**Debunking the Battle family’s happy slave myth**
****
The Durham Herald-Sun Feb 17, 1935
Previously published histories of Dred Wimberly perpetuate the lost cause myth of the loyal slave. The complex and remarkable reality of Dred Wimberly’s life has been constrained to a family narrative casting the Battles as southern white heroes and Dred Wimberly as their loyal and subservient former slave. The historical record of Dred Wimberly’s life following emancipation belies this narrative. Dred Wimberly consistently denounced the institution of slavery and he was a powerful (even radical) civil rights advocate throughout his life.
The false and condescending “Uncle Dred Wimberly - Slave Senator” narrative first appeared in print in 1935. It continues to hold sway over Rocky Mount’s official histories. Over the years researchers including Dred’s own granddaughter, Quay Wimberly Whitlock have struggled to disentangle the truth about Dred Wimberly from this pernicious “uncle Dred” narrative. Today, with a growing wealth of digitized sources, the lost cause narrative of “uncle Dred” can be laid to rest.
**************
**Dred Wimberly Revisited**
**
On February 10, 1845, Allen Wimberly was bought by James S Battle at the bankruptcy auction sale of Robert D. Wimberly’s Walnut Creek Plantation.[^1] Three years later, on March 18, 1848, Dred Wimberly, the son of Allen Wimberly and Della Battle, was born on Walnut Creek Plantation. At the time of James S. Battle’s death he was one of the largest cotton growers and slave owners in North Carolina and on December 18, 1854 his daughter, Martha Ann Battle, inherited a one-fifth interest in his estate.[^2] Martha’s inheritance included the Walnut Creek Plantation and the slave population needed to maintain and operate it at a profit. Dred Wimberly was nearly five years old at the time. This same year Martha married her second cousin Kemp P. Battle, a recent University of North Carolina graduate with a new law practice in the capital city of Raleigh, NC,[^3] This young wealthy couple represented another generation of the prominent Battle family sustained by the slave economy.[^4]
Then came the war and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, enacted January 1, 1863, followed by the 13th Amendment, which rightly settled once and for all the slavery or freedom question, but unsettled the southern capital structure based upon coerced labor. Dred Wimberly was fifteen years old when he was emancipated and he quickly latched onto the free agency of labor concept. Allen Wimberly and his extended family, including his son Dred, left Kemp Battle’s plantation soon after Emancipation and, by1870, were sharecropping back with their namesake, Robert D Wimberly.[^5] Robert protected enough assets during the bankruptcy of his Walnut Creek plantation to remain a wealthy slave-owning planter until the climax of the Civil War. In 1860 he still owned $20,000 in real estate and his slaves accounted for the bulk of his $70,000 in personal property.[^6] Sorting out land-based working relationships between the Black Wimberlys and the white Wimberleys remained a constant focus for Dred in the turbulent decades ahead.
Between 1875 and 1885 the aristocratic Dr. Kemp P. Battle was instrumental in reopening and reorganizing the shuttered antebellum university as a New South public university.[^7] In 1875, the General Assembly allocated the annual $7,500 land script funds to the University.[^8] But Dr. Battle and the Board of Trustees realized that if the University at Chapel Hill was to become a public University supported with North Carolina taxpayer dollars, the isolated village of Chapel Hill would have to have a railroad line connecting it to the people. Towards that goal, on Jan 29, 1879, at a meeting of the University Board of Trustees, “the board endorsed the proposition to build a railroad from the University to the main line”,[^9] The following evening at 7:30, Kemp P. Battle gave a lecture in the Commons Hall of the House of Representatives - the General Assembly now redeemed and back under conservative Democratic control - on the subject of the “Usefulness of the University to practical men.”[^10] Sitting in the Hall that evening was first term Republican party congressman Dred Wimberly, proudly representing Edgecombe County’s common farmers and laborers.[^11]
A few weeks later, in the evening session of the NC House of Representatives, Dred W. Wimberly cast the deciding vote in a standing roll call on HB 211, entitled “a bill to incorporate the State University Railroad Company”.[^12] Clinton W Battle, the other Representative from Edgecombe County, also voted in favor of its passage.[^13] The House bill was sent back to the Senate and it passed and was ratified.[^14] While Dred’s deciding vote in favor of the University railroad was the crucial first step in the creation of North Carolina’s modern public university system, his vote in favor of funding the College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts in Raleigh, nearly a decade later during his second term as congressman, might have been more consequential.[^15] Many years later, Dred explained he supported the white schools with the hope that white folks would in turn support education for his race.[^16]
