Washington Street Historic District
High Point, Guilford County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Washington Street was created and given its name in 1850. This cultural icon rose above discrimination, segregation, and racism to become a symbol of black determination, perseverance, and success. By 1960, the Washington Street district, covering nine ma… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
Laid out and named in 1850, Washington Street grew into the beating heart of High Point's African American community. Through the long decades of segregation, its blocks filled with Black-owned businesses, churches, doctors' offices, theaters, and gathering places—a self-sustaining commercial and cultural district built when Jim Crow shut Black residents out of the white downtown. By 1960 it stretched across a broad swath of the city, a point of pride and independence forged in the face of discrimination.
Why it matters
Districts like Washington Street show how Black Americans, barred from the mainstream economy, built thriving parallel communities of their own—centers of enterprise, faith, and dignity that anchored the broader struggle for equality.
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