Vick cemetery

Lane Street Project: Vick Cemetery, one year later.

A year has passed since I broke the news that at least 4,224 of our kinfolk are buried in Vick Cemetery. What has the City done since then to address and redress the continuing harm done to the dead and their families?

Essentially, nothing.

City Manager Grant Goings never introduced the plan he claimed he would reveal in August 2023. City Council member Gillettia Morgan, who lives in eyeshot of the cemetery, is still apparently moving “behind the scenes” (slowly, and in circle?) A meeting with Mayor Carlton Stevens in September to discuss next steps for Vick seemed productive, but it’s been crickets ever since. As far as I can tell, Vick Cemetery has not been on Council’s agenda since August.

Wilson put every single incumbent back into their seat in November. Demand more and better for your vote. JUSTICE FOR VICK CEMETERY.

WE WILL NEVER FORGET.

Lane Street Project: WTVD ABC-11 reports on Vick Cemetery.

The struggle continues. Eight months after City Manager Grant Goings announced at a council meeting that he would soon introduce his recommendations for Vick Cemetery, and five months after our meeting with the Mayor and Councilmember Gillettia Morgan to discuss Lane Street Project’s vision for next steps, the City has not made one move toward redemption.

ABC-11’s report on Vick aired today and reminds us all of the stakes here. Can’t stop, won’t stop.


View reporter Akilah Davis’ report here:

https://abc11.com/black-cemetery-vick-destroyed-missing-headstones/14501270/

My thanks to Levolyre Farmer Pitt for sharing her thoughts about the state of Vick Cemetery and to Akilah Davis for her dogged pursuit of the truth.

Thank you, M.E. Barnes!

Lane Street Project: in memory of Robert Ashe Jr. (1949-1949).

I’ve spoken of the database I am developing of likely burials in Vick, Odd Fellows, and Rountree Cemeteries. My spreadsheet draws upon death certificates, obituaries, and other sources — most distressingly imprecise. The term “Rountree Cemetery” on these documents may refer to Vick, Odd Fellows, or Rountree. Some documents broadly refer only to burial in Wilson. However, in the absence of official burial records for any of the cemeteries, we make do.

This series honors the men, women, and children who never had grave markers, or whose stones have been lost or stolen or destroyed. Graves believed to be in Vick Cemetery, which the City of Wilson stripped of remaining markers in 1996, will be identified with a Vick Cemetery logo.

Robert Ashe, Jr., died 16 September 1949 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 20 May 1949 in Wilson to Robert Ashe Sr. and Josephine Avery and lived at 614 Darden’s Alley. He was buried in Rountree Cemetery, Wilson. [Baby Ashe may have been buried in Rountree Church Cemetery, but more likely was buried in what we now know as Vick Cemetery.]

Lane Street Project: distractions.

I heard that last week’s city council outburst about the courthouse’s Confederate monument also included a charge that Pender Street was named for a Confederate general and should be renamed. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But while living, breathing Wilsonians are still weeping for the desecrated graves of their loved ones, I am uninterested in the performance of outrage about 150 year-old street names.

Still, if you want to be mad about institutions and entities named for men complicit in upholding the institution of slavery, start with the city and county of Wilson, who were named for politician and Mexican War general Louis Dicken Wilson.

Louis D. Wilson (1789-1847)

Louis D. Wilson died in 1847. His will was simple — a couple of individual bequeaths, proceeds from property to care for the poor of Edgecombe County, and all his slaves to his sister Ann Wilson Battle. The sister died before he did, and her heirs, James L. and Mary A.S. Battle, duly stepped up to take their share of their uncle’s wealth. A court-appointed committee allotted to Mary A.S. Battle 17 men, women, and children — “Ben Jackson Frank Gilbert Willie Turner John Steller & child Rose Amandy Albert July Lucy Mary Mariah & child Providence & Martin valued at Six thousand two hundred & five dollars.” James Battle received another 17 — Ellick Guy Clinton Ephraim Henry Boston Edmond Bill Winney Nancy Dinah Martha Anicka & child Sabry Tener Bob & Mary valued at Six Thousand one hundred & fifteen dollars.” The siblings were given equal shares in one man, who was called Bill Hall. (Note that Wilson claimed 78 enslaved people at the time of the 1840 census. I have no information about the apparent sell-down between then and the distribution of his estate.)

