RP: In the Interest of Progress, I REMOVED the Last Posting (on James Lester and his rants), so What to Do NOW??? (starts with an "M")

REPRINTED from here: http://theweathercontinues.blogspot.mx/2014/03/in-interest-of-progress-i-removed-last.html

Front of the Bellamy Mansion, Fifth and Market in Wilmington, NC

From in front of the mansion, looking across Kenan Plaza, you see:

The Carolina Apartments built by William R. Kenan, JUNIOR, before he built Kenan Fountain in 1921 and gave it to the city, memorializing his parents, including his father, William Rand Kenan, SENIOR, who with First Presbyterian caused the Wilmington Race Riot (Insurrection) of 1898, which THREW OUT the elected government, and REMOVED businesses, homes, and lives from many black folk.

At least a hundred of whose heads were impaled on stakes on the peninsula where the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear Rivers come together -- in clear view of downtown Wilmington. 

For generations, this was known as "Niggerhead Point", and Wilmington has NEVER regained its status as Cultural Mecca that it had when Wilmington had a majority of blacks, many in high office or prosperous business.

Pity.

Early tinted postcard of Carolina Apartments, before the fountain was built.

At the time it was built, this apartment building was the most technologically advanced building in all of North Carolina. Today, its appearance is of rotting slowly away, much of the iron-work of balconies and fire escapes has deteriorated enormously, although I believe it DOES have functional fire escapes.

William R. Kenan, Jr., LEFT Wilmington PERMANENTLY and in disgust at the small-mindedness of Wilmington residents. He never returned to visit even his sisters, who lived there until their deaths. In his autobiography, he barely even mentions Wilmington as the city he grew up in.

Then, in 1985 while this apartment building was used in the filming of:

Click image to see all of it.

 . . . I dated Robbie Anderson, a musician and music teacher who then lived there. His most previous boyfriend had been Thomas S. Kenan III, and I never pumped Robbie for info on Tom, but he DID say that when the two of them attended serious functions, people were always asking for "a piano or an organ", and Tom always helped their organizations out. This had been a PRIME CAUSE of Henry Flagler: to give ANY church, philosophical organization, or similar, their choice of piano or organ -- in the areas of Florida he developed.

Mary Lily Kenan, his third and final wife, had been known as "The Carolina Songbird" and he KNEW that nothing soothes the soul more than music.

Wilmington cypress swamp in morning.

Scott

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