Videography Lead
Maryam Khanum
Writing Editor
Adam Coil
Creative Director
Sarah MacDougald
Videography
James Watson
Celina Seo
Sam Stinson
Brody Leo
Photography
Lucius You
Selinna Tran
Design
Selinna Tran
Josh Reynolds
Zoie Irby
Writers
Adam Coil
Maddie Stopyra
Tabitha Cahan
Selinna Tran
Shaila Prasad
Connor McNeely
Will Zimmerman
Bella Ortley-Guthrie
Contributors
Christa Dutton
James Watson
Jane Alexander
Wyla Solsbery
IIn this semester’s edition of e Magnolia, you will nd stories of the people of Winston-Salem a long overdue feature to encourage the student body of Wake Forest to engage with the community that the campus resides in.
In last semester’s edition, we emphasized the importance of engaging with all walks of life on campus in order to better understand and be a part of the Wake Forest community. is sentiment applies to Winston-Salem. In order to rebuild the strained relationship between Wake Forest and Winston-Salem (as a re-
I met Willy when I was sitting on University Parkway’s median, just past 11th Street next to the Bojangles. He immediately shouted at me, noticing that I was in the middle of the highway. I shouted back and waved, throwing my camera over my shoulder. As I hustled back across the road and over to him, I saw that Willy was concerned about me being in the road, but also kind of curious.
e curiosity was mutual. I had seen him bike around several times and had been taking pictures of him and other residents of the area as they crossed University Parkway. I was interested in how people navigated the four lanes of busy tra c that divided the neighborhood. Willy was too.
His interest was borne out of concern. As we walked together to the pedestrian catwalk overlooking the city, Willy told me about how the metal structure, which is covered in overgrown tree branches and full of trash, wasn’t used by many people at all. e ones that did cross the walkway, he warned me, were usually dangerous characters.
I’d later nd out that it wasn’t always like this. e catwalk was originally used by children living in the Boston- urmond neighborhood, who crossed east-west so they could go to the two elementary schools in the area: Kimberly Park and Carver Crest (now Cook Elementary). Today, the bridge isn’t at all safe for children. e bushes and tall trees planted to enclose sidewalks and residential areas hide anyone near the catwalk from sight. Willy was worried that parents might lose their children when they crossed the bridge, or worse, they might not be able to protect their children from the dangerous tra c.
e junction between Northwest Boulevard and University Parkway is occupied by a community of people who don’t have houses. at’s how society is de ning them; in terms of what they don’t have, or how they’ve failed.
But the people who live in this area are much more than the faces that blur past your car as you drive downtown. ey’re more than the fact that they don’t have a house, or the kind of money or possessions that others have. ough they often stand in the middle of the road, asking for cash, many of these people are simply trying to get your attention. More often than not, they just want somebody to talk to — someone who will try to understand them for who they really are.
e four-lane highway that cuts through the residential space of so many people is harmful. It’s hard to live around a high-tra c expressway. But even though thousands of cars pass through the community at high speeds, every day there’s potential for the people and the city to reimagine how they get to where they’re going.
Sometimes it might mean taking a detour; eating at restaurants where your neighbors eat in another part of the city, or taking a right o the highway and through a neighborhood street. If you do, you’ll nd that the people you see — like Willy — are outside, enjoying their home and any new travelers that might take some time and visit.
ree miles of University Parkway connect Wake Forest University’s primary site, the Reynolda Campus, to its urban setting in Downtown Winston-Salem: Wake Downtown.
e rst acres of the Reynolda Campus were bequeathed in 1941 — an enticement to the owners of Wake Forest College, courtesy of the Reynolds family empire, the architects of Winston-Salem. Down the parkway, on the eastern side of the city, Wake Downtown began as just a single building — an abandoned tobacco warehouse. e seed that sprouted into the urban campus was sold to the Wake Forest School of Medicine in 1992. e seller was the same titan who had lured Wake Forest College 100 miles west half a century prior.
e university acquired that warehouse from Reynolds Tobacco for $1 million. It was pennies on the dollar. In ve decades, a lot had changed.
ough the tobacco titan had crumbled, its buildings remained. Reynolds moved out, and Wake Forest moved in, but the history remained. History in the form of roads and warehouses, in tenements and villages, in memories — some sweet, some sour, most more sticky than the tar snared in the rolling paper and trapped under ngernails.
In 2023, Wake Forest continues to grap-
ple with a story complex, nuanced and older than itself. Following that sale three decades ago and the ribbon cutting at Wake Downtown in 2017, the university’s sphere of in uence has continued to expand, now catalyzing industry as far as Charlotte. at’s not to say the focus has strayed from Winston-Salem, particularly the downtown area. In the heart and soul of the city, opportunities remain plentiful. ough, as the university grows, some in the community fear they’re being left behind.
It’s not a novel concern — those
people have been left behind before. e reminders are in the smoke- stacks and the warehouses. History seeps from Reynolds’ red bricks.
e school and the city are ada-
mant about evolving, but the community’s not convinced that evolution means their evolution, too.
s you are driving down Reynolda road, if you blink you just might miss the 1958 airstream trailer that is home to Co ee Park. Nestled in Buena Vista neighborhood—not too far from Wake Forest—Co ee Park has cemented itself as a staple landmark of Winston-Salem. This would not have been accomplished without the work of Duncan omas Priest II (Tommy), the owner, operator, creative director, COO, janitor and occasional barista of Co ee Park.
Before I had a chance to formally introduce myself to Priest in person, I walked into Co ee Park to see him disgruntled and typing on his phone with frustration. He turns and notices my presence and o ers an apology for the lack of introduction as he proclaims he was “arguing with terfs online.” e strong and cogent emotions towards bigotry and a pursuit of human rights and social justice that I noticed in Priest within seconds of meeting him reverberated throughout the rest of our conversation.
e motivation behind starting Co ee Park for Priest was the lack of accessibility to a local drive-up coffee place in Winston-Salem accompanied by a personal constant need for co ee. Originally, Priest looked into nding a residence for Co ee Park in various locations and shopping centers around Winston-Salem, the ruway shopping center being a failed prospect. It wasn’t until a friend of Priest found the trailer in
Asomeone’s backyard that the idea of Co ee Park was beginning to come to fruition.
Priest said the trailer was, “Under a tree, about 40 miles away from here, it was covered in pine sap and it was in really bad shape.” His friend is curious and, “he walks up to the door, [at which] there’s a sign that says, ‘Donny don’t forget to take your meds.’ It’s a trailer in front of a house. He knocks on the door, this guy comes up, cut o shorts, no shirt, no shoes, very few teeth.” is man is con rmed to be Donny, who begrudgingly takes the sign and walks away. Shortly, he returns and Priest’s friend inquires about whether the trailer is for sale. Donny responds with, “ at piece of [expletive]?” which is met with an apprehensive, “Yeah, would you take 250 for it?” And so, for 250 dollars (and a trip to [the Quonset Hut] in Boston- urmond), the trailer would become what we know as Co ee Park.
After rehabilitating the airstream trailer, Priest said, “We didn’t tell anybody what we were doing, dropped it right here, and some folks in the neighborhood starts to lose their [expletive].” e general response towards the trailer, as Priest articulates, was: “Do you know what neighborhood this is?! You can’t put a trailer in Buena Vista.”
Co ee Park has now held residence for 16 years.
And in those 16 years, Co ee Park has integrated itself with the community and holds a multi-faceted relationship with Winston-Salem.
“One of the biggest things that Coffee Park has done in Winston-Salem is that we have tried to create cross-silo communication,” Priest said. “Our organizations, our activists, our municipal organizations, they are so siloed. We can amplify a cause if we all work together. I am typically using Co ee Park as that glue to bring people together in order to magnify whatever it is that needs to be magni ed.”
For Priest, activism, social justice, art, culture (and co ee!) are all intertwined, as he emphasizes about thirty minutes into our conversation that he is, “not a neo-con,” and rather identies with collectivism. He stressed the importance of utilizing, “the arts in order to create intentional conversations around race, gender, class, power, and privilege.”
In fact, one of the rst intentional events hosted at Co ee Park was in conjunction with the law school at Wake Forest and the student-led domestic violence advocacy center which aimed to ensure that survivors of domestic violence had advocates at the legal level. ey worked together with a representative of Project Night Night from San Francisco to gather art pieces from various local shelters to be displayed.
Priest asserts the necessity of having these di cult conversations, and Coffee Park acts as the glue to intersecting these di erent facets of justice, culture and co ee.
As Priest talks about Winston-Salem,
he remarks on the symbiotic relationship between Wake Forest and Co ee Park while also highlighting the twoway street dynamic that exists between Co ee Park (and Winston-Salem) and Wake Forest. “Wake is seen as a land baron for Winston-Salem, and with the student population being so cloistered it is seen as shiny land on the hill,” Priest said. “it’s not necessarily that way. It’s a two-way street.” Priest ends our conversation with a message to the student body of, “what better thing to do than get involved,” in response to the disconnect present between the student body and the Winston-Salem community. He encourages students to engage with the rich arts and culture that Winston-Salem has to o er, and to use the arts as a catalyst towards a greater relationship between the two communities.
Story By: Maddie Stopyra (‘25)
When getting a tattoo, how often do you look at the walls?
Not only does nationally renowned tattooist C.W. Eldridge make sure you take a moment to look at the walls of his shop Tattoo Archive, but he also hopes you learn something from them.
Located on Fourth Street in downtown Winston Salem, Tattoo Archive is the workplace of two tattoo artists and home to a vast collection of tattoo collectibles and historical images. e walls are lled with art pieces from other tattooers and those they tattooed. Since 2007, the shop has been a space where tattoo artists and the public can gather to learn more about Eldridge’s favorite subject — tattoo history.
“I spend most of my time looking backward,” Eldridge said. “ ere’s just not enough people documenting tattoo history.”
