NAACP

N.A.A.C.P. honors …

I have lived a lot of places, but Wilson is home, and there is nothing quite like being recognized and honored by your home folk.

Tonight, I received a Community Service Award from the Wilson Branch of the N.A.A.C.P. at the organization’s annual Freedom Fund Banquet.

The evening included a special tribute to the late Frank D. and Bobbie D. Jones.

The magnificent Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II delivered personal anecdotes about the Joneses’ lives and work and a homily for the perilous times we live in. We face dangers seen and unseen, so what will you do with the time you have — whether six minutes or six hours or six days or six months or ….?

It was great to see two of the Joneses’ children, Bobbie and Freddie. We both lost fathers in 2022 and at the time reached out to remind each other of the blessing of being raised by such incredible men. (By the way, that’s Dante Pittman sitting at our table. I spotted him looking around and invited him to join us. If you live in Wilson, take some time to get to know this man.)

Thank the Lord I said my little bit before 95 year-old Samuel Caswell Lathan, legendary musician and my friend, was recognized. He brought the house down with a rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” followed by remarks that began “I was born in 1929 — and you don’t have to tell me nothing” about perils and rose to “I’m gon tell you some things — and I don’t care if you carry it back.” In other words, he delivered a word, too.

Harry B. Harris readies the Jones family for reflections on the night’s events.

The indefatigable William E. Myers. (He is 91, y’all. NINETY-ONE.) For the last 60+ years, a banquet in Wilson ain’t a banquet, a wedding ain’t a wedding, a funeral ain’t a funeral without this treasured musician live on sax or keyboards.)

Me and my lovely sister, Karla Henderson-Jackson.

Thank you.

There has been an astonishing occurrence in Wilson.

We continue our celebration of Mary C. Euell! Her letter to W.E.B. DuBois about the attack on her by Wilson school officials resulted in an article two months later in the N.A.A.C.P.’s The Crisis magazine.

The Crisis, volume 16, number 2 (June 1918).

 

N.A.A.C.P.’s Walter White speaks in Wilson.

Wilson Daily Times, 19 May 1933.

Two years into his long stint as Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Walter F. White delivered a lecture at Wilson’s Calvary Presbyterian Church.

For more about White’s extraordinary life as a civil rights activist, see here and A.J. Baime’s White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret (2022).

Walter F. White (1893-1955).

Hat tip to G.K. Butterfield Jr. for the article on White’s visit — he learned of the event from his father, G.K. Butterfield Sr. 

Photograph of Walter Francis White, between 1920 and 1940. NAACP Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (051.00.00) Courtesy of the NAACP [Digital ID # cph.3c07019].

NAACP meets at Piney Grove.

Wilson Daily Times, 6 August 1948.

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In 1918, Isaac Butler registered for the World War I draft in Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia. Per his registration card, he was born 7 September 1899; lived at 1723 Lee Street, Brunswick; his nearest relative was George Butler, Owens Ferry, Camden, Georgia; and he worked as a laborer for “Targan Rosin & T. Co.,” Brunswick.

In the 1920 census of Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia: longshoreman Isaac Butler, 24, was a lodger in the household of Will Mitchell, 1417 Albany Street.

On 13 January 1923, Isaac Butler, 24, of Wilson, son of George and Patsy Butler, married Estelle Joyner, 25, of Wilson, daughter of Kinchen and Jane Joyner, at E.S. Hargrave‘s in Wilson. Free Will Baptist minister Hargrave performed the ceremony in the presence of John Boykin, Annie Hargrave, and Jane Taylor.

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Butler Isaac (c; Estelle) hlpr h 317 Hackney

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 413 East Green, rented at $15/month, Georgia-born household servant Isaac Butler, 44; wife Estelle, a household servant; and lodger Eleanor Deans, 38, also a household servant.

In 1942, Isaac Brandon Butler registered for the World War II draft in Newport News, Virginia. Per his registration card, he was born 7 September 1894 in Camden County, Georgia; lived at 629 – 26th Street, Newport News; his contact was Estelle Butler, 704 East Green Street, Wilson; and he worked for Newport News Shipping & Dry Dock Company. He signed his card “Rev. Isaac Brandon Butler.”

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 506 East Vance, Isaac Butler, 55, and wife Estelle, 50, servant.

Isaac Branton Butler died 25 February 1966 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 7 September 1899 in Georgia to George and Pattie Butler; lived at 708 Edwards Street, Wilson; was married to Estelle Butler; and worked as a minister.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

Sankofa: remembering Marie Everett.

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For hundreds of years, the Akan of Ghana and Ivory Coast have used symbols, called adinkra, as visual representations of concepts and aphorisms. Sankofa is often illustrated as a bird looking over its back. Sankofa means, literally, “go back and get it.” Black Wide Awake exists to do just that.

