Economics

Where we worked: Sam Vick’s employees.

A running tally of the men who worked in Samuel H. Vick‘s multiple enterprises, their job title, and the year for which I have found evidence of their employment:

  • Robert Hill Sheridan, farm laborer, 1918

  • William Wells, laborer, 1917; auto mechanic, Vick’s Garage, 1920, 1922
  • Jacob Bowen, farmer, 1918
  • Johnie Best, laborer, 1917
  • George Brown, auto garage employee, 1917
  • Leon Bryant, carpenter, 1917
  • Stacy Edwards, carpenter, 1917
  • Buck Claude Reid, carpenter, 1917
  • Dave McPhail, auto driver, 1917
  • Louis Thomas, carpenter, 1917
  • Daniel L. Vick, wage employee, 1917
  • Lawyer Whitley, transfer driver, 1917

Rocky Branch home demonstration club has monthly meeting.

In the lead-up to my February 8 talk at Wilson County Public Library, every day I’ll feature a post related to Wilson County’s Rosenwald schools. Rocky Branch home demonstration club’s members lived in Rocky Branch school district.

 

Wilson Daily Times, 9 April 1943.

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  • Della O’Neal — in the 1950 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer James O’Neal, 46; wife Della, 46, farm helper; son Rubin, 23, farm helper; daughter Ruby Barnes, 23; and grandsons Tyren W., 2, and Joe Ann Barnes, born in February.
  • Lossie Shaw — in the 1940 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer James R. Shaw, 51; wife Lossie, 44; and James Ray, 12, and Arlene Dixon, 11.
  • Esther Barnes

Notes on Booker T. Washington’s visit.

As we’ve discussed here and here, Booker T. Washington visited Wilson in October 1910 with a who’s who of educators, businessmen and A.M.E. Zion clergymen.

Certain documents from Greensboro History Museum’s A.H. Peeler Collection have been digitized by Gateway, a collaborative community history portal hosted by the University Libraries of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Peeler was a long-time principal and community leader whose personal archive is rich with resources related to African-American education in early 20th-century North Carolina, especially in Greensboro. Somewhere along the way, Peeler obtained a sheaf of lined note paper on which someone — perhaps Washington’s secretary Emmett J. Scott? — jotted brief notes about their stops.

Wilson was the ninth stop on the tour, and the local delegation received high marks for content and presentation. The city’s mayor, W.W. Briggs, met with Washington’s retinue, as did Charles L. Coon, who was basking in the heat of his controversial 1909 address, “Public Taxation in Negro Schools,” which argued that funding the education of Black children did not create a drain on white taxpayers.

The Colored Graded School was lauded as the “best public school facilities seen[,] suppose best in state[, with a] chapel for exercises.” [This is the first I’ve heard of the Graded School having a chapel. It’s too bad no architectural drawings of the building exist.] “Washington’s happy here,” the amanuensis continued, presumably because of quality of agricultural products grown by African-American farmers in the area, including “pumpkins, cotton, corn.” “Swellest banquet” speaks for itself. “One man rule — Vick: 400 houses” speaks to a recognition of the immense wealth and political influence Samuel H. Vick wielded in the city.

Wilson photographer O.V. Foust captured this grouping of Booker T. Washington, seated at center, his Tuskegee party, and leading North Carolina educators seated on Sam Vick’s front lawn. An unknown man in a slouch-brimmed hat photobombed them at far left. The photograph is part of the Peeler Collection.

Hat tip to former Congressman G.K. Butterfield Jr. for alerting me to this find!

Wilson’s 2043 comprehensive plan.

The homepage of the website for Wilson’s 2043 Comprehensive Plan declares: “The City of Wilson is a place for innovation, ideas, and creativity. Wilson’s strengths lie in its welcoming community, arts and culture, and nationally recognized programs and infrastructure. In the coming decades, Wilson will be poised to harness growth from the Triangle and take advantage of its place in the region to continue to build a welcoming place for all.”

More: “The Comprehensive Plan is a roadmap that provides guidance on where and how a community will grow and change over a period of time. The City of Wilson uses this as a policy document to set priorities and make important land use and investment decisions. The 2043 Update will revise sections of the Wilson Growing Together: The 2030 Comprehensive Plan to reflect the changes that have occurred in the community in the past decade and to support a renewed vision for the future of the community. In some cases, issue areas will be added that are not part of the original 2030 Plan. …

“The updated Comprehensive Plan will address land use, development, transportation, public investment, and identify other community priorities. The Project Team, led by City of Wilson staff, was supported by local consultants at Clarion Associates and VHB. As part of this process, the City of Wilson gathered input from the community to guide the development of a renewed vision for Wilson.”

The image below is a detail from the Comprehensive Plan’s Future Land Use Map. The parcels shaded blue have been designated “institutional” for future land use zoning. “Institutional” land has “uses related to community services, such as fire stations, libraries, schools, civic buildings, water treatment plants, and the like.”

I placed the upper circle over Maplewood Cemetery, which is appropriately shaded blue. What is going on in the oval though?

Here’s a close-up of Bishop LN. Forbes Street. The blue blocks on the left represent various churches colored “institutional.” The blue block at the top is B.O. Barnes Elementary School. The smaller blue blocks below it are Rountree Missionary Baptist Church and the two halves of its cemetery on B.L.N.F. Street. Strangely, though, the other five cemeteries on the street are shaded maize, “2-4 units/acre (med-density residential),” and part of Odd Fellows is green, “agricultural residential (rural residential).” Huh?

Why would these cemeteries be marked for the same future use as the neighborhoods around them? An oversight? Nefarious design?

The City is holding two more Open Houses for the public to review and provide feedback on the draft Comprehensive Plan. Ask why Vick Cemetery and Odd Fellows Cemeteries and the other L.B.N.F. cemeteries are not “institutional.”

Thanks to Jon Wesley Mullins for bringing this to my attention!

[Update: 9/18/2023 — the map has been updated, and the Masonic, Hamilton, and Rest Haven Cemeteries are now blue! Vick remains in limbo, but we appreciate this start.]

Wills and estates.

Even when they owned property, most African-Americans in Wilson County in the 19th and early 20th centuries, even the wealthiest and most prominent,  did not execute wills, and their estates passed informally to their descendants as “heir property.” (A major contributor to loss of land and wealth among African-American families.) Some bucked the trend, however, and this post comprises a running list of such wills and estates featured in Black Wide-Awake.

Men and women born enslaved are marked with an asterisk. Free people of color are indicated with a circumflex (^).

Last will and testament of Ella Clark Gaston Hinton, executed 15 August 1946.

Wills

Estates

Food demonstrations across the community.

Wilson Daily Times, 4 June 1943.

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Recommended reading, no. 15: Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque.

On a quick escape to New Orleans during that first pandemic summer, I dropped by my cousin Zella Palmer’s for a little socially distanced catching up. Sitting on her front porch, she told me that she’d been contacted about writing a cookbook/memoir with Wilson barbecue pitmaster Ed Mitchell and his son Ryan. In a time of scarce good news, the alignment of family, friends, food, and folkways in this project felt especially serendipitous, and I urged her to do it. 

My copy of their collaboration, its recipes interwoven with piquant stories and lush photographs of the Mitchell family and East Wilson, arrived yesterday. Surely you’ve got yours, too.