Echoes from the Sandhills

Echoes in Action: Lives that Shaped the Sandhills and the World

Series 4 - Echo 9: Echoes of Determination: C. D. Waddell and the Power of the Printed Word

History often remembers the loudest voices.

But some of the most important figures are those who worked quietly — armed not with wealth or political power, but with intellect, perseverance, and a belief that their people deserved the opportunity to learn, grow, and be heard.

Such was the case with Cornelius D. Waddell.

Though only fragments of his story survive today, the pieces that remain reveal a man deeply committed to education, literacy, civic engagement, and the advancement of African Americans during one of the most uncertain periods in Southern history.

Born in 1858 (some records cite 1855) to John Waddell and Mary Ann Waddell, Cornelius entered the world just before the Civil War transformed the nation. His childhood unfolded during years of upheaval as slavery ended and newly emancipated families began the difficult work of building lives in freedom.

By the time Waddell reached young adulthood, African Americans across North Carolina were establishing schools, churches, businesses, newspapers, and civic organizations while also confronting growing resistance to Black political and educational advancement during Reconstruction.

It was within this environment that Waddell emerged as a young intellectual voice in Fayetteville.

In 1874, while still remarkably young, he co-founded The Educator alongside William Caswell Smith. The newspaper became one of the earliest African American-owned and edited newspapers in North Carolina.

At the time, publishing a newspaper as a young Black man in the South required extraordinary determination.

A newspaper demanded literacy, funding, printing access, subscribers, public confidence, and courage. More than anything, it required belief — belief that Black voices deserved to be preserved in print and that African American communities had the right to shape their own intellectual future.

Waddell clearly believed they did.

The Educator declared its purpose was the “intellectual and moral” development of African American youth in North Carolina. Those words reflected a broader movement among Black educators, ministers, journalists, and civic leaders who understood that literacy was inseparable from freedom itself.

For men like Waddell, education was not merely about reading books. It was about citizenship.

Opportunity.

Dignity.

Self-definition.

The newspaper also connected Waddell to influential African American leadership networks of the Reconstruction era. Bishop James Walker Hood of the AME Zion Church reportedly supported the publication and encouraged subscriptions among church members. Hood was among the most influential Black leaders in North Carolina at the time — an educator, minister, political organizer, and advocate for civil rights.

Surviving newspaper accounts reveal that Waddell’s role extended beyond journalism.

A February 17, 1876 article from the North Carolina Gazette referenced “Cornelius Waddell” in the midst of political commentary surrounding Republican appointments and racial tensions in North Carolina. The article also mentioned Congressman Hyman and Bishop Hood, placing Waddell within a broader network of African American civic and political leadership during Reconstruction.

Though written through the hostile racial lens common in many newspapers of the era, the article reveals something important:

C. D. Waddell was publicly known.

He was not simply a teacher or editor working in obscurity. He was connected to the political and intellectual currents shaping Black advancement in postwar North Carolina.

Yet like many early African American newspapers, The Educator struggled financially.

After roughly a year of publication, the paper ceased operations in 1875. The publishers openly acknowledged the challenge, writing that a lack of patronage forced them to stop publication.

Even so, the newspaper’s short life mattered.

Its pages documented a generation determined to move from bondage toward education, citizenship, and self-determination.

Waddell’s commitment to education did not end when the presses stopped.

In October 1880, he married Ann Eliza Williston, daughter of Frank and Henrietta Williston. Together they established a family during an era when African American households across the South were striving to build stability and opportunity despite persistent inequality and racial barriers.

By 1910, census records show Cornelius D. Waddell working as a public school teacher. Living in the household were his wife, Ann Eliza, and their daughter, Etta.

That small census entry speaks volumes.

The young man who once helped publish a newspaper devoted to intellectual uplift had devoted his later years to teaching children directly.

The transition feels fitting.

Both professions centered on the same enduring belief:that knowledge could transform lives.

One can imagine Waddell standing before students who represented a generation unimaginable only decades before — Black children openly attending school during a time when many of their parents or grandparents had once been denied the right to read at all.

There is something profoundly moving about that continuity.

He wrote.

He taught.

He encouraged.

He documented.

He believed.

And sometimes belief itself becomes a form of resistance.

When Cornelius D. Waddell died in 1911, he was laid to rest in Brookside Cemetery in Fayetteville — the same city where he had worked to advance education, literacy, and civic thought among African Americans during the fragile years following the Civil War.

Today, no grand monument marks his legacy.

Few photographs survive.

His name rarely appears in broader historical narratives.

And yet, men like C. D. Waddell helped lay the intellectual foundation upon which future generations would stand.

Through newspapers.

Through classrooms.

Through community leadership.

Through the simple but powerful act of believing that Black minds mattered.

Echoes Remain

The story of Cornelius D. Waddell reminds us that history is often carried forward not only by famous national figures, but also by teachers, writers, publishers, and quiet builders of community. Though much of his life has faded into the shadows of time, the surviving record reveals a man devoted to education, literacy, and the advancement of his people during one of the most pivotal periods in American history. His echoes remain in the printed words he helped preserve and in the generations who continued the work after him.

Echoes from the Sandhills

Echoes in Action: Lives that Shaped the Sandhills and the World

Echo 8 - A Young Voice in 1875: Education as Uplift

In 1875, just ten years after emancipation, a student at the Howard School in Fayetteville, John Tyson, stood and delivered a speech on education as part of a school oratory exercise. His words were later published in The Educator, a Black newspaper serving the Fayetteville community.

