Greensboro Century: Gate City of North Carolina

Greensboro was at the center of it all, geographically and culturally. From blue jeans to basketball, from civil rights to textiles, this North Carolina metropolis has long been the gateway to history. In fact, it’s known as the Gate City because it’s at the hub of rail traffic and, later, highways in the Piedmont Triad - a region that also includes Winston-Salem and High Point. Greensboro is perhaps best known as the birthplace of the lunch-counter sit-in movement that helped break segregation in the South. It was there, at a Woolworth’s on Elm Street, that four Black college students from North Carolina A&T sat down at a segregated counter to be served. It was the beginning of a movement that would spread across the South, a key moment in the struggle for civil rights.

The 20th century saw Greensboro grow from a city of barely 10,000 people at its outset to a bustling metropolis of more than 220,000 by the end of the millennium. In the meantime, it gave birth to a textile boom, hosted a major golf tournament and even had its own pro basketball team. The famed short story writer O. Henry worked at a downtown pharmacy, and a later owner of that same drugstore developed a famous cold remedy that’s still popular today.

Plenty of stories can be told of the city from the 19th and 21st centuries. Greensboro Century, illustrated by nearly 150 historical and contemporary images, tells the story of what happened in between.