Wilson Daily Times, 2 March 1918.

Badin Aluminum Works placed this alluring ad in the Daily Times in 1918. Though working for Alcoa seemed to offer an appealing alternative to sharecropping, life in this company town had a dark side — literally, as the families of African-American workers lived segregated in Negro Town, and figuratively, as the extent and impact of industrial pollution continues to come to light.

“Badin has become a crucible for questions about the legacy of industrialization, racial capitalism, and environmental justice in the American South, and for how choices made and prejudices fomented a century ago reverberate into the present — with the added complication that Badin was a company town.” Read Emily Cataneo’s The Complicated Lgacy of Badin, North Carolina, http://www.undark.org, for more.

[I am searching for evidence that any Black Wilson County families answered this siren call.]

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.