Lane Street Project

Lane Street Project: paying respects.

I’m back in Wilson. My first stop is always Rest Haven to pay respects to my father. From there, Vick Cemetery is literally just around the corner.

I placed flowers on the grave of the Unknown Ancestor and made a prayer of thanks.

I turned to get back in my car and nearly stepped on this bit of marble.

It appeared to be a piece of the marble “box” that was once surrounded the Unknown Ancestor’s grave. I placed it inside the orange cones guarding the site.

There was also this a few feet away. It’s hard to see in this low-contrast image, but it’s comprised of shards of granite imbedded in concrete and is a little over a foot long. It appears to be a section of grave border, or maybe even a headstone base. I’ll alert the City in the morning.

Whew. This GPR survey can’t happen soon enough.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2026.

Lane Street Project: all those in favor?

I watched tonight’s city council meeting live on Vimeo and cheered all the way through.

First, let me give a deep bow and thunderous hand-clap to all — brown, black, white — who spoke in defense of Councilmember Eduardo Herrera-Picasso and the city’s immigrant community. I applaud your brave insistence that the City respectfully address the concerns of all its residents and that your neighbors understand that Wilson belongs to all of us.

And — Council unanimously passed the Vick Cemetery proposal. The resulting first order of business is the ground-penetrating radar of the right-of-way we have been demanding for years. Results of that survey will shape our next steps.

I could not get to Wilson this week, so I asked Castonoble Hooks to read brief remarks on my behalf during the public comment period. He followed with his own trenchant remarks (that I accidentally interrupted.) Thank you, Cass.

 

Lane Street Project: the 19 March 2026 council meeting agenda; or, at last, a recommendation.

Finally, item 13 on the 19 March 2026 Wilson City Council Agenda:

These supporting materials have been presented to council members for review and are available online.

The Agenda Item Cover Sheet, subject line “Vick Cemetery Plan,” summarizes Item 13 and sets forth City Manager Rodger Lentz’s recommendation.

This document sets forth the Vick Cemetery Plan in detail. The plan is proposed in three phases by order of urgency, with some additional future actions, and includes a summary of archaeological firm New South Associates’ recommendations.

Council previously approved placement of boundary markers, paid for with state grant money. The next documents suggest placement and appearance.

(Nobody asked me, but as between these three, I’d go with the simplest  — C. I might also pick a different font, maybe Gill Sans or Optima, though the Roman matches the existing pillars at the entrance to the parking lot.)


(There’s something a little off about the larger scale for “Vick” below. A, with same size lettering?)

New South Associates’ proposal and budget for additional ground-penetrating radar at Vick, which include confirmation that the pieces of stone dislodged in December were marble vault fragments associated with a grave in the right-of-way.

I am confident that City Manager Lentz’s recommendations will be adopted, and the City will move forward with alacrity to begin implementation. The results of this round of GPR will dictate the manner in which many of the proposals can be carried out and whether even more action is warranted. Vick Cemetery has suffered more than a century of indifference, neglect, and active harm, and its issues won’t be remediated overnight. However, this recommendation goes a long way toward addressing our oft-repeated demands, and for the first time I am sanguine about the cemetery’s future.

Thanks again to Mayor Carlton Stevens, City Manager Rodger Lentz, Assistant City Managers Bill Bass and Albert Alston, and Councilmember Susan Kellum for righting the City’s ship on this issue. Thank you to Castonoble Hooks, Briggs Sherwood, Dr. Judy Rashid, Lisa Benoy Gamble, Jen Kehrer, Tiyatti Speight, Chris Facey, and all who kept a close eye on Vick over the last few months, documented its condition, or spoke truth to power on its behalf. Thanks also to the Wilson Times for its close and ongoing coverage of Vick Cemetery issues. A robust local press matters!

Lane Street Project: thank you, Greenfield School!

Greenfield School returned to Odd Fellows Cemetery in force this morning, clearing weeds, underbrush, and dead limbs from the cemetery’s center. Our relationship with the school’s students goes back three years, and the Knights have become one of our most reliable partners in the reclamation of this sacred space. They bring energy and enthusiasm to the task, and we thank them, their parents, and administrators (especially Assistant School Head Steve Manna, who coordinates and leads the student-volunteers) for their commitment to the cause. Who’s got next?!

Photos courtesy of Steve Manna.

 

Lane Street Project: at Odd Fellows, next steps loading.

Vicki M. Cowan shared these snapshots of her mother Monte Vick Cowan and uncle Robert E. Vick visiting Odd Fellows Cemetery on a winter afternoon, perhaps in the 1990s.

In the first image, they stand beside the marble ledger tablet that covers the grave of their mother Annie M. Washington Vick. Rountree Cemetery is behind them. 

Below, Robert E. Vick standing in Odd Fellows.

The families of the Lane Street cemeteries never forgot their dead. Never abandoned them.  Distance, or age, or responsibilities to the living may have kept them from coming to lay flowers or from fighting nature’s relentless threats, and time is the thief of memory, but never abandoned. We knew our people were here, even if we didn’t know how best to reclaim them.

Lane Street Project will soon announce new initiatives to expand our care for the dead of Odd Fellows Cemetery. We’re excited about the possibilities for improving conditions in this cemetery, and count on your continued support.

Thank you, Vicki Cowan!

