The Long Journey To Preserve Black History in Greensboro

Drive along East Greensboro’s South Benbow Road, and you’ll notice something different at the Broad Avenue intersection—a sprawling Modernist-style house with a low-sloped roof, clusters of windows so high they almost touch the ceiling, a carport, and a palm tree in the front yard.  

Scott Wood fell in love with the place years ago. He’d drive past the house on the way to his coaching job at Dudley High School. Each time, he’d have the same thought. 

“It always looked like it should be in California,” he said. “You think about those in-the-hills houses.” 

In 2018, when Wood and his wife learned the home would soon be on the market, they jumped at the chance to buy it. As part of that process, the couple learned something else: They were purchasing a piece of local civil rights history.

Sixty years before the Woods bought it, the house was custom-built for J. Kenneth Lee, a Black Navy electrician and prominent civil rights attorney. One of the first students to integrate the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Lee represented thousands of Black Americans in legal challenges against segregation. He also helped found the Greensboro branch of the American Federal Savings and Loan Association, providing decent low-interest loans during segregation at a time of restrictive lending practices. 

Lee’s prominence made his home a key meeting place for some of the civil rights movement’s most legendary figures. When Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in Greensboro, Lee’s house was where they would hold court and talk strategy in the basement. 

“In the ’60s, they couldn’t stay in hotels,” Wood said. “A  lot of times when people, big-time speakers or civil rights leaders would come, they would meet here or meet at someone’s house.” 

That’s just one part of the home’s connection to history.

The J. Kenneth Lee House was designed by W. Edward “Blue” Jenkins, a North Carolina A&T State University-trained architect and the third Black architect ever licensed in the state. Segregation and discriminatory lending practices like redlining limited where Black families could purchase homes in Greensboro. But Jenkins and a handful of pioneering Black architects designed homes for many middle- and upper-class Black families in the neighborhoods surrounding historically Black N.C. A&T and the women-only Bennett College from the 1950s through the 1970s.

The neighborhood they helped build is one of the largest concentrations of Black-designed modernist homes in the state. 

Since 2017, a community-led grassroots movement has worked to get national recognition for this piece of East Greensboro history. A coalition of community leaders, preservation groups, university historians, and city officials supported adding the neighborhood—a 459-home, 219-acre zone dubbed the South Benbow Road Historic District—to the National Register of Historic Places. Designated sites can receive economic benefits, including increased local tourism, higher property values, and deeper investment from local governments. 

The years-long campaign came to fruition last December when the neighborhood was officially added to the National Register. It is the first historic district in Greensboro focused on a historically Black neighborhood and the residents who fought for civil rights.

The designation would have been impossible without community support and involvement in the preservation process, organizers said. As efforts to recognize and commemorate Black history face headwinds at the federal level, those involved in the historic district’s creation say their work has taken on a heightened significance both locally and nationally. 

An Overlooked History

The effort was sparked by a single man’s passion for architecture—particularly the work of designers active during the middle of the 20th century. 

“I started walking around, just amazed at these houses,” said Eric Woodard, a local architecture enthusiast. “And then I found that some of the most impressive houses were designed by African American architects.”  

Woodard would stroll through the neighborhood and marvel at the buildings. Soon, he became a fixture there. Through research, he found many of the area homes were designed by a handful of Black architects, several of whom once lived in the neighborhood and studied or taught at N.C. A&T. 

Woodard’s interest in Greensboro’s Black-designed homes was, at the time, unique. Efforts to recognize prominent architects in Greensboro long revolved around the works of Edward Loewenstein, a Jewish architect whose firm worked on hundreds of local buildings in the middle of the last century. Loewenstein employed some of the first Black architects registered in North Carolina. 

Far less attention was paid to the Black men who built and designed homes alongside him.

Among them was Jenkins, the first to be employed by Loewenstein’s firm. In addition to the J. Kenneth Lee House, he also designed other prominent buildings on the city’s east side, including the award-winning gymnasium at Dudley High School. 

Another was William Streat, a former Tuskegee Airman who also designed homes in the South Benbow Road Historic District. 

Architect Clinton Gravely worked with Loewenstein in the early 1960s before starting his own firm later in the decade. Gravely would be involved in some 800 projects, including the N.C. A&T Library and early proposals for Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Museum.  

A fourth architect, Gerard Gray, never worked for Loewenstein. But he did design several homes in East Greensboro, at times collaborating with Jenkins. 

All four men were modernists, using newer materials like plate glass and reinforced concrete. Their projects looked futuristic, open, and unique, contrasting starkly with more traditional styles. Historic district supporters said the difference represents the optimism and hope for progress Black people held even in the Jim Crow South. 

Their work centered on buildings that served the community, creating the homes, schools, and churches Black Greensboro used as a refuge from the daily injustices of being forced through back entrances and seated at separate lunch counters in the 1950s and 1960s.

