Recalling a communtiy that once thrived
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 2, 2017 4:06 PM
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Phoenix Merchant, 4, and Kamaurye Whitehead, 8, race around a set of circular stairs during the annual Little Washington Reunion Saturday at H.V. Brown Park Saturday. The first reunion was in 2002 at Waynesborough Park.
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Kamaurye Whitehead, 8, and Phoenix Merchant, 4, roll down the hill while Orie Henry Jr. puts up posters during the annual Little Washington Reunion Saturday at H.V. Brown Park Saturday. The first reunion was in 2002 at Waynesborough Park.
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Orie Henry Jr. nails posters to a wooden wall at H.V. Brown Park Saturday as he and others set up for the annual Little Washington Reunion. The posters are covered with photos and written memories from the community.
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Kamaurye Whitehead, 8, and Phoenix Merchant, 4, play in the rain during the annual Little Washington Reunion Saturday at H.V. Brown Park Saturday. The first reunion was in 2002 at Waynesborough Park.
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Phoenix Merchant, 4, and Kamaurye Whitehead, 8, race through the rain during the annual Little Washington Reunion Saturday at H.V. Brown Park Saturday. The first reunion was in 2002 at Waynesborough Park.
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Ashari Blackman runs towards a shelter at H.V. Brown park with her dog Princess. Although several showers delayed setup for the annual Little Washington Reunion attendees were still able to enjoy each other's company and food.
A new generation of children laughed as they ran and played in the rain Saturday afternoon at H.V. Brown Park.
Sitting under a shelter behind them was the generation before ---- children who grew up in the area when there was no park ---- back when the community was known as Little Washington.
The handful of people who braved the occasional downpours to attend the 14th annual Little Washington Reunion refused to let the weather ruin their chance to get together and reminisce about growing up in what they remember as "a city within the city of Goldsboro."
The former community ran from where U.S. 117 is now located, to Center Street. It also included the area that is now Waynesborough Park.
It was annexed into Goldsboro in 1915.
In its heyday, it was a self-contained town, with its own restaurants and shops, nightclubs, a library, dry cleaners, doctors and lawyers, churches and schools.
Larry Jones, 67, laughs as he recalls slipping into the back of his grandfather's truck to go into the nearby fields.
"He worked in the fields, and he had a truck where he would pick up workers and take them to the fields," Jones said. "I sneaked down into the back of the truck as a kid to get to the fields.
"What can I say? We had fun. I can remember as child growing up here, my grandfather was the only blacksmith in Goldsboro."
Jones said his grandfather would let him operate the bellows to keep the fire coming up.
"He would put a rope around the horse's back leg and hold the back leg up, and the horse would be jumping," he said. "Granddaddy would say, 'Don't get behind that horse.'"
Jones would often visit his paternal grandmother who lived just a few blocks away.
When he thinks of her home, Jones recalls the walnut trees in the back yard.
He and his bother would pick up walnuts and throw them at each other.
"I hit my brother with a walnut," Jones said pointing to his forehead.
Doreatha Macklin, 81, who founded the reunion, says she can still hear her mother's voice calling her and her friends home after they had spent hours in a mulberry tree eating the fruit.
"Everybody could hear her calling," she said. "There were three of us -- my two friends and me. In the summertime we would get up there and eat the mulberries until they called us."
Then they could come home with the evidence of what they had been doing still visible on their faces, she said.
Standing under the picnic shelter as rain pounded its tin roof, Macklin points in different directions naming where different houses and businesses once stood.
"There were houses all down here," she said. "This is the part that we called the bottom. This is where the water would stand. We lived up on the hill. I can't even imagine where it was now. It was on Canal Street."
As the water would rise in the "bottom," it would begin to seep into houses, and residents would have to seek higher ground, she said.
Macklin said she thought about a reunion of some sorts for several years before finally starting one to preserve the history of Little Washington so that it would not be lost to the urban renewal that replaced it.
"I said I would like to do something to keep our heritage going" she said. "They (local residents) kept coming to me to do this."
The first few years the reunion was held at Waynesborough Park before moving to H.V. Brown Park.
"We love Little Washington," she said. "We had a town in a town. We had everything the downtown had except for a shopping center."
But Macklin and the others who grew up in Little Washington worry that the memory of their community will cease as they grew older and pass away.
"There are few of us left, not that many," she said.
And that, she said, is why it is so important that they not allow obstacles like Saturday's rains to wash away those memories.
That include ensuring that succeeding generations, such as the children playing in the rain, know their heritage and what residents of Little Washington stood for, Macklin said.