In 1880, while campaigning for re-election to a second term in the House of Representatives, Dred Wimberly acknowledged the accusations of incompetence and ridicule directed at him by the press - as a field hand he had received no education during slavery times. Dred countered in his stump speeches that he understood the people in his district, that he was a “ laboring man and didn't go dressed up.”[^17] Dred lost his reelection to W.W. Watson in 1880, and then turned his attention back to farming and organizing farm labor at Walnut Creek Township, (situated on the Tar River about midpoint between Tarboro and Rocky Mount off old US 64) where he, his father Allen and other family members were sharecropping on the farm of Robert D. Wimbely,[^18]
The inequities of the sharecropping system, exacerbated by constant quick cycles of Wall Street crisis and financial depressions made the plight of America's small farmers dire. So it was under these harsh conditions that Dred and his wife Kizziah Whitfield focused their lives on making ends meet and raising their children.[^19] But an optimistic Dred Wimberly was determined to better himself and run again for the House of Representatives–and continue his fight for the rights of his race, as well as for all working-class men.To that end, he dedicated himself to acquiring a liberal education. At night and when rains kept him out of the fields, he studied under the tutelage of William P. Mabson of Tarboro.[^20] Mabson served two terms as State Senator in 1875 and 1877.[^21] And at the Redeemers Constitutional Convention held in 1875, delegate W.P. Mabson joined with Oliver Hart Dockery in a lengthy protest,[^22] stating “The entire tendency of its (the convention’s) action has been to restore to power the oligarchy under whose control the rich grow richer and the poor poorer…”[^23]
****William P. Mabson
In 1887, self-educated tenant farmer Dred Wimberly was elected to a second term in the North Carolina General Assembly with strong support of the Colored Knights of Labor. Between 1887 and 1889, African American membership increased in local Knights of Labor branches across northeastern North Carolina exponentially. This growth led to the state assembly becoming a majority black group.[^24] In 1890 the fifth annual statewide convocation of the Knights of Labor was held at the Opera House on Main Street in Tarboro on January 28-29, 1890.[^25] Rocky Mount’s local Colored Knights of Labor purchased a lot for a meeting house on Hill Street in 1887. One of the original organizers was Weeks S Armstrong (14 African Americans purchased the meeting house property but white farmers were welcomed)[^26] . In 1888 [Henry Cheatham Plummer] was also elected to the United States Congress with strong Knights of Labor support. Cheetham rewarded Weeks Armstrong with the lucrative Rocky Mount Postmaster position in 1889.[^27] And Dred Wimberly, following his term as State Senator in 1889, was rewarded by Cheatham with an appointment to the Pention Office in Washington DC.[^28]
In 1887, when Dred returned to Raleigh for his second congressional term, a bitter public education fight was brewing between Kemp P. Battle and L.L. Polk. By June of 1888 it was prominent front page news.[^29] On this second important education bill, Dred Wimberly voted against Kemp P. Battle and the University at Chapel Hill, and in favor of the establishment and funding of the Mechanical and Agricultural College in Raleigh.[^30] This important battle set the foundation for the state’s new University system, and helped set the stage for the biracial agrarian uprising which occurred in the following decade. The Agrarian revolt during the 1890s was driven by parallel farm organizing groups with common interests but different skin colors - the white North Carolina Farmers’ Alliance organized by L L Polk and Elias Carr,[^31] the Colored Knights of Labor[^32] and the North Carolina Colored Farmers Alliance organized by Walter A Pattillo.[^33]
Of major significance to Tarboro and the new Town of Princeville ( which had become the first Incorporated Black town in America the previous year) [^34] was Senator Robert S Taylor’s bill to establish a Normal School for the Colored Race in Princeville [^35] The bill passed both houses with the support of Dred Wimberly and R.C. Crenshaw in the House. [^36] Senator Taylor, made an impassioned speech on the senate floor, starting by asking for a $100,000 appropriation for a normal school down east (the 1875 appropriation had been $2,000), made a second motion on the floor to amend the appropriation to $10,000, and ultimately pushed the bill through both Houses with an increase from $2000 to $6000 - a small appropriation in comparison to white schools, but a consequential victory for African-American education in eastern North Carolina.[^37]
At the end of the 1887 legislation sessions, the three men appeared together in Tarboro on April 11, 1887, at a public meeting called to celebrate 22 years of freedom. All three men were selected orators of the day and after a lengthy march the procession, led by the Rosebud Brass Band and a phaeton in which the gentlemen rode, stopped at the Tarboro courthouse.[^38] Senator R.S. Taylor was the headline speaker and must have been a hard act to follow. He was widely known as a witty and compelling advocate for equality, while his exotic Jamaican french creole accent entertained the locals in the large audiences he drew.[^39]
