RESEARCH AND RESOURCE

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 3^rd 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...

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"...