Walking into the store, the rst thing customers will notice is the dozens of vintage art pieces that decorate the walls. Each piece re ects an era of tattoo history and a distinct style of tattooing. While the tattoo studio itself is closed o from the main gallery, individuals can watch the artist at work through a large glass window. Further into the shop, a collection of books line a large shelf built by Eldridge.
Although he was born and raised in Elkin, North Carolina, Eldridge began tattooing in California after nishing his service in the United States Navy in 1969. While he was getting tattooed in San Francisco, a tattoo artist o ered him an apprenticeship. Despite his excitement, Eldridge had a choice to make. Since leaving the Navy, he had spent his time making bicycles.
“So I came to a crossroads,” Eldridge re ected. “I’d already spent all these years pursuing the bicycle thing. e fellow who o ered to teach me was a brilliant tattooer that I really admired. So I ended up taking the tattoo road and haven’t built a bicycle since. Tattooing is the kind of thing that’s beyond an occupation. It’s really a lifestyle.”
After he nished his apprenticeship, Eldridge worked in various San Francisco tattoo shops, building his style and reputation. He never lost sight of his love for tattoo history, and his ambition to open his own tattoo shop focused on educating others.
“No matter how cool the shop you’re working at is, if you have ambition, you want to do things your way,” he said.
Eventually, Eldridge opened the rst Tattoo Archive just across the bay in Berkeley, California. He explained how, despite having a clear vision for the shop, he struggled to nd a suitable name. Eldridge didn’t like the common “cutesy” or self-titled names that many shops have. He wished for something original that would reect the uniqueness of his business.
“One day, I was on my bicycle riding by a building in Berkeley that was where the Paci c Film Archive operated,” Eldridge re ected. “For some reason, the word ‘archive’ just ran through my brain. I mean, I’ve literally been by that building hundreds if not thousands of times, and that name never rang the way it did that day. at was it. I knew my shop would be the Tattoo Archive.”
After operating Tattoo Archive in Berkeley for more than 35 years, Eldridge and his wife Harriet Cohen moved back to North Carolina and reopened Tattoo Archive on Fourth Street in 2007. Eldridge said that the move was born from big-city burnout and a desire to return home.
“People always asked me in California, ‘Oh, where are you from? Where’s your home?’ I would answer ‘I live here, but my home is in North Carolina.’ at was always my feeling inside me. I was always a North Carolinian, not a transplant Californian.”
Alongside the variety of prints and images displayed in the shop, the main hallway is lined with tattoo history books kept by Co-
shop.
“We just kept pushing forward,” he said. “We were just going to jump through any hoop they put in front of us.”
With a little help from the rising popularity of MTV, Tattoo Archive’s opening helped break the stereotypes that limited tattoo shops’ audiences in Winston-Salem. Eldridge explained that once the shop opened for business, curiosity about tattoos and the museum aspect of the shop brought people in. Tattoo Archive began to ourish.
“People fear things they don’t understand. Once they begin to grasp some understanding, a lot of fear can be washed away.”
During Tattoo Archive’s earlier years of business, Wake Forest’s Reserve O ce Training Corps (ROTC) students were among Eldridge’s rst customers. However, Eldridge expressed that Wake Forest’s conservative background hindered many students from visiting his shop. Students from Winston-Salem’s four other higher education institutions — University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Salem College and Winston-Salem State — more frequently visit Tattoo Archive.
hen, the Book Mistress.
Cohen’s interest in books about tattoo history stemmed from time spent entering Eldridge’s collection in a database. Over time, Cohen began selling her books on Amazon and preparing mail orders. When the couple moved to Winston-Salem, the Book Mistress shared the same space as Tattoo Archive. While Tattoo Archive and the Book Mistress are two separate businesses, their shared interest in tattoo history marries the two together.
“It’s a perfect combination,” Eldridge said.
Eldridge’s homecoming was not without its struggles, as the shop was initially hindered by rent, tattoo permits and stereotypes surrounding tattoo shops. Building owners didn’t want to rent to the couple, and Eldridge faced roughly $2,000 in fees to do his rst tattoo in Winston-Salem — a business license and tattoo permit cost $1,000 each.
“If my husband gets sick and can’t work, I’d have to pay $2,000 to bring someone else in to do their rst tattoo,” Cohen explained.
Despite these obstacles, Eldridge continued to work toward opening his Winston-Salem
“Wake Forest is a high-end school,” Eldridge explained. “It’s a big university, and it was originally a Bible college if I remember right about its history. I’m aware that the connotation is kind of wrapped up in Wake Forest’s image in this city, and I don’t know that I’m alone in thinking that.”
While Tattoo Archive does not have a close relationship with Wake Forest, Elridge sees a lot of college students in his shop. In his opinion, the variety of schools — each with a di erent location and culture — keep Winston-Salem from having a “college town” feel.
Whether they are Wake Forest students, UNCSA students or something else entirely, Elridge believes that the right customers will nd Tattoo Archive. is con dence has caused him to never feel the need to advertise his business. Tattoo Archive’s online presence focuses on the history, and it never advertises anything but the shop’s exhibits — an aspect of his shop that he calls a “public service.”
“Tattooing is the magic word,” Eldridge said, “ at will draw a certain number of people into your shop to either get a tattoo or just be curious about the shop.”
Whether a customer is interested in getting a tattoo, learning about tattoo history or simply looking at the artwork on the walls — Tattoo Archive is a place for the curious.
“People fear things they don’t understand. Once they begin to grasp some understanding, a lot of fear can be washed away.”
When I sat down with Kate Storho of Bookmarks Winston-Salem in late February, I had a speci c question on my mind: “How does one transform the historically antisocial act of reading into an interconnected exercise?” e night before, Dr. Ruocco — author and creative writing professor at Wake Forest — spoke at Bookmarks for the launch of her latest novel, “Artfully Yours,” an event that brought a full house, and the air was still brimming with a bright, convivial spirit. Yet I wasn’t sure how these events translated into a sense of community. I wanted to know, in the words of American poet and essayist Ben Lerner, if books could “circulate among persons and make of their readership, however small, a People.”
“Reading is absolutely a solitary act. You want to take your book home and sit by yourself and read it,” Storho admitted, but this certainly wasn’t the end of the story. “We try to create these opportunities where we’re going to talk about books. at’s why it’s important we’re connecting people with conversations.”
When I asked if she could explain how Bookmarks does this, Storho responded with a smile, “I think I’m going to answer with an example.”
A few years prior, after many instances of failed summer reading programs, the sta at Bookmarks cooked up a new plan. “What we decided to do was do a community one read, where we picked a theme, and we picked a book that ts that theme. And then we distributed those books to the community, and hosted events and partnered with community organizations. We called this program Book with Purpose,” Storho said.
“We want people to have access to books and to make connections with people.”
“For our rst one, the theme was anti-racism. And we read Ibram X Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning,” which has a YA version called “Stamped” as well as a version for younger kids. So we were able to get one book with di erent versions for di erent ages.” Bookmarks reached out and partnered with a wide range of people to get the word out and get people reading, such as the Winston Salem symphony, local churches and activist Yusef Salaam. All of this culminated in a keynote event at the end of their 2021 Festival, where people came together to think about anti-racism.
“ at was something that we did so that we could have a little bit more of a unifying aspect,” Storho noted. “ is year, we’re going bigger, we want to try to make sure that no one has to buy a book if they can’t buy a book.”
Indeed, getting books into more people’s hands is one of Bookmarks’ primary concerns. “We would love to see everybody in Winston-Salem who wants to be involved with books to have that opportunity,” Storho told me. “We don’t want some of these barriers to exist. We want people to have access to books and to make connections with people.” is idea of spreading books to every person who wants them is the ultimate vision of Bookmarks.
One of their main avenues to distribute books is the local school system. Bridging the gap between publishers and schools, Bookmarks sends authors out into the community with a couple of sta members who help facilitate events.
“It’s so cool,” Storho said, “because the authors will talk to the kids about what it’s like to be an author, they’ll read from their book and usually have some kind of engagement activities.”
After that, each student gets to take home a free book, a powerful act in a city where just under 20% of residents live below the poverty line.
Another way Bookmarks fosters community is their annual festival in September — an event that has exploded in popularity emerging from the pandemic — featuring authors with astronomical popularity like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Taylor Jenkins Reid. “It’s usually a big, one-day street fair on the last Saturday in September. And we usually have about 50 authors come of all ages, kids through adults.” e Festival is lled with author-led panels, readings and the harmonic circulation of books and ideas, as a cionados from across the country bond over a shared love.
Beginning in 2004, the Festival is now almost 20 years old. Bookmarks itself grew out of this festival, creating the much-needed space in which these gatherings could take place yearround, albeit on a smaller scale. Re ecting on the magnitude of the event, Storho said that “it takes a whole town to put on the festival.” Behind the scenes, there is a hidden beauty in the strong bonds that form between the volunteers who dedicate so much of their time and energy to making the event a reality.
Finally, Bookmarks cultivates more precise niches of community with its various book clubs, such as the Bookmarks Book Club, Lit/Flix Book & Film Club and Well-Read Black Girl Book Club. Not only do these clubs provide an opportunity for discussion and companionship, but they also provide discounts on particular books, minimizing the obstacles to readership.
Inside the store, Bookmarks has something for everyone. Sections range from Philosophy and Romance to Business and Self Help. Unlike major retailers, Bookmarks strategically places only one copy per book on the majority of their shelves. “We want you to see books that you recognize because sometimes it’s like seeing an old friend when you recognize a book that you love,” Storho explained, “But we also want people to stumble upon a book they’ve never seen before.” is diversity is re ected in the people you’ll nd at Bookmarks, where middle schoolers to those well past retirement ages all have found a place they belong.