****
**Robert S. Taylor**
By October of that year the Princeville Free Normal School, a two story schoolhouse with two wings costing about $3,000, was complete. Its course of studies included the languages and sciences and the school received a $1,500 annual fund.[^40]
E.L. Thorton, a recent Howard graduate whose hometown was Fayetteville NC, returned to North Carolina from Washington DC to become principal of the Princeville Normal School,[^41] His father, A G Thorton, was a white slaveholder before the war.[^42] Following the war he was granted permission by General Daniel Sickles, Commander of the Carolinas, to marry a negro woman.[^43] This black and white union was a rare case of a legal biracial marriage in NC prior to the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia ruling a hundred years later- the 1967 decision decreeding all state antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional.[^44]
When Dred Wimberly was elected to the North Carolina Senate in 1889, he was faced with a Redeemer Congress intent on passing a new election law to further restrict African Americans ability to vote. Republican members disparaged it by calling it the South Carolina Law. Dred actively participated in a two-day filibuster mounted by the Republicans, but the effort was doomed from the start. The passage of this bill appears to have been the straw that broke the camel's back for many African Americans in eastern North Carolina. Following passage of the election law aiming to disenfranchise African Americans, William P. Mabson became a vocal supporter of immigration to Kansas.[^45] Dred Wimberly, a true believer in the free agency of labor, also supported immigration but he cautioned his constituents to be leery of where, and with whom, they relocated, saying he had a cousin who left with immigration agents and had been killed in Mississippi.[^46]
**Populism and Republicans**
Dred himself became a temporary exile from North Carolina, accepting a salaried position in Washington DC. After his support of Henry P Cheatham’s re-election in 1890, Dred was rewarded with a position in the Federal Pensions Department.[^47] The following year, in 1891, Dred married his second wife Ella Bertha Jenkins.[^48]
When the couple returned home to North Carolina in 1892 they were just in time for the National People's Party southern campaign. The political landscape in North Carolina once again radicalized.
The white Farmers Alliance and the parallel colored Knights of Labor and the North Carolina Colored Farmers Alliance had grown exponentially. Rocky Mount was a hotbed of the movement in NC.[^49] When the third party National People's Party candidate for President, General Weaver, and Mary Lease, a Kansas attorney campaigning for United States Senate, stumped North Carolina in October of 1892, huge crowds of black and white farmers turned out in Fayetteville, Raleigh and Rocky Mount. But Rocky Mount was the epicenter - drawing the largest crowd reported in North Carolina.[^50] Reliable estimates put the number at 10,000.[^51]
During the 1890s Fusion decade, there were many other economic and political movements organized to protect various groups of working people or both races (see A Brief Sketch of Senator William Lee Person’s life and the White Supremacist conspiracy to destroy his work and his memory). Quite a few organized under the banner of “National Protective Association.” In 1892, one group organizing as the National Protective Association was led by Black Independent Republicans George E. Taylor and Fredrick Douglass. After they were denied a role at the Platform Committee of the National Republican Party, Taylor wrote “A National Appeal ''challenging the National Republican Party and President Harrison.[^52] The following year he again attacked both the President and the Republican Party at a Colored Men’s National Protective Association meeting held in June of 1893 in Chicago.[^53]
In 1896, both Senator-elect [[W. Lee Person]] and Ex-Senator Dred Wimberly, staunch southern Republicans, were important promoters of the NPA at both the state and national levels. During the final week of October in 1896, immediately before the presidential election, the Rocky Mount weekly correspondent for the Raleigh Gazette's, [[Weaks S. Armstrong]], under the heading “The Grit Man”, reported that “Prof. R.A. Caldwell, of the National Protective Association of the United States, lectured to a goodly number of our people last Wednesday night.” and that “Hon. J.M. Langston, of Petersburg (Langston Hughes' great uncle) made a rousing speech to our people last Saturday. Much good was done.”[^54]