I don’t know if any of these 35 people or their descendants have ties to Wilson, but I say their names as our spiritual, if not literal, ancestors. Their enslaver, of course, has the whole town and county named in his honor. I tell you this not because I want names changed. I tell you so you understand how inextricably tied to slavery the history of this city is.

Back to the subject at hand — Vick Cemetery.

Deed book 24, page 523, Edgecombe County Register of Deeds, Tarboro, North Carolina; credit for portrait of Louis D. Wilson here.

Lane Street Project: in memory of Alice Artis (1877-??)

I’ve spoken of the database I am developing of likely burials in Vick, Odd Fellows, and Rountree Cemeteries. My spreadsheet draws upon death certificates, obituaries, and other sources — most distressingly imprecise. The term “Rountree Cemetery” on these documents may refer to Vick, Odd Fellows, or Rountree. Some documents broadly refer only to burial in Wilson. However, in the absence of official burial records for any of the cemeteries, we make do.

This series honors the men, women, and children who never had grave markers, or whose stones have been lost or stolen or destroyed. Graves believed to be in Vick Cemetery, which the City of Wilson stripped of remaining markers in 1996, will be identified with a Vick Cemetery logo.

In the 1900 census of Ingrams, Johnston County: widower farmer Archie Artis, 78; daughters Bathanie, 32, and Alice E., 22; and granddaughters Victoria, 13, Effie, 10, and Pollie, 1.

In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Artis Alice (c) cook h Vance nr Pender

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Joe Evans, 26; wife Effie, 17; daughter Never E., 3; sister Victory E., 22, widow; [her?] children William, 7, Maggie, 6, and Harvey, 3; mother-in-law Bettie Artice, 37; aunt Alice, 35; and her daughter Polly, 10.

On 3 Dec 1914, Solomon Ward applied for a marriage license for Jesse Henderson of Wilson, age 21, son [great-nephew] of Jesse Jacobs and Sarah Jacobs, both dead, and Pauline Artis of Wilson, age 18, daughter of Alice Artis. On the same day, Fred M. Davis, Baptist minister, performed the ceremony at his residence before Mary Barnes, Annie Hines, and Willie Cromartie, all of Wilson.  [Jesse and Sarah Henderson Jacobs, who were very much alive, reared Jesse, who was the son of Sarah’s sister.]

In the 1916 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Artis Alice (c) dom h 219 1/2 Pender

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 217 Pender Street, Jesse Henderson with wife Pauline, daughter Bessie, and mother-in-law Alice Artis. Jesse worked as a truck driver for a woodyard. Alice Artis was a cook for a private family.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 318 Pender Street, Jack Henderson, truck driver, 38; wife Pauline, 31, and children Bessie, 12, Alic, 10, Joice, 8, Mildred, 6, and Archy, 4, listed in the household of mother-in-law Alic Artis, 49, private cook, paying $18/month rent.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 309 Pender Street, Alice Artis, 56; daughter Pauline Henderson, 39, household servant; granddaughters Bessie L., 23, hotel elevator girl, Alice, 20, household servant, Joyce, 18, household servant, Mildred, 16, and Doris, 10; and grandson Robert [Bobby], 4.

I have not found Alice Artis’ death certificate. Her grandchildren, however, report that she was buried in Vick Cemetery.

Lane Street Project: pansies and general maintenance.

I think it’s safe to say that these are the first flowers the city has planted in Vick in the cemetery’s 110-year history. Thank you, Heather Goff and Cemetery Commission crew.

