Fourth Ward native Charles R. Davis was a force of nature whose rhythmic heartbeat bridged the distance between the African continent and the American South. Davis was born on Jamaica St. and graduated from Ligon High School in 1954 and originally trained as a naval medical corpsman but eventually traded his nursing scrubs for flowing African robes, declaring that while nursing was the "cure," dance was the "prevention." As the visionary founder of DanceAfrica and the Durham-based African American Dance Ensemble, he transformed the stage into a sacred space using traditional West African movement to combat racism and foster community healing. A literal and figurative giant, he earned the nickname of “Baba” the African word for father and was recognized as one of America's "100 Irreplaceable Dance Treasures," yet he remained a man of the people, known for his all-encompassing hugs and his universal mantra, "Peace, love, and respect for everybody."

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Effie Whitaker was a lifelong educator whose work helped shape the North Carolina School for the Deaf. Growing up in Raleigh’s Fourth Ward, she became a strong advocate for deaf students at a time when specialized education was still developing in the state.

Whitaker championed the use of American Sign Language in the classroom and helped create hands-on vocational programs which gave students practical skills and greater independence. She also played an important role in moving the school from Raleigh to its long-term home in Morganton, a change that expanded access to education for deaf children across North Carolina.

Her commitment to inclusion, communication, and opportunity continues to influence the school’s mission today.

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During World War I, the Wake County Red Cross opened canteens in Raleigh to support soldiers traveling through the city. Since many Raleigh goods and services were segregated, Black troops were turned away. In response, local leaders created the Oak City Auxiliary on July 8, 1917, to ensure African American service members received food, care, and dignity.

The Auxiliary’s nurses were recruited and organized by prominent Black women in the community, who also served on its executive board. One of its key leaders was Dulcina Blanch Torrence DeBerry. A Shaw University graduate and the wife of a minister, DeBerry chaired the Auxiliary from September 1917 to March 1918, and guided the work to meet the needs of Black servicemen during the war.

After the war, DeBerry continued her commitment to education and public service. She taught grade school North Carolina, and later became the first Black librarian in the Huntsville-Madison Public Library System. She was honored by a library branch in Huntsville, Alabama, named in her honor.

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Dr. Lovelace B. Capehart was a Shaw University trained physician and professor who constructed a building which quickly became the center of life for the Fourth Ward community. He named it after himself, Capehart Hall, and it became a lively hub of Black enterprise and culture in Raleigh. The space pulsed with community life, Black owned businesses filled its rooms, and groups like the Knights of Pythias hosted elegant gatherings in its halls. Over the decades, Capehart Hall evolved with the neighborhood, housing everything from a A&P grocery store to the Paradise Club, to a Black Panther food bank in the 1960s. Though the building was demolished during urban renewal in the early 1970s, its legacy endures as a reminder of a once thriving center of African American resilience, creativity, and community care.

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The large building shown here was known for many years as Tent Sisters’ Hall, the meeting place of the United Order of Tents. This organization, founded and led by African American church women, was a secret society devoted to community care. Members provided healthcare, end of life care, and financial assistance to people in need. The hall stood at the northeast corner of Cannister and Battle Streets in the Southside neighborhood.

Women’s fraternal groups such as the Tents also played a major role in creating social welfare programs for older adults. The Grand United Order of Tents, founded in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1866, opened an Old Folks’ Home in Hampton in 1897 to support orphaned children and members who could no longer care for themselves. A similar home for elderly members was later established in Raleigh.

In 1909, civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois highlighted the Tent Sisters’ Hall in his book, Efforts for Social Betterment Among Negro Americans, calling it, “the most interesting experiment in the country.”

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For more than 60 years, Willie Virginia Otey Kay created elegant, custom gowns which made her one of North Carolina’s most sought after clothing designers. Born at 125 West Cabarrus Street, she was the youngest of eight children. Kay graduated from Shaw University in 1912 with a degree in Home Economics, winning the school’s dressmaking competition along the way.

She married John Walcott Kay and moved to Wilmington, but after his death in 1927, she returned to Raleigh with five children to support. With help from her sisters, Josephine, Inez, Gloria, Constance, and June, she opened her own dressmaking business. The Otey name soon became known across the state for fine formal wear, serving both Black and white clients.

