RESEARCH AND RESOURCE

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.

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...

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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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"...