Washington Street Historic District
Near Greensboro, North Carolina
In eighteen fifty, a new street was laid out in High Point, North Carolina, and named Washington Street. Over the following century it grew into something far more than a thoroughfare. African American entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and merchants built a dense commercial and civic district here, defying the daily indignities of segregation by creating institutions of their own.
By nineteen sixty the Washington Street district covered nine blocks and stood as a cultural icon. It was a place where residents could do business and gather without navigating the humiliations of Jim Crow. Community leaders called it a symbol of Black determination and perseverance, a self-sufficient world carved out under systemic exclusion. Washington Street remains a touchstone of High Point's African American heritage.