Kay remained deeply connected to her faith as a lifelong member of Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church. Her children later honored her legacy by dedicating a stained-glass window in her memory.

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Baseball was a favorite pastime for many children growing up in the Fourth Ward, where neighborhood teams played one another across Raleigh. Wilbur Allen “Pete” Wilder, born on McKee Street, was one of those kids who fell in love with the game. He graduated with the first class of Washington High School in 1927 and later studied journalism locally at Shaw University, as well as at New York University and at Fordham University.

Wilder played baseball at Shaw and went on to pitch professionally in the Negro Leagues. In 1937, he founded the Raleigh Grays, a semi professional team who played at Shaw Alumni Field and later at Chavis Park. After World War II, he and Arthur Dove launched another team, the Raleigh Tigers, in 1946.

Wilder’s impact on Raleigh sports was long-lasting. He was inducted into the Shaw University Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Raleigh Hall of Fame in 2010.

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Edward Austin Johnson was born into slavery in Wake County in 1860 and went on to become one of North Carolina’s most influential Black educators and civic leaders. He attended Raleigh’s Washington School and later graduated from Atlanta University in 1883. Returning to Raleigh in 1885, he became principal of Washington School and enrolled in the first class of Shaw University’s new law school, the only law program open to African Americans between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia.

While at Shaw, Johnson wrote, A School History of the Negro Race in America (1891), the first textbook by a Black author approved by the North Carolina State Board of Education for public school use. After he earned his law degree in 1890, he lived in the Fourth Ward near South West Street and West Lenoir Street, and was elected alderman for the ward seven years later. Johnson later taught at his alma mater and served as dean of the law school from 1903 to 1906.

He moved to New York City soon after, where he became active in politics and, in 1918, served as the first Black member of the New York State Assembly. He attempted a run for New York state senate seat in 1928. When Johnson died in 1944, much of his estate was dedicated to supporting a music scholarship at Shaw University and providing assistance for blind African American youth in Raleigh.

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In 1950, a corner of Raleigh’s South Dawson Street transformed into a culinary landmark when Peter Pavlakos and Michael Thevis joined forces to open the Pete and Mike’s Grill. Both men were seasoned veterans of the city's cafe scene. Pavlakos already established himself with the Fruit and Lunch Store and the Lincoln Cafe, while Thevis, a Greek immigrant from Sparta, brought a lifetime of experience to the partnership. Their collaboration was more than a business deal, it was a family affair, rooted in the kinship between the Thevis and Pavlakos households residing nearby on Dawson and Martin Streets.

The restaurant advertised in the 1950-1952 Negro Travelers Green Book. The information book listed Black owned or sympathetic businesses where Black travelers could get service. It became indispensable for Black families traveling across the United States. The guide identified hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and private homes who would welcome Black travelers. This system helped them avoid the humiliation of being turned away or the physical danger of "sundown towns".

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Construction on Memorial Auditorium began in 1932 to honor Raleigh’s soldiers who died in World War I. The site had a long history: Originally home to the Governor’s Palace, built in 1814-16, later became the Centennial Graded School, established in 1876 as Raleigh’s first public school and the only the second in North Carolina. The school served white children and was eventually replaced by a larger brick building in the 1880s before being demolished in 1931 to make way for the new auditorium.

The auditorium welcomed generations of Black performers, students, and community members who were often barred from other venues. From local Fourth Ward artists to nationally known African American entertainers passing through the Jim Crow South, the building became a rare space where Black talent could shine. Its history holds not only the memory of fallen soldiers, but also the creative resilience of Raleigh’s Black community.

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Lewis O. “Dusty” Dewberry, born in 1947, discovered his passion for cars while studying auto mechanics at Ligon High School, where he graduated in 1966. In the 1980s, he opened his own repair shop, which quickly became an anchor for the Fourth Ward community. Dusty and his wife, Barbara, ran the shop as more than a business, they offered food, shelter, and support to neighbors during hard times.

Dusty’s shop closed in March 2017, and two years later the space became home to Sam Jones BBQ. Dewberry passed away in 2020, leaving behind a legacy of skill, generosity, and community care.

