Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 3 September 1927.
The Journal and Guide‘s 3 September 1927 column sharing news of Wilson mentioned the membership drive carried out by the Phyllis Wheatley Princess Circle of the Patriotic Order of Ethiopians of America, Inc., a fraternal order founded just four years before. Presumably, Saint Simon and John Jasper No. 9 were P.O.E.A. lodges.
Calling all pastors, elders, deacons, trustees, members, and community preservationists:
“The National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is now accepting applications for grant funding for historically Black Churches in your community through the Preserving Black Churches grant program.
“As the oldest institutions created and controlled by African Americans, these spaces are a living testament to the achievements and resiliency of generations of American families and communities. To preserve and uplift these historic places and the neighborhoods they serve, the Preserving Black Churches grant program provides funding ranging from $50,000 to $500,000.
“In 2025, 30 historically Black Churches across the United States received a collective $8.5 million in funding to support critical preservation work, from structural restoration work to enhancing stewardship planning.
“No church is too small. No town is too remote. If you or someone you know cares for a historically Black church, it may be eligible!
Grant applications are due September 12.”
Learn more: https://ow.ly/8Anz50WznNj
[Note: the announcement sets a September 12 due date. So does the website. The flyer says September 16. Don’t slip — assume the earlier date!]
Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.
I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The third in a series — Cobb-Bethel A.M.E. Church Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.
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Located up a short slope behind Cobb-Bethel A.M.E. Church on County Line Road, this cemetery shows signs of a recent major clean-up. The older section, up front, is clear, and small red flags indicate a survey. As you push deeper, the ground is stubbled with the stumps of saplings, and even further back, some headstones remain in dense underbrush, but the church’s commitment to the care and reclamation of this burial ground is clear.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, May 2025.
Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.
I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The first in a series — Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.
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I’ve lived in Atlanta more than half my life, but only recently ventured into the city’s storied Oakland Cemetery. The cemetery’s “Black Section,” founded in 1866, covers 3.5 acres and more than 12,000 known burials. (That’s less than half the size of Vick Cemetery, but three times the graves.) The grounds are now the focus of extensive restoration efforts by Historic Oakland Foundation.
In 2021 or ’22, Wilson city council voted to fund interpretive signage at Vick Cemetery, but never moved forward. Signboards like this one would help the community connect history and family to the present seemingly empty field that is Vick.
This audio cell phone tour is fantastic and is on my wildest dream list for Lane Street Project.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2025.
A new boutique hotel has opened on Tarboro Street in downtown Wilson — the Harriss.
Its guest suites include The Coleman, named in homage to Mattie B. Coleman, long-time proprietor of East Wilson’s Orange Hotel. Samuel H. Vick built the hotel in 1906 in the 500 block of East Nash Street.
The Orange’s stories have gone quiet; the building awaits investment and renovation. In the meantime, Carrie and Holton Wilkerson are honoring part of its legacy of “resilience, progress, and inclusivity.”
Cheers to the Wilkersons — and if you want to book The Coleman, go to http://www.theharriss.com.
This rare postcard is the only known full image of the Commercial Bank of Wilson, founded by Samuel H. Vick and others in April 1921.
Detail from the 1922 Sanborn insurance maps of Wilson, N.C., showing Commercial Bank at the corner of South Pettigrew and East Nash Streets.
Hat tip to Keith Boykin.
Today marks the 107th anniversary of the resignation of 11 African-American teachers in Wilson, North Carolina, in rebuke of their “high-handed” black principal and the white school superintendent who slapped one of them. In their wake, black parents pulled their children out of the public school en masse and established a private alternative in a building owned by a prominent black businessman. Financed with 25¢-a-week tuition payments and elaborate student musical performances, the Independent School operated for nearly ten years. The school boycott, sparked by African-American women standing at the very intersection of perceived powerless in the Jim Crow South, was an astonishing act of prolonged resistance that unified Wilson’s black toilers and strivers.
Sallie Roberta Battle Johnson, one of the Graded School teachers.
The school boycott is largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes go unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9 henceforth, I publish links to Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.
we-tender-our-resignation-and-east-wilson-followed
the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school
a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings
what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers
lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks
photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools
a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city
womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school
respectful-petition-seeks-reids-removal
lucas-testifies-that-he-accomplished-his-purpose
there-has-been-an-astonishing-occurrence-in-wilson
And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.
Wilson Times, 4 March 2025.
This amazing document is the program for the sixth commencement exercises of the Wilson Colored Graded School, which took place May 21-23, 1889. The ceremonies took place in Odd Fellows Hall — the apparent predecessor to the three-story brick Odd Fellows Building Samuel H. Vick built in 1894. (Was it on East Nash Street, too?)
Teachers Susie Harrison and Lucy Robinson led exercises for the first, second, and third grade students; Braswell R. Winstead for the fourth and fifth graders; and Principal S.H. Vick, the sixth and seventh graders. J.P. Murphey, W.H. Vick, J.E. Hocutt, R.D. Dew, and J.H. Edwards served as ushers.
The main feature was the sixth and grade exercises. On May 23, Presbyterian minister H.H. Boone of Tarboro delivered the Annual Oration between performances of “Come Again With Singing” and “Soldier’s Chorus.” Sixth grade students Ella Johnson, J.E. Hocutt, Sarah Barnes, Turner Williamson, Howard Edwards, Sarah L. Rountree, Amanda Battle, Ida Rountree, and Augustus S. Clark declaimed, sang, or orated, as did seventh graders J.P. Murphrey, Celia Hill, Adelia Battle, Sarah T. Rountree, Charlotte Jordan, W.H. Vick, Annie M. Washington, and W.H. Clark.
