Pictured are two children posing for a photograph on the southwest corner of Cannon and S. West Streets (present-day Dorothea Drive looking east, What is now Heritage Park ) in the Southside neighborhood-Raleigh, NC, ca. 1914 ? 1916

Source: N.99.11.19-From the General Negative Collection, State Archives of NC
From the David Bass Collection-Scrapbook dated “Raleigh, NC 1916”
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Southside was a predominately African American neighborhood developed in the late 1800s largely on what once was the vineyard of Governor Daniel G. Fowle. Col. A. W. Shaffer, who was responsible subdividing the land, named the four main streets in the neighborhood Battle, Cannon, Cannister and Grape (a reference to grapeshot, an ammunition used in cannons consisting of packed bag of smaller, grape sized projectiles).

These names were often used a reference to its rough reputation—being in the fourth ward of the city, it was frequently referred to as “the bloody fourth.”

As a result of over a century of systematic discrimination, Southside and other African American neighborhoods of Raleigh, had become severely blighted by the late 1960s. The 1968 Fair Housing Act was a step (albeit, overdue) in the right direction. This legislation, part of the larger Civil Rights Act of 1968, outlawed housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

By the early 1970s Southside had been largely razed and in 1975 the Heritage Park housing complex was constructed in its stead. To this day, the Wake County tax record property description for Heritage Park reads, "Southside Urban Renewal Project." "

Source: From the Olde Raleigh fb page