This was not simply something written in quiet reflection.

It was spoken; shared aloud, before an audience.

A young voice, rising in a new era.

He titled his piece “A Declamation.”

In the tradition of the time, a declamation was more than a speech, it was a demonstration of thought, expression, and conviction. Students were expected not only to speak well, but to speak with purpose.

And Tyson did just that.

“Education is something useful, and is badly needed among us… it is the only thing that will ever be the upbuilding of our race.”

There is no uncertainty in that statement. No hesitation. No softening. Just clarity spoken aloud.

And he did not stop there.

“I tell you, my friends, education is a great thing. But it seems that there are but few of you that think so.”

That is not simply encouragement. It is a challenge—delivered directly to those within earshot.

Imagine the moment.

A young man, only a decade removed from a time when people who looked like him were denied the right to read, now standing and declaring before others that education was not only necessary, but essential.

Not optional. Not secondary.

Essential.

And then, he presses further.

Tyson speaks candidly about the choices that stand in the way, about time and money spent on things that do not build or uplift. He calls attention to habits that distract from growth and delay progress. His words are not meant to comfort. They are meant to awaken.

It is not comfortable language. It is honest language.

And perhaps even more powerful when spoken aloud.

What makes this moment remarkable is not only what was said—but who said it.

A student.

Young, yet already carrying a sense of responsibility; not only for himself, but for his community. In a time when education for Black Americans was still limited, contested, and often dangerous, he did not question its value. He proclaimed it.

In places like the Sandhills, where education often began in brush arbors, church spaces, homes, and modest schoolhouses, this belief in learning was not theoretical. It was lived. It was pursued with urgency.

Tyson understood that education was more than knowledge. In his words, it instilled pride. It shaped character. It changed how a person saw themselves—and how they moved through the world.

Education was transformation.

We have more access now—more schools, more resources, more pathways than could have been imagined in 1875.

And yet the question still lingers:

Do we value it more—or have we simply grown accustomed to having it?

Do we see education as a tool for uplift—or merely something to complete?

Do we carry the same urgency that a young man carried when he stood and spoke, just a decade after freedom?

Sometimes, when we look back, we expect to find only struggle. But what we often find instead is clarity. Vision. Determination.

In 1875, a student stood and spoke with conviction about the power of education—not just for personal advancement, but for the upbuilding of a people.

That voice still echoes.

The voice of a student.

The voice of John Tyson.

And it is not simply asking—it is calling us, even now, to consider what we will do with what we have been given.

Echoes of the Sandhills

Series 4: Echoes in Action: Lives That Shaped the Sandhills and the World

Echo 7:  Phoebe Walker and the Women Who Delivered a Community

In the early 1900s, long before hospitals were within reach for most rural families, life in the Sandhills began at home, often in the quiet hours of the night, guided by the steady hands of women whose names were rarely recorded, but whose work was never forgotten.

But this tradition did not begin in the 1900s.

Long before emancipation, in the slave quarters of plantations across the Sandhills and beyond, Black women served as midwives bringing life into a world that often denied it dignity. With no formal training, limited resources, and under the weight of oppression, they relied on knowledge passed down through generations. They understood the rhythms of the body, the power of herbs, and the strength required to usher both mother and child safely through childbirth. Their work was sacred, even when their humanity was not fully recognized.

That legacy did not disappear. It carried forward.

One of the women who inherited that tradition was Phoebe Walker.

In 1910, Phoebe Walker was a young wife and mother living in Barbecue Township in Harnett County. Like many women of her time, her life centered around family, home, and community. She was raising children of her own, learning firsthand the realities of childbirth, resilience, and care.

By 1917, her role had expanded beyond her own household. On a birth certificate from that year, her name appears again, this time not as a mother, but as a midwife, the one entrusted to help bring new life into the world.

Phoebe Walker was part of a long tradition of Black midwives often called “granny midwives” who served as the backbone of healthcare in rural communities across the Sandhills. In areas like Jonesboro, Broadway, Pineview, Stewarts Creek, and the surrounding countryside, access to doctors was limited. Families depended on women like Phoebe—women who carried knowledge passed down through generations, who understood both the physical and spiritual weight of birth.

They traveled by foot, wagon, or whatever means they had, answering calls at all hours. They brought with them not only skill, but calm, wisdom, and faith. They stayed after the baby was born, tending to mother and child, ensuring that both had a strong start.

By 1930, Phoebe Walker appears again in the census, now a widowed woman, still living in the same community. Though the record does not list her occupation, it is hard to imagine that her work had ended. Women like Phoebe did not simply stop being midwives. They remained pillars of their communities, called upon in moments of need, trusted across families and generations.

Phoebe Walker’s story is not just her own. It represents the countless women who labored quietly behind the scenes, delivering babies who would go on to shape families, sustain communities, and carry forward the legacy of the Sandhills.

Their names may only appear in fragments, on a census line, a birth certificate, or in the fading memory of a family story; but their impact is immeasurable.

Every child they helped bring into the world is a living testament to their care.

And in communities like ours, it is not an exaggeration to say:

They delivered more than babies.

They delivered a people.

Dedication

This Echo is dedicated to Phoebe Walker and to all the midwives of the Sandhills—the women who walked dusty roads in the dark,

who answered calls without hesitation,

who carried knowledge in their hands and faith in their hearts.

May we remember their names when we can,

and honor their work always—

for in every generation that followed,

their legacy lives on.