Tobacco and Textiles industries enabled the metro area to remain economically stable as compared to many other cyclic industries.

1.2 million people call this fast growing metro area home.  About 230,000 are African American.

There are more than 5,000 African American-owned companies in the metro area.

Krispy Kreme, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and Wachovia Bank were founded in Winston-Salem.

Greensboro leveraged its railroad hub to build one of the nation’s foremost centers for the textile manufacturing.

From 1895 through 1950s Cone Mills, Blue Bell, Burlington Industries, Guilford Mills and VF Corporation established headquarters in Greensboro. 

Notable residents either born here or made their mark in Greensboro or Winston-Salem include:

Franklin McClain, Ezell Blair, Jr. Joseph McNeil & David Richmond
Four students at North Carolina A&T who courageously started Civil Rights Sit-ins at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro; it became a pivotal tactic of the Civil Rights Movement

Dr. J. O. Crosby
First president of North Carolina A&T University in 1892

Dr. Willa B. Player
Bennett College's first woman president and the first African American woman president of a four year liberal arts college in the U.S.

Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole
Distinguished president of Bennett College

Maya Angelou
Poet Laureate

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Began as an activist began at North Carolina A&T during the famous lunch counter sit-ins

Dr. Ronald McNair
North Carolina A&T alum and Challenger Space Shuttle astronaut

Tim Duncan
Before he became an NBA all-star, he played at Wake Forest University

Mel White
A brother who tirelessly worked to uncover and exhibit truths about the special history of the Moravians and Africans Americans in Old Salem

John Coltrane
One of the two most innovative and influential Jazz saxophone masters