Photographs

To D.C. Suggs.

For $2800, you can purchase from AbeBooks this copy of Rev. E.K. Love’s History of the First African Baptist Church, From Its Organization, January 20th, 1788, to July 1st, 1888.

The description: “8¼” x 6″. Green cloth over boards, title gilt. Pp. [5], [A]-E, [6], iv-v, [blank page], 360. Good: Ex-library with remnants of call number to spine, bookplate, due cards and embossed stamp on title page; moderately shaken, boards moderately worn with losses at spine tips, ffep heavily notated. This is another copy of Love’s History with several outstanding associations. A partially obscured inscription on the front pastedown shows that this particular copy was presented by R.R. Wright to D.C. Suggs. Richard Robert Wright, Sr., who wrote part of the book’s introduction, was born into slavery in Georgia in 1855 and was valedictorian of the first graduating class of Atlanta University, now known as the HBCU Clark Atlanta. He became an educator and newspaper editor who went on to serve as the first president of the Georgia Industrial College for Colored Youths (GICCY), the first public institution of higher learning for African Americans in the state. Under Wright’s leadership, GICCY hosted renowned lecturers including Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Mary Church Terrell. Wright later founded the first Black-owned bank in Philadelphia and co-founded the first organization of Black-owned banks in the country. The recipient of the book, Dr. Daniel Cato Suggs, was born in Wilson, North Carolina in 1865. He was a wealthy Black businessman, active in real estate, and a teacher in the public school systems of North Carolina. He served as a professor at GICCY before being elected president in 1917 of Livingston College, a private, HBCU in Salisbury, North Carolina, noted for its strong affiliation with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. This volume also contains a bookplate from Bennett College in Greensboro. Founded in 1873 as a normal school to educate freedmen and train both men and women as teachers, Bennett is now a private HBCU liberal arts college for women. There is yet another interesting facet to this copy: the front free endpaper has two pages of handwritten notes regarding a speech given by David B. Hill in Savannah in 1892 as he was campaigning to be the Democratic candidate for United States President. We found the entirety of the speech’s text in a newspaper account online and note the oddity of the possibility of a Southern African American attending a Democratic candidate’ speech at that time. OCLC shows six holdings of the physical book over four entries. A unique copy, with wonderful associations, of Love’s important history of the First African Baptist Church.”

Private First Class Cornelius Braswell, stationed in England.

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In the 1930 census of Upper Town Creek township, Edgecombe County, N.C.: George Braswell, 41; wife Lizzie, 35; and children Cornelius, 15, James, 13, Eloise, 10, Arthur, 8, Rena, 5, Ollin, 3, and Walter, 1.

In 1941, Cornelius Braswell registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 26 May 1914 in Wayne County, N.C.; lived on Route 3, Wilson; his contact was mother Lizzie Braswell; and he was a “prisoner until Feb. 20, 1941” at Prison Camp 406, Wilson.

Image courtesy of Veterans of World War II Wilson County, spiral-bound volume, Wilson County Public Library.

Noah Artis, as imagined.

I am ambivalent about using artificial intelligence to restore photographs. Or, more specifically, I’m concerned about manipulated photographs supplanting original images and further blurring the line between reality and misinformation. However, the allure of AI-enhanced images is strong, as I often contend with blurry, poorly lit photographs in unnatural sepia or black-and-white tones. Photographs whose condition sometimes exacerbates the distance between us and our ancestors.

I have been experimenting with ChatGPT lately, feeding it queries and images to be restored and colorized. The results are somewhat haphazard, with many images weird and off-putting. Other times, the images are breathtakingly sharp and … alive. Black Wide-Awake exists to resurrect forgotten lives, and I believe these images are valuable to help us connect with the men and women we read about in these posts. From time to time, I’ll share the better ones here, clearly marked as AI-generated.

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Noah Artis (1856-1952), farmer.

 

1306 East Nash Street, re-visited.

I surely passed Clarence B. Best‘s house-cum-atelier thousands of times in my child- and young adulthood, but I have no memory of this display of his wares in his front yard as shown in this 1980 photograph. In this era, Nash Street cut right in front of his house. 

Houses, 700-1407 E. Nash Street, East Wilson Historic District, Wilson, Wilson County, Survey and National Register Branch, State Historic Preservation Office, Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and Records, Raleigh.

COL. WOMEN

In the early 1960s, uncomfortably aware of the optics, not to mention the illegality, of a segregated water fountain at the courthouse steps, Wilson County capped the fountain’s spigots and chiseled away the letters designating who drank where. By time I was born in 1964, local government had erased the public labels of Jim Crow. Most businesses followed suit, but some could not be bothered.

Wilson was deeply socially segregated for decades after civil rights legal rulings and legislation forbade legal enforcement. This meant, in practice, that while we could go into any public establishment and see a doctor or try on clothes or order a meal the same as any white person, the environment was not always inviting, nor the experience comfortable. This was the Wilson I grew up in. I never saw the old placards and partitions, but we bought chicken and barbecue from the back entrance of Parker’s, and I never played with, much less visited, my white friends away school. Still, we shopped freely at Belk’s and Barshay’s and Flower’s, guffawed at Disney movies in floor seats at the Colony and Wilson Theatres, and saw our white dentist and doctors at their West Nash and Tarboro Street offices.

