Greensboro

Smiling faces of children and adults listened to a youth choir outside The Kellin Foundation. The nonprofit celebrated being nationally recognized as a child trauma recovery center by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

Sam Frazier is a Greensboro-based singer, songwriter and musician with two solo CDs under his belt in addition to collaborations with some of the area’s top talent. The lyrics in his original songs move between silly and soulful, as his poetic storytelling speaks to our all-too-human nature. 

The grey skies showed that something was coming April 15, 2018. Then, without much warning for the residents of east Greensboro, an EF-2 tornado touched down.

The tornado ripped through neighborhoods, tearing roofs of homes, downing trees and power lines. In the end, it left one person dead after a tree fell on his car.

The Bennett College accreditation fight goes on. The historically black liberal arts college for women lost its accreditation on Friday, Feb. 22, then almost immediately had it temporarily reinstated by a court order. 

The clock is ticking for Bennett College. The historically-black women’s college aims to raise $5 million by Friday, Feb. 1 to help save its accreditation. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges voted to revoke Bennett’s accreditation last month over concerns the school is not fiscally sound and financially stable enough to keep its doors open. 

Chuck Mountain has not been on the Greensboro music scene long – the band just came to fruition in July – but they have already been on tour and laid down a number of original tracks. The band’s guitarist Beau James says their trip to Nashville, which included camping on the North Carolina state line, expedited the team bonding and lit a creative spark for the band. 

A deadly apartment fire in Greensboro earlier this year highlighted some deep-seated community issues. The kitchen fire in the Summit-Cone apartment complex in May killed five young children, all siblings who were refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Republican incumbent Tedd Budd and Democratic challenger Kathy Manning are in a tight and heated race to represent North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. Budd won in 2016 with no prior political experience, and Manning is in the same position this year. Budd owns a gun store and shooting range in Advance, North Carolina, while Manning has spent her career in law and philanthropy.

A new batch of artists has hunkered down for an experimental, immersive residency in Greensboro's Elsewhere Museum. For the nearly month-long Southern Constellations Fellowship, artists from different generations and backgrounds play, perform and present their work within the walls of Greensboro's thrift store-turned-museum.
 

Even though it’s his day off, Channing Gallimore is up early and waiting for his bus on Wendover Avenue in Greensboro.

Gallimore gets on Bus 1 and heads to the downtown bus depot. Bus riders have to connect at the depot to get elsewhere in the city. Buses arrive at the depot every half hour.

  A team of researchers from universities across the state will begin testing air and municipal water samples throughout North Carolina this month in search of potentially-toxic compounds.

Panhandling has been a hot political topic in the city of Greensboro this year. 

Greensboro-based Titus Gant is not only a jazz musician, but a music educator who helps bring music to the economically disadvantaged. 

Guilford is one of eight counties in North Carolina that has more than 40 gangs, according to 2016 numbers from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol GangNET database. In 2017, Greensboro had a record 42 homicides, and 11 of those killings were gang related. That same year, the number of violent deaths in High Point was nearly three times greater than killings in 2016. 

When Triad-based artist Molly McGinn agreed to organize a new weekly music night at a local venue, she wanted it to look and sound a little different. 

The Magnolia House has a rich history in Greensboro. In the 1950s, it was one of the few places that welcomed African-Americans traveling between Richmond and Atlanta. Its guest list includes stars from Duke Ellington and Ike and Tina Turner to James Brown and heavyweight champion Ezzard Charles.

Carol Cole was a Southern girl who came of age in the 1960s and did what she felt was expected of her. She found a good doctor to marry, had children and spent her days taking care of other people’s needs. She took her first art class in the early ‘70s, and even though her mother told her she did not have an artistic bone in her body, Cole decided she wanted to be an artist.

Magpie Thief is a stripped down folk-duo featuring Greensboro-based singer-songwriters Emily Stewart and Matty Sheets. For Stewart and Sheets, the heat of summer inspires some of their most creative work. They escape the sun and cozy up indoors in cool living rooms. As this summer approaches, Stewart and Sheets are hoping to veer away from their raw and eclectic folk sound and experiment with other genres, including the blues.

Kerri Mubaarak is the artistic director of Greensboro-based Scrapmettle Entertainment Group. Their Blueprints program gives youth the opportunity to create, write and produce arts projects from inception to performance. One day she received a call from educators at Ecole Actuelle Bilingue primary school in Senegal saying: our fourth and fifth graders are interested in radio, can you come up with a course of study for them?

When the white door to a three bedroom, one bathroom home on the south side of Greensboro opened recently, its frame filled with a tiny, older white woman before becoming engulfed by a 6-foot-4-inch black teenager.

Although the two don't look alike, Debbie Rochelle and Khalil Setzer are related.

For 32 years, the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society has been hosting its Carolina Blues Festival, which it calls the longest running blues festival in the Southeast. Joining host Frank Stasio for a preview of this year’s events is Atiba Berkley the president of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. He’ll talk about the preservation society’s commitment to bringing blues to the next generation.

Greensboro will host its first-ever literary festival this weekend. 50 planned events will feature more than 80 writers who are as diverse as the topics they cover, including authors who are undocumented, gender fluid, and from a range of other religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Nearly two dozen women filled the central branch of the Greensboro Library on a recent evening to discuss how the gender pay gap affects them and what they can do to effectively negotiate their salary.

The highest rent prices in the nation can be found in metropolitan areas like Manhattan or San Francisco. So why is it that Greensboro has some of the highest eviction rates in the country? Greensboro is ranked seventh on the list of the top evicting large cities in the U.S., according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. 

Fans of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” know him as Dr. Harlan Carson, but long before that R. Keith Harris was making a name for himself as an actor in films like “Big Fish” and “A Walk in the Woods.” Raised in Reidsville, North Carolina, Harris tried his hand at living in Los Angeles, but came back home with $40 in his pocket and very little to show for his five year investment. For most that would have been the end of the Hollywood dream. But for Harris, his acting opportunities have continued to expand.