Williston Industrial High School
319 South Tenth Street
1937
Leslie N. Boney, architect, U. A. Underwood, contractor.
Dedicated on May 24, 1938, this is the fourth school building named for Massachusetts philanthropist Samuel Williston. It was the premier educational institution for African Americans and graduated many talented students who took leadership roles in the community. Statewide, the high school was regarded as one of the best in music and sports. It was often the place where nationally known musicians and orators performed when in town. It became Gregory Elementary School in 1953 when a new Williston High School was built next door.
The Williston Industrial High School building is a three story red-brick building in the form of a rear-facing, t-shape. It is primarily a Neoclassical Revival style, most notably reflected in the centered entryway where four simple, colossal columns support a small, full-height portico at the top of a wide concrete staircase. Rectangular windows with brick lintels and concrete keystones symmetrically line the entire façade. Unlike many Neoclassical buildings, this building does not have any triangle pediments but is otherwise consistent with the style. Despite being noted as “Italianate Style with Neo-Classical Revival Style entry” in Historic Wilmington Foundation’s (HWF) Port City Architecture database, the building has minimal features of most Italianate architecture. The most notable Italianate characteristic is the flat or low-pitched roof that is common in Italianate Town House architecture. There are, however, no decorative brackets at the eaves or other decorative examples of Italianate style.[1]
This Neoclassical Revival style was typical for the architect, Leslie N. Boney Sr.. Boney, who is mentioned on the building’s historic plaque, was born on October 29, 1880 in Duplin County. In the early 1900s, Boney worked with leading architects across the Carolinas on many large-scale projects, and started his own architectural firm by 1924 in Wilmington. According to his son, Leslie N. Boney Jr., and architectural historian Catherine W. Bishir, Boney became especially well known for “solidly built, classically detailed brick schools.”[2] Williston Industrial High School is a prime example of this specialty of Boney’s, and his design has shaped the landscape of downtown Wilmington.
Aside from the contractor for Williston Industrial High School, U. A. Underwood, the only other name mentioned on the building’s historic plaque is its namesake – Samuel Williston. As the plaque notes, Williston was a philanthropist from Massachusetts. The first school named after Williston in the area was established by the American Missionary Association (AMA) in the early 1870s. According to local historian Bill Reaves, the school was named for him because he “gave considerable amounts of money to the AMA for educating black children.”[3] In total, three school buildings bore the Williston name in Wilmington before Williston Industrial High School was opened in 1938. Over the timespan of more than 60 years, Samuel Williston’s name has taken on new meaning in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Williston name has transcended the meaning of its original namesake’s philanthropy.
The three names mentioned on the historic plaque are inarguably important to the origins of the school, but there is not currently any mention of those who led Williston to be the esteemed institution it was. When the school opened, it was already a leading industrial school for African Americans in North Carolina thanks to community leaders like the first principal, David Clarke (D.C.) Virgo, who cultivated a reputation of excellence for the accredited industrial high school.[4] According to Margaret Mulrooney, Virgo “came to Wilmington convinced of the port city’s need for a public high school” and pushed for the expansion of Williston Graded School into Williston Primary and Industrial School that occurred in 1915. Mulrooney also credits Virgo for the school offering both vocational and “classical, college-preparatory curriculum.”[5] Virgo also advocated for the black community in other ways. For example, oversaw the opening of the first playground for black children in Wilmington as president of the community’s City Improvement League.[6]
The legacy and reputation of the Williston Industrial High School Building can also be attributed to the acclaim of some of its graduates. Two of the most notable alumni who graduated from the halls of that building were athletes - Althea Gibson and Meadowlark Lemon. Gibson was born in South Carolina in 1927, but spent most of her youth in New York City where she first started playing tennis. She had a long history of truancy, fighting, and other mischief and finally left school after junior high school. She worked a long string of jobs for the next several years, living in playing tennis or other street sports regularly. Gibson was competing in American Tennis Association tournaments by the early 1940s with support from a local tennis club, the Cosmopolitan Club, in Harlem. It was at one of these tournaments when Dr. Hubert Eaton, of Wilmington, met Althea in 1946. He subsequently took her under his care to train her, and enrolled her at Williston Industrial High School so she could pursue a college career.[7]
In her autobiography, Gibson recalls her pride in having graduated high school. Despite an extremely rocky history with school, Eaton worked with Williston to get her enrolled as a sophomore with an adjusted curriculum. She was in the school band and graduated with the class of 1949 at age 21. With the support structure of the school and Eaton family, Gibson got the opportunity to further hone her tennis skills on the college level. After graduation, she accepted a full scholarship to Florida A & M in Tallahasee.[8] Over the next decade, Gibson broke barriers in the tennis world as a black woman and paved te way for women like Serena and Venus Williams. The International Tennis Hall of Fame states that she won 11 titles during the 1950s in major championships including Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals.[9]
Meadowlark Lemon, born Meadow George Lemon III in Wilmington, was another notable athlete whose success can be directly attributed to their time walking the halls of Williston Industrial High School. Lemon is most well known for being a professional basketball player with the Harlem Globetrotters.[10] According to local researcher Edward Turberg, Lemon dreamed of becoming part of the legendary team since he was a young boy in the Brooklyn neighborhood of downtown Wilmington and successfully made the team upon graduating high school. After a brief stint in the military he officially signed onto the team and played around the world with the Globetrotters until 1979.[11]
