Civic Life

Lane Street Project: next service day — March 28!

March has been a fantastic month for Lane Street Project! First, we welcomed our friends from Greenfield School:

Then, Wilson City Council adopted a positive plan for Vick Cemetery’s near future, one that included the additional ground-penetrating radar we have long urged.

Please help us keep us the momentum going by coming out to Odd Fellows Saturday, March 28, at 10:00 A.M. for our next cleanup service day. Greenfield students made tremendous progress clearing dead brush and high weeds in the interior of the cemetery. We want to continue that work, which is especially important as warming weather awakens the wisteria that infests the space. We also need to mow the front section of Odd Fellows as the grass begins to green up.

A couple of hours of work by a couple of dozen people make a tremendous difference. We hope to see you Saturday!

Excerpt from “Greenfield volunteers support cemetery cleanup,” Wilson Times, 24 March 2026; photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2026.

Lane Street Project: all those in favor?

I watched tonight’s city council meeting live on Vimeo and cheered all the way through.

First, let me give a deep bow and thunderous hand-clap to all — brown, black, white — who spoke in defense of Councilmember Eduardo Herrera-Picasso and the city’s immigrant community. I applaud your brave insistence that the City respectfully address the concerns of all its residents and that your neighbors understand that Wilson belongs to all of us.

And — Council unanimously passed the Vick Cemetery proposal. The resulting first order of business is the ground-penetrating radar of the right-of-way we have been demanding for years. Results of that survey will shape our next steps.

I could not get to Wilson this week, so I asked Castonoble Hooks to read brief remarks on my behalf during the public comment period. He followed with his own trenchant remarks (that I accidentally interrupted.) Thank you, Cass.

 

Lane Street Project: the 19 March 2026 council meeting agenda; or, at last, a recommendation.

Finally, item 13 on the 19 March 2026 Wilson City Council Agenda:

These supporting materials have been presented to council members for review and are available online.

The Agenda Item Cover Sheet, subject line “Vick Cemetery Plan,” summarizes Item 13 and sets forth City Manager Rodger Lentz’s recommendation.

This document sets forth the Vick Cemetery Plan in detail. The plan is proposed in three phases by order of urgency, with some additional future actions, and includes a summary of archaeological firm New South Associates’ recommendations.

Council previously approved placement of boundary markers, paid for with state grant money. The next documents suggest placement and appearance.

(Nobody asked me, but as between these three, I’d go with the simplest  — C. I might also pick a different font, maybe Gill Sans or Optima, though the Roman matches the existing pillars at the entrance to the parking lot.)


(There’s something a little off about the larger scale for “Vick” below. A, with same size lettering?)

New South Associates’ proposal and budget for additional ground-penetrating radar at Vick, which include confirmation that the pieces of stone dislodged in December were marble vault fragments associated with a grave in the right-of-way.

I am confident that City Manager Lentz’s recommendations will be adopted, and the City will move forward with alacrity to begin implementation. The results of this round of GPR will dictate the manner in which many of the proposals can be carried out and whether even more action is warranted. Vick Cemetery has suffered more than a century of indifference, neglect, and active harm, and its issues won’t be remediated overnight. However, this recommendation goes a long way toward addressing our oft-repeated demands, and for the first time I am sanguine about the cemetery’s future.

Thanks again to Mayor Carlton Stevens, City Manager Rodger Lentz, Assistant City Managers Bill Bass and Albert Alston, and Councilmember Susan Kellum for righting the City’s ship on this issue. Thank you to Castonoble Hooks, Briggs Sherwood, Dr. Judy Rashid, Lisa Benoy Gamble, Jen Kehrer, Tiyatti Speight, Chris Facey, and all who kept a close eye on Vick over the last few months, documented its condition, or spoke truth to power on its behalf. Thanks also to the Wilson Times for its close and ongoing coverage of Vick Cemetery issues. A robust local press matters!

Lane Street Project: at Odd Fellows, next steps loading.

Vicki M. Cowan shared these snapshots of her mother Monte Vick Cowan and uncle Robert E. Vick visiting Odd Fellows Cemetery on a winter afternoon, perhaps in the 1990s.

In the first image, they stand beside the marble ledger tablet that covers the grave of their mother Annie M. Washington Vick. Rountree Cemetery is behind them. 

Below, Robert E. Vick standing in Odd Fellows.

The families of the Lane Street cemeteries never forgot their dead. Never abandoned them.  Distance, or age, or responsibilities to the living may have kept them from coming to lay flowers or from fighting nature’s relentless threats, and time is the thief of memory, but never abandoned. We knew our people were here, even if we didn’t know how best to reclaim them.

Lane Street Project will soon announce new initiatives to expand our care for the dead of Odd Fellows Cemetery. We’re excited about the possibilities for improving conditions in this cemetery, and count on your continued support.

Thank you, Vicki Cowan!

Lane Street Project: the mayor presents meeting details to full council.

Please note that, while we appreciate these moves and are hopeful about Vick’s future, so much of what is now being proposed to council are requests and demands repeatedly made right here at Black Wide-Awake over the last three years. The information needed to support these proposals has been available to anyone willing to look and see.

Thank you, Councilmember Kellum.

A couple of months ago, I went a little off-topic to ask Wilson’s new council members to set new standards for communication with their constituents (and others with vested interests in community affairs). I don’t know if Susan Kellum saw my post, but, one way or another, she heard my cry. Kellum has demonstrated a refreshing and unprecedented willingness to listen to community concerns and made herself available for last week’s meeting even though she had a tight schedule. 

Here’s what I wrote in January: “… a timely post from a council member, especially about issues directly concerning the people who put them in office, is both efficient and effective and allows for comments and quick feedback from community members. No one is expecting council to spill state secrets on Facebook, but the dense fog that shrouds Wilson’s workings needs to dissipate, and these kinds of posts are absolute sunshine.” Thank you, Susan Kellum, for championing hard conversations and for keeping the community informed.

Congratulations and gratitude, Castonoble Hooks!

Lane Street Project’s Castonoble Hooks is getting his flowers this month, and we are here for it! This past Sunday he received Mount Moriah Community Church’s Community Impact Award, one of three such honors bestowed upon him by area churches this month. We add our thanks to Cass Hooks for his dedication to the preservation and uplift of our history.

Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Drawhorn.