But those unique buildings were missed in early efforts to document Greensboro’s architectural history. Researchers who surveyed the properties in the 2000s said many were not yet eligible for preservation because they were too recent to qualify for a historic designation.  

Woodard persisted, knocking on doors in East Greensboro to ask people to share stories about their homes and families. He approached the Greensboro History Museum and the International Civil Rights Museum to highlight local architects. His efforts caught the attention of Preservation Greensboro, a nonprofit focused on the city’s historic sites.

Benjamin Briggs, a former executive director of the organization, recalled asking Woodard to speak about his research at an event in 2016.

“This was just an incredibly rich neighborhood in terms of contributions given to North Carolina and United States history during this important time of the civil rights era, the 1960s and 1970s,” Briggs said in an interview. “The progressiveness of the people who live there is reflected in the architecture.” 

By the mid-2010s, many of their projects were old enough to qualify as historic. Woodard joined the board of Preservation Greensboro, documenting the history of predominantly Black neighborhoods like Clinton Hills, Nocho Park, and Benbow Park. He also began giving tours, showing city officials and local preservation groups the history he wanted to remember. 

“I was the sherpa,” Woodard said. “Usually, I was the only African American in the vehicle. And a couple people have said—and these are people who are well-versed in Greensboro—that they’d never been through this neighborhood or this area.” 

Increasing Scope

In 2017, Woodard’s project caught the attention of another group: the city of Greensboro’s Planning Department. 

City government regularly plays a role in getting federal recognition for historic sites and properties, an honor that can spur new economic activity in an area. Alongside the creation of local historic preservation districts, many of these efforts have focused on the National Register.  Prior to the official listing of the South Benbow Road Historic District, Greensboro had 12 districts and 42 properties on the register. 

Few focused explicitly on the area’s Black history. 

Two districts on the National Register, the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina Historic District, and the Bennett College Historic District, highlight the campuses of East Greensboro’s historically Black colleges and universities. The register also includes listings for buildings like Dudley High School and its Jenkins-designed gymnasium, which were significant to civil rights struggles in the 1960s. 

But the hundreds of residential buildings near South Benbow Road remained unlisted, leaving a significant part of local history out of the national spotlight.   

The problem isn’t unique to Greensboro. Sites important to Black history and the struggle for civil rights are just a small portion of preserved properties across the country. 

“Urban renewal” efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s saw predominantly Black communities divided by roads and highways, destroying many historic properties. In some places like the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed some buildings and permanently scarred others, rebuilding and repairs permanently altered their exteriors. Some had to be completely reconstructed using new materials, complicating preservation efforts. 

In recent years the National Park Service, which oversees the National Register, has worked to offer more direct support to efforts focused on civil rights and Black history. The African American Civil Rights Grant allows local governments to nominate possible sites. 

The predominantly Black neighborhoods along South Benbow Road have been largely undisturbed, leaving a large swath of buildings eligible. Many homes are still occupied by the families who first moved into them in the 1950s and 1960s. So when a new batch of grants opened up in the late 2010s, Greensboro officials jumped at the opportunity.

“They recommended that we do a comprehensive survey of neighborhoods in east and southeast Greensboro,” said Mike Cowhig, a senior planner with the city’s Planning Department. “Those areas were really underrepresented in terms of historic designated resources.” 

In 2019, the city received a $12,000 grant from the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office to document and survey buildings constructed by Black architects. In 2021, the city also received $40,000 from the African American Civil Rights Program to hire an architectural historian who would prepare the application for the district and conduct oral history work in these neighborhoods. 

At that point, the city was looking to widen the scope of Woodard’s initial proposal, shifting from simply documenting the work of the city’s Black architects to a broader look at Black history in East Greensboro and the communities they helped build. 

“It is such a rich area,” said Woodard. “The criteria for the National Register designation, one is architecture, the second is culture, and the third is civil rights. And you know, that area knocked it out of the ballpark in all three of those areas.”

A Durham-based firm, hmwPreservation, was awarded the architectural survey bid. It looked at more than 400 buildings in the eastern and southeastern part of the city, eventually identifying four neighborhoods for addition to the National Register: Benbow Park, Clinton Hills, Spaulding Heights, and Spaulding Park. 

The city, with input from neighborhood associations and the community, decided to pursue a single designation for them. The effort to establish the South Benbow Road Historic District began in earnest. 

A Complex—and Expansive—History

Much of East Greensboro’s history branches off of South Benbow Road. It’s one of the main residential streets in the area, where students, physicians, politicians, and lawyers have lived, worshiped, and organized for decades. 

Barbara McPherson still remembers her family’s home in the Clinton Hills portion of the district. Her parents worked for the postal service and moved into a house on Curry Street in 1956, shortly before she was born. 

