some farm.’

“They’re NOT all bums, either. They HAVEN’T come to town to get work in the mills or on CWA. They’ve come because there’s no place for them to live in the country. Every abandoned shack in the countryside is filled up.”

Finding light on this bitter anniversary.

Rederick C. Henderson, about 1951.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago, and she said, laughing, “I never once spoke with your dad, but I swear I can hear him.” I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was some pithy aphorism or another, and Rederick C. Henderson was the king of same, so she paid me the ultimate compliment.

I miss this man mightily and can hardly believe today marks two years since he left. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel him with me, and I am grateful for all he was in life and beyond.