Rocky Mount (N.C.) Telegram, 8 September 1945.
There were 1696 African-American students enrolled in Wilson city schools at the start of the 1945 school year. Darden had 670 students in grades seven through twelve, and a total of 950 children attended the two intown elementary students. Sixty-six children crowded into Barnes School on Airport Road, but only ten were at one-room Lane School.
Wilson Daily Times, 5 March 1940.
Elm City’s African-American school building burned to the ground in March 1940, likely as a result of sparks igniting wooden shingles.
Wilmington Morning Star, 30 October 1886.
Wilson County’s calls for a high school for African-American children went unanswered for nearly 40 more years.
Over the weekend, I picked up from Levolyre Farmer Pitt a box of newspaper clippings that her mother Savannah Powell Farmer had saved in the 1970s and ’80s, and —
Wilson Daily Times, 23 February 1982.
Look at that young historian!
As a friend remarked, “The village love is priceless!” Much more to come from that treasure trove!
Wilson’s African-American high school was renamed for Charles H. Darden in 1938. Thirteen years later, Opelika, Alabama’s new high school for Black students was named for Darden’s first-born son, Dr. John W. Darden.
Both Darden High Schools graduated their last classes in 1970. Their buildings, however, remain in use. The newer section of Wilson’s Darden houses part of Samuel H. Vick Elementary. Opelika’s Darden is now home to Lee County Head Start Darden Center.
Architectural drawing posted at “First Black Doctor in Opelika, AL,” Valle Vision News blog, 22 February 2018.
This photograph of Wilson Colored High School, later known as Darden High, was displayed in Philadelphia’s Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition of 1926. It was one of several dozen featured in an exhibit staged by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, Division of Negro Education. The caption: Cost of Building $65,000.00 — Total Value Colored School Property $96,250.00 — Total Population of the City 14,000 — Total Colored Population of City 6,650.
From Sesquicentennial International Exposition Photographs, Division of Negro Education, Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina State Archives.
The six-room Williamson High School, the third high school for African-American children in Wilson County, opened in 1941 near Lucama in Springhill township. Long-closed, its roof and cinderblock exterior remain intact, but its interior is a moldering shambles.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, September 2017.
In 1928, Wilson Colored High School was led by principal William H.A. Howard and teachers F. Meredith (math), J.E. Amos (home economics), J.F. Anderson (science), C.F. Hunt (English), and B.M. Davis (history and French).
As was their principal, the Colored High School’s teachers seem to have been short-term Wilson residents:
Photograph courtesy of Darden Alumni Center, Wilson.
This photograph of Wilson Colored High School’s Class of 1937 also hangs in the hallway of the Darden Alumni Center.
A label listing the students’ names has been augmented where possible with birth and death dates and parents’ names, below.
Photograph courtesy of Darden Alumni Center, Wilson.