After the Fusion movement's phenomenal success in the 1896 election, the NPA quickly expanded across North Carolina and the rest of the South.[^55] In March of 1897, Warren C. Coleman, founder of the Coleman Manufacturing Company in Concord, NC, and one of North Carolina’s wealthiest African American, was elected national President of the NPA by about 100 delegates meeting at the Philadelphia House in Washington, DC.[^56] Two days after the NPA’s national meeting in Washington, Person introduced a bill establishing and incorporating the NPA in North Carolina.[^57] W. C. Coleman, of Concord was treasurer, Dred Wimberly of Tarboro was first Vice President, and Edward A Johnson of Raleigh was the NPA attorney and likely helped craft the bill.[^58] Senator Person’s bill passed the General Assembly on March 5, 1897.[^59] Reporting on the NPA in North Carolina, a correspondent for the Washington Bee succinctly described its mission: “throughout the entire country just prior to each national election to outline policies to be pursued by the Colored voters..... Plans for the overthrow of fraudulent election methods will be augmented, and funds provided for legal procedures against all who attempt to violate the right to suffrage.”[^60] On the other hand, a conservative correspondent to the New Bern Journal took exception to the NPA’s stated mission.[^61] Twenty of North Carolina’s most successful and prominent African-Americans chartered the North Carolina branch of the NPA. Seven of these men were from Rocky Mount and Tarboro: Dred Wimberly, first vice president, newly appointed Battleboro Postmaster Clinton W. Battle; Raleigh Gazette circulation manager for eastern North Carolina Charles E. Spicer; State GrandMaster of the Royal Knights of King David, S.F.C. (Sandy) Hester; W.N. Wainwright; Rev. O.B. Alston; and, of course, State Senator [W. Lee Person]. [^62]
In 1900, Dred was elected as an Edgecombe County delegate to the National Convention to nominate McKinley for a second term and Theodore Rooservett for Vice President.[^63] In the aftermath of the violent White Supremacy movement, Dred again secured a position in the federal government as a custodian in the US House of Representatives - this time through the efforts of George H White, the last African American from North Carolina to serve in the United States Congress until Eva Clayton in 1992.
** **
****
Dred Wimberly (circa 1920) from *The Battle Book*
** **
In 1902, Dred Wimberly returned to NC and purchased property on Raleigh Road in Rocky Mount. The property was in the brand new platted R.H. Moore subdivision, not far from the Warren Street entrance to the private Unity Cemetery, organized the year before in 1901.[^64] This Black subdivision and cemetery, planned by a local white oligarchy led by [[Thomas H. Battle]], marks the beginning of Rocky Mount city planners controlling and directing Black economic opportunities to confined segregated areas. Generational disinvestment in Rocky Mount’s segregated neighborhoods continues to this day . [^65] During his introduction of Booker T Washington when he visited Rocky Mount in 1910 Thomas Battle reiterated his promise of equity of the town law to 3000 African-American citizens:[^66]
"When I began my first campaigns I talked with the leading negroes and explained my ideas of progress and promised them absolute fairness and justice before the town law, explaining that there was no politics in it all, and that the strongest government was the safest one for the weakest citizens, that I would trust them and they must trust me."
Battle Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina
In 1903, Dred Wimberly, [[W. Lee Person]] and former fusion era Rocky Mount Town Council member [[Rev. Charles Edwin Spicer|Charles E. Spicer]], three of the original incorporators of the NPA, reincorporated as the Lincoln Benefit Society with its home office in Raleigh. Samuel Vick invested heavily in the Lincoln Benefit Society and its home office was soon moved to Wilson where it prospered.[^67]
In 1908, sixty-one-year-old Dred Wimberly continued to farm even though the extractive mortgage lease farming was his only option. To secure a farm supply loan so he could raise a short crop on a nearby farm owned by Wiley Daughtridge and Judge Chapman(near Pineview Cemetery) he was required to mortgage his homeplace, his prized home-raised calico mare Rubbie, his dray cart and buggy just to raise ten acres of corn and four acres of tobacco.[^68] It appears his crops made good because he did not lose his Raleigh Road residence. In between his short crops, Dred found employment as a carpenter and, to make ends meet, he and Ella ran a grocery and laundry next to their home place. In 1920 at the age of 76, Dred and Ella were able to pay off the mortgage and Dred retired, although the younger Ella continued “taking in laundry for the white folks”.[^69]
Dred Wimberly died in 1936 at the age of 89.[^70] Memorials carried in the white press across the state served as white hero worship propaganda - the myth of Dred Wimberley’s absolute fidelity to the Battle family was front and center.[^71] But on June 18, 1937, at Rocky Mount’s Unity Cemetery, a different story was told by men who had known Dred long and well. [Rev Charles Edwin Spicer], Fusion Era radical republican, NPA founding member, and Rocky Mount Town Councilman in 1898, assisted Rev Willie Powell in the Service. Eulogies were given by attorney Champ Rich and prominent Rocky Mount fusion era entrepreneur [[Frank Weston Davis]].[^72]
Mrs. Ella Jenkins Wimberly remained in the Raleigh Road home place until her death, at the age of 77, on Feb 13, 1945.[^73] Ella was buried alongside Dred and her children in Unity Cemetery, just a short distance from their home.
