Wilson Daily Times, 7 May 2024.
Reid Street Community Center opened in December 1938. For more about the history of the pool, see here.
Wilson Daily Times, 15 May 1948.
For the 18th anniversary of the Wilson Chapel Four, Reid Street Community Center hosted a concert featuring legendary Thurman Ruth and his Selah Jubilee Singers.
Wilson Daily Times, 17 March 1939.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 February 1950.
Wilson Daily Times, 13 January 1944.
Famed Kansas City jazz pianist Jay McShann played Reid Street Community Center in January 1944!
Wilson Daily Times, 23 December 1943.
Twenty-one year-old impresario Percy Mincey put together an impressive Christmas night dance in 1943, five months before he enlisted in the United States Army. (Note the reduced price for white “spectators,” who could watch, but not dance.)
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 500 Stantonsburg Street, John Mincey, 50, tobacco factory laborer; wife Olivia, 46; children Olivia D., 17, tobacco factory laborer, Joseph, 23, Margie, 15, Susie M., 12, Johnie M., 8, Percy, 6, and Prince, 21, and his wife Alice, 19; and grandchildren James, 12, Lawrence L., 7, and Willie L. Carroll, newborn.
In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 500 Stantonsburg Street, Jack Mincey, 61; wife wife Olivia, 58; sons Johnie, 20, and Percell, 19; and grandson Darance, 17.
In 1942, Percy Mincey registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 29 December 1922 in Wilson; lived at 500 Stantonsburg Street; his contact was Ben Mincey, 650 Wiggins; and he worked for Watson Warehouse, Goldsboro Street.
Wilson Daily News, 5 November 1949.
In November 1949, the Eastern Star Quartet, which actually had five members, appeared at a community sing program at Reid Street Community Center alongside the Stantonsburg Jubilaires and Elm City’s Harris Brothers Quartet.
I think Junius Lucas has the guitar, and Ernest Edwards stands behind him to the left. Can you identify the other singers?
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Every once in a while, we step outside Black Wide-Awake‘s period of focus to highlight an especially interesting document.
Reid Street Community Center opened in 1938 as, of course, a segregated facility. Long-time plans to build a state-of-the-art “community center building for the whites” (as it was called in a 11 August 1954 Daily Times editorial, and thus the moniker “White Rec,” as it was known for decades and maybe still is) screeched to a halt in early 1954 after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” standards of racial segregation were unconstitutional.
Opined the Daily Times editorialist:
The exhortations worked, and voters (who were largely white) elected to fund both community centers. Architectural sketches of the proposed new (or renewed) buildings dropped in March 1955, and here’s the proposed updated facility at Reid Street with its big new pool.
A few features were pared away before final construction, but anyone, like me, who learned to swim at Reid Street as late as the 1980s will immediately recognize the high and low diving boards and the lifeguard’s chair. The overhang shown shading the exit from the locker rooms, where you turned in your wire clothes basket and received an enormous numbered safety pin, didn’t make the final cut. Nor did the tennis courts, the large wading pool, or the landscaping.
Courtesy of Google Maps, here’s an aerial rear view of Reid Street Community Center shot when the pool was closed during the pandemic. It’s looking a little worse for the 68 years of wear since 1955, and the $1.9 million overhaul recently announced is long overdue.
Wilson Daily Times, 10 July 1941.
Wilson Daily Times, 12 July 1941.
The first Catholic services for African-Americans in Wilson were held at Reid Street Community Center in 1941, with construction of a new church — to be known as Saint Alphonsus — soon to get underway.
Washington, D.C.’s Heavenly Gospel Singers performed at Reid Street Community Center in October 1945.
Wilson Daily Times, 18 October 1945.