What Storho would like to see more of, though, is college-aged customers. “I think young readers are looking to see themselves on the page,” Storho said, “ ey want to read a book that speaks to them and speaks to their identity.” And at Bookmarks, a talented crew of people has the ability to deliver exactly that.
“I like that we’re the kind of space where, when people walk through the door, the booksellers tend to recognize their regulars, and they know you by name, and they greet you by name. We’ve seen through the rise of Tik Tok — especially BookTok — that more people are interested in being in a bookstore, more young people. And that’s awesome. And we want y’all to come in and feel welcome here and stay here.” When I asked her what she would like to say directly to Wake Forest students, Storho replied, “We know you are reading, we just want you to come here and talk to us about what you are reading.”
As readership declines across the country, the question “why read?” seems to take more and more energy to answer. According to Storho , reading is “a way to get away from everything else that’s going on in life and get into something that interests you.” From the outside, this can seem lonely or taxing, making a book less appealing than a video game or a TV show. But at Bookmarks, reading is not so lonely, and it’s not so laborious. It’s something that people do for fun. Whether you want to share moments with friends or make new ones, Bookmarks is a place where you can feel good about reading alongside others.
Kate Storhof, Bookmarks General Manager
In the window of the WTOB o ce lies a yellow smiley face, under which a sign reads, “Home of the Good Guys!”
Home of the good guys, indeed.
Bob Scarborough, the owner of WTOB, has dedicated the last seven years to preserving the magic of radio. WTOB is a radio station licensed to Winston-Salem that serves the Piedmont Triad area and employs a classic hits format. In the 50s, when the station rst aired, it was an AM-only station that played the top 40 hits. In the “good old days,” as Scarborough refers, he would ride his bike and put money in the payphone to call the station.
He started working in the radio industry at 15, inspired by WTOB, the soundtrack to his childhood. In those days, getting a license from the Federal Communications Commission was mandatory because of the regulation rules surrounding transmitters. is was a much more time-consuming task with the technology of the time. Radio hosts used mathematical equations to ensure the frequency was correct. Nowadays, the commission simply requires that the chief engineer log a certain number of readings. When Scarborough started, he looked at them every three hours. ey had to be on a piece of paper that indicated that the plate voltage and current were correct, and members would sign their initials. “You’re thinking, I hope I don’t get this wrong,” Scarborough remembers.
Scarborough returned to WTOB in 2015 after his time in Myrtle Beach, motivated to serve his Piedmont Triad audience.
“So fast forward to now, after a whole career in broadcasting,” Scarborough says, “I am working at WTOB, which is where it all began.”
Although Scarborough is nearing the end of his career, he sees his return as something like a “full circle” moment. He cares about what WTOB means to Winston-Salem as a means of entertainment, information, support, discussion, and celebration. Aiming to stay as true to the show as it sounded during its glory days, it is one of the few stations still employing disc jockeys to run it manually. e disc jockeys can speak on air as they please, and they play the music they see t. Radio stations today often cycle through the same 1,000 or so songs a day based on an algorithm, but Scarborough does not do it that way. Instead, his goal is to emulate how radio is used to captivate audiences — as a theater of the mind.
“We re ect the city; we’re a mirror reection,” he told me. “We don’t necessarily go out and say, ‘we encourage you to do this.’ We say, ‘hey, this might be fun.’”
WTOB is an integral part of the Winston-Salem community. Its job is to be able to entertain and inform.
“We have a news department that covers news, but we don’t get the news,” Scarborough continued, “We create it.” ey report the news as it comes about, such as a road blockage or an upcoming event.
We follow it just like all the other news outlets do. And so we have the resources to provide that information.
If we see that an event is coming up, we are happy to promote it, if it’s something that’s going on at a church, a civic organization, or a charity. And sometimes on the weekends, speci c times on the weekends, we’re the only station in the area with somebody with a live microphone that they can turn on and say, ‘Hey, there’s a re. Or there are roadblocks over here because of a crash,’ and that kind of thing. So those things that we learned when we were kids on the radio, we were able to promote and do and implement today. And that’s what’s exciting about being here today doing what we’re doing. Because we have the ability to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got the immediate now covered, what’s happening today.”
e station has had the bene t of having call letters used in Winston-Salem since 1947. Call letters are a series of letters that serve as a unique identi er for the station. As a result, they have decades of people who love WTOB and remember speci c call letters. “Somebody will walk in the door to pick up a ticket they want. And they’ll say, ‘Man, I’m glad you all are back.’” WTOB has had several call letters throughout the years: WAAA was from 1950 to 2006, WTIX from 2006 to 2009, and WEGO from 2009 to 2016. e call letters are ingrained in people’s hearts and minds. “ ey’ll say, I remember when you all did, and here comes their story…you can’t buy that type of loyalty.” As a result, WTOB’s fanbase is incredibly dedicated, some even remembering jingles from throughout the years.
In Scarborough’s opinion, the corporate stations don’t have a business model that will allow them to serve the community to which they are licensed.
“Radio is broadcasting. It’s from one place to many places, and you can pick us up wher-
ever or however you listen,” he said. “But there may be 20,000 or 30,000 people out there listening, give or take. ere may be only three. I’ll be talking to 30,000 people, but to them, I’m talking to them. To me, it’s many people that are listening, but on the other end of that, it’s a personal conversation that I’m having with whoever is tuned in.” e unique part about radio that no other medium can do is to reach people at an individual level. It’s a personal relationship. Radio can conjure up images, creating a personal auditory experience. Music is so much more than entertainment to Scarborough. It is our soul. Music is intensely personal, taking us back to a speci c time.
Scarborough has a special twinkle in his eye when he talks about music. When questioned about his top three artists, he was the rst person I have asked who gave a thoughtful and detailed response. e 5 Royales are his favorite, both because they are Winston-Salemites and their impact on the music scene. Excitedly, Scarborough pulled up a Youtube clip of their most famous hit, “Dedicated To e One I Love.” He mimicked the guitar technique of Lowman Pauling, plucking the invisible strings by his knees. “He plays it down here,” he demonstrated, bending his knees slightly. He explained that most of the shakers and movers of music are inspired by e Wrecking Crew, a loose collective of Los Angeles-based musicians responsible for hundreds of the top-40 hits during the ’60s and ’70s. e Wrecking Crew, as he described them, were very di erent from the musicians at the time. “ ey were scallywags,” he said jokingly, “they weren’t like the guys in buttoned-up suits and ties.” He is inspired by people who push the needle.
On my way out of the station, I noticed a letter to WTOB taped to the wall. e listener praised them for playing the greatest music and thanked WTOB for its service. ey listen to the station daily at their house and in their car. is is what radio stations are all about — touching the lives of individuals and providing them with the positive feeling of emotions and personal memories.
e rst paid female ghter in the United States was trained right here in Winston-Salem, and she only found out herself ve years into her career. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Sandra Waldron grew up in New York and moved to Winston-Salem when she was 21, following her ex-husband who got a job at the Summit School. But after her marriage started to fall apart, she was forced to nd a way to support her children, so she turned to public safety.
It was 1973, and Waldron was one of two women in her public safety class — the other focused on becoming a police o cer — where they spent eight weeks learning and eight weeks on the job for a year straight.
Waldron approached re ghting with the determination that comes with needing to support her family, and thus she wasn’t trying to prove anything. Many doubted Waldron’s fearless presence but she continued to prove herself. She built a sense of respect for her abilities, despite needing to work twice as hard to be considered half as good.
Despite being told she was blind to the problems her male coworkers had with her, Waldron never sensed any hostility because she had con dence in earning respect through her abilities and dedication — which is exactly what she did. She was able to move up the ranks, and after 30 years of service, retired as battalion chief.
Stories like these often go untold, but one organization founded here in Winston-Salem makes part of its purpose highlighting parts of this community’s history that are looked over — MUSE Winston-Salem (MUSEws).
Initially named the New Winston Museum, MUSEws’ founding marked a signi cant shift in focus toward strengthening the public understanding of Winston-Salem’s true history.
“When I heard there were e orts underway to open a history museum for the community in 2012, I was excited, and pretty soon thereafter I got involved as a guest curator,” Mike Wakeford, executive director of MUSEws, said.
Wakeford, a history and humanities professor at the UNC School of the Arts, joined MUSE through an educational collaboration. He described the MUSE-
ws as a top-down storyteller. Rather than displaying a standard version of the past, the curators hope to o er people the opportunity to be their own narrators – either by providing them their own galleries or displaying their work.
“ is is a community that has a deep and important history with a lot of vibrant historical consciousness,” Wakeford said. “But it hasn’t always foregrounded an inclusive narrative.”As with many cities in the United States, this history tends to be tainted by racism.
MUSEws recently moved locations to an old courthouse, where they are renovating and preparing for the launch of
hand with its goal: o ering opportunities for people to tell their own stories — starting with their Oral History Program called StoryTap, that includes stories like Waldron’s.
“At this point, we have 100 oral histories completed over the lifetime of the organization, many of those done in collaboration with a diverse population in racial and ethnic terms,” Wakeford said. ese oral histories can be found on Soundcloud, in an attempt to give the larger Winston-Salem community untethered access. Listeners can hear accounts like Waldron’s or of Holocaust survivor, Hank Brodt. ere are also many series focusing on topics like the African American experience in Winston-Salem, African American artists of Winston-Salem and the lives of war veterans.
e StoryTap program taps into the unheard slices of Winston-Salem and honors the idea that everyone has a story worth telling. Wake Forest is included through the oral history from Jean Boroughs about “Life on Wake Forest University Campus.”
the new and improved history museum. Instead of removing all traces of the property’s history, MUSEws is embracing the look and integrating it into their renovations.
“ e museum opened originally in a small building, and about ve years ago we made the decision to move out of that building into a preferable location where we could nd more foot tra c,” Wakeford said.
e new location on 226 S. Liberty St. is only a short walk from downtown Winston-Salem, and Wakeford described a plan that involved exhibits that foreground the museum’s role as a facilitator of dialogue.
