Hughes’ Visit
Saint Alphonsus Performance
First on Langston Hughes’ Negro History Week itinerary list, devised by Librarian Elizabeth Jenkins, was Saint Alphonsus School. There, students recited his longest published poem “Freedom’s Plow” back to him. In his news column in the Chicago Defender, the impressed poet wrote:
“Mrs. Elizabeth Jenkins, charming and efficient librarian of the Wilson County Negro Library, had arranged a busy day for me beginning at the St. Alphonsus Catholic School where the Negro nuns had an assembly of tiny youngsters who did all by themselves a fine Negro History program. It closed with a rendition of my “Freedom’s Plow” by apt little boys and girls who knew every line of it.”
Witnesses of Hughes’s 1949 attendance to St. Alphonsus Everlene Cunningham and Anne Harding were in the 3rd-4th grade when Hughes attended their Negro History Week program. This is shown as Hughes’s itinerary from that date states:
Visited: St. Alphonsus (Catholic) School… kindergarten to 4th).
Cunningham and Harding were not able to recall much about this event, but they remembered that every year their school brought in well-known Black artists to speak to them, demonstrating to them what educated and talented Black excellence can look like. However, Cunningham remembers some of what happened that day. The transcript below features parts of my interview surrounding Hughes’s journey and the witnesses’ experience with literacy at St. Alphonsus:
Kacey Cooper (K.C.):
Yeah, well in 1949 he [Hughes] visited Wilson during Negro History Week and we have some recollection about Saint Alphonsus being one of the churches, well schools back then, that he visited. I was wondering, and maybe we can start with Miss Harding: Can you recall the day of Langston Hughes’s performance or anything else that you have recalled throughout your life of his performance at the school?
Annie Harding (A.H.):
Not really and be accurate. I remember that we were in the Catholic school, St. Alphonsus Catholic School. And in ‘49, Everlene? We were probably like third and fourth grade because we would have two classes in one room, and I think in ‘49 it had to be about third and fourth grade and you and I were probably in the third. Okay and we were lucky to, and fortunate to, get the people who came to visit our school. We had a number of I would just say cultural activities where the Nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence out of Baltimore who brought people such as Langston. I think, did Mariam Anderson come, Everlene?
Everlene Cunningham (E.C.):
I want to say maybe it was Dorothy Mayner.
A.H. :
Maybe, I’m not sure. Some other important singer came too and Stephen Fletchit, I remember that because I didn’t know what that was and what it meant. I thought it was going to be somebody doing something. But they also brought up the Raleigh or the State orchestra to perform for the children at the school. We had a room called The Big Room and we would all go into that big room, I’m thinking Everlene. The other thing too, I think he [Hughes] visited our class.
E.C. :
He did. That’s what I remember, I remember sitting in class. I knew who he was. At that time, they had already exposed us to his works of poetry and I knew who he was. They told us that he was a very important poet, a Negro Poet. And honestly, I can’t just remember. I wish I could remember specifics. I just remember sitting in class, he sat at the teacher’s desk in front of us and, his looks, he looked just like the pictures that you see of him when he was, I guess, in early middle age, light brown skin, wavy hair and a mustache, and he talked to us but I don’t remember what he said. He was rather soft-spoken and he just talked to us in a very friendly manner. But I don’t remember what he said, I’m so sorry, I cannot recall what he talked about. I just don’t know
A.H. :
The other thing too, Everlene, and I tell this all the time, Everlene and I use to go to the library every day at the school and Everlene said to me, let’s read every book in the library. And I bet she may have finished her goal.
E.C. :
No, she did not.
A.H. :
But we were talking about the books that Ms. Jenkins had recommended for us.
E.C. :
We wanted to see our names in the books, Our names were in a lot of books because those days they had a little card that went in the book. You had to put your name on it for so if you didn’t bring the book back, they would know who had it. But when you brought the book back, they put the card back into the little sleeve in the back of the book.
A.H. :
We also looked out-we made sure they put out book names-that they didn’t take it away from us because we had it going for a while. My mom would pick me up in the afternoon, and they would put me across Pender Street right there, and I’d walked down and meet Everlene at the library in the afternoon. So, we were readers.
History of the Church & School
The information provided below comes from the historical African American blog, Black Wide Awake, written by Wilson history and genealogy researcher, Lisa Y. Henderson. Black Wide Awake focuses on the historical documentation and genealogical research of Wilson’s past Black community.
For a more extensive history of the Saint Alphonsus School, please see Saint Alphonsus School.
Wilson, NC’s St. Alphonsus School began as a predominantly Black Catholic church by Redemptorist Priests to honor their founder, St. Alphonsus Mary De Liguori of Naples. In 1948, the church purchased an Army PX and was converted into the Saint Alphonsus School, modifying its rooms into classes, offices, and assemblies. Nuns of the Oblate Sisters of Providence taught at the school. Financial concerns eventually led Saint Alphonsus to merge with Saint Therese’s School, ultimately merging the two Parishes by 1970. The previous church and school went on to house Kiddie Kollege of Knowledge, a private African American kindergarten school.
Articles
March 30, 1942, the Wilson Daily Times published this article about the dedication of the church (Click to view the full photos):
Hundreds of people-both Black and White-came out to see the cornerstone of St. Alphonsus’s church being laid. At the time, it made the 15th Catholic parish in North Carolina. Bishop McGuinness, the dedicator, informed everyone that St. Alphonsus isn’t meant to replace other churches, but to bring in those without a church home. The Redemptorist Fathers built a rectory next to the church for the pastor and his assistant.
An additional article from Wilson Daily Times on September 9, 1948 on the opening of St. Alphonsus School:
Presently
Address: 810 Reid St E, Wilson, NC 27893
The St. Alphonsus building now serves as a community center owned by the Catholic Diocese in Raleigh, NC. The building is still used for worship services and community-wide events.