This 1926 scene, shot in an unnamed Wilson warehouse in 1926, depicts dozens of men, several African-American, on a tobacco warehouse floor.
“Tobacco for sale in auction warehouse, Wilson, N.C.,” Scan 6, Series 1, Wilson County Tobacco Production, ca. 1926; Commercial Museum (Philadelphia, Pa.) Collection of North Carolina Photos, ca. 1923-1939; Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A rare image capturing workers on a Wilson County tobacco farm preparing to “barn” or “put in” green tobacco to begin the curing process. There is no information identifying the eighteen or so people, including five young children, depicted. Two — at far left, just visible behind the boy, and at far right, leaning against a fence — were African-American.
This photograph is part of the Commercial Museum Collection at U.N.C.’s Southern Historical Collection. Per the collection’s description, “the Commercial Museum, located in Philadelphia, Pa., was in operation from 1897 to 2010. Modeled after the great exhibition halls of the World’s Fairs (World Fair, Universal Exposition) of the late nineteenth century, the Museum offered a vast selection of displays and information related to commerce and trade in Pennsylvania, across the United Sates, and the international marketplace. The Museum maintained a large collection of photographs documenting a variety of industries, agriculture, and trade in many areas of the United States. These images were marketed for use in publications around the United States and the world. The images, circa 1923-1939, document agriculture and industry in Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Halifax, Moore, Sampson, Wayne, and Wilson counties in North Carolina. A few towns are also identified. Subjects include cotton, farming, lumber, pottery, and tobacco. …”
Scan 4, Series 1, Wilson County Tobacco Production, ca. 1926; Commercial Museum (Philadelphia, Pa.) Collection of North Carolina Photos, ca. 1923-1939; Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Globe Theatre
A nice and cozy place to rest and enjoy the pictures the night before or after selling your tobacco. The seating capacity is quite large enough to accommodate all our friends.
If you want to laugh and grow fat come see Fatty Arbuckle and Mack Sennett in their funny comedies. If you want excitement that will almost make your hair stand on your head, come and see Ruth Roland in Tigers Trail on Monday, Wm. Duncan in “Man of Might” on Tuesdays, Tom Mix’s Westeners and “Silent Mystery” on Wednesdays, Eddie Polo in “Lure of the Circus” and “Masked Raider” on Thursdays, and the great Wm. S. Hart features on Fridays and Fox Features on Saturday. Dispersed among these nights will be Pathe News, Pictorial Life, and regular and colored comedies. The program condensed is as follows:
MONDAYS: Fox Features, Pathe-News and Comedy.
TUESDAYS: “Man of Might”, Pictorial Life and Colored Comedy.
WEDNESDAYS: “Silent Mystery”, Pathe News, Tom Mix‘s Westener
THURSDAYS: Eddie Polo in “Lure of the Circus” begins September 25th and “Masked Raider” begins October 23rd.
FRIDAYS: Wm. S. Hart pictures every Friday and good comedies.
SATURDAYS: A five reel features and good comedies.
The great advance in Pictures forces the General Admission to 25cts.
The show begins each evenings at 7:00 o’clock. Come early and see the first show.
The Williams Jubilee Singers, the Greatest Aggregation of Negro Singers in this Country will start at the Globe Wednesday, Oct. the 8th. Regular admission 50c. Reserve seats 75c.
TAKE NOTICE: Boys who are Boisterous and noisy are not wanted and we reserve the right to eject all such.
My thanks to a reader who shared this handbill for Samuel H. Vick‘s Globe Theatre, which likely dates to about 1920.
Wilson Daily Times, 25 July 1934.
Samuel H. Vick‘s run of bad luck with barn-burnings continued in 1934.
For much of the twentieth century, tobacco factories and stemmeries employed more African-American workers than any other industry in Wilson. The work was low-paid, mostly seasonal, and often performed by women.
In September 1939, shortly after the season began, Imperial Tobacco abruptly released hundreds of newly hired workers, sparking mass layoffs by other factories. The state employment office opened a temporary processing location at Reid Street Community Center, but officials warned that most workers had already maxed out their yearly unemployment eligibility.
Wilson Daily Times, 13 September 1939.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 17 August 1948.
Wilson Daily Times, 26 June 1942.
The end of the Depression did not curtail the power of employment offices over the bodies of African-American laborers. We saw protests in the late 1930s against workers being sent to toil in deplorable conditions in Duplin County strawberry fields. In 1942, even tobacco barons were crying foul as the employment office shipped nearly 200 men, women, and children to Delaware to work in fields, despite a severe farmworker labor shortage in Wilson County. “Suggestions pointing to the ‘drafting’ of farm and tobacco labor if the work could not be done on a voluntary basis were made at the meeting.”
Wilson Daily Times, 12 June 1896.
The welcome mat laid out for Little Richmond was quickly rolled up. Within months, the neighborhood developed a reputation for violent crime, and complaints replaced the cheers.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 September 1922.
Tenant farmer Roscoe Pearson raised tobacco on Green Watson’s farm between Wilson and Kenly, a town at the edge of Johnston and Wilson Counties. He stored his crop in a packhouse near the road. Three white Johnston County men were accused of stealing his tobacco and selling it at Planters Warehouse in Wilson. A white Wilson policeman testified against the trio, asserting that one of them asked if he thought the matter would be dropped if they paid Watson (not Pearson) for the tobacco.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Though they once dominated block on block of south downtown Wilson, relatively few tobacco factory and warehouse buildings remain today. The hulking old Export Leaf building, however, still stands at Mercer and Banks Streets.
The building was originally built for John E. Hughes Company, as shown on the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map.
Sanborn fire insurance map, Wilson, N.C., 1922.
The wooden buildings shown in yellow are long gone. I took the photo above standing in what would have been the space between them. Samuel H. Vick and Andrew J. Townsend owned considerable property in the area, rented to workers at Export and other nearby tobacco companies.
The 200 laborers would have been largely African-American. From “Six Firms Operate Eight Tobacco Redrying Plants in Wilson,” Wilson Daily Times, 19 August 1955.
Guy Cox or Charles Raines shot this image of Black women sorting tobacco leaves at Export about 1946.
The photo below, which accompanied the article above, dates from a time just outside that covered in Black Wide-Awake, but depicts a scene that would have been much the same ten or twenty years earlier.
Wilson Daily Times, 19 August 1955.
Export Leaf Tobacco Company, Images of Historic Wilson, N.C., Images of North Carolina, lib.digitalnc.org.