Wilson’s Art Deco bus station stood from 1938 to the mid-1990s.
In 1943, a dozen years before Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks’ celebrated acts of resistance, at least four young African-American men and women refused to move to the back of Wilson buses. Read again of their direct challenges to Jim Crow and discrimination and lift up their memory.
According to the 1880 census of Bull Doze township, Greene County, Dennis Swift was born in Maryland. He did not remain in Wilson County long, as he appears in no other county records. Swift married in Greene County in 1877 and gave his age as 24, which would have made him about 14 when he entered into this labor agreement with John H. Winstead of Joyners township, Wilson County.
Twenty-eight books I recommend to contextualize the history and culture of Wilson County, North Carolina,’s African-American people, in no particular order. Search for a review of one book every day this Black History Month. You’ve got the rest of the year to read them.
February is generally business as usual for Black Wide-Awake, but this year is the 100th anniversary of Dr. Carter G. Woodson‘s Negro History Week, and folks are ripping down exhibits, so I’m going to go a little harder on the promotion, research, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of Black history, culture, and genealogy of Wilson County, North Carolina. I encourage you to do the same for a place you love. I wish there were a B.W.A. equivalent for every county in these United States. Starting one may not be your path, but you can search out your local history organizations, your cemetery preservation groups, your musicians and poets and playwrights, and show them and their work some tangible love this month. Discover your community’s historic heroes and shout their names!
Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) in 1865 to assist millions of formerly enslaved black people (and impoverished whites) in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Bureau provided immediate relief in the form of food, clothing, and fuel; managed confiscated or abandoned land; established schools for African Americans; legalized marriages; negotiated labor contracts; and investigated and adjudicated disputes involving freed people.
Millions of Bureau records, including invaluable correspondence by and about freed men, women and children; labor arrangements; marriage records; and various reports are available for genealogical research via Familysearch.org, Ancestry.com, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. Many records have been digitized and indexed; many have not.
Researching Wilson County residents in Freedmen’s Bureau is complicated by geography. There was no Bureau office in Wilson, so those who sought the Bureau’s services had to apply to offices nearby. Wilson was officially under the jurisdiction of the Goldsboro Bureau office, and most relevant documents are found there. However, people who lived north of the town of Wilson, especially in the area of what is now Elm City, often looked to the Rocky Mount office.
The map above shows the locations of the five offices closest to Wilson County. A thorough search for documents of genealogical interest should touch Goldsboro, Rocky Mount, Kinston, Smithfield, and Raleigh.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 15 January 1927.
Among the early January social happenings reported to the Journal and Guide in 1927, we learn that attorney Glenn S. McBrayer was the keynote speaker at Wilson’s January 1 Emancipation Celebration, held in the Wilson Colored High School auditorium. We also learn that Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church had wrapped up a series of Good Will services at their new chapel, i.e. the building Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church now occupies.
I learned just today of Wilson Arts’ Juneteenth activity this year, but it’s never too late to shine spotlights. I reached out to Executive Directive Cathy Brown Hardison to find out more.
“Quilt-making and basket-weaving are traditional cultural practices among American Descendants of Slaves, especially within the Gullah-Geechee communities that span from the Carolinas to northern Florida,” she said. “Ribbon-weaving serves as a nice callback to those traditions—it requires less dexterity and can involve participants of all ages and abilities. We also had a ton of fabric and ribbon on hand, and our set designer built the stand for us—so it really came together as a meaningful community project.”
The weaving wasn’t quite finished at Wilson’s Juneteenth Festival, so visitors to the Farmers & Artisans Market a few days later were given the opportunity to contribute. Since then, the weaving has been installed in the Wilson Arts gallery as a drop-in activity alongside information about Juneteenth. (Given the recent viral video showing workers at a Wilson business making snarky comments about the holiday, this educational outreach is welcome … and sorely needed!)
Kudos to Wilson Arts for offering a Juneteenth activity that wasn’t just a personal takeaway, but a collaborative piece that the whole community could contribute to.
Thank you to Wilson Arts for the images and video!
Yesterday, late afternoon, in a north Mississippi local government office.
Me: Are y’all open tomorrow?
Black woman behind counter: [Quizzical pause.] … Yes.
Me: Juneteenth?
Her: What?
Me: Juneteenth.
Her: [Another pause. Locks eyes with me, suppresses rueful laugh.] Aw, naw. Yeah, we’re open. They don’t celebrate that here.
Though I have no roots here, Mississippi always moves me, maybe shakes me, deeply. Last evening, I stood on the banks of the Tombigbee River and nearly dropped to my knees as the sun set on its swirling chocolate-brown waters. I don’t have roots here, but I probably have people here. Unknown and unknowable descendants of men, women, and children sold out of North Carolina and Virginia to the cotton plantations of the Deep South.
I’m in Mississippi on the trail of slave traders — men esteemed in the annals of Wilson County history. By chance, today is Juneteenth. The courthouse is open, and I am here to find us.
“Through powerful objects and first-person accounts, this exhibition explores the lives of free Black Virginians from the arrival of the first captive Africans in 1619 to the abolition of slavery in 1865. Learn about how Virginia’s people of color achieved their freedom, established communities, and persevered within a legal system that recognized them as free but not equal.”
For more information, see here.