Raleigh Black Church History

Raleigh Black Church History…

is fascinating.  It would be too long for a blog post, so I am going to tease you with some of the article that I wrote for the Black Oak Society’s Church edition, due to come out in the next couple of weeks.

Raleigh has a formidable history in terms of the Black church.

The roots of the Black church go back into the times of slavery. While some plantation owners didn't want their slaves to know anything about religion, others wanted slaves to hear those passengers requiring slaves to obey their masters to keep fear and obedience hand in hand. Still other slave owners encouraged religious knowledge and brought it to their slaves and their slaves to the church.

In some instances, plantation owners held services on Sunday mornings at home with a traveling preacher or bits of bible reading and prayer. Other owners ventured to church services and allowed slaves to come worship and become members of an organized institution.

Many of...

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Dr. Lovelace B. Capehart

Dr. Lovelace B. Capehart was a prominent Black physician in Raleigh.

The original house his family lived in was built around 1924-25. Dr. Capehart was born in 1863 in Bertie County to a white father (considered “one of the most substantial white citizens of that section”) and slave mother, Penelope Capehart.  

He attended the State Normal School in Elizabeth City and graduated from Shaw University in 1884. After completing a law degree at Shaw, he became a professor of English and also served as the third principal of Washington Graded School. He also taught at Jackson Baptist College in Mississippi before returning to Raleigh.

He attended Shaw  University's Leonard School of Medicine. He began to practice medicine in 1907.

The other house that he lived in on Smithfield Street (now Martin Luther King Boulevard) was sold to Calvin Lightner in 1941 and became Lightner Funeral Home.

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Mary A. Burwell

Mary A. Burwell

Mary A. Burwell was an only child, born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, of freed slave parents who were living in “humble circumstances”.  A visiting uncle who was impressed with her disposition asked for her to live with him and promised to have her educated in the city schools of Raleigh.  She was enrolled at Washington School when she was eight years old.

She then entered Shaw University, graduating after completing the remainder of the high school (called Normal Department – a three-year program), with a diploma from the Estey Seminary course. She was a student of Dr. Scruggs.

After graduating, she taught for several years in the public schools.  She then taught at the “colored” Oxford Orphanage, knowing that it was heavily in debt and she would receive no pay.

The orphanage consisted of one wood building with three rooms and housed eight children.  She trained the children for concerts and after a year took them...

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Jessie H. Copeland

Jessie Highsmith Copeland

Jessie Copeland was a woman with community spirit who fought for the rights of tenants in housing communities.  A single mother of three, she moved into Chavis Heights in 1951, remembering it as a place where residents banded together and tended beautiful gardens.  It was a safe place to raise children and families looked out for one another. 

Considered “The Mother of Chavis Heights”, she was always looking out for children and young mothers, remembering when she had been one herself.  She raised many children other than her three, in the neighborhood as well as those she nurtured as a domestic worker.

Mrs. Copeland’s community activism helped to raise awareness in Raleigh of the issues of those living in public housing who seemed to have been forgotten.  She was on the Raleigh Housing Authority’s Board of Directors for eight years, after being the first public housing resident appointed in 1974 and rising...

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Cliffornia Grady Wimberley

Cliffornia Grady Wimberley

“Cliff” Wimberley was a native of Mt. Olive, North Carolina.  She was part of the Wynn and Grady families.  She and her sisters were known as “The Grady Girls”.  She graduated from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in 1951 and returned home to teach.  She was invited to come to Raleigh to teach 3rd grade at Washington Elementary School. 

She had earlier met William Peele Wimberley when they were both headed to Virginia for college at the train station.  They began dating then but weren’t married until 1959.  By this time, she had not only taught in Raleigh, but had taught for a year in Sagamihara, Japan at the American Dependent School.

She settled in and was active in the community, particularly in areas dealing with education and young people.  Her interest led her to participate in the Panel of American Women, speaking at schools, churches, halls and other places about racism...

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Panel of American Women - List of Participants

I was asked on Facebook who some of the other women were who participated in the Raleigh Chapter of the Panel of American Women.  Here is the list that I have compiled from information I got from Mrs. Jackie Eisen (and the list is not complete).  They are in no particular order, but are listed by race or religion as my lists show (some lists didn't share that information).

