Wilson Advance, 14 May 1891.
postmaster
Which is it, Wilson citizens?
Statesville Landmark, 9 December 1902.
North Carolina Problem at the White House.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 December 1902.
This cartoon, originally run in the Washington Post, depicts Samuel H. Vick standing in President Theodore Roosevelt’s doorway as the controversy over Vick’s postmaster appointment drew national attention.
Smoking the Pipe of Peace Under Dangerous Circumstances.
News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 2 December 1902.
The furor around Lily-White Republican Senator Jeter C. Pritchard‘s attempt oust postmaster Samuel H. Vick, who represented “the last vestige of negro office holders in the state,” was covered avidly in state and national press. This cartoon in the News and Observer depicted the issue as literal powder keg.
Hat tip to V. Cowan for alerting me to this graphic, a photocopy of which was passed down in Vick’s family.
They object to his color.
The Appeal (Saint Paul, Minnesota), 20 December 1902.
The Appeal was an African-American newspaper in, of all places, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Here, unvarnished truth.
He must turn over the business of the office to Professor Vick.
Wilson Advance, 14 July 1898.
In 1898, the Wilson Advance reprinted this brief editorial about Samuel H. Vick that first appeared in Wilson’s short-lived Black newspaper, the Wilson Blade.
Ex-Senator Person speaks out for Samuel H. Vick.
The Washington Bee, 14 March 1903.
——
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.
Vick is a worthy appointment.
The Star of Zion (Charlotte, N.C.), 3 October 1889.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church began publishing The Star of Zion in 1876 and continues today as the longest continuously published African-American newspaper in North Carolina. In October 1889, it ran a small piece recognizing 25 year-old Samuel H. Vick‘s historic appointment as postmaster of Wilson, North Carolina.
Recommended reading, no. 16: “Black Tip, White Iceberg.”
For an in-depth understanding of the context and significance of Samuel H. Vick‘s service as Wilson postmaster, please read Benjamin R. Justesen’s “Black Tip, White Iceberg: Black Postmasters and the Rise of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1897-1901,” published in The North Carolina Historical Review, Volume 82, Number 2 (April 2005), pp. 193-227. (If you don’t have a JSTOR subscription, you can sign up for 100 free article views.)
Civil servants.
This massive volume, dense with charts and tables and lists, illuminates the fierce struggle over political appointment/patronage jobs in the late 19th century and the intense sense of envy and entitlement that shaped attitudes toward award of such jobs to African-Americans. Essentially, this book lists all military officers and federal government employees on the payroll in 1891.
Here is Alfred Robinson, railway postal clerk on the Rocky Mount, N.C., to Norfolk, Virginia, line, earning $1000 per year.
And here is Samuel H.Vick, postmaster of Wilson, pulling down a $1500 annual salary.
Measured in 2016 dollars, the relative economic status value of a $1000/year salary is $239,000. A $1500/year salary is valued at $358,000. (Economic status value measures the relative “prestige value” of an amount of income or wealth measured between two periods using the income index of the per capita gross domestic product.) This kind of wealth awarded to African-Americans set blood boiling.
“Official Register of the United States, Containing a List of the Officers and Employees in the Civil, Military, and Naval Service,” Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, digitized by Oregon State Library, Salem, Oregon; available online at http://www.ancestry.com.