**[Dred Wimberly (E-74) | NC DNCR](https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2023/12/13/dred-wimberly-e-74)**
*****************************
The City of Rocky Mount now owns the Wimberly home place. An adaptive reuse of this property could become a landmark anchor and the catalyst for a transformative vision for this entire neglected section of town.
## Notes
[^1]: _The Weekly Standard_, January 22, 1845. & Edgecombe County Register of Deeds, Book 23, Page 513.
[^2]: Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Book 26, Page 511.
[^3]: _Semi-Weekly Standard_, December 5, 1855, 3; _The Spirit of the Age_, January 11, 1854, 3; _The Weekly Standard_, August 30, 1854. pg 1
[^4]: Herbert Bemerton Battle and Lois Yelverton, _The Battle Book; a Genealogy of the Battle Family in America, with Chapters Illustrating Certain Phases of Its History_, ed. William James Battle (Montgomery, Ala., The Paragon Press, 1930),145, [http://archive.org/details/battlebookgeneal00batt](http://archive.org/details/battlebookgeneal00batt).
[^5]: 1870 United States Federal Census Page No 46, Tarboro Township.
[^6]: Schedule 1, Slave Inhabitants of Edgecombe County, 1860, Robert D Wimberly.
[^7]: Kemp P. Battle, *History of the University of North Carolina. Volume II: From 1868 to 1912*, 3.
[^8]: Id.
[^9]: Id.; *The News and Observer*, January 30, 1879.
[^10]: *The Wilmington Sun*, January 31, 1879.
[^11]: *The Herald-Sun*, February 17, 1935.
[^12]: [https://ncleg.gov/Files/Library/sessionlaws/1871-1880/pubs_lawsresolutionso1879.pdf](https://ncleg.gov/Files/Library/sessionlaws/1871-1880/pubs_lawsresolutionso1879.pdf)
[^13]: Id.
[^14]: The Wilmington Morning Star, April 16, 1879, Page 1.
[^15]: Kemp P. Battle, *History of the University of North Carolina. Volume II: From 1868 to 1912*, 374.
[^16]: The Herald-Sun, February 17, 1935.
[^17]:_The Tarborough Southerner_, July 29, 1880.
[^18]: 1880 United States Federal Census, State: North Carolina County: Edgecombe Township: Enumeration District 59.; Google Map.
[^19]: 1860 United States Federal Census
[^20]: _The News and Observer_, Sun, August 15, 1948, pg.51,; _Rocky Mount Telegram_, July 7, 1952. Pg 4,; C. H. Hamlin, Ninety Bits of North Carolina Biography (1946) pg 44-46
[^21]: Library of Congress, Legislative record, giving the acts passed session ending March, 1877. Together with sketches of the lives and public acts of the members of both houses. v. 1, no. 1.
[^22]: Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the state of North Carolina, held in 1875
[^23]: Id.
[^24]: North Carolina Historical Marker Program, Knights of Labor (E-122)
[^25]: Id.
[^26]: Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Bk 65 pg 267 & Bk 65 pg 268
[^27]: *The Roanoke News*, April 25, 1889.; North Carolina Historical Marker Program, Knights of Labor (E-122); The Daily Journal, April 3, 1890.
[^28]: The Lancaster Examiner, Thu, September 10, 1890 pg 3
[^29]: _Weekly State Chronicle_, June 29, 1888.
[^30]: _Weekly State Chronicle_, March 3, 1887; _The News and Observer_, April 30, 1887; _The Raleigh Signal_, June 7, 1888. Kemp P. Battle (Kemp Plummer), 1831-1919, _History of the University of North Carolina. Volume II: From 1868 to 1912_, 374.
[^31]: [Documenting the American South, L. L. Polk (Leonidas La Fayette), 1837-1892](https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/polk90/bio.html)
[^32]: North Carolina Historical Marker Program, Knights of Labor (E-122)
[^33]: Omar H. Ali, I*n the Lion's Mouth: Black Populism in the New South, 1886-1900*,
[^34]: Private Laws of North Carolina, 1885, c. 29
[^35]: Private Laws of North Carolina, 1887, c. ?; The Raleigh Signal Thu Apr 21, 1887,Page 3
[^36]: Private Laws of North Carolina, 1887, c.
