Wake County

Rolesville reckons with lynching.

The Wake Weekly, 12 September 2024.

——

Kudos to Rolesville! This is what community looks like.  Descendants, teachers, and students — the Wake County Community Remembrance Coalition; the Historic Rolesville Society; and the mayor and town board collaborated with Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative to commemorate the only documented lynching in Wake County, that of George Taylor in 1918.

Taylor was arrested — abducted, actually — in Wilson County and taken to Rolesville in the trunk of car. I blogged about his terrible death here.

Equal Justice Initiative partners with communities to install narrative historical markers at the sites of racial terror lynchings.

“Historical markers are a compelling tool in the creation of a permanent record of racial terror violence that provides everyone in the community exposure to our shared history of racial injustice. EJI’s historical markers detail the narrative events surrounding a specific lynching victim, or group of racial terror lynching victims, and the history of racial terrorism in America.

“Through the Historical Marker Project, local communities are motivated to confront historical trauma that is both universal and also very specific to the Black experience. EJI’s Historical Marker Projects are led by community coalitions that include individuals representing a diversity of experiences and affiliations in the local community. EJI believes that reckoning with the truth of racial violence that has shaped our communities is essential for healing.”

Two of these markers are waiting for Wilson County.

I hope my white friends will remember me.

I do not know the context of this puzzling letter Rev. Jeremiah Scarborough wrote to the editor of Wilson Times.

Wilson Times, 15 September 1899.

Twenty years later, Scarborough was still preaching the gospel of accommodationism.

Wilson Times, 2 June 1919.

——

In the 1870 census of Little River township, Wake County: farm laborer Robert Scarborough, 55; wife Flora, 48; children Louisa, 20, Sarah, 18, Jeremiah, 17, and Charles, 6; plus Maryann Fowler, 25, and her son Willie, 10.

Scarborough appears in the 1877 edition of Shaw University’s catalog as a Wake Forest native and graduate of its Normal School division. He is also listed in Claude Trotter’s History of the Wake Baptist Association, Its Auxiliaries and Churches, 1866-1966 (1876) as a pastor in 1878 at Wake County’s Friendship Chapel, near Wake Forest.

In the 1880 census of Dunns township, Franklin County, N.C.: farmer Jerry Scarboro, 24, and wife Martha, 20.

In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Scarborough Jeremiah (c) farmer h[ome] Nash nr Lucas Av

In the 1910 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: on Nash Road, farmer Jerrimiah Scarborough, 53; wife Martha R., 45, laundress; children Olzie, 17, laundress, Robert, 13, James, 11, Lula, 9, and Maggie, 5; and granddaughter Martha A.E. Stallings, 18 months.

In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Scarborough Jeremiah (c) lab h W Nash nr Lucas Av

Leah Holloway, 62, of Wilson, daughter of Harry and Rosa Farmer, married Jeremiah Scarboro, 63, of Wilson, son on Robert and Flora Scarboro, in Wilson on 31 March 1922. Missionary Baptist minister Charles T. Jones performed the ceremony in the presence of W.S. Barnes, Columbus Stuart, and Annie Rountree.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Scarborough Jeremiah (c; Leah) firemn r[esidence] New Grabneck [The Scarboroughs were among the Black families moved from the former Grabneck community to New Grabneck in the early 1920s.]

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Scarborough Jeremiah (c) firemn r New Grabneck

In the 1930 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: in a home owned and valued at $3000, Jerry Scarboro, 75, widower, and roomer James Duerant, 39, “Babtist” preacher.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 306 Elba Street, truck driver Ellis Brown, 37; wife Margaret, 36; sons Ellis Jr., 19, and William E., 17; and father-in-law Jerry Scarboro, 85, widower.

Rev. Jeremiah Scarabourgh died 9 June 1949 in Bunn, Franklin County, North Carolina. Per his death certificate, he was 94 years old; was born in Wake County, N.C., to Robert Scarborough; worked as a teacher; had lived in Bunn for 15 years; and was a widower. He was buried in Wilson in the Mason[ic] cemetery. Mrs. Mary Stallings was informant.