“It was a very loving, nurturing, close-knit community,” McPherson said. “These homes were the first lower middle-class homes that allowed Black people to advance, to have some home ownership. I’m very proud of the community we grew up in.”

She moved away from Greensboro for college and medical school but later returned to care for her parents and raise her family. Her father lived in the home on Curry Street until his death in 2023. 

The sense of community there made each block tight-knit. Older South Benbow residents remember leaving their doors unlocked and windows open, and they could go to their neighbors for anything. That’s a habit they maintain to this day as they care for elders in their 90s.  

Some recalled playing pickup basketball games with future NBA All-Star and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo, a local sports star whose father worked at N.C. A&T. Others remember running into civil rights leader Jesse Jackson during his time as an A&T student and protest organizer. When college students went home for the summer, Black high schoolers living along South Benbow Road were charged with maintaining pressure on segregated businesses, creating a second wave of the sit-in movement. 

Historian B. Bernetiae Reed fondly remembers her time living in the neighborhood. She was delivered by a doctor who lived in the neighborhood. Her parents both worked for N.C. A&T, and the home she lived for part of her was designed by William Streat.

“I knew the streets growing up,” Reed said.

Since 2022, Reed has collected residents’ oral histories, speaking with people for hours, sometimes days, to understand their lives. She’s conducted dozens of interviews, with over a hundred more scheduled. The interviews will be added to the state archives.

“It’s very important to preserve that history because that’s what’s potentially going to be lost if we don’t capture the living memories that are still present with people,” Reed said. “This project provided an important opportunity to really reach out and see what else is out there that can be preserved.” 

Many pioneering figures lived in this area, including Henry Frye, North Carolina’s first Black Supreme Court Justice, and Vince Evans, the first Black quarterback to start for the Chicago Bears. Dr. Alvin Blount Jr. was a physician who joined a lawsuit that led to the desegregation of Moses Cone Hospital and, eventually, other hospitals in the South. Loretta Lynch, the first Black woman to serve as U.S. Attorney General, spent part of her youth in the neighborhood, as did Debra Lee, the former Chairperson and CEO of Black Entertainment Television. 

The depth of that history surprised people working on the project.

“I knew about the sit-ins and things like the Greensboro Four, but not in real detail about where things were being planned and who were the sort of boots-on-the-ground people behind it,” said architectural historian Heather Slane. 

A Community Effort

The South Benbow community played a primary role in determining how its history is remembered. 

Chad Roberts, the vice president of the Benbow Park Community Association, said getting neighborhood associations involved was crucial in ensuring the designation reflected the voice and experiences of those still living in the historic district.

Community meetings were held alongside neighborhood celebrations and informational events. The effort continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting to social distancing and federal guidelines.

As the project expanded, local historians and archivists joined in, launching an initiative to collect photographs and other materials. They were scanned into the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s Gateway database. The resulting project, Conversations in Black: African American History and Heritage, is a growing collection of community and family memories from South Benbow that can be accessed online. 

“What’s so exciting about this project was it wasn’t the city saying we want to do this,” said David Gwynn, the lead curator.  “This was the community saying we want to do this, and the city saying, ‘Okay, how can we help?’”

The city is now looking into additional National Register nominations. In July, it got a $75,000 grant from the National Park Service to further explore local civil rights history. 

But given the Trump administration’s efforts to gut all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the future of federal civil rights historic preservation efforts is unclear. The National Park Service, which oversees both the register and the African American Civil Rights Grant Program, did not respond to The Assembly’s inquiries about the status of the program.

‘Long Overdue’ Recognition

Earlier this month, a crowd of historic district residents, city officials, and history enthusiasts gathered at East Greensboro’s Providence Baptist Church to celebrate the national register honor. 

Residents hugged one another and reminisced. A bus tour offered a chance to see some of the historic homes and buildings up close. 

A few hours later, neighbors gathered at the Greensboro History Museum to continue the celebration. During the event, a panel of residents shared stories about their homes and what being part of the historic district means for their families. 

“This district means that generations to come will recognize the efforts that these Black men and women made in this neighborhood,” said longtime district resident Bernard Bell. 

After a decade of work, Woodard told The Assembly, seeing the historic district become a reality was exciting. Now, he is turning his efforts toward making sure residents know what tax credits are available for rehabilitation and ensuring the community has a say in how the district is promoted moving forward. 

“The history that came out of this district, the people that are instrumental to civil rights that came out of this district, these are people who changed not only Greensboro history but national history,” Woodard said. “It’s important that they begin to get recognition that is long overdue.” 

P.R. Lockhart is a Greensboro-based reporter for The Assembly and a Report for America corps member. She previously reported for the Mountain State Spotlight and Vox, and studied psychology and journalism at Duke University.