towns of grace, ‘freedom road’, ‘Forks of the Tar’ , ‘Pea Town’, ‘Potato Hole’

This photo was taken in Raleigh, NC, c. 1915 and depicts an African American group working in a community garden. The view is looking west from east Raleigh around the E. Cabarrus/Swain St. area.
The two buildings seen in the distance that LOOK like one are Citizens National Bank (right) and Commercial National Bank (left).

This neighborhood represents what is called a Red-Lined neighborhood. Redlining was created based on white supremacy segregation structures.

Chavis Park, Raleigh, N.C., Named for John Chavis, free Black educator, noted preacher who lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the park was dedicated in 1938. The park was a WPA project completed in 1937 and is the historically Black counterpart to Pullen Park the city park built for white people during the Jim-Jane Crow era.

Black North Carolinians could not go to white North Carolinians parks, beaches, etc... during the enforcement of NC State segregation laws.

Black Neighborhood In Durham Added To National Register Of Historic Places
By Leoneda Inge • May 27, 2019

Photograph: John Greene moved to 'College Heights' in the 1970s. He was a math professor at NCCU and taught in the public school system.

A well-known African American neighborhood in Durham has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Photographs of Boy Scouts learning to swim and dive at Crabtree Creek Recreational Area during the summer of 1943, in Raleigh, NC.

Crabtree Creek Recreational Area was developed beginning in 1934 as a Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project.

Asheville, NC.
Left image: ca 1968, East End Community. Velvet Street. Left to right: Langdon Ray, Audrey Rice, Fernando Lynch, Regina Lewis, Brenda Gaines, Sharon Brown.
Photo by Andrea Clark and courtesy of Pack Memorial Library.
Source: digitalnc.

State Mile Marker for Princeville, NC

Vermel Stewart
Cary, North Carolina

Vermel Stewart was the daughter of Roann Artelia (Telia) Evans and Albert Patrick Stewart.

Albert's father and Vermel's grandfather was Thomas Stewart, one of the early settlers of the Friendship community in Apex , NC in the 1800s.

A settlement/community built for newly freed enslaved Black people after the Civil War in
Salem, North Carolina (Winston-Salem)

On a warm September afternoon in 1939, a striking woman in a jaunty beret turned heads as she drove her red convertible down Fayetteville Street and into the Hayti community on the southwest side of Durham.

The Jacksonville•Onslow African-American Heritage Trail is a joint project of Onslow County Tourism, the Onslow County Museum, and the Minority Business Services Division of the Jacksonville•Onslow Chamber of Commerce.

Image description: Mrs. Tulia Turner sitting on the railing of the porch of her home, the John T. and Mary Turner House in Oberlin Village, Raleigh, NC May 25, 1983.
Image credit: N&O negative collection, State Archives of North Carolina.

"Oberlin Village emerged in the 1860s as one of Raleigh’s first freedman’s villages. By 1880 the neighborhood had developed into a thriving community with around 150 Black owned households. The area boasted churches, retail stores, a butcher, and eventually, in 1892, Latta University.

Photo Description: Photograph of family reunion at Jones Lake State Park, ca. 1945.
From the collection of North Carolina State Parks.

Jones Lake opened in the summer of 1939 as the first state park for African Americans and was a popular location for reunions, baptisms, and picnics.
Between 1961 and 1964, North Carolina's state parks were desegregated.

Photograph: Jones Lake State Park in Bladen County, NC, circa 1950.
Jones Lake was a segregated outdoor space that opened in 1939 as the first state park in NC for Black people to enjoy outdoor spaces and swimming.
Image courtesy of North Carolina State Parks and Recreation.

Boone, NC-Junaluska Community:
Top photograph- October 2024 Three sisters, Shelia Goins, Lisa Foster, Brend Whittington, sitting on the porch of sister Lisa's home talked after tropical storm Helene happened.
"We've been through worse, we're just happy to be alive." Goins said.

Louella had been enslaved for all of her 24 years but her vision of land ownership, community and freedom kept her going along the long trip. Louella Bobo Montgomery, along with her husband Reverend William Montgomery left Montgomery plantation in 1865 after the Civil War to find a promised land that she’d envisioned in her dreams. They established the "Kingdom of the Happy Land" in Henderson County, North Carolina with the hundreds of newly freed Black people who joined them as they traveled from Mississippi to in the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina.

