Greensboro

The city of Greensboro has helped more than 200 renters become homeowners this year.

When Stephanie Pickett was a nurse at Duke University Medical Center, more than 90% of the patients she saw with kidney failure were black. This shocking racial health disparity both bewildered her and inspired her to take action.

Singer and guitarist Dave Ray Cecil began writing music when he was six years old. As a child, he strung notes together on the piano and secretly used his brother’s guitar to write songs.

As of 2016, Greensboro and Winston-Salem had the highest rates of evictions in all of North Carolina. 

A yearlong collaborative reporting project dove into the topic: exploring how evictions create a ripple effect in people’s lives, the role the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem plays in evictions there and a look at one redlined community in Greensboro. 

A Triad City Beat investigative piece reveals troubling accusations against United Youth Care Services (UYCS), an agency that provides substance abuse treatment tied to housing for those enrolled in Medicaid.

Carolyn Coleman got her first taste of community activism as a young girl in a segregated community in Savannah, Georgia. She and her mother went door-to-door collecting signatures to advocate for neighborhood improvements. She continued to work for civil rights and social justice for close to six decades.

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.