“We don’t want to have an antiquated approach,” he said, “Rather, we want to use informed programs and galleries to leverage conversation about issues that matter.”
e museum is working hard to develop purposeful programs that go hand in
“In the history of the organization, there have been lots of collaborations with the Wake Forest community,” Wakeford said. “Lisa Blee, a professor in the history department, has brought many of her classes to the museum.” MUSEws has also been partnering with the Department of Communication with Professor Luke Gloeckner.
Gloeckner, a documentary lmmaker and instructor at Wake Forest for three years now, teaches COM 309: Visual Storytelling and assigns his students anal project that uses their newfound video skills to tell the stories of a speci c location in Winston-Salem. ese stories have been showcased at the museum and have developed into a cross-institutional showcase. However, Gloeckner’s initial exposure to MUSEws was a “funny twist of fate.”
“I was going for a walk downtown the summer before my rst term at Wake Forest and I walked by MUSE,” Gloecker said. “I see this museum of storytelling, so I ended up contacting them wondering if there was an intersection between what they’re doing and what I’m teaching.”
“...we want to use informed programs and galleries to leverage conversation about issues that matter.”
When Gloeckner found out that MUSEws was celebrating local Winston-Salem history, he was immediately interested. Together, they put up displays of the projects, which allowed Gloeckner’s students to not only get out into the community coming out of the pandemic , but also see their effort make an impact.
“People from the community would come out to the event because they wanted to see the stories of their town told by students here,” Gloecker said. “It’s cool to see people care about this community so much.”
MUSEws has also been involved with some bigger Wake Forest programs, such as the Faceto-Face Speaker Forum. This platform began a couple of years ago and has brought powerful figures to the Wake Forest campus, including Supreme Court justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg to award-winning artists and authors.
In the Spring of 2021, former President George W. Bush came to campus, and his conversation in LJVM Coliseum highlighted his newfound passion: painting. This was something that Wakeford and his colleagues observed, so they decided to “have a little fun with it.”
“If the former president can paint pictures of us, other Americans, why can’t we paint pictures of presidents?” Wakeford said. MUSEws worked with John Hutton, Salem College art historian and illustrator, to further Bush’s impact. They conducted a workshop that discussed Bush’s paintings, and then Hutton provided a lesson in caricature drawing.
“It’s not serious — it’s just a fun, different way to interact with Bush’s presence here,” Wakeford said.
On top of MUSEws’ involvement in the community, they also have an impressive collection of historical pieces. Curation is not an easy task,
but MUSEws is currently waist deep in the gallery selection process and will continue to be, at least until MUSEws’ official opening in a larger space.
“We’ve surrendered from the outset the unreachable aspiration of telling the whole story at one time,” Wakeford said. “If someone has an hour to spare, we want the chronology and signature features that will allow a linear understanding of this city’s growth.”
One of Wakeford’s most significant examples included Labor 22, the story of a labor union effort in the 1940s by a group of Black women working for RJ Reynolds Tobacco. This group was successful in its effort to negotiate for improved work conditions.
“That story has so many interesting pieces to it,” Wakeford said.“But it’s also a way of telling the story of the growth of RJ Reynolds Tobacco.”
Wakeford acknowledges that these goals are a couple of years away from being achieved. “We’re not where we want to be right now,” Wakeford said. But the museum’s mission in picking what it displays stays the same. They plan on having two galleries: core and temporary. The core gallery would be more permanent — though always flexible to change — and the temporary gallery would have faster, more homegrown or traveling shows — such as a show from the Smithsonian.
“We’re always in these conversations being confronted by others or confronting ourselves, because every time you have a photo or video telling a story, there are 10 other things you can justify having as well,” Wakeford said. But to MUSEws, that’s what makes history so beautiful, and they want to be transparent about that.
“We want to encourage our visitors to come face to face with the truth,” Wakeford said. “‘History’ is not the same as ‘the past.’ History is an art, a craft and a narrative act.”
Story by Bella Ortley-Guthrie (‘24)The wind blows on Trade Street, swaying the downtown stop lights back and forth.
e street is quiet amidst the brisk wind but Moji Co ee + More stands warmly on the corner. Red, yellow, blue and pink colors with slogans like “Co ee that Gives Everyone a Voice” and “Double Jolt of Joy Daily” line Moji’s windows. Inside, Moji’s baristas (Mojistas) greet customers from behind the co ee bar. From handcrafted geometric prints to painted art on the wall, everything in Moji is colorful, welcoming and purposeful. Because Moji Co ee is a place with a purpose.
Moji Co ee + More, strives to be the embodiment of joy as they provide enriching and intentional employment to individuals with di ering abilities.
Moji’s Program Director, Dan Wellman, began working at Moji as a job coach in September of 2021 and became program director in November of 2021. Wellman leads and manages Moji’s volunteer e ort, training the baristas or “Mojistas” as they’re called at Moji.
“Moji is all about joy,” Wellman said. “ e joy that people can experience when they come and see us but really experience when they taste our product. Because, in essence, our mission is about the support that we provide, and the assistance that we provide to facilitate someone’s growth and their development.”
Moji opened its rst location on Trade Street in September 2019 and its second location at the Forsyth County Central Library ve months later. eir Mojista program allows sta members to set long-term goals and personalized plans while gaining work and learning experience in the co ee shop. For all Mojista’s, the end goal is to help them achieve program mastery, at which point Wellman will work alongside them and Moji’s employer networks to facilitate program graduation. e program mastery helps transition sta members to employment outside Moji where they can
continue to develop skills, gain nancial independence and be challenged, according to Wellman.
In 2022, Moji had 11 graduates and created three new independent roles. ese new roles allow graduates to work as captains and coaches at Moji to supervise, encourage and implement the learning steps for newer Mojistas. As Program Director and a coach, Wellman’s been most encouraged by witnessing his sta member’s development and growth in the mastery program at Moji.
In Winston-Salem, the inclusive hiring sphere has seen a gradual increase, as inclusive workspaces like Grace’s Bakery and Bitty & Beau begin to open their doors. However, the e ort to have diverse hiring spaces ultimately remains a challenge.
“ e goal is to really transform the landscape of employment in Winston-Salem — to be more inclusive, more open to diverse hiring practices and diverse training practices to hiring and creating universal accommodations that are supportive to individuals with di erent needs and di erent abilities,” Wellman said.
Moji is part of the roundtable discussion called the Neurodiversity @ Work Employer Roundtable, founded by Microsoft, which seeks to create dialogue and strategies surrounding diverse and inclusive hiring, training and education models. Wellman works with the Roundtable alongside representatives from companies like Bank of America, IBM and Walgreens to create conversations around implementing inclusive workspaces.
Since rst opening, Moji has a mission-oriented mindset. is means they participate in community and education-based outreach that aligns with their mission’s goals. Some of their events and connections include partnerships and events with North Carolina Autism Society, Down Syndrome Association, Deac Dash and Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership. Moji is working to keep building their employer network within the city. Some of their current employer networks include Atrium Health, Lowes Food and Catch Creek Bakery.
“We reach out to anyone in our network, anyone that we’re connected to,” Wellman told me. “Because we take to the philosophy that anyone and everyone can bene t from the advocacy that we’re trying to do and the kind of inclusivity that we’re trying to practice.”
Wellman sees Moji’s advocacy as something that organizations, people and communities can take part in.
“Whether it’s someone that has an intellectual or developmental disability, or they have a loved one who does, or a co-worker or a neighbor, or maybe they just want to be more inclusive when they encounter someone with a different need,” Wellman continued, “We really don’t think there’s anyone that’s an inappropriate audience to participate and share in the kind of advocacy that we’re doing.”
At Moji’s coffee station, they have visual, physical and tactile aids to help Mojistas accomplish certain tasks. In the dining area, chairs are spaced out to welcome and accommodate every type of body and level of mobility. On the walls, there is artwork, pottery and works for sale by graduated Mojistas and other members of the community.
At both locations, Moji offers a variety of products from coffee, tea, smoothies, drinks and pastries, some from local businesses like Sunshine Drinks and Grace Bakery. Mojista’s pride themselves on their in-house brew though, available in decaf, regular and french roast.
“We go out of our way to manually calibrate our grinders every morning so that the finest grind and the time yields an appropriate amount of espresso that we pull manually,” Wellman said. “It’s pre-measured with care. The technical pieces of actually pulling espresso and steaming milk and putting the components together are done very intentionally and in a specific order with care, so that we produce a really good product. And I’m very proud of all of my staff that has learned all of those steps.”
think, for the students that have come to see us and gotten our coffee or spent time studying in our cafe and meeting our staff, I’m sure a lot of them can attest to the joy that we bring, the positive experience and that we have so much to share.”
For Wellman, Moji represents only one story and one perspective of Winston-Salem. It’s a story that is not isolated but extends and blends into Wake Forest and Winston-Salem.
“There are neurodiverse people everywhere. And an increased awareness of the differences a neurodivergent person might experience in life — some of them are challenges, some of them are barriers and some of them might just be differences. But an awareness of what those differences are and how to understand them, and how to bridge the gap so that a neurodiverse person doesn’t feel so different, or alien, but they’re just another person that is different to you is an important skill that requires some effort. It requires advocacy and education,” Wellman said.
“There are neurodiverse people everywhere. And an increased awareness of the differences a neurodivergent person might experience in life — some of them are challenges, some of them are barriers and some of them might just be differences. But an awareness of what those differences are and how to understand them, and how to bridge the gap so that a neurodiverse person doesn’t feel so different, or alien, but they’re just another person that is different to you is an important skill that requires some effort. It requires advocacy and education,” Wellman said.
