[Posted Mar. 5, 2008]

Local Company Donates "Colored" Sink To Group

By Leonard E. Colvin

Chief Reporter

New Journal & Guide

     Mae Breckenridge-Haywood, as a member of the Portsmouth African American Historical Society, is used to collecting and storing stuff from the past. 
Sifting through old suitcases, crates, musty boxes in a basement  or roaming between book shelves, she searches for pieces to history’s puzzle. The older the better.
  Her most recent historic treasure was a donation.  It is an old sink from an abandoned warehouse located on Constitutional Avenue in the mid-city business district of Portsmouth. The old metal sink has the word “colored” embossed on the top.   
      It is taking up space in her garage these days.  Time, dust and neglect caused the old sink’s skin to yellow and its body to sag.
      Haywood, who retired from I.C. Norcom High School as a librarian, has discovered that the sink is not significant because any super stars of yesteryear may have washed their faces and hands in it or that it was built with some special material or ornament. While it may be a worthless piece of junk, it is worth its rusting weight in historic gold.
       Once upon a time, Blacks and Whites, by law, had to use separate public facilities, including bathrooms, sinks and drinking fountains.
       Haywood said she wants to do research on the families who lived near the site of the warehouse and the men and women who may have used the “colored” sink.
The old Midtown neighborhood  which stood near the facility and provided black labor, is now gone, she said. 

Mae Breckenridge-Haywood

     But old city directories and other resources at the Portsmouth Library may shed light on this part of the sink’s mystery.
       “We often talk about the time when separate but equal was the norm,” said Haywood.
“But here we have an example, an artifact …a piece of history that reveals to us that period in our history. It is an exciting find  A lot of our young people do not believe such a time existed. Now we have something to show them other than pictures and film and our memories.”
   

    Haywood said that once the old rusting and battered sink is restored, it will be part of the artifacts to be placed in the museum, planned for downtown Portsmouth. She said the African American Historical Society is not only looking for historic artifacts to display like the Jim Crow sink, but monetary donations as well to restore the old library.
       The city’s old “colored” or Community Library will house the facility, now that it has been moved to a lot at 900 Elm St. Haywood said  the Portsmouth African American Historical Society envisions placing the sink in the library once it is fully restored.
       “This is evidence to show a chapter of American history that a lot of people cannot believe existed,” said Haywood. “But it did.  And people can now visualize part of American apartheid.”
       Just how she acquired the old, rusty Jim Crow era relic, Haywood told the New Journal and Guide,  is just as interesting as the piece itself.
       In mid-January,  Haywood said she received a call from Scott Newsome, the manager at a truck shipping container yard in Portsmouth.  In the container yard was an abandoned warehouse. He found the sink while exploring the place.
       “He said he had taken a picture of it and taken it to a couple of museums which were not interested,” Haywood recalled.  “So he was instructed to contact me. And I was invited to the warehouse to see the sink.”
       Although the warehouse was not in use, homeless people have found it to be a suitable shelter. The rusting sink was still bolted to a wall with no partitions.
       Immediately Haywood said that she wanted to know who owned the property where the warehouse was located so she could determine if she could assume ownership.  Property records indicated that the property was owned by CSX Railroad in the midtown part of Portsmouth, near the river.
       “We found out who to send a letter to in late January,” she recalled. The letter explained the sink’s powerful history as well as its value as a museum exhibit.
       Five days later there was a knock at her front door. A small gentleman driving a big white pick up truck “told me he had something I wanted.”
       Meg Sacks, spokesperson for CSX Railroad based in Jacksonville, Fla., said the sink was located in a building where locomotives were repaired. CSX bought out Seaboard. It owns the old building which Sacks says is condemned and has not been used since the 1980s to repair locomotives. CSX has about 1400 employees in the region and still provides train service.
       “We are glad to make this contribution to the Portsmouth Historical Society,” said Mrs. Sacks.  We think that it is important to help with educating people today about our times past. This was not a happy time, but we feel it is important to educate present and future generations on that history.”
       It’s a past that affects people differently, said Haywood. “The man who delivered it seemed like he was ashamed.”
       “There are people in their 30s and younger who do not believe that we lived under laws which required ‘colored’ and ‘white’ drinking fountains, toilets and even sinks.  This is great proof of a time which no longer exists. But we must always remember to make sure it does not repeat itself.”

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