Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 26 December 1936.
A much-better version of Elizabeth Scott Hines‘ engagement photograph.
migration to California
DesVigne-Taylor wedding held at Saint Alphonsus.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 3 August 1946.
Edna Gray Taylor married New Orleans native Sidney L. DesVigne Jr. on 12 June 1946 in Wilson. The venue, Saint Alphonsus Catholic Church, apparently was an accommodation for the groom’s faith, as the Taylors were members of Saint John A.M.E. Zion. Hattie Pearce Tate, widow of barber Noah J. Tate, hosted a reception at her home at 307 North Pender Street.
Wilson natives in the bridal party were the bride’s brother Roderick Taylor Jr.; siblings Rosemary Fitts and Howard Fitts Jr.; the bride’s sister Mary Joyce Taylor; and standing at rear, the bride’s father Roderick Taylor Sr.
Rats? No rent.
Los Angeles Evening Herald, 19 January 1928.
In January 1928, attorney Charles S. Darden went into court to defend himself against a suit filed by his landlord for non-payment of rent. Darden asserted that the Central Avenue office space was uninhabitable because it was overrun by rats. His attempts to combat them with a cat called Jack Dempsey had failed, and Darden and his stenographer Viola Lambert had abandoned the premises. The judge was not swayed and entered judgment for the plaintiff landlord.
C.S. Darden writes the Secretary of War.
Four months after the United States entered World War I, Wilson-born attorney Charles S. Darden (then living in Los Angeles, California) wrote Secretary of War Lindley Garrison on behalf of African-American men who had tried to enlist in the military’s “Aviation Department.” “I was informed, some time ago,” he wrote, “through the News Papers, that applications from young colored men would be acceptable to the government …, and I am now unable to understand where the local Recruiting Officers of of [sic] that Department get their instructions to the contrary.”
Signal Corps Captain Thomas H. McConnell responded quickly and succinctly: “At the present time no colored aero squadrons are being formed and applications from colored men for this branch of the service cannot be considered for that reason.”
United States War Department. Letter from Secretary of War to Charles S. Darden, August 11, 1917. W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
Thanks to Patricia Freeman to bringing this letter to my attention!
Charles S. Darden announces Los Angeles office move.
The Liberator: A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Cause of Good Government and the Advancement of the American Negro, Los Angeles, California, 29 November 1912, page 5.
The obituary of Harper Best.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 June 1930.
After decades in southern California, Harper Best returned to Wilson a decade before his death in 1930.
Wilson Daily Times, 11 June 1930.
M.H. Wilson defaults on five lots.
In February and March 1938, trustee D.M. Hill ran a notice of sale of real estate for five large parcels of land that carpenter-contractor Mansfield H. Wilson owned on Pender, Church, and Smith Streets. Wilson had defaulted on loans taken out in 1926.
The first lot was 116 North Pender Street, which Wilson had purchased from E.F. Nadal and wife in 1906.
The second lot bordered O.L.W. Smith; Wilson had bought it from D.C. Suggs and wife in 1906. The one-third acre lot contained houses numbered 521, 523, and 525 Church Street.
The third lot had been cobbled together from several purchases made between 1907 and 1924 and included 121 and 123 North Pender and 529, 531, 533, and 535 Smith Street.
Wilson had bought the fourth lot, bordering Charles Knight, from William and Ethel Hines in 1920.
O.L.W. Smith and wife sold Wilson the fifth lot, 201 North Pender, in 1920.
Wilson Daily Times, 14 March 1938.
Virginia-born Mansfield Wilson arrived in Wilson before 1908, but was far away before the trustee called in his debt. By 1934, he was well enough established in California to register to vote in Los Angeles.
California Voter Registrations, 1900-1968, http://www.ancestry.com
In April 1935, however, Mansfield H. Wilson died at the Richmond, Virginia, home of his son Samuel H. Wilson. Three years later, during the depths of the Great Depression, Wilson’s creditors called in their loans and forced the sales of his properties.
In this detail from the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, asterisks mark nine of Mansfield H. Wilson’s properties.
——
In the 1880 census of Powellton township, Brunswick County, Virginia: farmer Henry Lewis, 33; wife Matilda, 38; and children Edward, 10, Catharine, 6, Louisa, 4, and John H., 6 months; plus step-children Mansfield, 21, and Mary Wilson, 17.
On 10 September 1890, Mansfield H. Wilson, 30, born in Brunswick County, Virginia, to William and Matilda Wilson, married Maggie J. Richards, 24, born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in Richmond, Virginia.
In the 1900 census of Tarboro township, Edgecombe County, North Carolina: carpenter Mansfield Wilson, 39; wife Maggie, 32; children Gertrude, 6, Samuel, 3, and Mansfield, 1; and sister-in-law Lucy Richards, 30, dressmaker.
In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C, city directory: Wilson Mansfield H (c) carp h 126 Pender
In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: farmer Mansfield H. Wilson, 49; wife Maggie, 43; son Samuel, 15; sister-in-law Lucy Richard, 45; and servants John M. Madderson, 14, and William Dew, 21.
In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C, city directory: Wilson Mansfield H (c) carp h 126 Pender
Maggie J. Wilson died 30 June 1914 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 29 February 1865 in Virginia to Henry Richards and Annie R. Crozier; and was buried in Tarboro, N.C. M.H. Wilson was informant.
In the 1916 Hill’s Wilson, N.C, city directory: Wilson Mansfield H (c) carp contr h 126 Pender
In 1918, Samuel H. Wilson registered for the World War I draft in Wilson. Per his registration card, he was born 5 September 1897 in Edgecombe County, N.C.; his father was born in Brunswick County, Virginia; he lived at 126 Pender Street; and worked for Mansfield Wilson, who was his nearest relative.
