SALISBURY — There was a new addition to the Juneteenth lineup over the weekend in Salisbury — a guided trolley tour through the annals of the city’s rich Black heritage.

Scattered around the city are numerous historical markers outlining various points in Salisbury’s history, including contextually significant Black accomplishments and incidents.

On Saturday, Livingstone College Honors Program Director Dr. Da’Tarvia Parrish and Jeff Cockerl, reference and instructional librarian, added meat to those historic bones.

“As we begin this tour, some things are kind of spread out but when we get into Livingstone College, things are closer together, so we want to give you a little bit of narration as we approach,” Parrish said.

The first stop was a two-fer: Oak Grove Freeman’s Cemetery Memorial and Soldier’s Memorial American Methodist Episcocapl Zion Church.

“Many people of African American descent were buried there but buried without markers,” Parrish said. “In 2006, there was a re-dedication of this cemetery to identify African Americans.”

Parrish said that there were names of those who were believed to be buried at the site and that those names were collected through family histories of descendants of the unnamed.

Next up, was a dark moment in Salisbury’s history — the 1906 lynchings of Jack Dillingham, John Gillespie and Nease Gillespie. According to a University of North Carolina website about lynching in the state, in the summer of 1906, five African Americans including Dillingham and John Gillespie, and Nease Gillespie, John’s son, were accused of murdering members of a white family, the Lyerlys, near Salisbury.

Held in jail in Charlotte until their trial, the five defendants were brought back to Salisbury in August for a special session of Superior Court. According to newspaper accounts, on the night of Aug. 6, a mob led by George Hall gathered outside the Salisbury jail.

For some time, sheriff’s deputies and the state militia guarded the prisoners, but as the mob grew in size and violence, the protection was withdrawn. Soon thereafter, the mob stormed the jail and removed their three victims, leaving others in jail unmolested. The mob paraded Dillingham and the Gillespies downtown before hanging them near the corner of Long and Henderson streets, at the Henderson Ballground.

Hall was later tried and convicted for leading the mob. He served some time in prison before escaping, being recaptured and then being pardoned.

Parrish mentioned that information on those lynchings and others were collected by the Equal Justice Initiative and featured in a museum in Montgomery, Alabama.

Turning a corner onto East Bank Street, Cockerl discussed the William Valentine House.

Cockerl said that Valentine was a slave and his home is one of the oldest residences in Rowan County.

Shortly thereafter, Calvary Baptist Church on South Long Street became the topic of discussion.

“Coming up on your right, you will see one of the churches built under the leadership of Harry Cowan,” Parrish said.

According to the ​​NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Cowan, born a slave in 1810 in Mocksville, was allowed by his owner the freedom to travel and preach — distinguishing him as a pioneering Black Baptist preacher in the state.

In acknowledgement of his importance, Baptist historians and contemporaries called him the “father” of Black Baptist preachers in North Carolina. Cowan’s preaching abilities served him well and, by the time of his death in 1904, he was credited with organizing 49 churches and baptizing 8,500 individuals plus preaching thousands of funeral and marriage ceremonies.

That site includes information about Cowan’s time in Salisbury.

“Cowan’s personal congregation at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Salisbury was part of the Rowan Baptist Association, which he served as the first moderator,” it said. “The Rowan Association was organized in 1877 and was one of the strongest Associations within the statewide Baptist Convention.”

That area of town is noted for another episode in local Black history. It was a prominent Black neighborhood called Dixonville until urban renewal changed the landscape.

“Dixonville is a historical Black neighborhood on this side of Salisbury,” Cockerl said. “Most of the homes in Dixonville were torn down during the 1960s time of urban renewal, where a lot of cities were tearing down older homes.”

The tour shifted gears towards Livingstone College’s campus and the prominent individuals that carved out a legacy for Salisbury’s historically Black college and to a larger extent the surrounding town. Those names included such fixtures as Wiley Immanuel Lash, William O. Ferron, Pinkney A. Stevenson and John C. Dancy along with the college founder Joseph C. Price.

Dimitri Cheatham recently moved to Salisbury from Charlotte and was one of the guests on the trolley for the final tour of the day.

“I did not realize all that was here,” Cheatham said, adding that she did not realize Livingstone College included so much history.

“I have never seen the college,” she said. “I have been here three years. I did not know the history behind it.”

Cheatham acknowledged that from her seat towards the back of the trolley, it was hard to hear everything, but that she was thankful she could follow the city’s network of historic markers at another time.

“There are a lot of markers,” she said. “That is what I do like and that is what I will be going back to see, but just to be here in Salisbury and knowing that all that history is here about my culture, it is interesting.”