librarian

The early activism of Dr. Evangeline Royall Darity.

Barber-Scotia College’s Evangeline Royall was among a multiracial group of students who lived together at a Black family’s home while working to build a credit union office for African-American farmers. A mob, led by a sawmill operator (straight out of central casting), gave white students 24 hours to get out of Columbia, North Carolina, and milled around their bus as they packed up to leave.

This news report of the incident is studiously neutral in its account of events, but carefully sets out the names and school affiliation of each student, as well as the ethnicity of non-white students like Royall.

Hope Star (Hope, Ark.), 21 August 1947.

We first met Evangeline Royall as the high school student regarded as the first “librarian” of Wilson’s Negro Library.

Per http://www.prabook.com, Evangeline Royall Darity was born 16 June 1927 in Wilson, North Carolina. She received a Bachelor of Science in Religious Education, Barber-Scotia College, 1949; Master of Education, Smith College, 1969; and Doctor of Education, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1978. She held various positions with the Young Women’s Christian Association, 1949-1953, and was executive director in Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1979-1981; taught in Egypt, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, 1953-1967; and was the assistant to class deans at Smith College, 1968-1975. Dr. Darity was vice-president of Student affairs at Barber-Scotia College, 1978-1979; associate dean at Mount Holyoke College, 1981-1994; and a member of the Amherst (Mass.) Town Meeting, 1971-1980. She was a member of the American Association of University Women; the American Association of Counseling and Development; the National Association of Women Deans, Counselors and Administrators; the League of Women Voters; Phi Delta Kappa; and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

Her husband, William Alexander Darity, was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her son, William A. Darity Jr., is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. Her daughter Janki E. Darity is an attorney.

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In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 203 Pender Street, widow Ossie M. Royall, 33, an elevator girl at the courthouse; her mother Tossie Jenkins, 53, stemmer at a tobacco factory; daughters LaForest, 16, and Evauline Royall, 14; and a roomer named Ed Hart, 45, a laborer employed by the town of Wilson.

On 23 December 1950, William A. Darity, 26, of East Flat Rock, Henderson County, N.C., son of Aden Randall Darity and Elizabeth Smith Darity, married Evangeline Royall, 23, resident of “(Wilson) Charlotte, N.C.,” daughter of Dock Moses Royall and Ossie Mae Jenkins Royall, in Wilson. Presbyterian minister O.J. Hawkins performed the ceremony in the presence of Mary B. Moore, Grace L. Coley, and Solomon Revis Jr.

In the 1952 Danville, Virginia, city directory: Darity Evangeline R Mrs (c) dir Y W C A h 330 Holbrook; Darity Wm A (c; Evangeline R) insp City Dept Pub Health h 330 Holbrook

Wilson Daily Times, 20 April 1963.

Evangeline Royall Darity died 27 September 1994.

Coley receives a degree in library science.

Wilson Daily Times, 21 June 1947.

Elizabeth Pauleze Coley was almost certainly the first, and perhaps the only, African-American native of Wilson to graduate what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A 1940 graduate of Charles H. Darden High School, she received her first degree from North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in 1944.

Coley married Kelly Winslow Bryant of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and eventually migrated to suburban Washington, D.C. Though it’s not clear whether she ever worked in Wilson — the main library on West Nash Street was whites-only in 1947, and the tiny Negro branch remained a fledgling — Elizabeth Pauleze Coley Bryant did become a librarian.

Roundtable (1969), the yearbook of Frank W. Ballou High School, Washington, D.C.

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Elizabeth P. Coley was born 1 May 1923 in Wilson to David Henry Coley and Eva Jane Speight.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 930 [sic, 931] Carolina Street, barber Henry Coley, 48; wife Eva, 46, teacher; and children James, 16, Eva, 15, and Elizabeth, 13. [The ages of this entire family are off. David H. Coley was in fact about; Eva, about 30; Elizabeth, about 6; and Eva, about 4.]

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 901 East Green, rented for $15/month, barber Henry D. Coley, 44; wife Eva J., 39, teacher in public schools; and daughters Elizabeth P., 16, Grace L., 14, and Eva E., 10.

In the 1948 Rocky Mount, North Carolina, city directory: Bryant Kelly W (c; Pauleze; Wright’s Chick Shack) r 522 Raleigh rd