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Morning, gang.
We hope you’re all enjoying the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers this week as we march into December and toward the end of the year. This week, we’re bringing you two stories that should make you feel as good about Greensboro as you do bad about the sheer volume of pie you put away.
First up, P.R. Lockhart looks at Greensboro’s top score in the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index, which measures towns and cities based on LGBTQ-friendly policies and protections. This is the fourth year in a row the city has scored 100 on the index.
From there, we go downtown, where some recently worried Hudson’s Hill would be packing it up after 13 years of selling local and USA-made goods out of the old Coe Grocery store building. Luckily, the venerable shop was simply moving up Elm Street, into the old Miller Furniture building.
Let’s get into it.
— Joe Killian
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Greensboro Gets Top Marks in LGBTQ Equality Index
For the fourth consecutive year, a national organization has highlighted Greensboro as one of the nation’s most LGBTQ-friendly cities.
Last week the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) gave the city a 100 percent score in its annual Municipal Equality Index, a measurement of how hundreds of cities around the nation are doing on LGBTQ+-friendly policies and protections. Greensboro was one of 130 cities to score a 100 in 2024, making it part of a record year for high scores at the city level.
LGBTQ North Carolinians continue to live under a number of restrictions, including laws limiting the visibility of queer and trans youth. But city-level policies can provide some relief.
“These municipalities are not just pushing back against discriminatory measures,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson wrote in the report. “They’re actively creating new pathways to ensure that LGBTQ+ people, particularly our most vulnerable community members, have access to vital services and protections.”
Greensboro was the highest-ranking city in North Carolina, maintaining its position even as cities like Chapel Hill, Charlotte, and Wilmington fell. Cities across the nation lost points due to restrictive state policies, the Human Rights Campaign said.
“Important advances in equality were countered by the efforts of state legislatures to pick away at municipalities’ power to enact policies and ordinances for the people they serve,” the group wrote in its report.
In Greensboro, the organization found that local policy protections remain strong. The group gave the city high marks for its non-discrimination ordinances, offering city services to LGBTQ+ residents, and enacting pro-LGBTQ+ policies. The city received additional points for supporting queer youth and assisting those living with HIV/AIDS.
The city scorecards don’t fully capture the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people in any given area. The organization said the rating doesn’t reflect how comfortable a person might be living in a city. Instead, the scores are meant to show policy differences between municipalities and highlight what protections a city could adopt in the future to better include LGBTQ+ residents.
In states where protections, particularly for transgender people, have been reduced or prohibited by state policy, cities can struggle to find workarounds. Greensboro’s lowest score was on transgender healthcare benefits, something limited by the state’s reluctance to include gender-affirming care on government-sponsored health plans.
Even in places like Greensboro, there is always work to do. Last month, local ballroom and drag performer Cocoa Hamilton was killed by her estranged boyfriend, calling renewed attention to violence in the city, particularly against trans women. And as a new administration prepares to take control in Washington, D.C., local LGBTQ+ groups like the Guilford Green Foundation & LGBTQ Center say they are committing to offering community support and reaffirming efforts to provide gender-affirming services.
“Greensboro is a city that values diversity and the richness it brings to our community,” Jennifer Ruppe, the outgoing executive director of the Guilford Green Foundation, said in a statement provided to The Thread. “As attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion increase it is more important than ever that local municipalities act on their values and put protections in place to protect vulnerable communities.”
– P.R. Lockhart
Read this newsletter online or contact The Thread team with tips and feedback at greensboro@theassemblync.com.
Hudson’s Hill Keeps on Keeping It Local
Last month Hudson’s Hill posted a photo to its popular Instagram profile. But this one wasn’t the usual row of American-made selvedge denim, locally made t-shirts, old-school sneakers, and leather goods manufactured in North Carolina.
Instead, it was a single image of the storefront at 527 S. Elm Street, the old Coe Grocery and Seed Company building from which Hudson’s Hill has operated for the last 13 years. It was empty.
Was the “Last Great American-Made General Store” closing up shop? Leaving downtown Greensboro, the latest victim of rising rents and the dominance of online retail and fast fashion?
Not hardly.
Last week the store re-opened in its new location, the old Miller Furniture building at 314 S. Elm Street, in time for Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. The new location has more space, fewer structural problems, and two large shop windows already decorated with a vintage tube television playing Christmas movies and a classic motorcycle.
“It’s been great so far,” said Greg Redelico, who manned the shop over the weekend. “We’ve seen a lot of people come through, a lot of foot traffic.”
Downtown as a whole has come a long way in the last decade, Redelico said, but the move has already illustrated that more shoppers are still browsing on the stretch of South Elm before the railroad tracks.
“We’ve had people come in and say they saw the old shop, but it was always kind of dark and small and they weren’t really sure what was in there,” Redelico said. “This space is going to be a lot better.”
Hudson’s Hill has long been a key part of keeping the local textile manufacturing scene alive in Greensboro, from its connections to Proximity Manufacturing Company at the Cone Mills’ old White Oak Plant to acting as boosters for other North Carolina and USA-made goods. They’re proud to keep things local even as the multi-national companies that once made Greensboro the center of the denim universe have moved production out of the country, operating more as advertising enterprises than true manufacturers.
A pair of quality USA-made jeans crafted from Proximity denim can run around $385—a price that makes some customers’ eyes go wide. But Hudson’s Hill also sells more budget-friendly options from Raleigh Denim ($225) and Tellason ($125). They’re closer to what you’d pay for a pair from American brands like Polo Ralph Lauren or Brooks Brothers, which now manufacture their wares in Bangladesh or Mexico.
“You can tell the difference in quality,” Redelico said. “What we say is, you can buy better and buy less, cause it’s going to last. And you know who is making it, you know the conditions, you know people are being paid and treated fairly.”
The new space also allows the store to expand its vintage offerings, which have their own section, and will help them to continue community events they began at the old location.
“It’s definitely not over,” Redelico said. “It’s a new space, a new chapter.”
— Joe Killian
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What We’re Reading
Centering Unhoused Voices: Triad City Beat commissioned local filmmaker Louie Poore to create a short film in which Winston-Salem’s Ron Schultz tells his story as an unhoused person. The film, and the story accompanying it, are worth your time.
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