The Bessemer Greensboro Destroyed

A lot of people who read this blog don't believe me when I tell them that through annexation, Greensboro destroyed a community that was more prosperous than Greensboro itself. With the help of my friends in the Facebook group Greensboro,NC, Bessemer community 50' thru 80's I've started putting together a list of the things Greensboro deliberitly destroyed in the years after annexation. I've also asked the City of Greensboro for a list of the businesses mentioned in this quote from the City of Greensboro website.

"This lively community began to wind down in the late 1950s and 1960s when, under the guise of "urban renewal," thousands of people and more than 80 businesses (many minority-owned) were displaced. Most of those businesses never reestablished."

Things Greensboro Destroyed In Bessemer

Mr. James Barbershop
Tastee Freeze
Beverlys Barbecue
The Polio Hospital
Evergreens
Rays restaurant
Blalock's store
Bessemer Community Center
Trampolines and putt putt
 small fairs that would come to Northeast Shopping center
Hawkins Skating Ring
Brendles
Thornton furniture
Martin Fredrick's store
Howard's store
Biff Burger
GI 1200
Bessemer High School
Swaim Lumber Company
Dockery Lumber Company
Batts Grocery
Crawford Paint Company
Clarks Department Store
Prago Guyes
Pic and Pay shoes
Big Bear
A&P
Ben Franklin drug store
Modlin's Café
the Slot Car racing track
Monroe's Drive-in restaurant
Castaways
Bowling Alley
McClures Restaurant
2 Libby Hills restaurants 1 remains
Paragon restaurant
Alpat restaurant
Macks Curb Market
Mitchel & Anthony's Grocery
Marian Lewis's Bake Shop
Murphy's Drapery Shop
Dick's Ice Cream Company
Daphne's Beauty Shop
Gillis "Self Service" Grocery
Gardner's Atlantic Service Station
Weaver Place Billards Parlor
Whitesell's grocery
2 Bi-Rite Grocery Stores
Upchurch's Curb Market