Yesterday, I drove up to north Edgecombe County to see the new Equal Rights League historical marker for myself. It stands on Highway 33, between Whitakers and Leggett,  adjacent to Red Hill Missionary Baptist Church, which was founded in the 1870s. The  church’s cemetery is across the road, and as I looped through it, I spotted the familiar long-tailed 9’s of Clarence B. Best‘s work. 

Oscar Lyons’ headstone is classic Clarence Best — the deeply incised font, the off-center epitaph, the recycled tablet itself, with its top surface showing a chiseled-out panel.

And nearby — not Wilson County-related, but just because I love a good local artisan — was the concrete Williams marker, which may be related to the delicately engraved headstones I’ve seen at Saint Delight in Greene County. 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023.