Elsewhere, however, physical vestiges of codified segregation continued to leak radiation. I documented the ghosts of Jim Crow in a short-lived pandemic era Tumblr account. But the hand-painted White Water sign on a wall at Farmer’s Warehouse, starkly visible until the building’s demolition in 2023, confronted black workers and visitors well into the 1980s. The building’s owners never thought the sign’s poisonous message damaging enough to paint over. (Or maybe they understood precisely what it signaled.)

I have never believed that the Farmer’s Warehouse sign was the last of these signs. Downtown Wilson’s brick storefronts and former factories and warehouses are in the midst of a wave of redevelopment. Many old buildings, often long disused, have been demolished. Others have been renovated for exciting new uses. Surely, as investors and developers and contraction crews have scoured their interiors, they have encountered evidence of the rigid social structures that once locked black people  into (or out of) place.

Like this one.

That’s the door to the COLORED WOMEN TOILET. This five-panel door has been in storage since, it appears, about 1990. From about 1938 to at least the mid-1960s, it marked the restroom available for the few black female employees of the company that occupied this downtown building, all of whom likely all worked on the cleaning staff.

A different, unrelated company operated in the building in the 1970s and ’80s. I don’t know if they left the door where it originally hung or took it down and stored it, but they didn’t paint over its label or throw the door away.

This battered green door, still bearing stains from the oils of the countless hands that pushed through it, stands is an tangible, undeniable link to a past that many would now downplay. My deep thanks to those who shared this photograph with me and gave permission for me to publish it.

Lane Street Project: Barton Bulldogs do it again!

When I got the news that a landscape company had done a major cleanup at Odd Fellows Monday, I wondered if there’d be anything left for Barton’s student volunteers.

Apparently, plenty!

The Bulldogs came in two waves today to chop chest-high weeds, fell small trees, and haul debris, pushing further into Odd Fellows’ acreage than ever.

Lane Street Project relies on community, and we’re thankful that Barton is part of our village. Read their press release to learn more the College’s annual service day:

WILSON, N.C. — October 6, 2026 — Hundreds of Barton College students, faculty and staff served throughout Wilson on Tuesday, Oct. 6, as part of the College’s Day of Service and Engagement, continuing a tradition that has connected the Barton community with local schools, nonprofit organizations, churches, and community partners since 2008.

This year, Barton set aside the academic day for students, faculty, and staff to serve alongside organizations throughout the Wilson community. Students gathered through their academic schools and First-Year Seminar courses, allowing them to spend the day serving with classmates and faculty within their academic communities.

Students from the School of Business and Innovation and First-Year Seminar classes worked together to package 15,000 meals for communities facing food insecurity through Rise Against Hunger at the Kennedy Recreation and Intramural Center.

Barton’s ongoing partnership with Sleep in Heavenly Peace brought first-year students to Truist Stadium for an afternoon service project. Students assembled 30 beds to support the nonprofit organization’s mission of building and delivering beds to children in need. Sleep in Heavenly Peace works to ensure children have a safe, comfortable bed of their own, recognizing quality sleep as an important part of their health and well-being.

“It is incredibly rewarding to see Day of Service unfold across Wilson,” said Brenda Whaley, director of student activities. “From the first groups heading out in the morning through our final projects in the afternoon, students were serving in schools, parks, churches, nonprofit organizations, and community spaces across the city. They worked outdoors, supported local organizations, packaged meals, and built beds, each contributing to the needs identified by our community partners.”

Service sites included The Arc of Wilson County, Foundation YMCA of Wilson, Hope Station, Lake Wilson, United Way of Wilson County, Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, Wesley Shelter, Wilson Area Habitat for Humanity, Wilson Arts, Wilson Botanical Gardens, and Wilson Education Partnership, among numerous other community partners.

“Day of Service is about more than the work we accomplish in a single day,” said Amanda Metts, vice president for enrollment, engagement, and athletics. “It is an intentional part of how we help students develop a commitment to service and understand their responsibility to the communities they are part of. The experience gives students an opportunity to learn from others, form meaningful connections, and carry those lessons with them beyond Barton.”

Barton first held Day of Service and Engagement on Oct. 22, 2008, as an opportunity to foster civic responsibility and service learning as part of the Barton Experience. As Barton marks 125 years, Day of Service reflects a guiding principle that has shaped the College throughout its history — a commitment to service rooted in its Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) heritage and its relationship with the Wilson community.

Photo courtesy of Castonoble Hooks.

701 East Green Street, revisited.

George and Cora Miller Washington built their large house at 701 East Green around 1920. George Washington‘s sister Annie was married to Samuel H. Vick and lived catercorner from the Washingtons at 622 East Green.

Within a decade of Historic Register designation in 1988, East Green Street had lost many of its gems, including the Washingtons’ house. The house below was built on the lot.

Upper photo, N.80-11-895, N.88.2.515-517, 701 E. Green St., Cora Washington House, East Wilson Historic District, Wilson, Wilson County, Survey and National Register Branch, State Historic Preservation Office, Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and Records, Raleigh. Lower photo taken by Lisa Y. Henderson, 2025.

Pvt. I.D. Bostick, serving in France.

Wilson Daily Times, 19 May 1945.

In 1942, Ide Bostick registered for the World War II draft in Wilson. Per his registration card, he was born 2 August 1922 in Wilson; he resided at 530 Stemmery Street; his mailing address was 609 North 7th Street, Wilmington, N.C.; his contact was Isabell Bostick, 530 Stemmery; and he worked for N.C. Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington.

Image courtesy of Veterans of World War II Wilson County, spiral-bound volume, Wilson County Public Library.