Politics

The 108th anniversary of the school boycott.

Today marks the 108th 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.

The only known photograph of the Wilson Normal Collegiate & Industrial Institute. 

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 re-read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.

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the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school

The teachers.

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what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers

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photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools

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the-program

a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city

womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school

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And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.

Lane Street Project: the 19 March 2026 council meeting agenda; or, at last, a recommendation.

Finally, item 13 on the 19 March 2026 Wilson City Council Agenda:

These supporting materials have been presented to council members for review and are available online.

The Agenda Item Cover Sheet, subject line “Vick Cemetery Plan,” summarizes Item 13 and sets forth City Manager Rodger Lentz’s recommendation.

This document sets forth the Vick Cemetery Plan in detail. The plan is proposed in three phases by order of urgency, with some additional future actions, and includes a summary of archaeological firm New South Associates’ recommendations.

Council previously approved placement of boundary markers, paid for with state grant money. The next documents suggest placement and appearance.

(Nobody asked me, but as between these three, I’d go with the simplest  — C. I might also pick a different font, maybe Gill Sans or Optima, though the Roman matches the existing pillars at the entrance to the parking lot.)


(There’s something a little off about the larger scale for “Vick” below. A, with same size lettering?)

New South Associates’ proposal and budget for additional ground-penetrating radar at Vick, which include confirmation that the pieces of stone dislodged in December were marble vault fragments associated with a grave in the right-of-way.

I am confident that City Manager Lentz’s recommendations will be adopted, and the City will move forward with alacrity to begin implementation. The results of this round of GPR will dictate the manner in which many of the proposals can be carried out and whether even more action is warranted. Vick Cemetery has suffered more than a century of indifference, neglect, and active harm, and its issues won’t be remediated overnight. However, this recommendation goes a long way toward addressing our oft-repeated demands, and for the first time I am sanguine about the cemetery’s future.

Thanks again to Mayor Carlton Stevens, City Manager Rodger Lentz, Assistant City Managers Bill Bass and Albert Alston, and Councilmember Susan Kellum for righting the City’s ship on this issue. Thank you to Castonoble Hooks, Briggs Sherwood, Dr. Judy Rashid, Lisa Benoy Gamble, Jen Kehrer, Tiyatti Speight, Chris Facey, and all who kept a close eye on Vick over the last few months, documented its condition, or spoke truth to power on its behalf. Thanks also to the Wilson Times for its close and ongoing coverage of Vick Cemetery issues. A robust local press matters!

Lane Street Project: the mayor presents meeting details to full council.

Please note that, while we appreciate these moves and are hopeful about Vick’s future, so much of what is now being proposed to council are requests and demands repeatedly made right here at Black Wide-Awake over the last three years. The information needed to support these proposals has been available to anyone willing to look and see.

Shout-out to Gary Redding for his daily Halifax County black history highlights!

You know I love a granular Black history, and Halifax County, N.C., Commissioner Gary Redding is pouring it in spades this Month. I’ve known Gary since he was five years old. He comes from a long line of social justice warriors, and I’m so proud of his work as an educator, lawyer, and community advocate in his home county. He is the embodiment of “servant-leader.”

Every day, Gary posts to Facebook a brief description of a Halifax County black history milestone with several attached photographs or newspaper clippings. I am struck by the vignettes themselves, but also by the similarities and differences between what happened in Halifax and Wilson Counties. Gary is building a vital archive for his community and for all of whose who believe in the power and importance of sharing our stories.

Thank you, Gary R. Redding!

Help for the road to the Negro cemetery.

In the aftermath of complaints by “prominent Negroes of the city” about the impassable condition of roads leading to Vick Cemetery, City Manager W.M. Wiggins appealed to the Wilson County Board of Commissioners to request the state highway commission to make “the road to the local negro cemetery” a state highway. The “town and state” had made some improvements to try to make the road passable in winter, and Wiggins believed the state would take over if asked.

…

Wilson Daily Times, 26 November 1937.

When I first posted about the complaints, I concluded that the road in question was what we now know as Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway/US Highway 264. I’m now revising my thoughts.

The eastward extension of Nash Street past town limits was already a paved state road by 1937 as shown on this 1936 Wilson County road map.

US 264 and NC Highway 58 were already 264 and 58. But there’s a tiny spur, a little dashed set of parallel lines, that represents the road that turned off 264 at Rountree Missionary Baptist Church and ran several hundred feet back to three cemeteries. This — now the eastern end of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street — was the muddy road to the Negro cemetery. It’s not clear whether City Manager Wiggins’ appeal was immediately successful, but a 1968 N.C.D.O.T. map labels this as S.R. (“state road”) 1546.

Is Bishop L.N. Forbes Street still a state road?

Celebrating Dr. and Rep. Jones!

This audacious try happened two years ago, but the clip is making the rounds again this Black History Month. Abe Jones, who represents part of Wake County in the North Carolina General Assembly, is a Harvard University and Harvard Law School graduate, and I wanted to know a little more about him. Imagine my surprise to find that Jones was born in Wilson!

