Built in 1928, the main W. G. Pearson Elementary School building was named for William Gaston Pearson, a well-known African American businessman and educator. Born into slavery, his potential was recognized by a factory owner who financed his education at Shaw University in nearby Raleigh, NC. He began teaching at a small Durham grade school in 1886, where he later became principal. In 1922, W.G. Pearson became the first principal of Hillside Park High School, the first African American high school in the city, a position he remained in until his death in 1940 and for which he is best remembered. W.G.Pearson was also active in the city’s business and social life. Among other contributions, he was one of the original organizers of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; he helped found Mechanics and Farmers Bank on Durham’s “Black Wall Street”; and he served as a trustee for both North Carolina Central University and Kittrell College. Both North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and Mechanics and Farmers Bank continue to operate today.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the growing black population in the Stokesdale district, as well as the philanthropy of both black and white businessmen, led to the construction of several new schools including W. G. Pearson Elementary in 1928. W. G. Pearson is the only school in the neighborhood to survive the late twentieth century intact. The school was most recently a magnet school for gifted and talented students in kindergarten through fifth grades.

In the 1880s, the founding members of Angier Avenue Baptist held Sunday school classes out of a “small wooden structure known as the Oak Grove School.” At this time, East Durham had not yet been incorporated into the city of Durham. It was a separate town with its own officials and did not yet have electricity, running water, or paved streets. In search of a permanent location for the church, the founders decided that the intersection of Angier Avenue and Driver Street would be the location for their new church. It was completed in 1889 and lit with kerosene lamps and heated with coal-burning stoves. The sanctuary was further expanded in 1924 and remained a community fixture for nearly a century.

The project also includes the revitalization of three additional storefront buildings lining the central thoroughfare. They’ve hosted many local businesses since they were originally constructed in the 1920s but have been vacant or underutilized for years. The parish experienced declining memberships in recent years, and the building was purchased along with the neighboring buildings by Self-Help Credit Union, a locally headquartered member-owned mission-driven credit union, nonprofit loan fund, and policy advocacy organization.

Built in 3 phases between 1900 and 1915 in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Revolution Cotton Mills is an example of the diversification in the Southern textile industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was founded as a joint venture of the Cone and Sternberger families, two prominent Jewish families integral to Greensboro’s development.

The mill was fully operational by September 1900 and included 12,000 spindles, 376 looms, employed 350 people, and had 125 company houses – creating the village of Revolution. A 1910 description of the mill noted that “the company houses its employees in neat, modern houses and has supplied the village of Revolution with schools, free kindergarten, healthcare facilities, playgrounds, summer camps, a YMCA, churches, and every possible convenience.”

Revolution Mills’ particular significance lies in the fact that it was reputed to be the first flannel mill in the South, at a time when flannel was an increasingly popular fabric. By the 1930s, Revolution Cotton Mills had become the largest exclusive flannel mill globally, growing to over 1 million square feet and producing over 50 million yards annually.

In 1947, the Revolution Cotton Mills merged with Proximity Manufacturing Company, a secondary business venture founded by the Cone family, to become the Cone Mills Corporation. For approximately thirty years after the merger, the Revolution plant continued to produce flannel goods.

In the late 1970s, however, with new government standards concerning flammability, the company elected to get out of the flannel business. The plant was then converted to corduroy production, with a large export market, but when this market deteriorated, Cone Mills shut down the Revolution plant for good in February 1982. In 2012, Self-Help Ventures bought the mill and embarked on the first phase of redevelopment for the complex. The main campus was complete in 2019, and the Mill House project represents the final piece of the Revolution Mill development.