“We now employ white people only, which we feel is just what the home people of Wilson want. Our motto stands for itself, …” Wilson Daily Times, 22 February 1928.
Mollie E. Farrell and Allie C. Lamm operated B&G Cafe at 112 East Nash Street, across the street from the Wilson County Courthouse. John D. Marsh was their cook. Their collective idea about what the home people wanted seems to have been off the mark. B&G was gone before 1930.
Wilson Daily Times, 16 October 1948.
Daniel Hill parents formed Daniel Hill Educational Club in September 1948 and by December 1949 were able to buy a school bus for the community’s children.
——
Wilson’s Christmas light decorations did not cross the tracks until 1 December 1949.
Wilson Daily Times, 30 November 1949.
Wilson Daily Times, 6 April 1943.
Meet James Parker, American hero.
In April 1943, Parker boarded a Wilson city bus on Saturday evening. He sat down in the white section and remained firmly ensconced when the driver asked him to move. The driver, James Batchelor, abandoned his route to drive the bus to the police station, where Parker was arrested and charged with violating North Carolina’s “passenger law,” which allowed for the designation of colored and white sections in commercial transport vehicles. Parker was adjudged guilty and given a thirty-day suspended sentence provided he remain “in good behavior.” Per the Daily Times, Parker was the first person to challenge Jim Crow laws in Wilson County in 25 years.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 13 March 1924.
In early 1924, Wilson native Dr. Joseph H. Ward, a major in the Army Medical Corps and a pioneering physician in Indianapolis, was appointed first African-American chief surgeon and medical director of a Veterans Administration hospital. The appointment was poorly received by many in Tuskegee, Alabama, and the displacement of former personnel by a nearly all-Black staff was initially stiffly resisted.
Wilson Daily Times, 10 November 1932.
This ad for musical comedy The Big Broadcast focused on Cab Calloway and his Orchestra (who performed the opening of their big new hit “Minnie the Moocher), rather than stars like Bing Crosby. Wilson’s African-American moviegoers would have had to enter through a side door and watch from Carolina Theatre’s balcony.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 August 1935.
This theatre for colored patrons presumably was the Ritz Theatre at 523 East Nash Street.
A few comments:
As discussed here, the Atlantic Coast Line’s handsome passenger rail station was the point of departure for many African-Americans leaving Wilson during the Great Migration. Now an Amtrak stop, the station was restored and renovated in the late 1990s.
Here’s the station’s main waiting room today. Through a doorway, a sign marks a second room for baggage.
Into the 1960s, though, the baggage area was the train station’s “colored” waiting room.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, June and September 2021.
This short bit appears in a Cleveland Gazette column reporting Cincinnati, Ohio, happenings:
Cleveland Gazette, 4 August 1894.
What happened here?
Joe Ward of Indianapolis is Dr. Joseph H. Ward, though he was not yet a doctor in 1894. In fact, he was newly graduated from high school and just about to commence his medical studies. This passage from an 1899 Indianapolis Freeman feature mentions Ward’s return to North Carolina after graduation.
I am surprised that Mittie Ward Vaughn was in Wilson as late as 1894 — I’d assumed she was in Washington, D.C., with her daughter Sarah Ward Moody‘s family. I’m more intrigued, not to say perplexed, by the reference to an incident involving his wife.
First, Joseph Ward had a wife in 1894? His first marriage of which I am aware was to Mamie Brown in Indianapolis in 1897. It ended in divorce. Then, in 1904, he married Zella Locklear.
Let’s assume there was an earlier wife, though, and the incident happened to her. (In other words, the encounter was personal, not a third-party incident to which Ward was reacting.) Mrs. Ward sassed a white woman for whom she was working (in Wilson?), the white woman’s husband “smacked down” Mrs. Ward, and Mrs. Ward was arrested and fined $12.50 for her impertinence???
I have not found any references to Ward’s visit in Wilson newspapers, but will continue to search for further details.
The barber trade was nearly all black until the late 1920s, when white barbers began to appeal to racial solidarity to gain market share.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 May 1930.
Wilson Daily Times, 16 December 1930.
Clippings courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.