Communities Collection
African American group working in a community garden
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).
College Heights, Durham
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.
Hayti - Fayetteville Street - Durham, North Carolina
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.
She wheeled onto the campus of the North Carolina College for Negroes, set the brake, and stepped out to reveal her full outfit, which included pedal pushers — not exactly the conservative faculty attire preferred by Dr. James E. Shepard, the straight-laced founding president of the school that would later become North Carolina Central University.
Zora Neale Hurston, however, was hardly interested in conformity. Her 1937 masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, had just been issued in Italy and England following its bright debut in the United States. The acclaimed writer and folklorist had been hired by Dr. Shepard to create a drama department at the college, and drama she delivered, although not so much in the classroom.
John T. and Mary Turner House in Oberlin Village
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.
Jones Lake State Park, ca. 1945.
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.
Junaluska Community, Boone, NC
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.
N.C. COLORED STATE FAIR
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.
Naomi Hester, Annual African American Heritage Celebration
Cartwright Park is located where the first AME Zion church used to sit, on the corner of Sr. Walter Raleigh Street and Bideford Street.
This church was the first African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Northeastern North Carolina. Andrew Cartwright, the founder of the Manteo AME Zion Church was born in Elizabeth City in 1835.
Some contend that he was the son of enslaved parents and other believe that he was freeborn.
He became an ordained minister of the AME Zion Church sometime around 1860 in New England.
Cartwright Park includes the ruins of the church, as well as a pavilion, where the Annual African American Heritage Celebration was held in 1992 when this photograph was taken.
North Carolina Colored State Fair
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
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.
Oberlin Village
Raleigh village built by former slaves is fast disappearing, but not these two houses
News & Observer--By Richard Stradling-January 11, 2019
RALEIGH, NC
Oberlin Village, the community formed by former slaves after the Civil War that once stretched two miles along its namesake road, has been shrinking for decades, enveloped by a growing city and muscled under by office buildings, apartments and stores.
Oberlin Village
Photo: Map of Raleigh highlighting Oberlin Village
--
Antebellum Raleigh: Cameron Plantation and Oberlin Village
By Heather
Published March 30, 2017
Right in the heart of downtown Raleigh, where NC State students drink lattes and shop in boutiques, once sat a very different world: An antebellum plantation, complete with a classical mansion straight out of Gone with the Wind, and the sad Southern history of enslaved men and women.
.png)
.jpg)
Taylor Town
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, Moore County, North Carolina
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.
.png)
The Mayor Orren James Groceries in downtown Princeville
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.
.jpg)