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Union Grove Baptist Church took root around 1905 under the leadership of Reverend Alex A. Jones, beginning as a humble wooden sanctuary on South Saunders Street. By 1935, members like recording artist Hamp Jones who journeyed from South Carolina in search of new opportunities during the Great Depression. Jones and others found the small Baptist congregation and helped raise the wooden church that still stands today. While much of the surrounding neighborhood was erased by urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, Union Grove Baptist Church endured, becoming the lone surviving spiritual landmark of its community. Its doors remain open, carrying forward more than a century of faith, resilience, and fellowship in Raleigh.

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Established in 1872, Mount Hope Cemetery was the first municipal burial grounds for the newly freed in North Carolina. Many of these individuals, born into slavery, created a thriving and diverse community. Those interred in the cemetery owned shops and businesses, became pioneers in education, and were skillful entrepreneurs. There were also many who fought for their country and led the struggle for equality.

The City of Raleigh appointed three prominent African American citizens to locate and purchase land for a new cemetery expressly for the interment of African Americans. On January 16, 1872, the City bought eleven and one-half acres on the south side of the city for the new Mount Hope Cemetery. Mount Hope provides a peaceful retreat to reflect and remember. Almost 1,500 monuments mark only a few of the 7,000 burials in the historic portion of the cemetery. The identities of many more who rest here have been lost over time.

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Washington School was founded after the Civil War to educate newly freed African Americans at the corner of McDowell and South Streets. As Raleigh grew, a new school building was constructed in 1923–1924 to serve the rising number of students. For many years, Washington Graded and High School was the only secondary school available to Black students in the city, a role it held until John W. Ligon Junior–Senior High School opened in 1953. The school later integrated in 1971.

In 1982, Washington became part of Raleigh’s magnet program, offering a Gifted & Talented curriculum for elementary students. Its long legacy in public education was recognized in 2005, when the school was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

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The roots of First Congregational Church date back to 1867, when the American Missionary Association founded a school and church for newly freed African Americans. As the congregation grew, members built a wood frame church with a corner tower in 1896. Under the leadership of Reverend Perfect Robert DeBerry, they later constructed a larger brick church in a Gothic Revival style at the corner of South and Manly Streets.

First Congregational became a vital center of religious and civic life in the Fourth Ward. It hosted North Carolina’s first African American Boy Scout troop and, in 1944, the inaugural meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) North Carolina State Conference.

During urban renewal in 1976, the congregation was forced to relocate to Creech Road, and the original chapel was demolished. The church community, however, continues its work and legacy today.

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In 1867, the American Missionary Association (AMA) met with Black residents in a small one room building on South Street near Manly, where they helped establish the Freedmen’s School. This early partnership laid the foundation for what would become First Congregational Church.

The church soon grew into a beacon of hope for the Fourth Ward community. In 1877, Reverend George S. Smith became its first Black pastor. Nearly a century later, in 1976, urban renewal forced the congregation to relocate, and the original church was demolished. Many treasured features such as the stained-glass windows, the pipe organ, curved pews, and pulpit furniture were carefully moved to the new building on Creech Road. The congregation held its first service there on July 3, 1977, continuing a legacy of faith and resilience.

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In 1895, a small group of African Americans purchased land to build a church of their own. Reverend John T. Pullen, pastor of “The Little Mission Church” at 751 Fayetteville Street, agreed to sell them the property. The original building was modest but welcomed the first congregation of 16 members. On August 1, 1895, the group bought the church for $800—paying $50 upfront and the rest in yearly installments of $100 over seven and a half years. They named it Fayetteville Street Little Mission.

When urban renewal forced the congregation to relocate, the church purchased 9½ acres on Cross Link Road to build a new home. In 1970, the congregation opened its new doors under a new name, First Cosmopolitan Baptist Church.

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The founding of the school which would become Shaw University in 1865 profoundly shaped African American life in Raleigh and across the nation. Just months after the Civil War ended, Union veteran and missionary Henry Tupper established a school for newly freed men and women. Over its first 50 years, Shaw expanded beyond general education to include professional programs that met the needs of the Black community, including schools of pharmacy and law.

Located along the boundary between Raleigh’s Third and Fourth Wards, Shaw University became a major center of learning, leadership, and opportunity. Today, it continues to educate students and stands as one of the oldest Historically Black College and University in the United States.

