Wilson’s Art Deco bus station stood from 1938 to the mid-1990s.
In 1943, a dozen years before Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks’ celebrated acts of resistance, at least four young African-American men and women refused to move to the back of Wilson buses. Read again of their direct challenges to Jim Crow and discrimination and lift up their memory.
Wilson Daily Times, 19 December 1947.
News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 7 April 1943.
Raleigh’s major newspaper followed up on the sentence levied on James Parker, who refused to move to the back of a Wilson bus twelve years before Rosa Parks. All things considered, Parker’s punishment was surprisingly light — perhaps, none yet perceived a real threat to the Jim Crow system.
In this series, which will post on occasional Wednesdays, I populate the landscape of Wilson County with imaginary “historical markers” commemorating people, places, and events significant to African-American history or culture.
We been here.
Opened 1928 by Greek immigrant George C. Woller for an African-American audience. Featured motion pictures, musical and theatrical acts; hosted fundraisers for black schools and hospital. Badly damaged in fire in December 1932; did not reopen.
Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2025.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 4 February 1928.
What in the East Germany is this?
In 1928, the Negro Business League suggested that “members of the race” become “a committee of one” and carry little notebooks to jot down their neighbors’ patronage habits. Beyond the bizarre and chilling embrace of citizen spies, this brief bit, which appeared as part of an otherwise breezy column of Wilson society news, raises some interesting implications.
Readers were counseled to “see whether” others “are having a white or Negro physician, a white or Negro undertaker.” An examination of death certificates discloses that up until about World War I, white undertakers like A.D. McGowan and Amerson-Boswell handled a significant amount of black custom. There’s less evidence of this practice by 1920, however.
It’s more difficult to assess the degree to which black residents patronized white doctors instead of black physicians like Drs. Frank S. Hargrave Michael E. DuBissette, Matthew S. Gilliam, or William A. Mitchner. Major surgeries, especially in emergency situations, were often performed by white doctors at one of the two white hospitals — black patients returned to Mercy to recuperate — and some white doctors, most notably A.D. Williams, routinely delivered black babies. However, death certificates of the era were signed overwhelmingly by black doctors.
Finally, there was concern about who was “patronizing the white theatre for Negroes and who is patronizing the Negro theatre.” The Negro theatre, of course, was Samuel H. Vick‘s Globe, housed in an upper floor of the Odd Fellows building he constructed on East Nash Street. The “white theatre for Negroes” was the Lincoln, opened by a Greek-American in the Nash Street block just east of the railroad. Vick was an early member of the Negro Business League and no doubt was stung by the financial hit the Lincoln created.
Chicago Defender, 6 September 1947.
Among other things, segregation created daily absurdities like the picket fence separating white and “colored” customers in Wilson’s Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) store on Nash Street.
Photo courtesy of https://wilson.ncabcboards.com/history/
Add two more names to the list of people in Wilson who defied Jim Crow laws confining them to the back of the bus in 1943 — years before Rosa Parks sat down in Montgomery.
In February 1943, Wilson siblings William and Christine Hooks boarded a bus for Portsmouth, Virginia. Their friend Asilee Myers had gone to the bus station to see them off. The driver ordered William Hooks to move to the back of the bus. Hooks refused, and the bus driver ejected him. In response, the Hookses and Myers allegedly then threw gravel at the bus. The driver stopped, hopped out, and confronted William Hooks. A policeman arrived and, according to this account, Hooks jumped him before he could open his mouth good and a “young riot” broke out. The officer and the bus driver finally subdued Hooks with a black jack, and he, his sister, and their friend were arrested and charged with being drunk and disorderly and interfering with a police officer. [Personal note: I don’t believe the Hookses were intoxicated. Drunk and disorderly charges were means of criminalizing refusals to comply with unjust laws.]
All were convicted. William Hooks received a total of 36 months “on the road.” Christine Hooks got 10 months, and Asilee Myers, 30 days. I have not been able to determine the outcomes of their appeals.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 February 1943.
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In the 1930 census of Speights Bridge township, Greene County, N.C.: farmer Charlie Hooks, 45; [second] wife Lossie, 25; children Lewis, 21, James, 19, Charlie, 17, William, x, and Christine, 9; and sisters-in-law Gather, 29, and Ethel, 20.
In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: widow Lossie Hooks, 34, cook; sister Gether Jones, 38, stemmer; children Christine, 18, cook, and William Hooks, 21, plumber; lodger Frank Allen, 20, truck driver; and daughter Dorothy G. Hooks, 9.
In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 116 Ashe Street, Asilee Myers, 27, nurse, born in South Carolina, and Joe Battle, 30, laborer.
In the 1950 census of Portsmouth, Virginia: Lossie Hooks, 43, domestic; daughter Christine, 28, domestic; daughters Betty Jean, 8, and Dorothy Gray, 10; and lodger Ossie Spruell, 54, widow.
William Hooks died in May 1962 in Wilson. Per his obituary, published in Wilson Daily Times on xx May 1962, he lived at 139 Narroway Street and was survived by wife Essie Mae Hooks; daughters Peggie Ann and Dorothy Mae Hooks; son William Hooks Jr.; stepmother Lossie Hooks of Portsmouth, Virginia; sister Christine Hooks of Portsmouth; brothers Charlie E. Hooks of Wilson, James Lewis Hooks of Pinetops, N.C., and John B. Hooks of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Wilson Daily Times, 19 November 1950.
Anybody could hear the symphony, but “colored tickets” had to buy their tickets from a designated representative, Hartford Bess.
Wilson Daily Times, 14 January 1932.
In January 1932, Saint John A.M.E. Zion Church presented a repeat performance of “The Light of Ages” for charity and with a special appeal for white people to attend. “The entire middle section of the church will be reserved” for them, said Rev. J.B. Holmes.