In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 126 Pender Street, Virginia-born house contractor Mansfield H. Wilson, 60; son Samuel H., 20; and sister-in-law Lucy Richards, 40.
In the 1920 Hill’s Wilson, N.C, city directory: Wilson Mansfield H (c) carp contr h 126 Pender
In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C, city directory: Wilson Mansfield H (c) carp h 123 Pender
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 123 Pender Street, owned and valued at $2000, Virginia-born carpenter Mansfield Wilson, 50, widower; son Samual, 30, insurance company agent; daughter-in-law Sarah, 24, public school teacher; granddaughter Audrey, 3; and sister-in-law Lucey Richard, 50.
Mansfield Harrison Wilson died 25 April 1935 in Richmond, Virginia. Per his death certificate, he was about 70 years old; was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, to Henry Wilson and Harriett [maiden name unknown]; was a carpenter; lived at 1271 East 33rd Street, Los Angeles, California; and was buried in East End Cemetery, Richmond. Samuel H. Wilson was the informant.
Samuel Henry Wilson, 41, born in Wilson, son of Mansfield Wilson and Maggie Richards, married Janie Thomas Williams, 32, born in Richmond, Virginia, daughter of Roland Williams and Eliza Ricks, on 18 November 1938 in Richmond, Virginia.
Mary Matthewson Meachem died 22 February 1948 in Tarboro, Edgecombe County. Per her death certificate, she was born 12 July 1876 in Brunswick County, Virginia, to Mansfield Wilson and Mildia Dunn; was the widow of A.B. Meachem; and was buried in Community Cemetery, Princeville, North Carolina. William Matthewson, Norfolk, Virginia, was informant.
Snaps, no. 91: At home with friends, Los Angeles, 1950s.
Two of Walter S. and Sarah Dortch Hines‘ children migrated to Los Angeles, California, where they joined the city’s emerging mid-century Black high society. Elizabeth “Scottie” Hines Eason and her Texas-born husband Newell Eason were educators. Eason grew up in Los Angeles and attended UCLA and, after several years teaching at Shaw University in Raleigh, took his family back to California just after World War II. Scottie Eason’s brother Walter D. Hines and his wife Cadence Baker Hines, who met in Michigan, arrived in the late 1940s. Their friend, lawyer Walter Gordon, left a trove of photographs that captured the era, including this one:
On couch, left to right: Kenneth Levy, Honore Levy, Newell Eason, Scottie Hines Eason, Dr. Arthur Mitchell, Gloria Mitchell. Seated: Clara Gordon, unidentified girl, Cadence Hines, and Dr. Walter D. Hines.
The Shaw University Bulletin, July-August Edition, 1937.
“At home with friends, Los Angeles, 1950s,” Walter L. Gordon Jr./William C. Beverly Jr. Collection, UCLA Special Library Collections.
Charles S. Darden’s groundbreaking legal work against segregation.
In 2018, the City of Los Angeles nominated the Cordary Family Residence and Pacific Ready-Cut Cottage at 1828 South Gramercy Place, Los Angeles, California, for historic-cultural monument designation.
Page 13 of the nomination form contains this arresting statement: “Until recently the case of Benjamin Jones and Fanny Guatier, Plaintiffs v. Berlin Realty Company, a corporation, Defendant, has been an obscure footnote to history. But observers are now not just rediscovering the case itself, but also reminding us that the legal arguments against racial covenants used by Plaintiffs’ attorney Charles S. Darden in this case — and adopted by the Los Angeles Superior Court judge in ruling favorably for the Plaintiffs — preceded and foresaw what became the notable winning argument of later precedent-setting “Sugar Hill” case that took place in Los Angeles in 1945.” That case, involving actors Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers‘ fight against racially restrictive covenants, is credited with being the first to cite the 14th Amendment as justification for overturning such covenants. That recognition, however, more properly belongs to Jones and Gautier — and the arguing attorney, Wilson’s own Charles S. Darden — which has been overlooked because it did not rise to California’s Court of Appeals. Read more about Darden’s innovative arguments below.
Other suns: California.
Though the Great Migration to California most often drew seekers from states like Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, Wilson County natives also joined the tide that increased the African-American population of that state exponentially.
- Best, Harper, and Rosa England Best, San Jose, 1880s
- Darden, Charles S., Los Angeles, ca. 1905
- Freeman, Joseph T., Los Angeles, bef. 1920
- Morgan, Lee, Oakland, betw. 1935-1940 (in Seattle, Washington, prior)
- Eason, Elizabeth Hines, Los Angeles, ca. 1936
- Williams, Oscar, Los Angeles, bef. 1940
- Haskins, Robert, Los Angeles, bef. 1940
- Dupree, Samuel C., Oakland, bef. 1940
- DeBell, Oscar, Los Angeles, bef. 1940 (in New York, N.Y., prior)
- Desvigne, Edna Taylor, Los Angeles, late 1940s
- Hines, Walter D., Los Angeles, ca. 1948 (in Detroit, Michigan, prior)
Perhaps the first nationally known Wilson native to take up residence in California arrived not in the Great Migration, but as a result of the National Football League draft. The Los Angeles Rams drafted Saint Augustine’s College defensive end Isaac T. Lassiter in 1962, and he later spent five seasons with the Oakland Raiders, playing in the 1967 Super Bowl. Lassiter was born in 1940 in Wilson to Dempsey and Mary Jane Bynum Lassiter and graduated from C.H. Darden High School.
Hat tip to Bernard Patterson for the football card image.