A quick bit of research informed me that Jones was born to Frissell W. Jones and Pauline Gallop Jones during the brief period that Frissell Jones taught diversified occupations, math, and English at Darden High School. Jones left Wilson to teach at Saint Augustine’s College, and Abraham Penn Jones was born soon after.

Dr. Frissell W. Jones modeled excellence for his son, and we celebrate both!

Greensboro News and Record, 18 January 2006.

Samuel H. Vick overcame odds.

Wilson Daily Times, 24 February 2003.

This Black History Month piece offers a few nuggets for further research on Samuel H. Vick:

  • “His father … had three brothers, all having different last names depending on the white families to whom they belonged.” [Who were Daniel Vick’s brothers?]
  • newspaper articles reported that, on Vick’s first day as postmaster, “[g]un-toting black citizens lined the streets to serve as bodyguards because he had received so many threats” [Wowww.]
  • “The Independent School continued to operate until 1923 when the local school system opened the Wilson Colored High School ….” [Other sources estimated a ten-year run, but this makes sense.]

28 Books for 28 days.

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.

  1. Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family, Norma Jean and Carole Darden (1978)
  2. African-American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina, Beverly Patterson and Sarah Bryan (2013)
  3. Greater Freedom: the Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina, Charles W. McKinney Jr. (2010)
  4. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval, Saidiya Hartman (2019)
  5. The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Hits Home, Melissa Holbrook Pierson (2006)
  6. Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia, Lynn Rainville (2014)
  7. Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina, Linda Flowers (1990)
  8. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist (2014)
  9. Sherrod Village: A Memoir, Barbara Williams Lewis (2014)
  10. Elm City: A Negro Community in Action, C.L. Spellman (1942)
  11. Race and Politics in North Carolina 1872-1901: The Black Second, Eric Anderson (1980)
  12. No Justice No Peace, Algernon McNeil (2015)
  13. The Rise of a Southern Town, Wilson, North Carolina 1849-1920, Patrick M. Valentine (2002)
  14. Jim Crow in North Carolina: The Legislative Program from 1865 to 1920, Richard A. Paschal (2020)
  15. To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner, Carole Emberton (2022)
  16. Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, Ed and Ryan Mitchell (2023)
  17. Cemetery Citizens: Reclaiming the Past and Working for Justice in American Burial Grounds, Adam Rosenblatt (2024)
  18. ‘Make the Gig’: The History of the Monitors, John Harris (2024)
  19. In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning, Grace Elizabeth Hale (2023)
  20. Black Folks: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Blair LM Kelley (2023)
  21. Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, A National Movement, Emilye Crosby, ed. (2011)
  22. Historic Wilson in Vintage Postcards, J. Robert Boykin III (2003)
  23. Slavery in North Carolina 1748-1775, Marvin L. Michael Kay and Lorin Lee Cary (2000)
  24. From a Cat House to the White House: The Story of an African-American Chef, Jesse Pender (2007)
  25. Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, David Zucchino (2020)
  26. North Carolina’s Free People of Color 1715-1885, Warren E. Milteer Jr. (2020)
  27. George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Game of Life, Benjamin Justesen (2001)
  28. History of African Americans in North Carolina, Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hadley Watelington (2002)

Lane Street Project: the problem with “next steps.”

Let’s circle back for a moment to Wilson Communications and Marketing Director Rebecca Agner’s comment about the status of the cemetery ditch incident:

Let me tell you the problem with this.

Pro-blems.

First, “the marker near the ditch” is at least two Vick Cemetery markers uncovered and broken when contractors scraped the ditch bank. It’s also sections of concrete kerbing damaged at the Tate family plot in Odd Fellows.

Let them dismiss that as semantics though. There is a more critical issue.

New South Associates is a highly respected cultural resource management firm. Many regard them as the Southeast’s gold standard for geophysical services like ground-penetrating radar. Kudos to the City for contracting with New South to handle this work, both at Vick Cemetery and, earlier, at the private Farmer family cemetery at the corner of Kenan and Pine Streets downtown (a project no one had to beg them to do.) 

However, for all the expertise it brings, New South is operating at a glaring deficit here: its “additional guidance” on “next steps” comes with no input from or critique by Vick’s essential stakeholders, the descendant community.

Nearly everything we know about the history of Vick Cemetery comes from the collective memories of its descendant community and the six years of my research as documented in Black Wide-Awake. It is we who have cried out for years that graves lie in the public right-of-way and must be located and protected. It is we who have pulled back the curtains on the repeated abuses the City has heaped upon the bones of our ancestors. Yet, even as our fearful prophecies have manifested, we remain shut out of discussion and decision-making about our own dead. The City stands mute, ignoring our pleas for information and demands for inclusion. And New South, under contract to the City, cannot talk out of school.

Whose graves are these? How many others lie next to the road? Who authorized excavation in the ditch? In Odd Fellows Cemetery?

New South and the City will decide what is best for Vick. They will cover up, or move, or whatever, the grave markers broken on December 10, and you and I will find out about it when they feel like updating their webpage to tell us. When it comes to decisions impacting our sacred spaces, Wilson moves in silence. In darkness. Undercover. Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project, however, will continue to train a sharp and steady white light on Vick Cemetery and on every person who claims a superior right to decide its future — or who hangs back and lets others exclude us.