“It’s not the most natural thing to immediately understand someone who’s different. But it is really important: it’s really valuable. Neurodiverse people are everywhere, they’re on Wake Forest’s campus. They’re a part of your student body, staff and the faculty. At Moji, we just represent what I think is a pretty shining, exemplary example of how to navigate those differences with kindness and with compassion, by putting the person first because we are people like everyone else.”
Wellman encourages Wake Forest students and community members to extend themselves outside the campus to see and experience the community and diversity Winston-Salem has to offer.
“There’s a certain level of isolation to the campus that separates students from the rest of the community,” reflected Wellman. “There’s a missed opportunity there when you’re not connecting to the broader community that you’re in and the city that you’re in.”
He continued: “We have so much to share. I
Moji Coffee + More really is more than just coffee, it offers community for those both in and outside of their doors. It’s a community that doesn’t define someone by what they can or cannot achieve but sees people as being capable and having the power to advocate for themselves and their independence. In Moji’s program and under Dan’s advocacy and leadership, Moji builds people up to grow, learn and flourish. It’s an intentionality which delivers a product that not only brings joy to the customer but to the staff themselves.
Photographer Lucius You Director Selinna Tran
Weathered. That’s how Winston-Salem, the “city of arts and innovation,” feels to Nicholas Layne Schmidt. It’s in his art; words, symbols and shapes fade and scatter along complicated atmospheric shades of blue, white and yellow. Silhouettes stand robust against tattered walls of color. Lines curve, bend, sprout, zig and zag, clump together. Figures are always in action among scratched and textured backgrounds of paint; some of them are performing, some of them observing.
“I wanted to give off something that you would see on the side of a building,” Schmidt said. “I love that aesthetic of urban decay. To me, it communicates the breaking down of structures that will inevitably fall if left untouched.”
Growing up in Yadkinville, 30 miles away from Winston-Salem, Schmidt watched his mother, a retired schoolteacher, paint. He gravitated toward image-based art, not performance, and once he was accepted into UNC School of the Arts, he frequented Waughtown, one of his frst exposures to the Winston-Salem art scene.
“It was a very gritty, vibrant and diverse place. You could walk for a few blocks and see live jazz, punk rock, sometimes for only a dollar,” Schmidt
said.
After showing art in Winston-Salem and then traveling internationally, Schmidt moved into a two-bedroom apartment on Bond Street where he lived for a decade until a new landlord arrived.
“At the time, we had been paying $450 a month for rent. Then, in 2021, the new landlord bought the place and wanted to make very superfcial renovations. The rent became $1200 a month, which is what we are paying now for a three-bedroom [apartment].”
The fnancial pressure that Schmidt and his family faced was not endemic to one street or one landlord. Rent prices are rising in national markets because of increased demand for single-family rentals. According to a list compiled in September of 2022 by the apartment rental agency Dwellsy, Winston-Salem accumulated a 64% rent increase year to year. That’s the 10th-highest rate of growth in the entire nation.
“At one point, I kept politics removed from my art, because you have to sell your art. You have to feed your kids and make the rent,” Schmidt said. “But I think there’s too much at stake now. My role is to use my voice to talk about things that impact me and my family.”
Schmidt is currently a fulltime artist and any inquiries can be reached at his email: kudzugardensart@gmail. com
Art for art’s sake, a French expression that says art has inherent value independent from its subject matter, doesn’t quite line up with Schmidt’s ethos.
Two years ago, Schmidt created a work quite di erent in composition from many of his paintings, but one that still signaled a kind of urban demolition and decay in the heart of Winston-Salem.
e mural, entitled “Deactown”, featured Wake Forest University’s Demon Deacon mascot mid-stride, stepping on houses with a bag of cash in hand. e deacon is painted against a gold background and “Deactown” is stenciled on the mural. e image, Schmidt said, was meant to be a critique of the university’s pervasive in uence on the city. Shortly after Schmidt nished his mural, the nonpro t Art for Art’s Sake (AFAS) made the decision to take it down and paint over it.
e “Deactown” mural was part of a series called Mural Fest, organized by AFAS. In an interview with the Triad City Beat, AFAS CEO Harry Knabb said that the work violated rules about what artists can paint: no nudity, no violence and no politics. Knabb said that the mural was “pretty political.”
After his mural was painted over, Schmidt took to social media to protest what he believes was “corporate censorship of art.” Local working-class artists and business owners got behind Schmidt as he received online backlash.
“I think that my mural was political. Politics at its core is a struggle for resources,” Schmidt said. “ e mural was asking questions about where money and value go in Win- ston-Salem.”
Over the last decade, Wake Forest has increased its total enrollment by more than 1,500 students, according to ocial university gures. e school’s properties o ce manag- es and leases approximately 1 million square feet of owned o ce, retail and residential space and is engaged in the strategic acquisition of real property.
e university is also involved in projects of economic revitalization, the most notable being the acquisition and transformation of vacant Reynolds warehouses into thriving centers for biotechnology and medicinal research. Wake Forest has also entered into the Whitaker Park Development Authority (WPDA), a partnership with Winston-Salem Business Inc. and the Winston-Salem Alliance. When Reynolds closed Whitaker Park, one of its industrial complexes, they donated it to the WPDA in the hopes that the space could potentially provide “thousands of new jobs.”
Schmidt, who has raised two children with his partner in Winston-Salem, sees the university’s role in these projects as a way of ignoring the city’s need for a ordable housing.
As the Winston-Salem City Council rubber-stamped the measure to fund the Whitaker Park complex, former city councilman Dan Besse criticized the use of money from the limited housing assistance fund for an economic development project.
“It looks like the city is purging poor and working-class folks by refusing to invest in a ordable housing. Schools like Wake Forest de nitely add to this problem,” Schmidt said. “Accepting more students than there is housing available drives up the cost of rent across the city.”
e “Deactown” mural gained traction in the Winston-Salem arts and small business community. Shortly after it was painted over, Carlos Bocanegra, the owner of Monstercade Bar on Acadia Avenue asked Schmidt to paint a similar mural on the side of their building, and then he hosted an art show, featuring live music and community activists. For the show, Schmidt spray painted the phrase “DEACVICTED” across an outline of a simple brick house, captioning the image on Instagram, “a friendly invitation to the brilliant PR team at AFAS.”
WE CONTINUE FROM PAGE NINE
Wake Forest is far from the rst suburban-based institution to venture outside their campus gates and into the urban arena. American downtowns across the country have, and continue to be, transformed by the growth and expansion of their neighboring universities.
Constructing academic facilities in downtown Winston-Salem is part of a push by Wake Forest to expand their real estate footprint, not unlike what’s happening in downtown Durham vis-à-vis Duke University.
“A university’s interests have never been fully dictated by teaching classes and conducting research,” says Davarian Baldwin, professor of American Studies at Trinity University. “Schools are often the biggest developers in their cities or towns, and despite their non-pro t designations, their interests are pro t-driven.”
It’s November 2022, and Baldwin is in Winston-Salem for the rst time. Wake Forest University is hosting “ e University & the Neighborhood Conference,” and he’s the keynote speaker.
Before he delivers his address, Baldwin sits to watch “ e Universities & the Neighborhoods Roundtable.”
e discussion features academics from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem State University and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. ere’s not a single community resident up on stage. But one, a middle-aged woman, stands up out of the crowd.
“Have you ever asked me my opinion on those things?” she asks the panelists. “We’ve watched Wake Forest come into this city … You want it to be ‘Deactown.’ You don’t want it
to be Winston-Salem. You want us to look at the hospital and the university as the pinnacle of what this city has to o er, when in reality, they have nothing to o er people like me.”
A Wake Forest student-journalist reporting on the event describes the clash with just one word: “Embarrassing.”
Minutes later, the session concludes and the participants le out of the conference’s host location — Wake Downtown’s main structure, a reinvented Reynolds Tobacco building.
Much of what you see today at Wake Downtown, or more broadly in Winston-Salem and its suburbs, can be traced back to Reynolds Tobacco. In the early 20th century, the company opened cigarettes to the mass market. An economic boom followed, and by 1920, Winston-Salem was the largest city in North Carolina.
Reynolds Tobacco transformed “Camel City” from street to sky. To house their tremendous workforce, the company bought 84 acres of property in Winston-Salem and built 180 houses in a development branded “Reynoldstown.” In 1927, construction wrapped on the 18-story Nissen Building, the largest in North Carolina, and the rst with air conditioning in the whole of the Southeastern United States. It would be outdone less than two years later when Reynolds’s new art-deco-style headquarters were completed — the 22-story o ce tower known as the “Reynolds Building” will later become the muse for New York City’s Empire State Building.
e astronomical capital and resources that were invested into Winston-Salem created economic reverberations in the nancial, commercial and social sectors.
ough parks, airlines, high schools, hospitals and hosiery companies were built on the heels of Reynolds’ deposits, the behemoth’s most enduring legacy was the donation of a tract of land on their rural estate three miles down the road.
“Nobody knew [back then] that this was what would save our ass,” Ralph Hanes Womble, philanthropist and former CEO of Hanes Dye & Finishing told Politico in 2016. “Because nobody knew everything else would be going away.”
In the late ’80s, Reynolds’ headquarters were moved to Atlanta. It all happened rather quickly, with then Reynolds’ boss F. Ross Johnson announcing the company’s merger with Nabisco in 1986. Johnson initiated the relocation in ’87 because Winston-Salem was too “bucolic” to attract young professionals. In ’88, the titan was acquired in a $25 billion leveraged buyout.
In less than two years, Camel City lost upward of 10,000 jobs.
Winston-Salem reeled from the loss of its economic engine. With the abandonment of the mills and factories, a tremendous labor pool was left out to dry.
City leaders searched desperately for any spark that might inject new life into an economy and workforce that were growing more desolate and dejected by the month. e saving grace came in the form of a single warehouse, sold by Reynolds in 1992, for a lump sum of $1 million. e following year, the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest’s School of Medicine, plus eight researchers from nearby Winston-Salem State University, moved in.