Marker Title: N.C. COLORED STATE FAIR
Location: 2600 block of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh
County: Wake
-----
Did you know there was a Colored State Fair in NC?
This was created because we were not allowed to participate in the NC State Fair which was also called, the White people's fair.

Photograph of Naomi Hester, Annual African American Heritage Celebration at Cartwright Park on 5-17-1992. Manteo, North Carolina.

November 18, 1879, the North Carolina Colored State Fair opened in Raleigh. Men of the Colored Industrial Association of North Carolina founded the fair to showcase the progress made by African Americans after Emancipation. @IrememberOurHistory®

This poster shows scenes from the fair, printed in “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,” December 6, 1879.

Image and narrative source: NCMH

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH – There were no signs. No fence posts and ropes. No blatant, visible barriers.

Invisible boundaries set apart the families who vacationed in Ocean City, a mile-long stretch of land within North Topsail Beach believed to be one of the first beachfront communities owned by African-Americans.

Raleigh village built by former slaves is fast disappearing, but not these two houses

Photo: Historic marker for OBERLIN VILLAGE - at the northwest corner of the Historic Turner House, 1002 Oberlin Road, Raleigh, NC
There are at least 600 souls buried in Oberlin Cemetery -Historic Oberlin Village Cemetery.

Photo: Map of Raleigh highlighting Oberlin Village

Photograph: Raleigh, North Carolina- Looking north on Oberlin road as children cross the newly built Oberlin Road bridge spanning Wade Avenue, June 1959.
Photograph source: NO.59.6.166 - From the News and Observer Negative Collection, State Archives of NC. Photo copyrighted by the News and Observer.
Narrative: History of Oberlin Village dot org, and Olde Raleigh N.C. FB page

Photograph of Princeville Buildings During Snow and Flood of Tar River, circa 1899.
Source: Courtesy of Edgecombe County Memorial Library/ DigitalNC..

Betty Town was a rural settlement of free African Americans located on South Creek, 22 miles southeast of the town of Washington, in Beaufort County, North Carolina.

The Black Beach Resort That Almost Changed North Carolina

A first-class seaside destination for Black southerners opened just north of Wrightsville Beach in 1923, but lasted only three years. The short life of the Shell Island Beach Resort still holds lessons for today.

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Description: Photos were taken on April 11, 1934, of Reverend Thomas B. McCain (left) with Nicodemus "Demus" Taylor on the right.

Rev. McCain was a retired minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a leading figure in Southern Pines.

Taylor was the founder of Taylor Town, a community for freed slaves, Moore County, near Pinehurst, NC.

Taylortown, NC—founded by emancipated caddy Remus Taylor and rooted in resilience
It Takes A Village - Geneva McRae, Demus Taylor and Taylortown
On July 13, 1987, Taylortown became a municipality. As was her style, McRae gave credit to everyone but herself for the achievement but, absent her organizational skills and tenacity, incorporation likely would have remained a pipedream.

Known as Black Teacher's Beach because of enforced segregation laws Hammocks Beach was one of the few beaches accessible to Black people in North Carolina in the 1950s and early-1960s.

C. Payne Lucas and his wife, Freddie Hill Lucas, picnic on Hammocks Beach, circa 1960. Payne Lucas, born in Spring Hope, was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Photo: North Carolina Division of State Parks
Source https://www.coastalreview.org/.../documentary-focus.../

Bear Island, at Hammock’s Beach State Park NC Dept. Parks and Recreation

Left photograph: The first Freedmen's Village, on Hilton Head Island, c. 1864
Source: National Archives and Records Administration

Right photograph: Freedmen's colonies offered education for children and adults.
Source: National Park Service, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

On February 20, 1885, 22 years after Emancipation, freedmen in Edgecombe County incorporated Princeville, the state’s first Black town.
Its claim to first in the nation is rivalled only by Eatonville, Florida. Along with James City in Craven County and Roanoke Island in Dare County, the community was among the state’s three resettlement colonies for former slaves.

Jupiter and Lucreecy Phelps Pailen

Formerly known as the Municipal Colored Park, opened June 10, 1938, to serve the African American citizens of High Point.

Your Home’s Value Is Based on Racism
Wherever they choose to buy, Black people are penalized by white preferences.

By Dorothy A. Brown/NYT/Opinion - March 20, 2021 - Image credit: Yannick Lowery