Black - Cliff Wimberley, Barbara Bland, Sandra Hardy, Earle Blue, Carolyn Johnson, Cleo Carr, Dolores Walker, Nurry Johnson, Ann Heartley Hunt, Gwen Bailey, Celeste Beatty, Margaret Lockamy, Joan Silvey.

Catholic - Mary Bode, Pat Gessner, Linda Macior, Eileen Moran

Jewish - Jackie  Eisen, Sherry Tove, Harriet Jablonover, Lea Bolt, Sylvia Ruby, Jackie Schlesinger, Ellen Deutsch

WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) - Bettye Martin, Bobbi Armstrong, Becky Basnight Toole, Lindsey Tate, Meta Ellington, Fran Myers, Barbara Parker, Ruth Steen, Pat Warner, Betty Adcock, Margot Maddox

These women were not...

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Panel of American Women

Panel of American Women

Many of you may have never heard of the Panel of American Women.  It was an organization started in Kansas City, MO, by Mrs. Esther Brown in 1958.  The panel that she was asked to moderate was to talk about prejudice.  The group of women talking was all white and just sat together and had a conversation.  Other people heard about it and wanted to host similar panels.  And that was where the panel had its beginning.  Eventually, the panels had 4 participants and a moderator. “Panels were made up of a Catholic, a Jew, a white Protestant, and a Negro and someone of another racial or religious minority in those areas where another exists.”

The panel was started in Raleigh, NC, by Mrs. Bettye Martin.  My mother, Cliffornia Wimberley, was one of the panelists as were other women in the community. (Mrs. Nurry Johnson, Mrs. Carolyn Johnson, Mrs. Gwen Bailey, Mrs. Celeste Beatty, Mrs. Barbara Bland, Mrs. Earle Blue, Ms....

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Residential Patterns and the Beginning of Systemic Racism

Blacks were interspersed among whites throughout the city, free Blacks tended to live in small enclaves reflecting segregation along racial and economic lines. Slaves were often hired out to others and could "live out" in areas of the city with families of free Blacks as well as white laborers.

Free Blacks were clustered around the city, generally occupying the cheaper tracts of land beyond the city limits, "the less desirable bottomland closer to downtown, and especially the narrow streets that bordered the railroad related industries." In areas where there was economic advancement, black leaders and middle class grew and so would churches, schools, and substantial homes. "By the 1890's, 50% of the population was Black and mature and solidly segregated neighborhoods nearly encircled the city. White attitudes were considered 'racial claustrophobia', feeling that the city was under siege by displaced Blacks.

The institutions that grew depended on the Black community for their...

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Trip Down My Memory Lane

Post is 2 years old (2019) and that makes it Black History!!  It went with an article from MSNBC about Gentrification.
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Listen and learn.


Yes this happens about every 50 years. My grandparents purchased a house on Bloodworth street from a white couple when they moved in the 1940's...when many African Americans were living in the county or Oberlin or Smoky Hollow. I came home from St. Agnes to Washington Terrace apartments about 8 years after they were built. Madonna Acres and Golden Acres, Biltmore Hills and Rochester Heights were built for middle class African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.


Desegregation of the Raleigh communities wasn't an easy thing. There were streets that became dividing lines of race and class. Streets like New Bern Avenue and Person Street. There were areas that the white middle class didn't want to live in and that the African American middle class didn't want to live in.


In the 1960s, when "Urban Renewal"...

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The Heritage of the Mary B. Talbert Home

The Mary B. Talbert Home for Women was built in 1939 by C. E. Lightner and Brothers Company.  The house stood on E. Davie Street where the playground of Moore Square Middle School is today.[1]

The following information is taken directly out of a personal interview in The Urban Negro in the South.  “….I am a member of the Women’ Club, originally called the Woman’s Reading Club.  It was for married women, and while possible members were discussed, no invitation was necessary to join it.  In late years it started taking in unmarried women too, for we felt that both should belong.  The Mary Talbert Home grew out of this club.

“The origin, development, and functioning of the Mary Talbert Home are especially representative of the implied indirection which has obtained in relationships of women’s formal groups to the Negro Main Street.  The ensuing statements bear this out.

“I organized the Mary Talbert Home for...

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