segregation

The enumeration for whites.

I was looking for an African-American family in the Evansdale area when I ran across this notation in the 1910 census of Stantonsburg township. A closer look revealed that enumerator R.B. Barnes divided Enumeration District 110 into four sections — the white residents of the town of Stantonsburg, the black residents of the town of Stantonsburg, the black residents (who made up the majority) of the rest of the township, and finally the rest of the white residents.

No other township is enumerated this way and, in fact, I’ve never seen this imposed segregation in any other census record anywhere.

No part of said premise may be conveyed unto any person of African descent.

As Wilson expanded west past Grabneck and other former African-American sections, deeds for lots and houses began to imbed restrictive covenants that, among other limitations, prohibited Black residents.

The language was standard:

(a) No part of said premises may be conveyed unto any person of African descent, nor any part thereof be occupied by any person of African descent other than such persons in the domestic employment of the owner. [In others words, onsite maids, cooks, yardmen, and drivers were fine.]

As shown in the referenced plat map below, this sale was for a large lot (#18) on Anderson Street between Moye Avenue and West End Avenue.

Plat Book 4, page 74, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

200 Negro newspapermen expected for the A.&T. game!

Wilson Daily Times, 30 September 1939.

The Daily Times predicted hundreds of pressmen for a match-up between A.&T. and Virginia Union at Wilson’s Municipal (later Fleming) Stadium in October 1939. White fans were expected, too, and “the grandstand will be divided, the third base line half for white spectators and the first base section of the stands for colored fans.”

A first look at the Reid Street pool.

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.

White/Water.

Jerome De Perlinghi recently revealed this haunting photograph taken just before Farmers Warehouse’s partial collapse last month. Though such images shock us now, they were once as commonplace as dandelions and unremarkable even to those who had to bypass them to slake their thirst under the ‘Colored’ sign.

I was immediately reminded of a passage in William B. Clark Jr.’s Some Reflections On and Trivia of Wilson’s Tobacco Auction Warehouses 1890-1980, self-published in 1991, and excerpted here in 2018.

[The ninth edition of Eyes on Main Street, the incredible international outdoor photography festival De Perlinghi founded in Wilson, opens 1 June and runs through 10 September 2023. Don’t miss it, or his newly opened American Center for Photographers.]