Farewell to the Longtime Home of Wilmington’s Black Press

On the Monday before Election Day, while much of Wilmington was anxiously thinking about the future, a backhoe on South 7th Street was tearing down a piece of the past.

One hundred and thirty years of history “came crashing down,” Paul Jervay wrote in a piece published the following week on the demolition of The Wilmington Journal.

Jervay knows what he’s talking about–his family founded the paper. Just three years after the 1898 coup and massacre saw the burning of the local Black-owned paper, The Daily Record, Jervay’s grandfather, Robert, opened a printing shop. He founded The Cape Fear Journal in 1927, taking up the mantle of the Black press from Alex Manly. It was renamed The Wilmington Journal 18 years later.

Jervay’s father, Paul Sr., moved to Raleigh, where he launched The Carolinian in the late 1930s. The third generation of the Jervay family also took up the cause; Paul Jervay was the Carolinian’s publisher for over half a century, and his cousin, Mary Alice Jervay Thatch, worked at The Wilmington Journal in various capacities since she was a child and took over formally in 1996.

But, after playing an important role in the Cape Fear region for decades, the Journal has more recently struggled with financial issues.

Back in 2015, Wilmington brought a code enforcement case regarding the century-old building that housed the paper, requiring just shy of $60,000 of work to bring it into compliance. The family got the structural issues under control, at least for a time, but not long afterward they also faced a tax lien–and storm damage from Hurricane Florence in 2018. A 2021 fundraiser saved the building from the auction block, raising roughly $95,000, according to the family. But the building was still in need of repairs. 

Later that year, Thatch passed away—a devastating blow for the family and the paper. Thatch was known for her commitment to covering the story of the Wilmington 10 and the eventually successful quest for their exoneration. She was also seen as a dogged and resourceful problem-solver who kept the paper running. 

The printing presses largely stopped after her death, except for occasional editions. The estate, the building, and the legacy of the paper fell to Thatch’s daughters.

Paul Jervay said her loss was “a challenge—and that’s not even a sufficient word—to recover from.” Still, the family and other supporters remained optimistic.

A small but growing organization known as the Wilmington Journal Breakfast Club had been workshopping efforts that included rehabbing The Wilmington Journal as part of a broader plan. Jervay said last year that he imagined that would involve a community development corporation, with a focus on the deep history of the neighborhood, which also included the nearby Gregory Congregational United Church of Christ and the site of the original Daily Record development corporation.

But problems with its building lingered, and by early 2024 the cost of restoring the building to its former glory had swollen to over $500,000, according to Jervay. And the issues weren’t just cosmetic. In April, the city cited another round of code enforcement violations, including several more serious structural issues that included the partial collapse of the roof and walls, and the cave-in of the second floor in the back of the building.

The appraised value of the building had dropped from over $120,000 to roughly $35,000, with over $215,000 needed to bring it up to code; that disproportionate ratio of value to compliance cost rendered the building officially dilapidated.

According to the city and Jervay, the family felt they had no choice but to have the building demolished. As a crew crushed the old building earlier this month, copies of nearly century-old papers were strewn about, lying tattered in the dirt.

It was a sad end to a long and important history, as Jervay wrote last week: “The Journal Building had withstood a 1973 bombing, and the ravaging of two hurricanes before it bowed to the elements. Throughout its history the building was the headquarters for free speech, and community activism on behalf of Wilmington’s African-American community.”

The demolition caught some in the community off guard, including Cash Michaels, who had been a prominent writer for the  Journal and instrumental in pursuing justice for the Wilmington 10. Most recently, he’s helped lead the Wilmington Breakfast Club effort.

“I really can’t tell you what happens next, but all of this should illustrate why Mary Alice Jervay Thatch was such an important force in the Wilmington community,” Michaels wrote in an email. “She would have found a way to keep the Journal going, and that building still standing.”

So, as Jervay posited in his recent piece, “with no building, what does the next chapter in the existence of The Wilmington Journal look like?”

The family has been fairly private about the paper’s struggles, and hasn’t responded to several requests for comment. Recently, Jervay quoted Robin Thatch Johnson, one of Thatch’s daughters, who said the family is interested in rebuilding and continuing publication. The Journal’s website, which went down last summer, is back up and remains active, although there’s no local Wilmington-area content of late.

There have been questions, including from Jervay, about why no one in the broader community emerged to help save the historic building. “Why were there no hurricane damage funds forthcoming?” Jervey wrote last week, also questioning what happened to the New Hanover Community Endowment’s interest in saving the building. 

WHQR reached out to both the Historic Wilmington Foundation, which champions historic properties in the city, and the New Hanover Community Endowment, the $1.3 billion foundation formed from sale proceeds of New Hanover Regional Medical Center.

Bill Stolz, who recently took over as executive director of the foundation, said it was a shame to hear of the loss of the building, but in his short tenure he hadn’t heard of any conversations about grants or other funding to help restore the property. 

The endowment’s newly appointed chief marketing officer Jodi Tatiana Charles said it had no record of any application of grant funding regarding the building and added that anyone could file a request through the endowment’s online portal.

But there’s a deeper question here about how The Wilmington Journal–building or no–can get back to the core mission of maintaining the Black press in Wilmington. Jevay sees it not just as a testament to the past, but the route to the future for  Wilmington’s Black community.

“Now there are two empty lots on South 7th Street. One where Alex Manley’s Daily Record was burned to the ground, a casualty of the 1898 Massacre, and now The Wilmington Journal building, a victim of demolition,” Jervay wrote. “With its demise, what tangible evidence is there left of the institution committed to freedom of speech, freedom of press, and independent thought?” 

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the name of Paul Jervay’s father.

Ben Schachtman is the news director for WHQR in Wilmington and co-author of our weekly newsletter on the Cape Fear Region, The Dive.