Celebration honors Mama Tene’s leadership and legacy

More than 100 Pamlico County residents sporting suits, dresses with blazers, gowns and dashikis arrived at the Deliverance Temple Ministries in Bayboro on the last Sunday of February to restart the county’s traditional MLK Day celebration after a twenty-five year hiatus.

But the focus of this year’s event was not Martin Luther King Jr., but the event’s founder, the late Ernestine Mattocks.

Known as Mama Tene for the motherly love she spread across her community, Mattocks was the first Black person to serve as a director of elections in North Carolina. She started the county’s MLK Day celebration in 1990 and hosted it every year until 2000 when she could no longer.

Mattocks, famous for her infectious personality, was also a Pamlico Community College Trustee. Dupree Jarvis, who proposed having the event in honor of Mattocks, said she exuded love. “When you saw her, she just had this smile that could just melt away the iciest, coldest hearts in the world,” he said. “We loved her.”

Jarvis emphasized the importance of honoring local history and local legends, such as Mattocks. “Yes, we have Dr. Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X; but we also have history here,” he said. “Our family, our extended family, has made history here in Pamlico County. … And we need to learn that history and never forget it. Because if we forget it, it'll be wiped away.”

Mattocks died in 2020 after dealing with congestive heart failure (CHF) for over 20 years. Only 35% of people diagnosed with CHF survive after 10 years according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“I think a lot of us felt like she would never die,” said Devin Smith, Mattocks’ grandson and one of the event planners. “She was known to have a really bad heart condition, but she always kept defeating the odds.”

Before the event, Carnell Barrow, Mattocks’ friend for over 40 years, said “she didn’t give me sad moments, so I can’t carry sad moments.”

Barrow said Mattocks was funny, genuine and fashionable — always having manicured nails and wearing jewelry and matching outfits.

“To me, she’s alive,” Barrow said, as she made her way to the pulpit where Barrow sang in the choir during the event.

This year's MLK Day consisted of music, testimonies from Mattocks’ friends/loved ones, comedic entertainment from the emcee, and awards recognizing local civil rights leaders and community icons.

Booker T. Jones, the former mayor of Mesic for 10 years and the first Black person in Pamlico County to serve on the board of education, was honored with an award for his services.

“I was very happy to see that the developers of the program were of a younger generation,” Jones said.

He appreciated that “there was an effort to continue the history of how the current generation got to where they are,” Jones said.

Smith said the path to justice and equality is a marathon, and even after her death, his grandmother continues to inspire people. “I saw how hard she worked. I saw how sincere her faith was and how much that drove her,” he said. “A lot of things that she dealt with and overcame in life, she dealt with it very dignified.”

Mattocks’ daughter, Virginia Mattocks, said Ernestine was orphaned as a baby, abused and raised in poverty. But “she continued to do the best she could do in the kingdom of God for the gospel's sake, to the best of her physical ability,” Virginia Mattocks said. “And the one way she did that when she could no longer go into a pulpit and preach the paint off the wall, she will love the hell out of people. I watched that.”

Virginia Mattocks, who got her doctorate in divinity from Duke University, is now the pastor of the same church, Broad Creek United Church of Christ, where her mother grew up in and served as assistant pastor.

Jarvis, who wept as he played keyboard and sang Mattocks’ praises, credits her for pushing him to pursue his passion for music in the church when he was younger.

“She loved the young people in the church,” Jarvis said. “She loved the young people in the community. That's something that she desired for us to do — to draw closer to Christ and draw closer to each other.”

Jarvis was surprised by the number of people who attended. “It's a really good feeling to know that the community is still behind us,” he said. He said he and others hope to start a scholarship in Mattocks’ name to continue her legacy.

**This story was updated at 10:10 pm, March 30.

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