Anyone who has driven through the university campus along what is now Spring Garden Street will recognize this view down College Avenue, though today it is lined with many more trees. On the right what was then called the main building can be seen. That building, now the only original structure still standing, is now called the Julius I. Foust Building. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.

Morning, gang.

This week we’re excited to introduce a new, recurring feature in The Thread. We’re calling it Postmark: Greensboro.

Since we launched our Greensboro bureau and weekly newsletter, we’ve been having a continuing conversation about the city, its history, and how that shapes its present. It’s something we’ve touched on through our stories, like the Juneteenth Green Book Bike Tour, the origins and evolution of Greensboro’s conservative weekly paper The Rhino Times, the backstory of how Greensboro’s current City Council came to be, and the potentially historic city elections coming next year.

That was on my mind a few weeks ago when I came across a cache of Greensboro postcards—complete with postmarks and messages—going back as far as 1902. They represented all of Greensboro—campuses, businesses, mills and mill villages, skyscrapers and churches, courtyard apartments, and luxury hotels.

“Before everyone had a camera, postcards were an important way of showing someone where you were and what you were seeing and talking about it,” said Glenn Perkins, Curator of Community History at the Greensboro History Museum. “They were social media before social media. And now, of course, they can be documents of a community’s history as well.”

In this series, we’ll bring you the stories of those places through these postcards—how they came to be, what they meant to the city, and mean to us now.

We’re starting off this week with my alma mater—UNC-Greensboro. Or, as it was known when our first postcard was sent in 1912, the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College, our state’s first state-supported women’s college.

The story of its journey from a radical educational experiment to the regional university we know today is one even most students on campus don’t know—in my days as an undergraduate or today.

Read the full story here.

— Joe Killian

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A New Life for Double Oaks

The staff of Down Home North Carolina poses in front of the Double Oaks, which will become the Reclaim Carolina Center later this year. (Photo courtesy of Down Home North Carolina)

Last week, we told you about Down Home North Carolina’s purchase of the Double Oaks Bed and Breakfast in Westerwood. When news broke of the left-leaning non-profit’s $1.5 million purchase of the historic house at 204 N. Mendenhall Street, there were a lot of questions.

The group has since published a blog post explaining they see the property, which will become the Reclaim Carolina Center, as “an anchor for our work across North Carolina and a center for movement strategy, training, and the development of future organizers for decades to come.”

We caught up with Todd Zimmer, the group’s co-director, this week to talk about their big Greensboro investment. The conversation has been condensed for length and clarity.

The Thread: Down Home says its mission is “to build multiracial and working-class power in small towns and rural communities.” Since the Double Oaks news, we’ve heard from readers wondering how buying a $1.5 million house fits that mission.

Zimmer: One reality is, we currently lease office space in [THRIVE Coworking] in Greensboro and have for a number of years. We have a density of staff both in Greensboro and in the immediate surrounding area. When we had the idea of having a center that supports a statewide organizing project, we looked all over the map for several years—in the mountains, in the east, throughout the Piedmont. In the course of that search, we realized if it isn’t central to all the places we organize, it limits the utility to our statewide network which runs from the mountains to the coast.

One of our ways that we train our network is frequently to bring people together from a dozen or more counties across the state in one central location to really go deep in training strategies over several days. And most often that’s already in Greensboro.

The other reality is, it’s a store of value. The value we paid for the home we now have in the home. We plan to run this center for many decades. But should we ever need to go in another direction, it’s not as if we’ve lost that money. That is what happens when we pay rent—that money leaves the organization permanently. In this way, all that value is retained within the organization. We made this acquisition with a very long-term view.

Why a historic house that’s been a bed and breakfast for 25 years?

We looked at a lot of properties—some churches and things like that that were for sale. But ultimately, nothing could really compete with the unique features of the Double Oaks property, it has a really cool outdoor kind of event and stage area, plenty of indoor meeting space. It has a retreat aspect to it. It has porches and gardens where we felt that our folks could not only come together to strategize but also have multi-day strategy retreats with a smaller team. Our work is really hard, so it’s good to also have time and space to have fellowship and build relationships.

You’re honoring reservations through the end of October. Do you foresee renting parts of it out after that?

There may be nonprofit partners or community organizations who want to lease the space to have a retreat. I think what we’re also interested in is, could we have community programming, some of which has already been in that space? Concerts, lectures, things that are of interest to the Greensboro community and maybe a reflection of our mission? And maybe we’re able to sell folks a glass of beer or wine while they’re there. That goes back into helping to maintain the space and helping to maintain the organization.

We’re not doing much with this property in the next few months because we’re focused on the election. Our members are going to knock well north of a half-million rural doors by election day across North Carolina. This week, we’re going to hit 100,000 knocks so far this year. Our canvassers are going to be out there on some of the most difficult turf in the state, talking to voters who are persuadable on the issues that matter to our members and sharing their personal stories of things like reproductive health choices. So the first use of this property is going to see is staging canvases in the backyard between now and Election Day.

I just want folks to know that. Because I have heard some folks saying, “Well, are you taking your eye off the ball?” And the answer is no, not in the slightest.

— Joe Killian

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What We’re Reading

Memorializing the Greensboro Six: In Greensboro, we never stop honoring the A&T Four. But comparatively little has been done to honor the Greensboro Six—the Black men who went to jail for playing golf at whites-only Gillespie Park in 1955—five years before the famous Woolworth’s sit-in downtown.

Last week a 90-foot-wide, 20-foot-high mural depicting those events was unveiled at the course ahead of the Wyndham Championship. WFMY was on the scene and Yes Weekly has the story of the mural and the men it memorializes.

Getting Rolling: Barber Park’s Community Bike Shop collects and fixes donated bicycles and distributes them to those who need them. For immigrants new to the community it can make a real difference in getting around the city, to work, or to school.

The shop’s partnership with the New Arrivals Institute, a non-profit helping refugees get settled in Greensboro, connects people with that essential transportation. Triad City Beat has the story of how the shop recently helped one such family from Afghanistan.

Read this newsletter online or contact The Thread team with tips and feedback at greensboro@theassemblync.com.

Recent Greensboro Stories

The Greensboro City Council Is About To Get A Lot of New Faces

Big changes could be in store with at least four, and possibly six, current members departing next year.

Objects Can’t Lie

A Greensboro museum has been working to return artifacts taken from Japan during World War II, part of a broader movement to repatriate items taken from foreign countries.

North Carolina A&T Names Its Next Leader

The UNC System Board of Governors has named James R. Martin II, a current vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh, as the new leader of the country’s largest HBCU.

Around the State

10 Things To Know About Roy Cooper, Potential Pick for Vice President

North Carolina’s two-term Democratic governor is seen as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris. Here’s what you need to know about him.

UNC Frats Get Center Stage At RNC

The Trump campaign invited members of UNC fraternities who protected the flag to the Republican National Convention. Not everyone was enthused.

NCSU’s Randy Woodson Announces Retirement

The popular administrator stayed in his post nearly three times longer than most college leaders. Now the UNC System must undertake yet another chancellor search.

The Assembly is a digital magazine covering power and place in North Carolina. Sent this by a friend? Subscribe to The Greensboro Thread or to our statewide newsletter.

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Joe Killian is The Assembly's Greensboro editor. He joined us from NC Newsline, where he was senior investigative reporter. He spent a decade at The News & Record covering cops and courts, higher education, and government.