Wilson Daily Times, 14 November 1942.
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In the face of stiff resistance by tobacco stemming companies against paying a minimum wage — $11/week — the ever-fiery Rev. Richard A.G. Foster made a blunt statement. As these businesses wanted to “keep Negroes poor and ignorant,” and “the white South still feels that Negro labor is slave labor,” “Negroes that live in the South must turn their attention to self help.”
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 19 November 1938.
The Wilson County Negro Library added bookmobile service for rural residents in 1950.
Wilson Daily Times, 29 November 1950.
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Wilson Daily Times, 29 July 1921.
Into the 1960s, outside the schoolhouse, nearly all public employment open to African-Americans involved low-skilled labor. However, though low-paying, the work was relatively steady.
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Wilson Times, 20 March 1896.
The Laborers’ Agency did not specify for whom they could secure positions, but laborers, cooks, nurses, and washers in Wilson in 1896 were overwhelmingly African-American.
Contentnea Guano opened about 1909 between the railroad tracks and Oakland Cemetery southeast of downtown Wilson. Over the course of more than fifty years, hundreds of African-American men labored in caustic conditions to produce the fertilizer cotton and tobacco farmers needed to replenish their worn-out soil. Among them:
Wilson Times, 24 October 1911.
Wilson Daily Times, 24 February 1994.
What a testimony!
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In the 1910 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: Henry Coleman, 38, farmer; wife Mary J., 28; and children Stella, 13, Willie, 8, Josiah, 7, William, 5, Mattie J., 4, and Sallie, 2.
In the 1920 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: on Old Wilson and Raleigh Road, farmer Henry Coleman, 50; wife Mary Jane, 40; and children Stella, 22, Willie, 19, Joesire, 17, William H., 16, Mattie J., 13, Sallie, 12, Bell, 10, Stephen, 8, Wiley, 7, and Eva, 1.
In the 1930 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: farmer Henery D. Coleman, 58; wife Mary J., 52; children Bill, 18, Stephen, 17, Willey, 15, Mattie, 22, Sallie, 20, Eva, 13, Guyes E., 9, Gurtice, 5; and grandson Ollie L., 10 months.
Sallie Coleman Bynum died 6 December 1994 in Wilson.
Lamm’s School stood on Lamm Road just north of present-day U.S. 64. The school was built in 1923 as Wilson County consolidated one- and two-room schools for white children into modern masonry buildings. The building was recently demolished to make way for a Chick Fil A.
Images of Historic Wilson County N.C., Images of North Carolina, lib.digitalnc.org.
In the fall of 1938, federal minimum-wage law and mechanization combined to erase hundreds of stemming jobs from Wilson tobacco factories.
Wilson Daily Times, 24 October 1938.
“Each year here in Wilson hundreds of negroes leave private employment in the fall to take more lucrative jobs in the factories while hundreds of other negroes who are out of work at the time get work at that time.”
[This photo says “1940s” or maybe even ’50s to me, not 1926, but 1926 is how it is labeled.]
Tobacco Production, 1926, Wilson County, Black and White Photographic Print 0019, in the Commercial Museum (Philadelphia, Pa.) Collection of North Carolina Photographs (P0072), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
