(The Wake Forest Planning Department is updating the Northeast Community Neighborhood Plan, and part of the effort is to find out as much as possible about the history of the area, including the Black department, Station No. 2.)
The Wake Forest Fire Department, the original one started in 1921 with Thomas M. Arrington as fire chief, was made up of all white men. Belatedly, and probably after persuasion and pressure from people in the northeast quadrant of town where everyone was Black, the department realized Black men could fight fires just as well as white men and created Station No. 2 in 1942.
In 2007 one of the few surviving members of that station, Matthew Williams, then 73, talked about his experiences as a fireman and his life in Wake Forest with the Gazette editor. He was not one of the original firemen – he was 12 when it was formed – but he remembers those first members of Station No. 2 and those who joined later.
Frank R. Keith, the third fire chief who served from 1941 to 1958, organized what was then known as the colored volunteer fire station. He was the father of the fifth chief, Bruce Keith, and grandfather of the eighth chief, Jimmy Keith.
In a picture that accompanied the article, Williams is shown with Chief Edward Alston, George Massenburg and Robert Alston in front of a fire truck the white department bought in 1948 and gave to Station No. 2 in 1953. Williams, who then lived at the Wake Forest Care Center (now closed), remembered some of the other firemen he served with like Luther Tuck, Oscar Smith, Buster Alston, McKinley Mitchell, William Thomas and Eugene Lucas. Smith served at least 10 terms as the president of the N.C. Volunteer Firemen’s Association.
“The fire department was up there by the water tank,” Williams said. A garage-like building, it was on North Taylor Street where the Alston-Massenburg Center now stands. The fire house burned down – “Somebody tried to sleep in there one night” – about the same time the black and white departments were combined. Williams said he did not join the combined department. “I knew I was too old to go down there.”
When the black department was formed, “They started off with an old panel truck with the body cut off. The town gave us their first truck later on,” Williams said.
The largest fire he remembers was the one that destroyed the Keith store on South White Street on Jan. 26, 1961. Williams said he was out on one of his many jobs, working as a carrier for the News & Observer, when the fire began early that morning but he joined the other firefighters later. A severe ice storm struck that morning, and firemen from town and Rolesville had trouble staying on their feet while holding the fire hoses that coated everything but the flames with ice.
The other large fire Williams remembers destroyed the slaughterhouse “down in the woods” off Wait Avenue that was owned by Wait Brewer Sr., who also owned a grocery store on South White Street.
Williams’ mother was Peggy Fort and his father was June Williams, called Juney. His three sisters, Gladys Gill, Mary Massenburg and Ella Smith, lived in Wake Forest and some of his nieces worked at the care center.
Juney Williams worked for Mrs. C.L. Jackson, who owned the first coal yard in town. It was first down where the underpass is now, Williams said, and then moved down by the old water plant (now Dawn Morehead’s dental practice) by the railroad tracks.
Thinking about the street lights on Nelson Street, “We used to play under the lights, things like I Spy and hide-and-seek.” The hill on Pine Street was steeper then, Williams remembered, and the children called it Happy Hill. When it snowed, “We would get our mama’s chairs out of the kitchen and slide down hill on them.”
Williams attended DuBois School through the fifth grade and then quit to go work. Along with carrying the newspaper for W.L. Glover, Williams worked as an electrician, delivered groceries for Frank Keith and worked at both the W.W. Holding Cotton Company and the farm the family owned.
Still active, Williams walks to the downtown area most days and can recall the stores that once occupied spaces like the Harrison grocery store that was between the Keith grocery store and Jones Hardware, all across from what is now Burkenstocks Restaurant.
He remembers going to movies in the Forest Theater (now the site of Fidelity Bank). At first, blacks entered from the alley and up a back staircase, but later they entered from the front although they still had to sit in the balcony.
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One Response
I remember those days like today, Movies were 15cts kids 35,cts adults. My parents never ever shopped at Keith grocery.