90-year-old Wilmington resident shares newspaper collection, speaks at Cape Fear Museum

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — 90-year-old Veteran Wesley O. Nixon was born in Wilmington and still lives here today.

Over the years Nixon began collecting newspapers, going all the way back to 1952. Nixon has seen and documented Wilmington through the time of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, the building of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, and much more.  

On Sunday, Nixon shared just some of those memories with others at the Cape Fear Museum. Nixon said he hopes his stories will give new perspective on a city he’s known for nearly a century.

“I always loved Wilmington, and I’ve been a lot of places, but always came back. This is home. That’s why I’m here,” Nixon said. 

Martha Afetse is Nixon’s cousin, though she never met him until the year 2000. She said after meeting and hearing the history of their family, she began to understand more about her own identity.

“By talking to him and his sister, his sister is 98, and reading our history I began to be able to find some wholeness within myself,” Afetse said. 

Afetse also wrote a biography on Nixon detailing his time attending Williston Senior High School, serving in the military, and growing up in a segregated south. Afetse said she hopes that more African American families will work to unravel their legacy.  

“As African American people, we need to tell our story,” Afetse said. “We need to tell our story to our children. My mother never told me my story. My father never told me my story. My sister never told me my story. My uncles, no one ever told me my story. It wasn’t until I met Wesley and his sister in 2000 that I began to understand my story.”  

Nixon added that to preserve those stories, he hopes more people in the community will work to save history, as he has.  

“Just do something, and stop waiting for somebody else to do it, and if they don’t do it, it never gets done. Do it yourself.”