public service

Happy 113th anniversary to the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.!

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., was a relative latecomer to Wilson, but as a woman steeped and marinated in crimson and cream, I recognize our national Founders Day here.

www.wilsonalumnae.com

My mother Beverly A. Henderson is a Delta. My father’s sister Hattie H. Ellis is a Delta. My sister Karla M. Henderson-Jackson. My niece Sydney Jackson. Two first cousins, Monica E. Barnes and Tracey E. Leon, and innumerable, more distant relatives. Deltas crowded my childhood “village,” i.e. East Wilson, and I was nurtured by Diana D. Myers, Yvonne C. Lofton, Evelyn W. Hagans, Shirley S. Woodard, Ruth H. Harris, Mary Peppers, Minnie E. Cummings, Jessie M. Jones, Ethel A. Woodard, Marian G. Lane, and so many others.

Sisterhood, scholarship, service, and social action. We are anchored in legacy and evolving with intention. Happy 113th Founders Day, sorors!

Lane Street Project: season 5, workday 4.

I don’t often get to put in a full Lane Street Project service day, but yesterday I put in work. Castonoble Hooks and Briggs Sherwood were in the parking lot oiling tools when I pulled up, and Raymond Renfrow was headed into the trees to hack down wisteria shoots.

Our complete elimination of treetop wisteria and dead trees has exposed the ground to sunlight for the first time in decades. Enormous weeds and weedy shrubs — dog fennel, pokeweed, privet, sedge grass, and wisteria shoots — have rushed to colonize the space. With the arrival of Portia Newman and Lisa Benoy Gamble, we focused on cutting and clearing the areas between Henry Tart and Lula Dew Wooten‘s headstones. When Billy Woodard strode in John Henry-style with ax and chainsaw, we sent him deeper into the cemetery to fell small dead or dying trees and cut large vines. Chris Facey circled among us, chronicling the work through his cameras, and a large pile of cuttings waits to be hauled to the curb by the next workday’s volunteers.

B. Sherwood takes a breather after clearing around Lula Dew’s fine grave marker. You can see behind him how thickly the weed stalks have sprouted. 

Portia and I went hunting for the pile of headstones that includes my great-great-grandmother Rachel Taylor‘s and found these weird swells of dried weeds. I generally know my noisome invasive plants, but this one is throwing me. This area was cleared last season, so this growth occurred over the summer and fall.

What is this stuff?

It reshrouded the headstones and everything else at the back of the opening. I had to pull up mats of this stuff to get to Rachel Taylor’s headstone, which was once again pinned down by wisteria runners. On the plus side, it pulls free fairly easily, and the task will be even less difficult without snow weighing down and wetting the stalks.

Bessie McGowan’s headstone released from its shroud.

On the bright side, late February and early March are daffodil season at Odd Fellows and Rountree Cemeteries!

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2025.

Lane Street Project: season 4, workday 3.

The weather has not been kind early this season, but we’re getting it done. Scarborough House Resort always comes through, and both Senior and Junior Force put in work!

We have a clear path now to the pile of headstones midway back in the cemetery. This is where I found my great-grandmother Rachel Barnes Taylor‘s marker in January 2021. Every season we have to release it from the previous summer’s outlandish wisteria growth, but perhaps this will be the last time. If we can clear the ground around this pile, we can begin to probe for more markers buried under decades of leaf mulch.

The Junior Force is continuing its fence beautification project.

Odd Fellows Cemetery has not looked this good in half a century. Special thanks to the City of Wilson’s sanitation crews for removing our work day debris.

Our next work days are February 9 and 23. Celebrate Black History Month with us!

Photos and video courtesy of Jen Kehrer. Please consider Scarborough House Resort for all your event venue and bed-and-breakfast needs!

Lane Street Project: MLK Day of Service.

“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”  — Martin Luther King Jr.

Serve and build community with Lane Street Project on Saturday, 13 January 2024, as we honor the life of Dr. King with our work to reclaim and restore honor to Odd Fellows Cemetery. Bring light cutting tools, weedeaters, and mowers; hot drinks and snacks; prayers for the safety of those working and the souls of the dead. All are welcome.

Lane Street Project: help wanted!

Lane Street Project has an opportunity to set up a booth at Wilson Juneteenth Festival to raise awareness of our work and the cemeteries we serve. This is an excellent chance to connect with the community, especially families who might be descended from or related to people buried in Vick Cemetery.

We have less than three weeks to pull this together. The festival is June 17th and runs from 2:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M. We need more volunteers who will commit to manning our booth during the day. We’ll be handing out informational literature about the clean-ups at Odd Fellows and about the recent findings at Vick Cemetery. If you’ve been wanting to help Lane Street Project, but dragging vines out of the woods isn’t your thing, please consider volunteering for an hour or two.

If interested, please contact me as soon as possible at blackwideawake@gmail.com or via the Lane Street Project Facebook page. Thank you!