Today, about a dozen Barton College students (including three from abroad) demonstrated their commitment to community, spending their Day of Service at Odd Fellows with Lane Street Project’s Senior Force. This is the third year we’ve hosted Barton students, and we are grateful both for their help and for the opportunity to share some Wilson history. Thank you, Professor Lydia Walker, for making and keeping this connection!
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. Let me know what you think about them.
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Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver (1872-1938), laundress, evangelist.
Sarah Silver’s AI-generated restoration also ages her a decade or so. She was about 50 years old in the original photograph.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 1 October 1938.
Though Leroy Foster did not make his career in the pulpit, he remained a lifelong A.M.E. Zion lay leader.
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In the 1920 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County: tenant farmer Claud Foster, 37; wife Cora, 37; and children Mammie, 16, Booker T., 12, Maggie, 9, Claud Jr., 7, Carry, 6, Leroy, 5, Sammie, 1, and Estell, 1 month.
In the 1930 census of Jackson township, Nash County, N.C.: farmer Claud Foster, 48; children Claud Jr., 16, Carrie Lee, 14, Leroy, 13, Samuel, 11, Cora, 10, Douglas, 8, and Marie, 6; and grandson Jimmie, 7.
In 1940, Leroy Foster registered for the World War II draft. Per his registration card, he was born 10 January 1917 in Wilson; lived at 303 North Vick Street; his contact was sister Carrie Highsmith, 1910 North 21st Street, Philadelphia; and he was a student at Livingstone College, Salisbury, N.C.
On 4 October 1944, Leroy Foster, 27, of Wilson, son of Claude and Cora Foster, married Lula Margaret Moore, 26, of Wilson, daughter of Louis Arrington and Lula Moore, in Wilson. A.M.E. Zion minister W.A. Hilliard performed the ceremony in the presence of Arthur Lee Battle, Viola McPhail, and Mary Elizabeth Thomas.
Leroy Foster interrupted his college education to serve in the United States Army from 1942 to 1946.
The Livingstonian yearbook (1947), Livingstone College.
In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 925 Washington Street, science teacher Leroy Foster, 33; wife Lula M., 32; and aunt Delphia V. Battle, 57, presser.
Leroy Darden died 10 March 1978 in Greenville, North Carolina.
Wilson Daily Times, 12 March 1978.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 1 October 1938.
Rev. Richard A.G. Foster made the most of his few years in Wilson. Among other things, he led the fight for improved school facilities for Black students in town and in the county. With Camillus L. Darden, he successfully mobilized African-American voters to put unresponsive county commissioners out of office. The two new schools they eventually secured were Frederick Douglass High School in Elm City and Samuel H. Vick Elementary School in Wilson.
We read here of North Carolina’s Good Roads Policy, which authorized counties to use mobile convict labor camps, manned overwhelmingly by African-American convicts, to build roads. Above, minutes from the 8 September 1903 Wilson County Commission meeting reflect the assignment of “the convict force” to Toisnot township to work on a road project for up to a month. George D. Green, chairman of the Commission, was ordered to “take such steps as necessary to supply the food and have same cooked by the convicts of this County for the road hands.” Also, W.H. Pridgen was ordered to “have 3 sections of 16 feet each of Portable convict quarters built.”
This 1996 article about a prison cage found behind Angus Barn in Raleigh and donated to the State Department of Corrections includes photographs of two other portable convict cages known to exist today in North Carolina. See also this 1994 article.
In April 1896, Cherry Hinnant, Henry R. Hinnant and wife Pennie Adella Hinnant, and John T. Revell sold Dock H. Hinnant, Vandorn Hinnant, and Guilford Wilder a parcel of land adjacent to the “colored Christian church,” i.e. Rocky Branch United Church of Christ, and “colored free school” number 12, i.e. the precursor to Rocky Branch School. The Hinnants and Wilder were officers and trustees of Rocky Blue Lodge #56, Prince Hall Masons.
Deed Book 43, page 442, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
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Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 30 September 1939.
On 15 September 1915, Lucintha Miller executed a will that bequeathed ten dollars to her son Cleveland Miller of Norfolk, Virginia, and her remaining property to daughter Cora Washington of Wilson.