[^37]: _The Raleigh Signal_, Thu Feb 24, 1887, 3
[^38]: _The Raleigh Signal_, Thu Apr 21, 1887, 3
[^39]: _Weekly State Chronicle_,_ _Thu March 17, 1887, 1
[^40]: _The Raleigh Signal_, Thu Oct 13, 1887, 1.
[^41]: _The Tarborough Southerner_, Thu, March 15, 1888, 3; _Charlotte Messenger_, July 17, 1886; _The Washington Bee_, Sat, May 26, 1883, 3.
[^42]: _The North Carolina Gazette_ (Fayetteville),· Thursday, July 09, 1874, 2; _Tri-Weekly Era_, Thu, May 30, 1872, 2.
[^43]: _Raleigh Daily Telegram_, Sun, June 4, 1871, 3; _North Carolina Gazette_, Thu, July 23, 1874, 2; _The Greensboro Patriot_, Fri, August 2, 1867, 1.
[^44]: Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
[^45]: US Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District (.mil) 11- Appendix H Princeville, Edgecombe County, North Carolina.
[^46]: _Tarboro Southerner_,_ _Thu Dec 19, 1889, 2.
[^47]: _The Lancaster Examiner_, September 10, 1890.
[^48]: _The Herald-Sun, February 17_, 1935; _New Journal and Guide, May, 3, 1945, A16.
[^49]: The Commonwealth, Thu October 6, 1892, 2; _The North Carolinian_, Fri October 7, 1892, 3; _In the Lion's Mouth: Black Populism in the New South,_ 1886-1900, [Omar H. Ali](https://www.amazon.com/Omar-H-Ali/e/B001JS64V6/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1).
[^50]: _The Progressive Farmer_, Tue August 26, 1890, 2. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-progressive-farmer/123603422/.
[^51]: _The Progressive Farmer_, Tue October 4, 1892, 2
[^52]: “To redress wrongs, Negroes want a plank in the Republican platform,” _Chicago Tribune_, June 5, 1892, 10.
[^53]: Anna R. Paddon and Sally Turner, “African Americans and the World’s Columbian Exposition,” _Illinois Historical Journa_l Vol. 88, no. 1 (1995): 19-20.; “Asked to Stay Away,” _The Inter Ocean_, June 28, 1893, 7.
[^54]: Weeks S. Armstrong, “Rocky Mount Grits,” _The Gazette_, October 31, 1896, 3.
[^55]: “They will confer in convention as to means of elevation their race,” _The Raleigh Daily Tribune_, May 13, 1897, 1.
[^56]: “Phila. House Meeting,” _Evening Star_, March 3, 1897, 17; “That Rocky Mount speech,” _The Semi-Weekly Messenger_, December 21, 1897, 3.
[^57]: North Carolina General Assembly, Chapter 101 of the Private Laws of 1897.
[^58]: Id.
[^59]: North Carolina General Assembly, Chapter 101 of the Private Laws of 1897.
[^60]: “Negros eyes are opened,” _Washington Bee_, May 8, 1897, 5.
[^61]: “Mistakes of the Negro,” _Daily Journal_, August 1, 1897, 2.
[^62]: North Carolina General Assembly, Chapter 101 of the Private Laws of 1897.
[^63]: _The News and Observer_, Sun, August 15, 1948, pg 51.
[^64]: Private Laws of North Carolina, 1901, c. 101.
[^65]: Ibid.; Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Bk 107, pg 576; Bk 107, pg 595; 113 , pg 483 (Subdivision plat, first phase of development- RH Moore Farm)
[^66]: _Rocky Mount Telegram_, Dec 14, 2020, “Location of city’s lost cemetery discovered”
[^67]: Report of Insurance Commissioner of North Carolina 1904; The News and Observer, January 13, 1903, 5; _The Farmer and Mechanic_, August 5, 1902.
[^68]: Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Book 122, Page 225, Book 143, Page 149.
[^69]: _The Herald-Sun_, February 17, 1935; Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Book 26 Page 511.
[^70]: Edgecombe County Register’s Office, Death Certificates
[^71]: _The Rocky Mount Herald_, Fri June 18, 1937, 1; _Rocky Mount Telegram_, Thur June 17, 1937, 4.
[^72]: _New Journal and Guide_, June, 26, 1937, 6.
[^73]: _New Journal and Guide_, May, 3, 1945, A16
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