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Dr. Morley Kare was a professor in NC State University's Department of Zoology, studying the biochemistry of taste and olfaction. The Kares often hosted other faculty and guest lecturers at their home, including a 1964 lunch for Dr. Francis Crick prior to his visiting seminar on campus. Crick was part of the famous Watson and Crick duo who discovered the structure of DNA in 1953. The Kares' daughter, Susan, who spent her middle school years in the house on Barfield Ct, would later develop the original typeface and icons for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer.

Architect Raymond Sawyer designed this midcentury modern house. Sawyer was one of many designers who studied at the NC State University School of Design during the program's early 1950s heyday as an engine of the Modernist movement. The building incorporates many features exemplifying Modernist design principles, including its modest size, open layout, flat roof, simple detailing, use of natural materials, de-emphasized main entrance, and integration with the surrounding terrain. The design brings the outside in while providing privacy from the street through carefully located and sized picture windows.

Date: 1962

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The State Capitol Holiday Inn is a 19-story Modernist hotel located in downtown Raleigh about 3 blocks west of the State Capitol Building. Its construction coincided with a local development and tourism boom following World War II. It is one of only a few mid-century hotels still standing in the city. Lundgren and Maurer of Austin, TX, who designed the building, were known for their round Holiday Inn designs.

The hotel consists of a circular 5-story base with a lobby and parking garage, a circular 13-story guestroom tower, and a cantilevered top floor restaurant and meeting space. The 5-story base features cast concrete walls with an open section ornamented with decorative concrete breeze block screens. The 13-story tower is constructed of concrete piers infilled with pebbledash concrete panels. The cantilevered, curtain-walled top floor originally rotated 360 degrees, providing panoramic views of the city. Though the guestroom balconies have now been enclosed, the hotel's original interior layout remains largely intact.

Date: 1969

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The Deitricks’ 1960 retirement home completes the story of William H. Deitrick’s influence on the architecture of Raleigh. The couple moved here after three decades in the Deitrick-designed Georgian Revival-style dwelling at 2501 Glenwood Avenue, also a Landmark. The U-shaped plan encloses a patio garden, offering multiple access points to the outdoor space and drenching the interior with light without sacrificing privacy. The Modernist design and attention to warm reception of guests reflect the evolution of Deitrick’s work from historicism to Modernism and from designer to architectural ambassador. He designed the house and landscapes with assistance from architect William “Bill” Waldo Dodge III and landscape architect Lewis Clarke.

Date: 1959

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Charles McGee Heck (1881-1952) chaired the physics department at North Carolina State College (now University). He was also an inventor, historian, and advocate. Heck built a meteorological station in his backyard and became nationally known for his forecasting tools. He raised funds to feed people in newly-formed China in 1913 and organized Depression-era infrastructure projects in the state. Charles and Maude Heck’s unusual, ca. 1920 house combines Craftsman and Italianate styles and is said to have been designed by Heck. He also drew the floor plans for the physics department in Daniels Hall at State and had grown up in the distinctive Second Empire-style Heck House at 309 N. Blount Street.

Build Date: 1912

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Oral tradition holds that Cameron Court, a large 1938 apartment complex, was popular with members of the LGBTQIA+ community in the 1980s and 1990s. The ability to choose to live in proximity with other LGBTQIA+ people created a physical community at a time in Raleigh when many people still felt the need to be discreet or even secretive about their sexual orientation.

Two other areas in Raleigh have been identified through oral history that were small enclaves for the LGBTQIA+ community. The Vance Apartment building at 105 E. Edenton St. was demolished in the 1980s. Young St., between Wake Forest Rd. and Ann St. in northeast Raleigh, is a roughly block-long area of single-family houses said to have been purchased by and rented out to gay men and drag performers in the late 20th century; the street was nicknamed “Queen Street.”

Build Date: 1938

LGBTQIA+ Associated: 1980s-1990s

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Legends Nightclub is a long-running and much-loved Raleigh LGBTQIA+ club. Legends and another nightclub, FLEX, are the two most commonly cited by survey respondents as significant social spaces associated with the LGBTQIA+ community, in part due to the longevity of both bars. (The original location of FLEX has also been evaluated as part of this project.) Legends Nightclub also has a significant connection to the history of drag performance in Raleigh.

Build Date: 1958, altered ca. 1991 & ca. 2012 (for 119 S. Harrington St.)

LGBTQIA+ Associated: 1991-present

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