Jamestown, NC

Mendenhall Plantation
This early 19th century Quaker plantation has many original relics from the Underground Railroad; check out unique buildings that housed slaves and two false-bottom wagons used to transport people escaping slavery; small admission fee; 10a-2p Tue-Fri, Sat 2p-4p from April-December; located 2 miles southwest of Greensboro; 603 West Main Street; 336-454-3819

Sedalia, NC

Charlotte Hawkins Brown State Historic Site
In 1902 Charlotte Hawkins Brown founded the Palmer Memorial Institute which became a nationally recognized co-ed prep school for African Americans; Dr Brown counted among her associates, Mary McLeod Bethune, Booker T Washington, and Eleanor Roosevelt; although the site closed in 1971, a victim of desegregation, in 1987 it reopened as a state historic site; free admission, Winter hours 10a-4p Tue-Sat, 1-4p Sun; Summer hours 9a-5p Mon-Sat, 1-5p Sun; located 10 miles east of Greensboro off I-85 freeway, exit 135; 336-449-4846

Greensboro, NC

North Carolina Manumission Society
The first anti-slavery organization formed by Quakers met here in 1816 and disbanded in 1834; located near the junction of US Highway 220 at state highway 62

Woolworth’s Building
This is the world famous First Lunch Counter Sit-in site where the Civil Rights Movement became energized with non-violent student activism; their persistence and cool heads despite overwhelming verbal and physical abuse at this lunch counter broke the back of segregation in Greensboro and became a model for non-violent sit-ins in the South and around the world; with additional funding for upgrading and expansion this site is slated to become the National Civil Rights Center & Museum; 100 South Elm Street, Suite 520; 336-274-9199

Walkway of History
Sidewalk markers depict 6 major chapters of local African American history ranging from the Underground Railroad to the appointment of North Carolina’s first state Supreme Court Justice; one begins to appreciate the distance traveled from man’s inhumanity-to-man up to today’s partially achieved racial tolerance and inclusion; many other Southern cities where the Civil Rights Movement played a profound role; would do well to study this example of historic markers; February One Place near South Elm Street

Union Cemetery
Three churches established this cemetery for the colored race in the 1880s; it is the oldest Black cemetery in North Carolina and is closely associated with nearby Warnersville, where lots were set aside for newly freed men after the Civil War; 900 block of South Elm Street

L. Richardson Memorial Hospital
Founded in 1927, it was originally known as the Greensboro Negro Hospital Association; it is the oldest surviving hospital structure in the region; the current name is derived from Lunsford Richardson (creator of Vick’s VapoRub), whose generous donations modernized this site listed on the National Register of Historic Places; 603 South Benbow Road

Winston-Salem, NC

Old Salem
There are many still standing structures which housed African Americans as residents or workers during the times of the Moravian congregation, including the Davy House, Single Brothers House, Miksh House, Volger House, and Salem Tavern; this town is also notable for schools and other public facilities that featured integrated settings nothing less than extraordinary for the South; God’s Acre cemetery in the 1770s buried Moravians of African descent side-by-side with Moravians of European descent and Salem Academy and College admitted its first African American female in 1785;  juxtaposed against more enlightened treatment of humanity in Old Salem, one can also point to Happy Hill just east of St Philips Church where the first enslaved people in the region were kept by Dr Frederick Henry Schuman in 1816; just south of downtown

African Moravian Church
A log cabin church was built here in 1823, a year after their separate congregation was established due to exclusion by the European Moravian congregation from the nearby Home Moravian Church; this edifice is the nation’s oldest African American Moravian congregation; the church served briefly as a Freedmen’s hospital after the Civil War; this church has been reconstructed as a historic site; Church Street before it bends into Race Street, in Old Salem

St. Philip’s Moravian Church
Adjacent to the African Moravian Church site, St Philips was constructed in 1861 and is the oldest still standing African American Moravian church; several anthropological digs are still underway at this National Historic Site; church Street in old Salem

Simon G. Atkins House
Built in 1893 by Dr Atkins, founder of Slater Industrial Academy (name-changed to Winston-Salem State University), this house was the first constructed in the Columbia Heights community; it is a local historic landmark; 346 Atkins Street

A Robinson Building
Built in 1941, it a rare surviving structure that anchored the Black business community during segregation; it housed a funeral home until the 1980s; on the National Register of Historic Places; 707-709 Patterson Ave

High Point, NC

John Coltrane Marker
John Coltrane (1926-1967), one of the two most influential jazz saxophonists, graduated at age 16 from William Penn High School; the commemorative marker is located near his boyhood home on Underhill Street; corner of Centennial Street and Commerce Ave