Lane Street Project: the mayor presents meeting details to full council.

Please note that, while we appreciate these moves and are hopeful about Vick’s future, so much of what is now being proposed to council are requests and demands repeatedly made right here at Black Wide-Awake over the last three years. The information needed to support these proposals has been available to anyone willing to look and see.

Lane Street Project: the March cleanups.

The weather has not been kind this cleanup season, but March is here with the promise of balmy weather. Our service days this month are the 14th and 28th.

We have specific goals we need to achieve over the second half of the season, and we encourage you to come out to lend a hand. There’s work for every level of ability, and we welcome you.

In preparation for a future project, we need to clip all the weeds and vines to the ground. Ideally, they should be low enough to keep them in check with a heavy-duty lawnmower.

We want to raze this clump of weeds between the Vick and Mincey plots.

We want to clear out the privet (the green stuff) and the dry weeds here. Try to avoid trampling the daffodils though, and watch out underfoot, there’s an old brick vault in this area.

We want to scalp this back to the tree line. Please don’t lean on grave markers.

Also, don’t cut the yucca. They were planted 100+ years ago to mark graves.

Any other little vine or sapling you see is fair game though.

Do you have a heavy-duty weed whacker? Perhaps with a brush cutter attachment? We really need your help!

Remember: SAFETY FIRST. Wear long pants and heavy boots or shoes. Gloves and goggles. There are tripping hazards at ground level, so please keep an eye out. Thank you!

Lane Street Project: I didn’t think I was shockable anymore, but here we are.

Driving into Wilson with a grin on my face, and POW! — “A Wilson man has been charged after admitting to digging up a grave at Vick Cemetery….”

You can read the sorry details here.

I immediately called Castonoble Hooks and diverted to the cemetery. The alleged perpetrator unearthed a corner of a burial vault in a grave at the edge of the ditch, but it has been recovered, and the earth tamped back down. While we were there, Public Works pulled up to shovel dirt over the remnants of the marble markers dislodged back in December. I was too shaken to even question why, but will find out.

Lane Street Project: the power pole easement revisited.

Y’all remember back in August 2023 when I requested information from the City concerning the placement of power poles in Vick and Rountree Cemeteries? Via Gabriel Du Sablon, an attorney in the office of City attorney James P. Cauley III, the City responded on 22 September 2023, and I call your attention to this declaration:

Funny, because look what I just found on the Wilson County Register of Deeds website — an easement deed, dated 4 August 1997, from trustees of Rountree Missionary Baptist Church to the City of Wilson. (And prepared by James P. Cauley III.)

Via this document, Rountree Church granted the City permission to “construct, install, inspect, operate, repair and maintain one or more lines and appurtenant facilities for the transmission of electricity …” on part of its land.

Including the right to install power poles (and alter or substitute them “from time to time ….”

The power pole in Rountree Cemetery, October 2025.

The easement began on Rountree’s western property line at the property line of Odd Fellows Cemetery, on the south side of Lane Street; ran the width of the property to a canal (Sandy Creek); then back 41 feet; then back across the cemetery; then back to the beginning, containing about .25 acre.

May I remind you that the entire southern portion of Rountree Cemetery comprises only one acre. 

For reasons that I cannot imagine, Rountree Church ceded a quarter of the main part of its old cemetery to the City. Worse, the City of Wilson plotted a power line corridor that demanded it. In 1997.

Page 3 of the easement continues the rights and privileges granted to the City by the easement.

The church gained no parallel rights, but can convey the land and easement. Nowhere in the easement is there an acknowledgment that this land is a cemetery.

And then there’s this attached plat map. It’s a little hard to make out, so I’ll zoom in on the pertinent part below.

Deed Book 1636, page 377, Wilson County Register of Deeds.

So, turned sideways, with Martin Luther King Parkway offscreen to the right, what we have is Lane Street (now Bishop L.N. Forbes) in red. (Note the narrowing as it passes the cemeteries.) In blue, Sandy Creek, which was channelized late in the 19th century as best I can tell. Yellow marks the boundary between Rountree and Odd Fellows Cemeteries. (I’d always believed it to be at the ditch shown left of the boundary, but the ditch is wholly in Odd Fellows.) The two halves of Rountree Cemetery are clearly shown. The top half is where the backhoe was roving late last year. The shaded area is the City of Wilson’s utility easement.

I repeat. There’s no mention that the City was securing a utility easement in a cemetery.

But maybe the City didn’t know, right? Here’s the pole again.

In the foreground, perhaps twenty feet away, is a pile of broken headstones, mostly belonging to an Ellis family. Another ten or fifteen feet further, the double-sided headstone of Daniel and Lottie Marlow, who died in 1918 and 1916. In 1997, when this pole was installed, the area was clear of brushy undergrowth, and these markers would have been plainly visible.

There’s no parallel easement recorded for Vick Cemetery. By 1997, the City had already confessed to owning the property and had recently cleared it of overgrowth and headstones, perhaps for this very purpose. And no recorded easement for Odd Fellows, which does not have a pole, but is crossed by the same power lines. In fact, graves in Odd Fellows were damaged just a few years later by heavy machinery brought into the cemetery for a line repair.

The repair sleeve on the middle line above Odd Fellows Cemetery. 

This is nasty work, folks.