Lily-White Republican

Ex-Senator Person speaks out for Samuel H. Vick.

The Washington Bee, 14 March 1903.

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As Samuel H. Vick faced ouster from his postmaster position, William Lee Person wrote a scathing letter to the Washington Bee defending Vick’s honor, chastising United States Congressman Henry P. Cheatham, and excoriating Lily White Jeter C. Pritchard.

Lee Person’s career had multiple parallels to Vick’s, having incorporated several fraternal lodges and founded a bank and a tuberculosis sanatorium. Person also served as Rocky Mount’s postmaster for several years before being elected to represent his district in the North Carolina state senate. There, he fought unsuccessfully to enact laws against lynching and to prevent discrimination in passenger accommodations.

I certify to his high character.

When Lily-White Republican Senator Jeter C. Pritchard set out to oust postmaster Samuel H. Vick, who represented “the last vestige of negro office holders in the state,” a slew of prominent Wilson Democrats bucked convention to rally in Vick’s favor. Among the politicians, lawyers and businessmen supporting Vick was John H. Blount, whose letter of recommendation noted that Vick’s “mother and grandmother belonged to [his] father.”

The writer of this opinion piece mocks the Democrats who had once lamented Vick’s sinecure, “pictur[ing] how their dear wives and daughters were humiliated by having to transact all their postal business at Wilson with a negro postmaster and negro postal clerks.”

peoples paper 12 10 1902

The People’s Paper (Charlotte, N.C.), 10 December 1902.