(Also, passersby may have noticed a dirt pile near the fence and patches of raw earth throughout the cemetery. The Commission crew is topdressing and filling in low-lying areas to improve drainage and appearance. Thanks to all keeping an eye on the land.)

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023.

 

Lane Street Project: Have the Graves of Your Loved Ones Been Marked?

Wilson Daily Times, 6 October 1945.

How many Vick Cemetery families ordered their loved ones’ grave markers from African-American stone cutter Clarence B. Best?

How many Best-made headstones did the City of Wilson destroy?

Lane Street Project: WHAT’S THE PLAN???

A quick rundown of high- and lowlights of the nearly eight months since the City released the devastating ground-penetrating radar report identifying at least 4,224 graves in Vick Cemetery:

  • at my request, Mayor Carlton Stevens arranged an open forum on May 11 at Reid Street Community Center in which I presented the history of Vick Cemetery and discussed the report’s findings. The mayor and council members Gillettia Morgan and Derrick Creech attended and heard members of the public call for transparency, accountability, and action at Vick.
  • in late May, Council voted to run a fence around Vick and brought New South Associates (NSA) back to the cemetery in late June to mark graves that straddled its borders.
  • in July, City Manager Grant Goings announced that he would make recommendations for Vick at an August council meeting and provided a preview of his suggestions.
  • on August 5, local clergy and Lane Street Project held a reconsecration ceremony at Vick Cemetery.
  • on August 11, I emailed the four council members who attended the reconsecration ceremony and asked them to move for:(1) formal engagement by the City with Lane Street Project and other representatives of the Vick Cemetery descendant community;(2) an independent investigation into the removal and disposal of Vick Cemetery’s headstones circa 1995;(3) preparation of a full survey map of Vick Cemetery, to include all built features; and(4) a ground-penetrating radar survey of the areas not surveyed in 2022, including, but not limited to, the public right-of-way between the power poles and the street. (None of the four council members have acknowledged receipt, but they generally don’t, so I’m going to assume they got my missive.) I also encouraged council members to hold off on making decisions about Vick’s future without additional information about the history and current condition of the site and without the input of stakeholders whose family members are buried there. None of these actions was taken.
  • in August, NSA presented its final report on Vick Cemetery at council meeting. Goings did not present recommendations.
  • on August 17, WRAL-TV ran its report on Vick Cemetery.
  • in late August/early September, evidence falls together that establishes that the power poles were placed in Vick and Rountree in 1997 — after the cemetery was cleared.
  • At September council meeting, Lane Street Project representatives presented to council a written statement of concerns and requests concerning Vick.
  • in late September, the North Carolina General Assembly approved $50,000 for Vick Cemetery (after a brief “miscommunication.”)
  • in late September, I attended a meeting the Mayor requested with him, Councilmember Morgan, and two others to discuss next steps for Vick. Despite my generally hopeful takeaway, I have heard nothing further from the Mayor.
  • in October, Vick Cemetery became a pressing issue for candidates for city council races. In defending their records, Morgan, Michael Bell, and James Johnson provided insight into their essential positions. For Morgan, it’s basically “Can’t we all get along?”; for Bell — and I quote — it’s “Let the dead rest”; for Johnson, it’s “Y’all just don’t understand 25 year-old me — and what do y’all want, anyway?”
  • Vick Cemetery was not on the agenda for October or November council meetings.

So. Here we are on December 4, and council has failed to engage the descendant community concerning Vick; failed to respond to or implement any provisions of Lane Street Project’s September petition (as far as I know); and failed to publicly state how it will spend the $50,000 received for Vick. In fact, the City has failed to articulate any goals whatsoever for investigating the missing headstones; remedying the power pole intrusion; protecting the bodies in the public right-of-way; or otherwise moving into the future with openness and honesty concerning this abused space.

What is the plan?

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2023.