Polaroid

The last days of Barnes Primitive Baptist Church, in color.

Last week’s highlight was the discovery of the rusted tin, charred beams, and old brick that mark the site of Barnes Primitive Baptist Church, a congregation formed by freed slaves shortly after Emancipation. Yesterday, I received digital copies of three precious Polaroid photographs of Barnes Church taken in 1977 when the church closed and moved south to Watery Branch Church Road in Wayne County.

In the first photo, Barnes Church’s long-time pastor, Elder Kemmy A. Sherrod, stands with Deacon Douglas Barnes between the church’s two entrances. Elder Sherrod, a Wayne County native, was a grandson of Jack and Cassie Exum Sherrod and also pastored Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church in Eureka, N.C., and New Center Primitive Baptist Church of Reidsville, N.C., and served as moderator of the Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Association and Durham Primitive Baptist Association.

The second photo, taken over the long hood of a car, shows the church’s southern elevation. That’s the chimney whose broken base we found standing in the woods.

The third hones in on the church’s simple, porchless, front-gable form. Fire consumed Barnes Church after it was vacated, and we found no sign of its plank siding, doors, or windows.

My unending gratitude to Leonard P. Sherrod Jr. for sharing these priceless photographs with me and to his cousin Cheryl Sherrod Pope for granting me permission to post them here!

Black History Month 2024.

That’s me. On Carolina Street circa 1973, holding my red-black-and-green basketball. It surely comes as no surprise that I got this honest. That I was brewed and steeped from my earliest days. That Beverly and Rederick Henderson left nothing to chance or the Wilson City School System when it came to understanding and celebrating Black history and culture. Every day. Happy Black History Month tho.

Happy birthday to a daughter of East Wilson!

My uncles moved North; my father and his sister cast their lots in Wilson. Both had two daughters, born in age-matched pairs. Monica Ellis Barnes was born exactly nine months before I was and was my very first bestie. Here we are, with her little sister, in front of their house on Faison Street. Happy milestone birthday, cousin! May it be filled with laughter and all the love your heart can hold!

1324 Carolina Street.

The one hundred thirty-first in a series of posts highlighting buildings in East Wilson Historic District, a national historic district located in Wilson, North Carolina. As originally approved, the district encompasses 858 contributing buildings and two contributing structures in a historically African-American section of Wilson. (A significant number have since been lost.) The district was developed between about 1890 to 1940 and includes notable examples of Queen Anne, Bungalow/American Craftsman, and Shotgun-style architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

In this grainy Polaroid, me in front of my friends’ house at 1324 Carolina, circa 1973.

As described in the nomination form for the East Wilson Historic District: “ca. 1917; 1 story; shotgun with shed-roofed porch and gable returns; Masonite veneer.” 1324 is one of a row of endway houses on the south side of Carolina between Wainwright and Powell Streets. Shifts in the numbering of houses in this block make it difficult to trace its first few decades of inhabitants.

Per the 15 October 1971 Wilson Daily Times, Wilson’s city council ordered the demolition of 1324 as “unsafe and dangerous to life and property.” Its owner, Luther Jones, agreed to repair the house, and city council revoked the order in 1974. The house still stands.