Civic Life

Reflections on Samuel Vick’s “unquiet life” in politics.

William T. Bost was the influential political correspondent and columnist for the Greensboro Daily News. Just a few days after Samuel H. Vick died, Bost wrote an editorial about Vick’s “unquiet” political life, reflecting on the aftermath of Vick’s removal from his postmaster position.

Greensboro Daily News, 13 July 1946.

Lane Street Project: summer maintenance.

Donations allow us to pay to keep the front section of Odd Fellows Cemetery looking good through the summer months, when sunshine and rain send weeds into overdrive.

Friends of Lane Street Project is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. To help us continue our work, please consider making a donation via Zelle at friendsoflsp — thank you!

Convicting White Caps.

As late as 1897, black men could still sit on Wilson County juries hearing cases charges brought against white men.

In State vs. Pharaoh Rowe, James Montgomery, J.V. Lamm, and John Bone, the jury included James J. Jones, Louis Townsend, Lee Moore, and Scott Johnson.

On 9 February 1897, the jury found the defendants guilty. They were White Caps, members of extralegal vigilante groups that targeted not only black people, but white people who flouted moral standards or otherwise defied the group norms.  Just months before this trial, Pharoah Rowe had been shot in the stomach when a band of his confederates sought to tear down the fence of a white Lucama man’s fence who had opposed a road project.

Wilson Advance, 11 February 1897.

In June 1896, a man who had been initiated into the White Caps by defendant James Montgomery testified that he had been told the group “was a good thing for the country, in that it saved expenses by attending to those who made themselves obnoxious to the community” and that “their signs were a peculiar whistling and the passing of the hand across the face.”

Montgomery’s good word notwithstanding, these vigilantes were looked down upon by Wilson County’s white elite, and the White Cap era seems to have been short-lived.

Signal Boost: Goldsboro’s James & Pine Black Business District.

Well, now. Here’s an idea.

“The city of Goldsboro dedicated the James and Pine Black Business District Memorial Parklet on Saturday.

“The parklet, at 401 S. James St., is dedicated to honor Goldsboro’s historic James and Pine Black Business District which “was a major center of Black economic, cultural, and social life from roughly the 1920s through the 1970s, during segregation, when Black residents built a self-sustaining commercial district that served as a hub for entrepreneurship, community gathering, and empowerment,” according to the event program.

“The project is meant to be a ‘living park’ to honor the legacy that was left behind by the Black business owners and community leaders who built the district into a place for the community to gather.

“Councilwoman Hiawatha Jones and Barabara Dantonio, James and Pine Black Business District Committee chair, introduced the work completed by the Downtown Goldsboro Development Corp. Design Committee, Bill Ellis of Playtime Installers who designed the park and the city for the installation and planning support.

“Continued efforts to capture the heritage and stories, and identify future funding will be carried out by the James and Pine Black Business District Committee, according to organizers.

“The committee will work to preserve the history of the district, develop a storytelling place to tell the history of the district, and revitalize the area to support new Black-owned businesses in the future. …”

From “Park dedicated to honor legacy of Black business owners,” Aynaelyssa Thomas-Frunk, http://www.newsargus.com, 24 June 2006.

Immunization schedule for colored.

Wilson Daily Times, 7 July 1948.

——

  • Jack Vale’s store, Elba Street — in the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 316 Elba, Jack Vail, 50, retail grocery store manager; wife Addie, 45; and son J.C., 22.
  • Best Stewart‘s store
  • Calvary Baptist church
  • Lodge Street store

The Fourth.

My conventional, performative patriotism probably hit peak when I was 12. I spent the Bicentennial summer in western Massachusetts, and who celebrated 1976 more fervently than small-town New England? Consensus builder Gerald Ford was president, the Reflecting Pool sparkled, and the U.S. was not (anymore) bombing anybody. Though I was called “ni**er” for the first time in my life that summer, the world — my world — seemed simpler, and I could uncritically, unselfconsciously, wave a tiny stars-and-stripes.

These days, I’m more likely to observe Independence Day with a rereading of Frederick Douglass’ astonishing, searing, stirring “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” and a reflection on all that my people have done, in spite of, to make this country worth shooting fireworks over. Black Americans have believed in America, in American ideas and ideals, with an incandescent intensity. And yet here we are at the Semiquincentennial, ‘buked and scorned high and low.

I’ll take some time today to remember the ancestors, to vibe to our world-spanning culture, to acknowledge this country’s jaw-dropping natural beauty, and to demand better.

“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Marchers in Alabama cross the horizon on the march from Selma to Montgomery on 21 March 1965. Matt Herron, photographer.

Happy birthday, America. Happy birthday.

Lane Street Project: the monuments.

When I come home, my first stop is always my father’s grave and then around the corner to Odd Fellows and Vick Cemeteries. 

Today, there was something I had to see for myself.

This really is a handsome marker. Deeply incised. Solid. Substantial. 

One of the corner markers. Its careful placement, guided by archaeologists, starkly contrasts to the violence that attended the installation of the wooden power pole and the five guy wires that tether it and the adjacent steel pole. I recognize and appreciate the shifts in perspective and commitment among city leadership that brought us to this place. 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2026.