
Many thanks to Democratic Women of Wilson County for the invitation to talk last night about the history and mission of Lane Street Project.

Many thanks to Democratic Women of Wilson County for the invitation to talk last night about the history and mission of Lane Street Project.
Wilson Daily Times, 19 May 1936.
By early 1936, J.D. Reid had been out of prison a little over four years for his part in the Commercial Bank scandal, which may have fueled this hasty correction. Also, he had moved to Washington, D.C., where he found federal work as a messenger for the office of the U.S. Speaker of the House.
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Wilson Daily Times, 17 January 1941.
In an era in which few African-Americans could qualify to vote in North Carolina, the Democratic Club of Wilson made a bold statement of its principles, “knowing full well the equality of all votes.” The club’s members were young men who worked in the service industry.



Wilson Daily Times, 23 October 1920.
Harrisburg Daily Patriot, 22 November 1878.
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I have not identified John Simms or his unnamed wife. Note that she was charged with beating her husband and violating his constitutional rights, but the “couple of white men” who waylaid Simms on the way to the poll, plied him with liquor (apple jack was an apple brandy), and coerced him to vote Democrat went unscathed.
Daily National Intelligencer, 21 September 1868.
Neither Joseph F. Johnson nor Buck Powell — who eschewed the counsel of carpetbagging “creatures” to “take their stand along with their white neighbors and friends” — are found in Wilson County records. Presumably, the Colored Democratic Club failed to gain traction among their black neighbors and friends, and the two took their talents elsewhere.
Powell may have been the Buck Powell, 23, barber, listed in the 1870 census of Wilmington, New Hanover County, North Carolina. I have no hints for Johnson.
The appointment of three populists, including Samuel H. Vick, to the Wilson County Board of Education in June 1897 created a firestorm and was condemned in the Times as a result of lawlessness and chicanery.
Notwithstanding, the new Board members were qualified at the beginning of July, and got on with their business. On July 23, C.H. Mebane issued an interim ruling recognizing Vick, George W. Connor, and Nathan Bass as Board members, as they had received a majority of votes from a majority of county commissioners during a meeting marked by confusion (and, likely, rancor.) Democrats Boykin, Moore, and Aycock were the choices of the county commissioners’ minority Democrat members.

Wilson Daily Times, 23 July 1897.

Wilson Daily Times, 18 April 1935.
Arthur W. Mitchell was the first African-American elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat,