Within days, Wilson’s board of town commissioners began to explore an ordinance addressing “the repair or elimination of unfit housing and dangerous building conditions.” Stakeholders weighed in — the city’s postmaster, the Colored Ministers Alliance — and the board requested the public at large to weigh in.
(Also on the agenda, a request by East Nash Street businessmen for parking on both sides of the street and a report that a “large number of colored school children are passing under freight car and trains on their way to school.” They were headed, of course, to Sallie Barbour or Vick Elementary or Darden High Schools from Black neighborhoods west of the tracks, like Daniel Hill and New Grabneck.)
Wilson Daily Times, 7 March 1950.