Drs. Barnes and Yancy lead battle for equal education.

Pittsburgh Courier, 4 February 1950.

The suit Dr. Boisey O. Barnes and Dr. Darcey C. Yancey filed eventually led to the construction of a new elementary school in East Wilson. Barnes died in 1956, and the school was named in his honor.

Swift bound to a labor agreement.

According to the 1880 census of Bull Doze township, Greene County, Dennis Swift was born in Maryland. He did not remain in Wilson County long, as he appears in no other county records. Swift married in Greene County in 1877 and gave his age as 24, which would have made him about 14 when he entered into this labor agreement with John H. Winstead of Joyners township, Wilson County.

Lane Street Project: cars dash through the snow at Vick.

There was a time when spinning doughnuts over the graves in Vick Cemetery was commonplace. As the message spread that this is sacred space, and as the Cemetery Commission’s crews began to care for the grounds, this kind of desecration had become rare.

Unfortunately, someone has again disrespected our cemetery by driving vehicles wildly through the snow that fell over the weekend. I deeply grateful to Heather Goff and her crew, who discovered the tire marks. Concerned about damage, they plan to set up cones to block access to the cemetery’s surface until the snow melts.

“Dying Is But Going Home”: Wilson County’s African-American Cemeteries, February 25.

Each year, I cross my fingers that Wilson County Public Library will extend another invitation to me to speak during Black History Month. Over the past decade, I’ve talked about Dr. Joseph H. Ward, Wilson County’s enslaved people and free people of color, the Lane Street cemeteries, Rosenwald schools, African-American churches, Samuel H. Vick, Mary C. Euell and the Colored School boycott, the 500 block of East Nash Street, and researching African-American genealogy.

The call came again this year, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my research with the people for whom it most resonates. This February, I’ll be talking about historic black cemeteries throughout Wilson County. I surely hope you’ll join me.

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)

Black History Month 2026.

February is generally business as usual for Black Wide-Awake, but this year is the 100th anniversary of Dr. Carter G. Woodson‘s Negro History Week, and folks are ripping down exhibits, so I’m going to go a little harder on the promotion, research, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of Black history, culture, and genealogy of Wilson County, North Carolina. I encourage you to do the same for a place you love. I wish there were a B.W.A. equivalent for every county in these United States. Starting one may not be your path, but you can search out your local history organizations, your cemetery preservation groups, your musicians and poets and playwrights, and show them and their work some tangible love this month. Discover your community’s historic heroes and shout their names!