It was a shot of adrenaline for the white-collar government o cials and remaining industry leaders, less so for the blue-collar men and women still out of employment.
Fast-forward almost 30 years and that former warehouse isn’t so easy to pick out among a sprawling 330-acre research park. Today, the Innovation Quarter is a blossoming knowledge community home to more than 170 companies, 3,700 employees, ve academic institutions and 1,500 students. With 240,000 square feet of state-of-the-art classrooms, research
and clinical lab space, Wake Downtown is just one among the Innovation Quarter’s many tenants.
Camel City’s revitalization was predicated on Wake Forest’s agency. Along with their peers at Winston-Salem State, Wake Forest was the rst tenant in the research park before it was even a research park. In 2002, when Wake Forest proposed expanded development, the university hired America’s most accomplished innovation park managers to lead the charge. e project couldn’t move forward until an entity assumed the capital risk associated with developing the project, and Wake Forest Baptist boldly shouldered the bulk of that load. Eyebrows were raised when 10,000 new jobs were promised, not to mention an in ux of billions of dollars into the local economy. Now two decades later, those vows have largely grown to fruition.
To this day, the Innovation Quarter continues to grow. e $841 million invested in the initial phase of construction will be dwarfed by what’s to come. Phase two, which began in 2023, calls for an additional one million square feet of clinical and lab space, 450 residential units and 10 new buildings.
By picking up where Big Tobacco fell through, Wake Forest has turned a new leaf on downtown Winston-Salem. And yet, as local activist Tommy Priest observes, the “us versus them” narrative persists.
Priest who owns and operates Co ee Park (see page 10) notes the mentality as one beyond racial associations. “ ose who remember — they don’t take kindly to Deactown,” Priest says.
Born in 1971, Priest can only speak to as far back as the ’80s. Back then, downtown was not a place you went to after 5 p.m. “Unless you were looking for cocaine or hookers,” Priest adds with a grin.
Downtown Winston-Salem is still tinted by the sepia tone of yesteryear, but there’s also more vibrance to the community than ever before. ere is lawn yoga and a brick-oven pizza joint. ere are 3-D printers and labs regenerating organs and tissues. ere are Big Apple-style pedicabs with bumping music and ashing lights. e Chainsmokers are playing here in May 2023.
e relics of another time still stand, but they’ve been retro tted with modern accouterments. Both the Nissen Building and the Reynolds Building remain triumphs of the skyline, and in 2014, either building was honored on the National Register of Historic Places. e former houses luxury apartments and features a rooftop pool, cabana and wet bar. e latter, renovated by the Kimpton Hotels Group, features a boutique hotel, restaurant and upscale apartments.
City-wide, new businesses seemingly open every week to cater to the younger, modern population moving into Winston-Salem. e new Downtown Grille, located at 500 W. 5th Street, o ers a $44 crab cake entree. e restaurant is a four-minute walk from the forthcoming ALV Nightclub, a new venue advertising live music, VIP sections and bottle service.
Priest says that, for a large chunk of the population who was here “before,” these new luxuries are inaccessible and una ordable. at’s not to mention that rental rates across the city have skyrocketed.
According to data compiled by the apartment rental agency Dwellsy, Winston-Salem ranked 10th in a list of cities with the fastest-growing rental rates. e news release states that, between August 2021 and September 2022, average rent prices increased by more than 64%.
e “Manhattan-esque,” rental rates, as Priest calls them, are a function of demand. For a lot of people, there’s a lot to like about the revitalized downtown. “All the amenities of a big city… without the big city,” Priest says.
e explosion of the Innovation Quarter has played no small part in transforming public perception. Downtown has become something of an “Eds and Meds” community, where the institutions of higher learning (“eds”) and medical facilities (“meds”) are the largest employers, and where the proclivities of these populations dictate the ebbs and ows of the economy.
According to the most recent data collected by the national non-pro t organization State Science & Technology Institute, Winston-Salem saw the fourth highest per capita increase in “Eds and Meds” employment between 2010 and 2015.
Wake Forest has breathed life back into downtown Winston-Salem — an area that was not being economically supported and was on a downward trend. But as a new population has moved in, an older population has been pushed out. In gentri cation, there’s always good and there’s always harm, but it’s rarely distributed equitably. No good deed comes without punishment.
From Wake Forest and other Innovation Quarter tenants, there have been good deeds.
A lot of community-facing work is already taking place at the Reynolda Campus, but for some K-12 partners, the suburban location is di cult to access because it requires traveling several miles down a multi-lane expressway in University Parkway. In contrast, the Innovation Quarter and Wake Downtown back right up against East Winston, home to some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in Forsyth County. Given its location, the research park is well suited to serve as a kind of bridge between these two areas. In recent years, classrooms and lab spaces have become increasingly popular eld trip destinations for local elementary and middle schools.
Despite the near proximity, there are other barriers that impede community members from taking full advantage of the resources and opportunities the research park has to o er.
Alana James, Associate Director of Community Engagement for Wake Downtown, notes the summer program o ered to high school students who attend Title I schools — a federal designation given to high schools with more than 75% of students coming from economically disadvantaged homes. “We started a lab-based STEM internship program last year,” James
said. “But it’s hard to ask a high school student who works to support their family — lifeguarding or ipping burgers — to give up that income for an academic opportunity.”
By making the internship a paid program and o ering free transportation, Wake Downtown is enabling local students to earn an income while acquiring the hard skills that come from working in a laboratory or clinical setting under the mentorship of experienced scientists and technicians.
“Wake Forest and other [local entities] haven’t always done a great job being inclusive in their expansions,” James said. “We have to think about what we can do to make sure our Winston-Salem students are poised [for future success].”
In extending university resources to strengthen and support the community, Wake Forest has pushed beyond the con nes of their Reynolda and downtown campuses. In 2020, Wake Forest Baptist Health partnered with Novant Health to open a primary care clinic in East Winston, not far from the site of the original “Reynoldstown.”
e clinic is a shade over half a mile west of Wake Downtown — students can make the walk in 12 minutes. From that urban campus, it’s a 10-minute shuttle ride back to the Reynolda Campus. anks to University Parkway, it’s a quick drive.
In constructing the most e cient route between the northern end of Winston-Salem and the downtown area, city planners cut directly through the historically Black Boston urmond neighborhood (see page 50). For all intents and purposes, the neighborhood connects Wake Forest’s suburban campus to the one downtown.
e parkway was constructed in 1960, just four years after Wake Forest moved to town. Of course, the university didn’t build the parkway, nor did they create any of the other structures and roadways that have hamstrung the Boston- urmond neighborhood. Wake Forest hasn’t pushed for rents to increase, and they certainly didn’t instigate the downfall of Reynolds Tobacco.
What Wake Forest has done is fund the salary of Regina Hall, Executive Director of Boston- urmond United. e non-pro t works toward the betterment of the neighborhood by prioritizing housing, education and community health and wellness. anks to Wake Forest, the organization is now able to a ord a full-time, highly-experienced and well-educated leader.
Such generosity isn’t unprecedented. For as long as Wake Forest has been in Winston-Salem, the university has been supporting the community. It was the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology that gave the downtown area the second chance it so desperately needed. A decade later, it was Wake Forest Baptist who assumed the capital risk required for further development of the research park. In the present day, it is university-employed scientists and researchers who are opening their doors and extending novel opportunities to disenfranchised community members.
None of this is making amends. Wake Forest didn’t create the conditions that have sti ed some community members, but some of these conditions are a by-product of their existence, just like some of the pressures downtown have been exacerbated by their expanding presence.
Community residents recognize the attempts the university is making to improve conditions in their neighborhoods, but many still feel that the harm — unintentional though it may be — outweighs the help. Given the in uence Wake Forest University commands, they want to see more.
“We don’t want you to remain silent, we want you to use your power and to speak up in your circles,” said the community resident who spoke out at “ e Universities & the Neighborhoods Roundtable.” “We don’t want you to bring [experts] to tell us about us. We want you to invite us to your meetings. We want you to not be complicit in the gentri cation and displacement of marginalized communities in this city.”
“History is the reason my job exists,” Allana James told e Magnolia. “Progress has been made, but you can’t overcome decades of history in one fell swoop.”
Overcoming history requires learning from history. If there’s a lesson to take from the history of Winston-Salem and the titan who abandoned it, it’s that the responsibility of supporting this city cannot be abated. Not when the university’s power and in uence are setting the wage ceiling for the city at large. Not when there’s a booming healthcare system that thousands rely on. Not when that system, operated in conjunction with Novant Health, comprises the largest employer in Forsyth County.
“We have to show up and keep showing up because we can’t expect people who haven’t traditionally been included to trust our intentions,” James said.
e second phase of development at the Innovation Quarter o ers a prime opportunity to ramp up those inclusionary e orts. Doing so requires not only hosting the necessary conversations but also prioritizing space for the proper voices. By engaging directly with community members, Wake Forest administrators and their peers can learn what these residents need to feel welcomed in the space. With that knowledge in hand, they can use their resources to build the necessary structures — an a ordable and well-stocked grocery store, perhaps — that will enable the community to thrive.
e model is already in place — look no further than Regina Hall and the work of Boston- urmond United — and the groundwork has been laid, but seeing these endeavors to fruition will take time.
Evolution never happens quickly, but with gown, city and town advancing as one uni ed front, maybe it all happens just a little bit quicker.
Along 25th Street, hundreds of women and men watched the empty road with babies in their arms and children by their side. Waitresses wiped their hands on their aprons and mechanics stood in their overalls. Rocking chairs leaned on the curbs and housewives left their houses to stand in tree-shaded front yards.
