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.
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.)
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.
When Lily-White Republican Senator Jeter C. Pritchard set out to oust postmaster Samuel H. Vick, who represented “the last vestige of negro office holders in the state,” a slew of prominent Wilson Democrats bucked convention to rally in Vick’s favor. Among the politicians, lawyers and businessmen supporting Vick was John H. Blount, whose letter of recommendation noted that Vick’s “mother and grandmother belonged to [his] father.”
The writer of this opinion piece mocks the Democrats who had once lamented Vick’s sinecure, “pictur[ing] how their dear wives and daughters were humiliated by having to transact all their postal business at Wilson with a negro postmaster and negro postal clerks.”
The People’s Paper (Charlotte, N.C.), 10 December 1902.
President William H. Harrison appointed Samuel H. Vick postmaster of Wilson in 1889. President William McKinley selected Vick again for the position in 1898. Despite the setback described above, the Lily Whites ultimately were successful in thwarting Vick’s reappointment in 1903.
Wilson Mirror, 26 February 1890.
Wilson Mirror, 1 April 1891.
Wilson Mirror, 11 August 1891.
Raleigh Morning Post, 14 July 1898.
Raleigh Morning Post, 4 January 1902.
Raleigh Morning Post, 8 April 1903.
An excerpt from a ledger recording appointments of Wilson County postmasters, including Samuel H. Vick:
Vick’s appointment dates were 28 September 1889, 27 January 1890, and 24 May 1898.
(Click to enlarge.)
Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971, records of the Post Office Department, Record Group Number 28, National Archives [database on-line], http://www.Ancestry.com.