teacher

The obituary of Sophia Dawson Artice of Cleveland, Ohio.

The Call and Post (Cleveland, Oh.), 7 June 1952.

Sophia Dawson Artice was another of Alexander D. and Lucy Hill Dawson‘s accomplished children. After graduating Scotia Seminary, she married Jesse A. Artice, but he died less than two years later. Artice taught for decades in Wilson County before migrating to Cleveland, Ohio.

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In the 1900 census of Concord Town, Township #12, Cabarrus County, N.C.: at Scotia Seminary,  student Sophia L. Dawson, 16.

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: restaurant cook Alexander Dawson, 50; wife Lucy, 49; and children Sophie, 25, school teacher, Mattie, 23, stenographer, Virginia, 19, school teacher, Lucile, 17, Alexander, 15, Clarence, 13, Augusta, 11, and Arlander, 1.

Also, in the 1910 census of Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia: at Colored Orphans Home, teacher Sophia L. Dawson, 25, born in N.C.

In the 1916 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Dawson Sophia (c) tchr h 505 E Vance

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: A.D. Dawson, 59, widower, and daughter Sophey Dawson, 28, public school teacher.

On 26 May 1920, Jesse Artis, 37, of Wayne County, son of Jesse and Lucinda Artis, married Sophia Dawson, 30, daughter of A.D. Dawson, in Wilson. Presbyterian minister H.B. Taylor performed the ceremony at 650 East Green Street in the presence of C.L. Darden, F.L. Artice, and Eugene Norman.

Jessie Arthur Artis died 9 March 1922 in Nahunta township, Wayne County, N.C. Per his death certificate, he was 39 years old; was born in Wayne County to Jessie Artis and Lucinda Hobbs; worked as a tenant farmer for his mother; and was buried in the “country” by C.H. Darden & Son. Sophia Artis of Wilson was informant.

Sophia Artis is listed in the 1925, 1928, and 1930 Wilson city directories.

Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory (1928).

In the 1950 census of Cleveland, Cuyahoga township, Ohio: Sophia Artice, 64, widow, and Lucy Artice, 38, lodgers.

Changes at Darden High School.

New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 13 August 1938.

In 1938, Darden High School added two new faculty members, an optional twelfth grade, and an extra month to the school year.

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Artelia Barnes leads Rockingham School to music prize.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 9 May 1942.

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: brickmason John M. Barnes, 44, wife Annie L., 32, Leonard E., 5, Lee J. [Leo Artelia], 4, Selma [Thelma] F., 2, and John W., 3 months.

On 22 June 1929, Leo Artelia Barnes, 22, of Wilson, married Emanuel D. Jones, 26, of Brooklyn, New York, in Wilson. Rev. J.E. Kennedy performed the ceremony in the presence of C.L. Darden, Annie L. Kennedy, and W.A. Mitchner.

In the 1930 census of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York: Emanuel W. Jones, 27, Pullman waiter, and wife Artelia L., 24.

Leo Artelia Davis died 16 December 1982 in Houston, Texas. Per her death certificate, she was born 6 May 1906 in North Carolina to John M. Barnes and Annie Darden; was a widow; was a music teacher; and her regular residence was in Stafford, Fort Bend County, Indiana.

Pioneer educator dies.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 9 May 1942.

Sallie Barbour‘s credit as Wilson County’s earliest proponent of the Rosenwald Fund is an interesting detail in this obituary. It’s also puzzling. The Stantonsburg School was in Stantonsburg. The Stantonsburg Street School, formerly known as the Colored Graded School and later formally renamed for Barbour, was on Stantonsburg Street in Wilson, but was built well before the Rosenwald era.

Ethel Coley retires after 40+ years of teaching.

Wilson Daily Times, 6 May 1971.

Long-time teacher Ethel Moye Coley‘s early education came at Wilson Training School, also known as the Independent School or Industrial School — the school the Black community founded after leaving Wilson Colored Graded School in protest in 1918.

