A RIDE IN HISTORY: Wilmingtonians take the WilmingtonNColor bus tour

“We were so poor that our Black neighbors fed us,” Daddy says every time he speaks about growing up on the North Side of Wilmington during the Great Depression.

As a young boy, Daddy boiled peanuts in an iron pot over a fire behind his house in what is now the Northside/Brooklyn Arts District. He bagged the salted, steaming nuts in small brown paper sacks, loaded them into a canvas tote he shouldered. He peddled his bicycle to the train yard a few blocks away. Daddy did pretty well selling his peanuts to railroad workers and travelers.

Not well enough, however, to help his family escape crushing poverty that affected many people in his integrated neighborhood. 

As with several areas of Wilmington, the North Side and Brooklyn have been a mixture of both impoverished people and well-to-do professionals over the years. House designs range from dog-trot and shot-gun cottages to stately mansions.

I was reminded of Daddy’s childhood and the block-by-block differences that have shifted over time in Wilmington neighborhoods when I was invited to join a recent 90-minute bus tour with WilmingtoNColor. 

The tour originates at the parking lot behind the 1898 Memorial at 1018 North Third Street. Cedric Harrison, owner and tour guide of WilmingtoNColor Heritage Tour, drove the bus in which I rode. Before I took this tour, I thought I knew a considerable amount about Black neighborhoods and Black history in Wilmington. I was wrong.

Cedric tells stories and points out important landmarks, both historic and present-day, as he inches the bus through narrow streets, some of which are original brick. At one of the stops, Cedric turns from the driver’s seat, reaches back, and puts “The Travelers’ Green Book” in my hands. I swallow a sob. I know of this book, of course, but holding it brings up powerful emotions. As a privileged white woman, how could I possibly understand the value of this book to Black people traveling the country, their lives in danger if they entered a hotel or restaurant where they were not welcome? Named for its creator, Victor H. Green, “The Green Book” was published between 1932 and 1967, with the North Carolina edition first printed in 1938. The Wilmington edition Harrison shows me contains about 50 entries of establishments that welcomed Black travelers.

During the 90-minute tour, Harrison narrates videos and passes around books and pamphlets. He tells Wilmington history as I had never experienced it, on streets I have rarely traveled, stopping at homes, houses of worship, businesses, and vacant lots that weave together threads of Wilmington’s rich tapestry of cultures, beliefs, architecture, commerce, and history. 

I grew up in New Hanover County. I was in high school when integration finally came to New Hanover County Schools in 1968, 14 years after school integration was mandated by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954. Williston High School, the Black school, was closed, John T. Hoggard High School was opened, and Black students were forced to attend either Hoggard or New Hanover High School. Even as a teenager, I knew something precious to all of us was destroyed when Williston was shuttered. I remember the horrors of the 1971 race riots that resulted in the arrests and convictions of the group that came to be called The Wilmington Ten. I was an adult when I first learned of the Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état of 1898. I certainly was never taught about this event in school.

I know a bit about some of the more famous Black Wilmington residents. Seeing their homes or properties along the tour route brings them, and their work, to life. The home of Dr. Herbert Eaton, physician, civil rights activist, and tennis player who mentored Althea Gibson, the first Black Wimbledon champion, and the vacant property where the home of newspaper owner Alex Manley stood before it was torched in the 1898 massacre, are two of the many locations Harrison shows us.

In addition to a better knowledge of local Black history, Harrison says he hopes participants take away from the tour, “how they can connect the past with the current.” This tour helps you identify which side of history you are on. Indeed, this tour asks you to ask yourself, “Now what?” 

Harrison answers “now what?” in several ways in his work beyond the bus tours he guides. On Saturday, Feb. 21, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., WilmingtoNColor hosts the Second Annual Black His/Her-Story Month Carnival. The family-friendly event is free or pay-what-you-can. Located at Chow Town Food Truck Park across the street from the 1898 Memorial Park on the Historic Northside of downtown Wilmington’s Brooklyn Arts District. The carnival features children’s events, carnival games, vendors, food trucks, community organization booths, and more—including 15-minute mini-tours by bus.

Harrison plans for the carnival to kick off WilmingtoNColor’s participation in the North Carolina American 250 project with historical storytellers and educators. “Since Black history in Wilmington is some of oldest in the country, we certainly should be a part of this,” he notes.

In addition to the Wilmington historic tour, WilmingtoNColor offers tours to two historically Black waterside communities. Gone now, Shell Island at Wrightsville Beach was a “thriving 1920s Black resort erased by segregation and development,” according to Harrison. Seabreeze, near Carolina Beach, considered North Carolina’s historic Black beach, also has been developed into a modern seaside area.

After winding through narrow residential streets lined with cottages and elegant homes and through thriving commercial areas, the bus returns to the 1898 Memorial parking lot. We take group photos, and I join the Indivisible group at nearby Palate for an outdoor pizza picnic. The conversations along the table move among international and local politics to what we experienced on the bus, to the deeply personal.

One other person, Dan Brawley of Cucalorus, and I were the only New Hanover County natives on the tour. We explain to the group, as best we can, the impacts historic preservation, renovation, and gentrification have had on historic communities. I realize that, without the memories, the context, the impact of our stories is lost. 

The phrase “living across the tracks” is a literal description of more than one kind of segregation in Wilmington’s history. Both financial and racial divides were clearly marked for many years. Now, as houses are dwarfed by towering apartment buildings, new types of businesses thrive, and old ones fade away, the demographics of the northern side of Wilmington have changed. Younger professionals of many races frequent the area, walking their dogs even on cloudy afternoons.

Cedric and I stood in the 1898 Memorial parking lot while we waited for folks to arrive for the tour. I made a comment about the lovely, peaceful hill upon which the memorial is built. He pointed westward. “One of the reasons the memorial was built up here is because you could see the river from here. Now look.” High-rise apartments now block the river view.

Details:

Second Annual Black His/Her-Story Month Carnival

Saturday, Feb. 21, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.

WilmingtoNColor

wilmingtoncolor.com