caterer

A dinner party for the Community Playmakers choristers.

Wilson Daily Times, 27 October 1945.

This brief piece reveals a number of interesting tidbits:

  • There was a Community Playmakers Club.
  • It had a choral division and pianist — Jerry L. Cooke.
  • Sam Roberson was “one of Wilson’s most able caterers.” This is the first reference to an African-American caterer that I’ve come across. He is strangely elusive in census records, but is likely the 24 year-old cook living with his mother Sue Roberson, 42, and sister Nellie B. Roberson, 17, at  506 [South] Goldsboro Street in the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County. If so, in the 1920 census of Wilson: at 510 [South] Goldsboro, widow Sue Robinson, 42; children John, 23, tobacco factory worker, Sam, 19, hotel bellboy, Sudie, 16, tobacco factory worker, and Nellie, 8; and grandson Kemmie, newborn.