News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 7 April 1943.
Raleigh’s major newspaper followed up on the sentence levied on James Parker, who refused to move to the back of a Wilson bus twelve years before Rosa Parks. All things considered, Parker’s punishment was surprisingly light — perhaps, none yet perceived a real threat to the Jim Crow system.
Erudite agricultural extension agent Cecil L. Spellman‘s Journal and Guide editorial on the Scottsboro Boys caused a kerfuffle in Wilson and got him booted from his radio program on WGTM.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 14 August 1937.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 1 October 1938.
Rev. Richard A.G. Foster made the most of his few years in Wilson. Among other things, he led the fight for improved school facilities for Black students in town and in the county. With Camillus L. Darden, he successfully mobilized African-American voters to put unresponsive county commissioners out of office. The two new schools they eventually secured were Frederick Douglass High School in Elm City and Samuel H. Vick Elementary School in Wilson.
My guess is that Rev. Richard A.G. Foster knew that Wilson was a stepping-stone, that he would not be in town long, that the A.M.E. Zion itineracy system, if nothing else, would roll him out before his civil rights zealotry ignited a retaliatory spark.
Also, he was financially insulated in a way that other local ministers were not. The church paid a decent salary and provided housing, so he had no need to work a supplemental, or even primary, job that could be boycotted or threatened.
Thus, Foster jumped into Wilson in late 1936 with both feet and, over the next three-and-a-half years, engineered election strategy, nurtured youth development, raised funds for investigations of police slayings, fought for better schools, and demanded integration.
Chicago Defender, 18 June 1938.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 1 October 1938.
A few weeks after I started curating Black Wide-Awake in October 2015, I discovered the obituary of Herbert O. Reid, a native of Wilson, “a leading civil rights lawyer who participated in several landmark cases that helped dismantle racial segregation in public facilities,” long-time advisor to Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry — and graduate of Harvard Law School in the class of 1945.
And there I was thinking I was first.
It wasn’t a hubristic assumption. I had never heard of another, and surely I would have, right?
I’m in Cambridge this weekend, basking in the marvelous sunshine that is the Celebration of Black Alumni. It’s only the fifth such event; the first was in 2000, and I hadn’t been to any before now. Yesterday’s morning plenary session featured the dean of Howard University Law School, Roger Fairfax, who paid homage to the seven Harvard Law-educated deans who had preceded him. Herbert O. Reid, of course, was among them.
Twice this weekend, speakers have invoked a version of Deuteronomy 6:10-12 — “We all drink from wells we did not dig, and sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.” Somewhere in the 41 years between his departure and my arrival on Massachusetts Avenue, Herbert Reid‘s memory was lost in his own hometown. I drank from his well, sat in his shade, and did not know him.
The Celebration of Black Alumni reconnected me with friends and classmates I haven’t seen in decades. It affirmed me in ways I had not thought I needed affirming, not least in my purpose to reclaim our heroes and their stories. We remember Herbert Ordre Reid, now and always.
In 1868, Robert Hilliard Farmer and Haywood White were among 11 “d—d black Radicals” crammed into a tiny jail cell, threatened, given meagre portions of over-salted meat and deprived of water, and viciously beaten because they would not support the Democratic party. White’s cry, under torture, that he had already sworn an oath to support the Constitution and the Union hints that the men may have been members of the Union, or Loyal, League, which formed across the South during Reconstruction to mobilize freedmen to register to vote and to vote Republican. About ten days before this story broke in the Raleigh Standard, Bill Grimes, local president of the League, had been jailed in Wilson for allegedly burning down the house of a white man who had shot a black man named David Ruffin.
New-York Tribune, 19 September 1868.
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On 14 September 1869, Haywood White, son of Benj. and Selie White, married Martha Daniel, daughter of Dennis and Exie Daniel, in Wilson County.
In the 1870 census of Saratoga township, Wilson County: farm laborer Haywood White, 26; wife Martha, 17; son Robert, 11 months; and Noah Tyson, 21, farm laborer.
Perhaps, in the 1880 census of Jamesville, Martin County, N.C.: laborer Haywood White, 40; wife Martha, 30; and sons Alexandria, 15, and Elisha, 12.
On 13 April 1910, Haywood White, 60, of Black Creek township, married Luetta Oggins, 40, of Black Creek township, at White’s house.
In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: laborer Haywood White, 65, and wife Rosetta, 37. Haywood reported having been married three times; Rosetta, twice.
Haywood White died 14 March 1914 in Black Creek township, Wilson County. Per his death certificate, he was born 22 November 1840 in South Carolina; was married; and worked as a farmer. B.S. Jordan of Wilson was informant.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 22 April 1939.
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A.A. Morisey‘s column Carolina Chronicles reported the surprising news that Camillus L. Darden had been called to jury duty in Wilson County Superior Court.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 24 February 1940.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 17 July 1937.
In 1937, an African-American man selected to serve on a Superior Court jury was the stuff of newspaper articles.
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