North Carolina View Establishments by North Carolina Cities
North Carolina: Vanishing Acts
North Carolina has experienced extreme racial discrimination, violence, and inequalities over the last several centuries, including incidents like the Wilmington Race Riot in 1898. However, places like the Hayti neighborhood in Durham, where the African American population flourished from the 1880s to the 1940s, were centers of African American culture and business. Additionally, North Carolina was the location of several important developments in the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. In cities like Greensboro, NC a series of sit-ins and other nonviolent protests were carried out in 1960 and subsequent years. The famed sit-ins had national coverage and impacts. Racial inequalities in areas like Charlotte, NC led to the eventual forced integration of schools in the 1970s. In this light, North Carolina is a compelling state in which to examine Green Book properties.
North Carolina prospered in the years following World War II and urban areas like Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte enjoyed unprecedented growth. This economic prosperity created an entirely new middle class benefitting both whites and African Americans, albeit not equally, with many Americans enjoying their first real disposable income. The rising affluence coupled with the expansion of the highway system produced the rapid rise of travel amenities and services allowing the new middle-class to travel widely and often. Despite the fact that North Carolina was a Jim Crow state, African Americans would have travelled to, or through, North Carolina to visit loved ones or tourist destinations. The Green Book helped African American travelers safely move through the state of North Carolina, but did not necessarily actively entice them to enter the Jim Crow state.
North Carolina listings in The Negro Motorist Green Book began in 1938. In all, the Green Book listed 327 properties in 35 out of 50 North Carolina counties. The Green Book listed a variety of business types, including hotels, tourist homes, barbers, beauty shops, service stations, restaurants, and night clubs. By far the most common type of business listed were restaurants, while hotels and beauty parlors were also popular listing types.
Green Book properties in North Carolina clustered in the African American neighborhoods of larger cities, like Wilmington, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Durham, and Raleigh. These same neighborhoods were the targets of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s. Urban renewal is one of the main causes of the dearth of existing Green Book properties: only about 20% of properties listed in the Green Book in North Carolina are extant. Today, urban gentrification, along with many other factors, threatens many of the remaining buildings all around the state.
Wilmington
The coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina had 50 total properties listed in the Green Book. Of those 50, 16 are extant. After the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, racial segregation in Wilmington grew. African American business districts grew in the Red Cross Street and Castle Street areas between 1900 and 1960, which remain predominantly African American neighborhoods. After the Atlantic Coastal Railroad left the area in 1955, Wilmington’s African American community underwent an economic recession, resulting in a number of businesses closing. A number of Green Book property owners left town altogether during this period.
Wilmington had a comparatively high number of extant properties compared to other cities in North Carolina. Since the Wilmington neighborhoods where the extant Green Books properties are located in National Historic Districts, it is possible that Wilmington’s focus on historic preservation has contributed to the high number of extant Green Books properties. Unlike cities like Durham, urban renewal and highway development have not as significantly changed Wilmington’s urban landscape.
Durham and Wake Counties
Durham has a rich history of African American entrepreneurship. Therefore, the history of these Green Book properties has been comparatively well documented. By the early twentieth century both W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington visited Durham, to see first-hand an African American community with a thriving economy (N. C. Civic Education Consortium 2006).
Both Durham and Wake Counties dramatically changed due to urbanization, mostly beginning in the 1950s. The shift away from agriculture in and around Durham and Raleigh had significant impacts on historically African American neighborhoods and business districts. In Durham, the construction of highway NC 147 in the 1960s and 1970s, led to the demolition of at least six Green Book properties. The remaining Green Book properties in the vicinity of the new highway were affected as well, because these sites were disadvantaged due to the construction areas, which made it difficult for patrons to reach storefronts.
In Wake County, Green Book businesses were also negatively impacted by changes in transportation. The NC State survey found that at least six sites in Raleigh were demolished for the development of the downtown bus depot and downtown parking lots. Out of the 12 extant properties in Durham and Wake Counties, about half are identified as barbershops or restaurants, two community staples.
Cumberland and Craven Counties
Fayetteville has had a significant African American population since before the Civil War. Between the 1940s and 1960s, it became one of the largest in the state. This was partially due to the proximity of Fort Bragg, especially after military desegregation in 1948. Interviews with local residents revealed that during the Jim Crow era, African American business ownership was prevalent in the downtown business district. However, African Americans were often forced into service jobs.
New Bern, one of the oldest cities in the state, has a relatively static African American population since 1930. This population consisted primarily of artisans who became the African American middle class. Until the fire in the Dryborough neighborhood of 1922, these artisans worked and lived in this downtown area. Before the fire, Dryborough was the center of New Bern African American cultural life. After the fire, “The Red Cross reported 3,530 people, the vast majority African American, were without homes and jobs… the majority population in New Bern switched from being slightly more than half African American to being slightly more than half Caucasian” (Hand, Bill. “Remembering the largest urban fire in N.C. history.” New Bern Sun Journal, 1 December 2012, http://www.newbernsj.com/article/20121201/News/312019863). Even so, the African American community was determined to rebuild and carry on. 512 Queen Street, the Rhone Hotel, was built in 1923 for Henrietta Rhone, a member of an influential African American family in New Bern. This was the first hotel built by and for African Americans in New Bern.
In Fayetteville and New Bern, extant properties were in mostly African American residential or commercial areas, reflecting the spatial realities of segregation. We surmise that the survival of Green Book properties reflect power dynamics in each county. Areas with politically and economically prosperous African American communities were able to preserve more properties.
Research Process
Initial research into North Carolina’s Green Book sites was undertaken by North Carolina State University graduate students in a 2016 Cultural Resource Management course. Interested in the recent and often marginalized cultural heritage of minority groups in NC, tourism and leisure economies in the southeast, and the rapidly changing built environment in the state, course instructor, Dr. Alicia McGill, developed this project in partnership with the NC State Historic Preservation Office as background work for an architectural survey.
At its base, this project was a finding mission centered on collecting information about the status of structures and useful resources on African American heritage in NC. The research proved to be a strong foundation for later research undertaken by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office and the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Our thanks to:
NC State Project Leadership team: Rachel Jacobson MA, Alicia McGill PhD, Jason Norris, Katie Schinabeck, with Maps from Malorey Henderson
NC State Students: Sylvia Bailey, Kate Bowers, Troy Burton, Nicole Coscolluela, Jacque Dinnes, Derek Huss, Andy Jordan, and Claire Kempa.
Sarah A. Woodard, N.C State Historic Preservation Office
Andrew S. Edmonds, State Historic Preservation Office
The NC State project would not have been possible without the financial and in-kind support of a variety of institutions including: the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, NC State College of Humanities and Social Sciences Office of Research and Engagement, NC State Department of History, NC State Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the City of Raleigh Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Division.
