Join Jordyn and Spencer as they finish out their historic timeline of Winston-Salem, making their way to our modern day.
1918
A riot takes place in Winston-Salem targeting African Americans; violence erupts in the heart of the city as police try to protect an innocent African-American man from a mob of people attempting to take his life.
1930
Seventeen years from when William Darnell wins his very similar case, Winston-Salem is again divided into “urban suburbs” or zones. “In 1930 the City adopted a zoning ordinance to prohibit African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods.”
1938
Katie Bitting Reynolds Memorial Hospital was built for Black doctors to see Black patients; the Memorial Hospital, often called the “Katie B,” was the first publicly-operated facility to treat only African-American patients in Winston-Salem and the first to allow African-American physicians the ability to treat patients.
1943
A group known as the Factory 64, 64 R.J. Reynolds factory employees, mostly African-American women, organized their first sit-down strike of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. This group, with the help of Local 22 and aided by community support, demanded better wages and safer working conditions. Although short-lived, Factory 64’s 1943 and 1947 strikes saw success as compromises were made across all R.J. Reynolds’ Winston-Salem factories.
1957
At 15, Gwendolyn Bailey became the first African American person to desegregate an all-white school in Forsyth County as she attended (and graduated from) R.J. Reynolds High School.
1958
The beginning of building projects like Interstate 40, and later U.S. Route 52, destroyed and displaced many middle-class African-American communities in favor of a transportation system for the growing city center.
1960
Carl Matthews’ S.H. Kress Lunch counter sit-ins take place in Winston-Salem. After being refused service, Matthews organized eleven African-American students from Winston-Salem Teachers College, now Winston-Salem State University, and 10 white students from Wake Forest to join the protest On May 25, 1960, Winston-Salem became the first city in North Carolina to desegregate its lunch counters, Matthews himself became the first African American to be served at an integrated lunch counter in North Carolina.
1969
Active until 1978, The Winston-Salem Black Panther Party formed as the first Black Panther chapter in the American South. As one of the most successful chapters in the region, through social programs like the Joseph Waddell People's Free Ambulance Service and their voter registration campaigns, saw the Black community of Winston-Salem bettered by their work.
1974
The Winston-Salem Chronicle newspaper was formed by Ernie Pitt with the help of Nigerian journalist Joseph N. C. Egemonye; their vow: to focus on events affecting the Black community of Winston-Salem, especially what other newspapers refused to cover. On several occasions, this commitment to the truth won them the John Russwurm Award for Best Black Newspaper in the United States.
2007
Triad Cultural Arts, Inc. is founded.