I had never heard of Marie Everett until I read Charles W. McKinney’s excellent Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina. I’m not sure how it is possible that her struggle was so quickly forgotten in Wilson. However, it is never too late to reclaim one’s history. To go back and get it.  So, here is the story of the fight for justice for Everett — a small victory that sent a big message to Wilson’s black community and likely a shudder of premonition through its white one:

On 6 October 1945, 15 year-old Marie Everett took in a movie at the Carolina Theatre in downtown Wilson. (The Carolina admitted black patrons to its balcony.) As Everett stood with friend Julia Armstrong at the concession stand, a cashier yelled at her to get in line. Everett responded that she was not in line and, on the way back to her seat, stuck out her tongue. According to a witness, the cashier grabbed Everett, slapped her, and began to choke her. Everett fought back. Somebody called the police, and Everett was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The next day in court, Everett’s charge was upgraded to simple assault. Though this misdemeanor carried a maximum thirty-day sentence and fifty-dollar fine, finding her guilty, the judge upped Everett’s time to three months in county jail. As Wilson’s black elite fretted and dragged their feet, the town’s tiny NAACP chapter swung into action, securing a white lawyer from nearby Tarboro and notifying the national office. In the meantime, Everett was remanded to jail to await a hearing on her appeal. There she sat for four months (though her original sentence had expired) until a court date. Wilson County appointed two attorneys to the prosecution, and one opened with a statement to the jury that the case would “show the n*ggers that the war is over.” Everett was convicted anew, and Judge C.W. Harris, astonishingly, increased her sentence from three to six months, to be served — even more astonishingly — at the women’s prison in Raleigh. (In other words, hard time.) Everett was a minor, though, and the prison refused to admit her. Branch secretary Argie Evans Allen of the Wilson NAACP jumped in again to send word to Thurgood Marshall, head of the organization’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall engaged M. Hugh Thompson, a black lawyer in Durham, who alerted state officials to the shenanigans playing out in Wilson. After intervention by the State Commissioner of Paroles and Governor R. Gregg Cherry, Everett walked out of jail on March 18. She had missed nearly five months of her freshman year of high school.

The Wilson Daily Times, as was its wont, gave Everett’s story short-shrift. However, the Norfolk Journal & Guide, an African-American newspaper serving Tidewater Virginia, stood in the gap. (Contrary to the article’s speculation, there was already a NAACP branch on the ground in Wilson, and it should have been credited with taking bold action to free Everett.)

Norfolk Journal & Guide, 23 March 1946.

Sankofa bird, brass goldweight, 19th century, British Museum.org. For more about the Carolina Theatre, including blueprints showing its separate entrance and ticket booth for African-Americans, see here.

Christopher L. Taylor, California dentist and civil rights leader.

Dentist and civil rights leader Christopher L. Taylor was born in Wilson, North Carolina, to Russell Buxton Taylor and Viola Gaither on December 21, 1923. Taylor served in the United States Army in World War II. In 1945, he received a bachelor of arts degree from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Five years later, he earned a D.D.S. degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Taylor opened his dental practice in the then-predominately African American Watts district of Los Angeles, California, in 1951. During the 1950s and 1960s, he provided bus service to his clinic and sponsored the annual Children’s Christmas Parade and Party. He also gave baskets of food to needy families at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Christopher Taylor played a major role in the then-evolving civil rights movement in the largest city in the West and the third largest city in the nation. In the early 1960s, he headed the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In May of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a civil rights rally of thirty-five thousand people at Wrigley Field Baseball Stadium in Los Angeles.

Shortly after King’s visit, Taylor established the United Civil Rights Committee (UCRC) and directed it as the committee became the most vocal organization for black equality in the history of the city. UCRC included members of the NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, and the Congress of Racial Equality. Several individual black leaders also belonged to UCRC. Among them were Los Angeles councilman Tom Bradley, leading civil rights attorney Loren Miller, and Marnesba Tackett, head of the NAACP’s education committee.

On June 24, 1963, Taylor and Tackett organized a mass protest against school segregation. Led by UCRC, over a thousand citizens marched from the First African Episcopal Church through the downtown business district to the offices of the Los Angeles Board of Education. It was, to that time, the largest demonstration for African American civil rights in the city’s history. Taylor led nine other marches for school integration. He also marched throughout Los Angeles County in 1963 and 1964 for housing integration and employment opportunities for African American residents.

Taylor also engaged in important political work which he saw as parallel to and supportive of his civil rights efforts. He served as eastside Los Angeles chairman for the successful re-election of California Governor Edmund G. ”Pat” Brown in 1962 and the election of Tom Bradley to the Los Angeles mayoralty in 1973. Bradley’s election marked the first time since the Spanish-Mexican era that someone of African ancestry had served as mayor of the city, and Taylor was publicly proud of the role he had played in the campaign.

During the 1960s, Taylor received numerous awards for his civil rights leadership. Among them were the NAACP Life Membership Award, Los Angeles City Council Award for Civil Rights, and the Presidential Commendation for Human Rights.

Christopher L. Taylor died in Wilson, North Carolina, on August 16, 1995, at the age of seventy-one. He was survived by two sons.

Sources:
“Dr. Christopher L. Taylor, Noted Civil Rights Leader,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 8, 1995; N.C. Department of Health, North Carolina Deaths, 1993-1996; Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

— “Christopher L. Taylor (1923-1995),” African-American History in the West, blackpast.org