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In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 459 Goldsboro Street, widowed laundress Della Moye, 31, with her children Albert, 17, twins Hattie and Mattie, 9, and Ethel, 2.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Moye Ethel (c) student h 420 E Green

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: laundress Delia A. Moye, 50; grandson William A., 12; Zophey Sills, 25, cook; and Ethel M. Moye, 19.

On 29 December 1933, John A. Cain Jr., 24, of Durham, son of John A. Cain Sr. and Georgeanna Cain, married Ethel Moye, 24, of Wilson, daughter of Boston Moye and Delia Moye, in Raleigh, Wake County, N.C.

On 18 August 1944, Ethel Mae Moye, 35, daughter of O.L.W. Smith and Della Smith [sic], married David H. Coley, 49, son of W.H. and Luanna Coley, in Wilson. A.M.E. Zion minister W.A. Hilliard performed the ceremony in the presence of C.L. Darden, Norma Darden and Mrs. Ambrose Floyd.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1207 Washington Street, David H. Coley, 56, barber, and wife Ethel Cain Coley, 40, primary teacher/principal at rural school.

Wilson Daily Times, 27 February 1987.

The 107th anniversary of the school boycott.

Today marks the 107th anniversary of the resignation of 11 African-American teachers in Wilson, North Carolina, in rebuke of their “high-handed” black principal and the white school superintendent who slapped one of them. In their wake, black parents pulled their children out of the public school en masse and established a private alternative in a building owned by a prominent black businessman.  Financed with 25¢-a-week tuition payments and elaborate student musical performances, the Independent School operated for nearly ten years. The school boycott, sparked by African-American women standing at the very intersection of perceived powerless in the Jim Crow South, was an astonishing act of prolonged resistance that unified Wilson’s black toilers and strivers.

Sallie Roberta Battle Johnson, one of the Graded School teachers.

The school boycott is largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes go unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9 henceforth, I publish links to Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.

we-tender-our-resignation-and-east-wilson-followed

the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school

The teachers.

a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings

what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers

604-606-east-vance-street

mary-euell-and-dr-du-bois

minutes-of-the-school-board

attack-on-prof-j-d-reid

lucas-delivers-retribution

lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks

photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools

new-school-open

the-program

a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city

womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school

the-roots-of-mary-c-euell

respectful-petition-seeks-reids-removal

lucas-testifies-that-he-accomplished-his-purpose

there-has-been-an-astonishing-occurrence-in-wilson

no-armistice-in-sight

And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.

Rev. Phillips?

We’ve met Rev. Henry C. Phillips, who arrived in Wilson from Edgecombe County in the late 1880s. This 1868 letter was written to a Freedmen’s Bureau official by a Henry C. Phillips, “a teacher of the Colored Children in the Hookerton village” in Greene County.

Was this the same man? His signature in the letter is very different than it appears on numerous marriage licenses 20 to 30 years later, when it is bold and assured and even a bit flamboyant. In 1868, however, Phillips would have been just a few years out of slavery, with relatively few chances to practice his penmanship. As an ordained A.M.E. Zion minister, Phillips, however, had daily opportunities to strengthen and polish his handwriting.

 

Studio shots, no. 260: Oswald W. Harris.

Yearbooks can be a valuable source of photographs of community members whose images were infrequently captured or retained. The 1952 edition of Charles H. Darden High School’s yearbook, The Trojan, included this photograph of Oswald W. Harris, who briefly taught math at the school. A native of Warrenton, North Carolina, Harris went on to become a professor of mathematics at Union College-New Jersey and University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He died in Pompano Beach, Florida, in 2001.

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In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 210 Powell Street, Oswald W. Harris, 40, math teacher at city high school; wife Johnnie, 37, home economics teacher at city high school; sons John M., 5, and Anthony W., 2; and cousin Lucy J. Oneill, 25, “caretaking of home.”