The historical significance of Williston Industrial High School is not limited to the success of its most notable alumni though. As the only secondary school open to African Americans in Wilmington when it was operating, Williston Industrial High School would have educated a sizable proportion of the local Black community. In addition to well-known African Americans like Gibson and Lemon, the school’s legacy also lies with rest of the staff and students who came through its halls. There are dozens of oral histories collected by various individuals and institutions in which alumni, former staff, and other community members powerfully describe how countless teachers, librarians, administration, and students cultivated a positive learning environment for black children during Jim Crow at Williston Industrial High School.[12]
A local public art project, Lost in Transition, has highlighted ten educators associated with the Williston Industrial High School building. The project provides a glimpse into the local and communal legacy of the role models that made the school what it was, even after it was no longer operating as a high school. Lethia S. Hankins, became a memorable part of the Williston Senior High staff in 1958. Hankins was a graduate of the Industrial High School, from the class of 1951, and was an English and Drama teacher for over 30 years. The Lost in Transition project’s feature on Hankins notes her involvement beyond the school as a city councilwoman and co-chair of the 1898 Foundation. B. Constane O’Dell began her teaching career at Williston Industrial School in 1949 and led the highly regarded Glee Club and choir program. William Grady Lowe was a social studies teacher at Williston Industrial High School beginning in 1950, after graduating the school in 1942. The art project states that one of the Greensboro Four, Joseph McNeil partly attributes his activism to “the lessons Lowe taught his students.” Many of the school’s graduates and staff became notable civil rights activists. Another educator, Bertha Boykin Todd, was a librarian at Williston Industrial High School and became a prominent local activist in and out of the school system throughout the rest of her adulthood.[13]
This building served as much more than just a school for academics, however. Of course, as it was an industrial school, it offered a range of vocational courses including auto mechanics, masonry, and carpentry. The school also offered what as essentially a curriculum pathway for students seeking to go to college. For black children in Wilmington, Williston Industrial High was was also one of the few places to pursue other interests or talents. The band was formed in 1939, competing and performing in and out of Wilmington. A glee club was also formed by 1941 and they similarly competed and traveled locally and regionally.[14] In 1953, the school offered a thespians club, glee club, Hi-Y club, cheerleading, band, football, basketball, baseball, a crown and scepter club, and a National Homemakers of America club.[15]
In 1953, the high schoolers attending Williston Industrial High School were moved into a new building next door that became Williston Senior High School. The iconic 1937 building, however, continued to be used under the name Williston Junior High School. Beginning in the 1950s, the school became a source of debate in the city as activists like Dr. Hubert Eaton fought to desegregate the New Hanover County School system. In 1968, the junior high was moved to the newer Senior High School building and the 1937 building became Gregory Elementary School. Most of the students and community members who protested the discriminatory school system during the 1950s and 1960s attended school in the iconic building as either junior high or high school students, or had some personal connection to it through their family. The infamous Wilmington Ten Case of the 1970s can trace its origins to the school system’s decisions surrounding the Williston Industrial High School building and its successor, Williston Senior High School.[16] The building was almost demolished in the 1990s, but it is still in use as part of International School at Gregory.[17]
Even though it houses an entirely different school today, the local black community’s collective memory of “Williston” remains attached to the iconic visual of the 1937 building on S. 10th Street. The 1937 building is essentially part of a larger culture landscape on the several blocks along S. 10th St. that have been called a Williston school.
- Researched and written by Karla Emperatriz Berrios, UNCW Public History MA student.
[1] See Virginia McAlester et al., A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013).
[2] Leslie N. Boney Jr., ed. Catherine W. Bishir. “Boney, Leslie N., Sr. (1880-1964),” North Carolina Architects and Builders: A Biographical Dictionary, 2012, https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000529.
[3] William M. Reaves, Strength through Struggle: The Chronological and Historical Record of the African-American Community in Wilmington, North Carolina 1865-1950, ed. Beverly Tetterton (Wilmington, NC: New Hanover County Public Library, 1998), 152.
[4] Reaves, Strength through Struggle, 159.
[5] Margaret Mulrooney, Race, Place, and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018), 166-167.
[6] Reaves, Strength through Struggle, 44.
[7] Althea Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 33-45.
[8] Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, 61-66.
[9] “Althea Gibson,” International Tennis Hall of Fame, https://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/inductees/althea-gibson.
[10] Mulrooney, Race, Place, and Memory, 212.
[11] Edward Turberg, Williston Industrial High School Plaque Application1.
[12] Randall Library Oral History Collection. University of North Carolina Wilmington. https://digitalcollections.uncw.edu/digital/collection/oralhistory.
[13] “Lost in Transition” art project, Michael S. Williams. Accessed February 13, 2024. https://lostintransition.art/.
[14] Reaves, Strength through Struggle, 161-162.
[15] Williston Senior High School. The Willistonian. 1953. https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/236621.
[16] Heyward C. Bellamy Papers. William M. Randall Library Special Collections. University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
[17] “About Us,” International School at Gregory, last modified 2021, https://gregory.nhcs.net/about-us.