A little Black girl named Deborah stood with her mother, Rosie Ford, gazing out at the oncoming motorcade in the cold sun.
Her father, Johney, wasn’t there to see the city police and state highwaymen parade across 25th. Even though most of Winston-Salem had shut down, he was still working. Mr. Ford usually had one day o , and it had already passed.
Deborah looked out at the crowd. Cameras were snapping on either side of the road. Even a priest in his robes stood there, taking pictures. An entire kindergarten had assembled with a big sign and an American ag, the stars and stripes swaying in the wind. Dozens held Confederate ags; little white girls and some young men, who waved their ags to the news cameras passing them in cars.
“
e President’s coming,” Rosie Ford told her daughter.
Before he would clean his lunch plate at the Babcock mansion down Reynolda Road, President Harry Truman rode in the White House limousine across 25th. His procession of hundreds of police cars and motorcycles passed thousands of residents and visitors that lined his route from the Smith Reynolds airport.
“Wake Forest Day” had arrived, and its national and local newspaper heralds crammed themselves into buses, cabs and
motor cars to stalk the presidential procession. People stood on the roofs of the exhibit buildings of the old Liberty Street fairgrounds to gaze down at the spectacle.
25th Street had never seen anything like it, the road least of all. It had been used to an easy kind of tra c: the slow tread of automobiles and feet. Only the rain made walking the dirt paths and streets di cult.
But there was plenty of land on which the crowd could gather for a glimpse of Truman, the President who hadn’t gone to college, come to break ground for a school that the Reynolds family had willed a hundred miles east from Raleigh.
“Most of these thousands will only be thinking one thing: at’s the President over there,” wrote a Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel columnist on Sunday.
He was right. Nobody knew what this new college would bring. Little Deborah had no idea that Wake Forest would carve itself a path to the city— one that would lift her parents’ house out of the ground and carry it somewhere else. e crowd of thousands watched as the President passed them by; the convertible sailed past the bungalow and foursquare homes of 25th; on through the orange and gold covering of the maple trees and the green open elds of Reynolda Road to the white facades of the Reynolda estate.
Hours later, Truman shoveled his rst spadeful of dirt from the mound where Wait Chapel would spring forth. As he walked back up to the speaker’s podium to face the battery of photographers, they shouted, “One more shot, Mr. President!”
In a moment Truman was back down the stairs with his shovel to break ground three more times; the President of the United States planting a seed that would stretch its network of roots throughout Winston Salem and break the ground right back.
Photos of Deborah Ford courtesy of Ivan WeissNearly a decade earlier, on the north side of Winston Salem, Johney Ford was preparing to go to join the ght in World War II. When he left his family, the Reynolds skyscraper stood over the city; a beacon of an industry that had attracted thousands of African American sharecroppers and farm workers to work in its factories. When Ford returned, the building hadn’t changed. It remained the unmistakable sign of an empire — a business in rm control of a city where it paid more than a quarter of all property taxes.
e people of Winston-Salem had their saying: nothing could get done in the town unless it had been rst approved on the 19th oor of the Reynolds building. ey were right. It was the wealthy white executive of Reynolds, Charles B. Wade, that helped handpick poor Black neighborhoods to wipe o the map in the Winston-Salem Redevelopment Commission.
Far below that top oor, dozens of Black women worked in su ocating heat and dust, deep in the heart of Winston-Salem. Sacks of tobacco rode men’s shoulders into the factory oor, where the women were waiting to roll them into cigarettes. ere were no breaks. If they slowed down, they’d be shown the door. Some would die in the building. e manual labor of these workers, who were primarily Black, built the Tobacco Metropolis, whose imperial building and giant smokestacks loomed over them.
When he returned from the war, Johney brought with him an interest in the famous trade of Winston-Salem: business. But not the Reynolds Tobacco kind of domineering industry. With money saved from the Air Force, Ford became a member of the growing class of Black professionals and small business owners in the city.
Johney started a business of his own in the middle of 14th Street: a café called Little Rose Garden. Music and the smell of meat on the grill would oat out into the road, welcoming Black customers that many lunch counters and restaurants turned away. It was a steady crowd for Mr. Ford, and in it, his favorite customer: little Deborah, who would come to visit her father at work and enjoy some ice cream.
Back then, there were plenty of small, Blackowned businesses like Mr. Ford’s on neighborhood streets. At the end of his workday, Johney would drive home from East Winston to 25th Street, where corner and grocery stores had sprouted up on nearby Cherry Street. ese were
centers of community, where residents purchased fresh produce and shared life with each other. e Fords lived in Alta Vista, an area with many doctors, teachers and factory workers. Lawns were tidy, and houses were taken care of. It was part of the Boston- urmond neighborhood, whose genesis can be traced back to a set of cottages developed by white investors for the growing number of working-class African American families.
Above the pavement and cement, these streets had human bonds of shared experience and neighborhood gossip to connect them for miles. A certain comradery had been built in those communities that the rst tremors of modernization would knock down.
e city government’s wave of “public good” had reached the North Ward. e Fords’ house — constructed in the 1930s — sat on the blueprint for yet another dividing line that was to be put between Black neighborhoods. e city of Winston-Salem purchased their house on April 1st, 1958 for $100 dollars. One morning, Deborah watched as her house was packed onto a truck bed and sent to a new property on urmond Street. Now, work could begin on the Cherry Marshall Project, which they would name University Parkway nearly two decades later.
As time unfolded, the dividing line in other Black neighborhoods had lengthened with it. Families likely opened the Sunday morning paper in 1959 and read the headline: “When the Bulldozers Come — Get Out!” and remained unalarmed. It was all too familiar.
e Fords were just one of the 4,000 families that the city had displaced from 1953 to 1959. And as strange as it was, this transplanting of homes was often the generous kind of relocation that the city of Winston-Salem enacted for residents that were in the way of the public purpose. ose who were renting homes, like the family of one of Deborah’s school classmates, Darinda Boston, didn’t have any help from the city to relocate.
Johney and Rosie didn’t have a say in the matter. ey moved to urmond Street. Johney continued to drive to East Winston, where his chain of businesses would be located for the rest of his life. Deborah learned to love her new house and Paisley High School, though she yearned for the allure of city life at Atkins in East Winston, a public school where her mother and cousins had gone. But even after a long day at Paisley, Deborah could still return home to urmond Street and her room, where a “million-dollar view” of the city skyline was waiting for her every night.
The municipal courtroom at City Hall in Winston-Salem was packed. Hundreds of people stood in the halls outside and jostled to get in. Although they were separated from the building by a thin line of policemen, their voices were so loud that the people in the room couldn’t even hear themselves speak.
It was a hot August night in 1959, eight years after the President had visited Winston-Salem and broke ground for the new college. Change — or modernization, as city leaders called it — had nally arrived in the city.
Truman’s successor had brought with him the most rapid phase of infrastructure development in American history: the new interstate highway system, which was in many ways the perfect opportunity for the Winston-Salem city government. If you pushed through the crowd outside the municipal courtroom in City Hall, you’d nd the aldermen of the city and members of the Winston-Salem Redevelopment Commission. ey had come to discuss their plan to renew the slums and impoverished places in the city. But after three hours of explanation and no questions from anyone else, no one had learned much of anything about what was going to happen in East Winston.
at plan would later result in the new foundation for the city — a series of highways and public housing projects to concretize existing segregation with the elbow grease of federal government dollars.
For the members of the redevelopment commission, renewal was just another word for destruction. Decades of racism and dominant white authority had created unimaginable levels of poverty for African American people. Living conditions were so bad for African American communities in the city that the city had decided to simply destroy them and either move the people somewhere else, or leave them with nowhere to go.
Government o cials and city engineers had helped to create the very conditions that they considered so abhorrent. roughout the decades, they had labeled and sectioned o Black people into specific neighborhoods and urban areas through segregation, restrictive housing covenants and discriminatory real estate practices.
City leaders had a blueprint for the “All-American” vision of Winston-Salem, and it was already being developed thirty years before the introduction of new road-
Photo courtesy of Forsyth County Public Libraryways and the interstate system. e city government had a guiding public development plan that carefully designated where African Americans lived, which was mostly on the eastern side of the city, developed by a planner named Harry L. Shaner C.P.W. In 1937, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), an arm of the federal government, provided a residential security map for Winston-Salem that assessed creditworthiness by color-coding mortgage security risks. Although the colors were green, blue, yellow and red, the map really only had two: black and white.
African American areas of the city were marked in the red, “hazardous” designation. ese neighborhoods locked residents into generational poverty. Areas classi ed as high-risk on HOLC maps became increasingly segregated by race and su ered longrun declines in home ownership, house values and credit scores. e swath of country property and white homes on Reynolda Road were graded an A. e land where historic, working-class Black neighborhoods stood earned Cs and Ds.
Up until this time, throughout the country, Black people had been essentially excluded from mortgage lending. e federal government put its stamp on discriminatory real-estate practices by giving a warning to insurers and private lenders about some neighborhoods and urban areas: “Rapid-Negro in ltration.” Even homes that might have been well worth a mortgage loan were discounted by this documentation.
African American people were forced into the cheapest communities available. Fifty years before the redevelopment of the city, the old 180,000-gallon Winston-Salem reservoir had cracked and ooded some bottomland. A working-class Black community, named “ e Pond” was con ned to the area. For decades, rainwater would store industrial runo from tobacco factories and attract mosquitoes, causing tuberculosis. In one area of the community, there was only one outhouse for as many as 50 people. But for residents, there was no help from their landlords, and no escape because of Jim Crow sanctions and federal loan policies.
Help would nally come from the Winston-Salem government, but not in the way that the people had expected or wanted.
City leaders had noticed unsanitary conditions in neighborhoods across the city, and they were alarmed. Polio had spread across Winston-Salem in the 1940s, and the language around the disease had communicated that it was a sickness primarily caused by the unsanitary conditions of poverty.
