The property she built on Broad Street in 1896 (the original structure she purchased in 1875 was destroyed by a fire) still bears her name and sits just over a block away from a monument to Confederate soldiers that was constructed in 1900. By 2014 calculations, that would have put her economic wealth at $2.3 million.īuilding in Edenton once owned by Josephine Napoleon Leary, a former slave who in the 1800s became wealthy and purchased multiple properties downtown. Joseph Bembry was a barber in a town where - even in a segregated Southern state - there’s evidence of a few success stories among black people: the most notable being Josephine Napoleon Leary, a barber (along with her husband), who was freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War and purchased six properties in town by the time she was 25. Uncle Elton (I always referred to him by his middle name to some of my cousins he was Uncle Johnny) was the first of seven children raised in what he described to prison officials as a loving, stable household not far from the waterfront and less than two blocks from the Lane House, a 1719 structure on East Queen Street that’s believed to be the oldest surviving home in the state. Strip the area of the modern cars, and I would imagine Edenton’s historic district looking similar to the way it did in 1912, the year Uncle Elton was born to Joseph and Eva Bembry - my grandparents. It feels like entering a time warp when you travel through the streets of Edenton’s historic district, an eclectic collection of colonial and plantation-era homes, a charm that earned the town one of the 11 spots on Forbes magazine’s list of the prettiest towns in America. That began my first real introduction to the man and the world from which he emerged.Įdenton, North Carolina, is a picturesque town of just over 5,000 people that sits on the north side of the Albemarle Sound, about a 90-minute drive west of the more popular Outer Banks.
BAMBI BLAZE MISS BIMBO PDF
I clicked on the attachment labeled “Bembry record,” and what materialized was a PDF file that was 89 pages long. I’ll be honest, that email gave me chills.
Three days later, I received a response: “ Good Afternoon Jerry, Please see attached.” After the staff meeting, I contacted the Massachusetts Department of Correction and placed a public records request for his file. I wanted to write about him in connection with the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X on Feb. My personal connection with him came up during a discussion of Black History Month at The Undefeated. Uncle Elton.Īlthough I spent less than 10 times with him in my life, Uncle Elton remains the most brilliant man I’ve ever encountered. My father’s oldest brother, John Elton Bembry. As Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography, Bimbi was “the first man I had ever seen command total respect … with his words.”
To Malcolm X, he was Bimbi – a man whose influence played a significant role in altering the life path of the famed Muslim minister and human rights activist. Some charges were legit (breaking and entering) others (loitering, vagrancy) likely the result of him simply being a black man in America. To society, he was a career criminal – a man with a lengthy arrest record that extended coast-to-coast. To officials in the Massachusetts Department of Correction, he was prisoner #22138 – a tall, slender “light Mulatto,” whose personality was described by his prison caseworker as “intelligent, studious … influential among other colored inmates.”
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