Brenda sits on her porch with her two boys, Tobiyas and Treyvon. eir family is just one of those on urmond Street dealing with a rise in rent price; an issue across Win- ston-Salem for all tenants. Photo courtesy of Connor McNeely
Photo courtesy of Connor McNeely
“
e lesson seems to come harder, but surely we are learning now that we must wipe out slums, the general breeding places of disease, vice and other evils,” read a Winston-Salem Journal editorial on July 9, 1948. e Journal, as well as newly elected Mayor Marshall Kurfees and the Winston-Salem housing authority, had a clear idea of where the “slums” were located. In April 1951, the Winston-Salem Board of Alderman created the Redevelopment Commission to nd “blighted areas” and redevelop them.
e Winston-Salem city government had decided to take action and clean up their city. e Pond was the rst slum on their list.
e city destroyed more than 300 dwellings.
en they built Kimberly Park on top of the rubble. In his study on the midcentury transformation of Winston-Salem, historian Shane Cruise notes that thousands of people were displaced without an opportunity to move into the area’s new housing development.
Urban renewal continued through the decades in Winston-Salem, strengthened by the introduction of the interstate highway system. A trio of federal, state and city governments installed the biggest landmark of their “modernization” of Winston-Salem — a giant dividing wall between the white and Black towns their blueprints had created. ey named it U.S. Highway 52.
e price tag for accelerated economic growth and activity would be the living space of 16,000 people, most of them Black. e city strongarmed these families out of their own homes with the use of eminent domain. Although urban renewal policy stipulated that homeown-
ers had to be paid a fair market price for their property, the land along the new highway route wasn’t part of that plan. With no new housing being built in East Winston and full public housing, displaced people were out on their own.
On the north side of the city, the city government saw another opportunity to modernize the city. Wake Forest, the private, all-white Baptist college that the President of the United States had welcomed would need an expressway to the city.
Planning engineers drew up a north-south expressway in the style of the “farm to market” roads system that would lead students, faculty and suburban and rural residents to downtown commerce. People outside of the city would have a direct connection to Marshall Street. e highway would link to U.S. 52. e decision, it seemed, was a no-brainer.
e expressway would doubtlessly lead to substantial economic growth and become one of the most well-traveled and e cient roads in the history of the city.
e choice could yield in ways that city leaders couldn’t even imagine: when the industries of Winston-Salem would collapse near the end of the century, this road would prove to be one of the most critical arteries to the new beating heart of the city: Wake Forest University.
e only thing standing in the way? A vibrant, united community of four Black neighborhoods, and in the middle, Deborah Ford and her family. e Fords’ house would become just like the others that the city had taken without question — a plot of land over which cars would thunder for centuries to come; its history and legacy emptied out and lled with concrete.
60 years later, Deborah still has her million-dollar view of the city skyline.
If you take University Parkway, it’s an eight minute drive to her house on urmond Street from Wake Forest University. On the second oor of the property, she watches Winston Tower and the other skyscrapers light up at night, just like she did as a little girl.
It’s easy to drive on University Parkway and pass the outlet onto 25th Street and the Fords’ old garage on the corner, which was never moved, and not even notice it. I’ve driven on the roadway for four years now, shuttling downtown and back, hardly ever cognizant of the history of the route that I was traveling on and its decades of modi cations and expansions. Hundreds of houses on the surrounding streets are invisible in the periphery when you catch your rst glimpse of the city’s skyscrapers.
But now that I’ve stopped and turned o the highway to walk down those neighborhood streets, I can’t stop turning over the name of the highway in my mind: University Parkway.
Road design in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including that of the Cherry-Marshall expressway, took elements from the original concept of a parkway. In uential 19th-century landscape architects had developed the idea as a means to link urban centers to suburbs — simultaneously encouraging surrounding green areas.
Many of these parkways, including University, were less focused on aesthetics and leisure than they were designed to promote robust, economical road systems that would lead to growth. Yet before University Parkway led weighty commercial infrastructure into this section of North Winston, Johney Ford would get into his car on his only day o and take a Sunday drive on the new road through Wake Forest’s campus, where his little girl would one day go to college. Back then, it was totally about aesthetics.
Instead of traveling up a corridor dense with hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and o ces, Ford would gaze out upon the beginnings of development; houses, businesses and the very rst coliseums and sports arenas that still had plenty of green space between them. CVS, Salem Chapel, the Habitat for Humanity complex and the Red Cross building were still mostly a vacant backyard. e intersection of Coliseum Drive, now a bustling hub of commerce, was then a modest set of businesses and their relatively undeveloped land. Lawrence Joel Veterans Coliseum and Truist Field, which now clog the arterial road with tra c on game days, were mostly empty elds, marked with names for the arenas and public spaces that would one day attract expansive parking lots lled with out-of-town visitors and their cars.
Johney’s destination, Wake Forest’s carefully curated campus, still remains one of the city’s most charming attractions. It’s the park in the middle of the parkway.
When I’m sitting in her living room, asking about her father and his Sunday drive, Deborah smiles as she remembers her father.
“I paid no attention to that,” she chuckles. “And it
really didn’t have a bearing on my going to Wake Forest. But then when I talk about it to my kids, I think to myself, maybe those drives did have something to do with it.”
In a city that changed as rapidly as Winston-Salem, there were many di pulled Deborah’s inclinations. She had white people at St. Benedict and other Catholic schools that she attended until ninth grade, where the entire student population was Black and the teaching sta white. Deborah grew up in Alta Vista and Street, two Black communities where you never really saw white people, especially back when everything was segregated.
urmond Street and graduated from Wake Forest, the world changed, and Winston-Salem changed with it. Yet even as the movement for civil rights — in which Deborah and her husband actively participated — ac complished wide-scale social change and uplift for Af rican Americans, the injustice in many of their material realities remains, especially in Winston-Salem.
University Parkway is one such example. Darin da Boston, a longtime resident of the Boston urmond neighborhood and one of Deborah’s school classmates, can viv idly remember how the highway had changed her community forever.
“It was upsetting, because we had been there for years,” Darina said. “Nobody really wanted the expressway to come through there, but there wasn’t nothing we could do about it. I can’t remember any meetings or if they sought other people’s opinions about it, even the people living in the area. Ev erybody was having to move in di knew that the expressway coming through there would make a big di ence in everything. And it did.”
I’m standing on the catwalk with David West, Bosurmond United’s team leader for revitalization, safecation. He’s lived in Winston-Salem his entire life, and now is advocating for this organization, which exists to protect the legacy of its community and develop
Ahead of us is the heart of his city. From every oor of the new Wake Downtown building, there’s a sweeping view of Winston-Salem and its old bones. RJ Reynolds smoke stacks hang over the bright green of Bailey Park. Sleek, post-industrial apartment and restaurant designs protrude from the 100-year-old factory
Behind us, there’s the park of the parkway, Wake Forest University, a top-30 institution with a growing number of the brightest undergraduates the nation has to o er. en there’s what David calls the “entertainment section.” He thinks there’s a potential change to the road brewing in that space, and it began with the Paul McCartney concert asco, where more than 30,000 attended and hundreds likely missed the event because
“University Parkway…”
David tells me, “It’s a 45-mile-perhour speed limit. To be honest with you, I don’t even do that!”
We walk across the catwalk together, and I try to listen above the blaring of sirens and c. We’re probably the only two people to walk the structure in the last week, or maybe even the last
month. It’s mostly used by the large homeless population that occupy University Parkway and its junction with Northwest Boulevard. Residents of this space constantly travel across the four-lane highway, sometimes using this pedestrian bridge, whose sole purpose now is to hoist billboards and advertisements.
University Parkway’s continuous river of tra c guides all people, in droves, through the Boston- urmond neighborhood. What once was an almost entirely Black community is now diverse and full of people from all walks of life. But for those living on either side of the highway, it’s often an immovable and disruptive force in the middle of their lives.
is disruption has consequences. In 2017, a woman who lived on Rundell Street was killed in a hit-and-run crossing University Parkway to get to Bojangles, the closest and most a ordable restaurant near where she lived. Over time, the expressway removed the local restaurants and corner stores with fresh food and produce. Now, corporate-owned chains and gas stations dominate the area and create food insecurity for residents who live near the highway.
It isn’t something that takes years of living in the area to recognize. On the corner of 25th Street, you’ve only got a couple of feet on the curb before you’re in the way of oncoming cars. All people walk across the four-lane highway, at all parts of the highway. If you go north, Wake Forest students cross early in the morning from housing across campus and cross late at night to go to parties. People working downtown jaywalk to get onto Northwest Boulevard. Some even cross the middle of the street at the busy intersection on Coliseum Drive.
For too many people, University Parkway is a ubiquitous, featureless highway that hardly occupies space in the mind. It’s successful in that way. Engineers and planners designed the road so that you barely have to think about it at all when traveling over it.
But what if people thought di erently?
What if they stopped and examined their lives in the way that they are constructed, down to the very roads and highways that carry them from place to place? Instead of looking in their rearview mirrors, or looking straight ahead, as David says, people could look out of their side windows.
Today, there is a community of neighbors living on either side of the cars that rumble through their neighborhood. Behind the black fences and walls of trees, families raise their own and celebrate life. ey mend the divide between the east and west, north and south, white and Black by making new communities, new history and a new legacy around the expressway.
On either side, they look to Wake Forest. Inside its academic halls, work o ces, parks and residences, exists a familiar illusion: that its people are not tied together with those outside of its walls in a mutual network of promise. As an institution, Wake Forest now seeks to powerfully reckon with its participation in injustice and its vast potential as the city’s economic engine and driver of change. Time has run out on the lie that the people of Winston-Salem are not all connected. Even now, families in the Boston- urmond neighborhood wait, watching for the next move.
Pictured is Miss Deb holding a childhood photo.