The Historic
Dimension Series
A student publication series by the UNCG Department of Interior Architecture
Lost History:
Happy Hill and Freedmen’s Enclaves
by Kelly Bennett Fall 2006
The period following
Emancipation is a
unique one in American
history. Enslaved
African Americans, with no previous
authority over their own lives, were freed. In
many cases, they set out and founded towns
and neighborhoods of their own. The Happy
Hill neighborhood in Winston-Salem, NC,
is such a place. In the 1870s, freed blacks
from Salem and surrounding communities
built this neighborhood on a former slave
plantation. By the 1920s, Happy Hill was
home to a community that supported three
churches, a library, a school, a theater and a
dance hall. It attracted African Americans
from all over the state to live there and work
in the city’s booming tobacco industry.
Today, precious little of the historic fabric
of this area remains. Happy Hill is known
more for its poverty and crime now than its
history. Happy Hill would be the natural
place to tell the story of the city’s first
free black community – if enough of the
neighborhood remained.
Towns and neighborhoods founded by
freed blacks are rare today. There are 30
remaining in the country, and most have
fallen on hard times. Most, like Happy
Hill, no longer reflect their deep history.
Happy Hill has many connections to Old
Salem, Winston-Salem’s museum district,
but most of that history was removed just
as Salem was being preserved. There are
several reasons why Happy Hill and other
freedmen’s enclaves have not survived.
The dilemmas of low property values,
small living spaces, and undesirable sites
have played a large role in the ruin of these
historic places.
Slavery in Salem
The Moravian Church and the community
of Salem had a complicated relationship
with slavery. The Moravians who founded
the town in the mid-18th century first
rejected slavery. When clearing the land for
their town became more work than they
expected, they turned to renting slaves
from owners nearby. Slaves were accepted
into the Moravian church, where they
worshipped with whites and were buried in
the church cemetery.
In the beginning of the 1800s, church
leaders began to hold separate services for
slaves. By 1819, slaves were being buried
in a separate graveyard, and in 1823, black
Moravians built their own log church in
Salem. By this time, although slave-owning
was discouraged by church leaders, the
church itself owned slaves that it rented
to the community. When the town needed
a new doctor, it compromised its slave-holding
beliefs and let Friedrich Schumann
live on a farm outside the town limits,
where he owned slaves and served as a
physician. However, Schumann freed his
slaves in 1836 and paid their passage to
Liberia, West Africa.
In 1861, with the log church too small for
the number of black worshippers, a new
brick church was built. It was constructed
just as the Civil War was beginning and its
cornerstone reads, “Jefferson Davis being
Provisional President of the Confederate
States of America.” After the end of the
war and emancipation, free blacks still
worshipped there, but they would soon live
outside of Salem.
Happy Hill
would be
the natural
place to tell
the story of
the city’s first
free black
community
—if enough
of the neigh-borhood
remained.
UNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 2
Fig. 2: The Schumann Plantation, that would later become Happy Hill, can be seen behind the two African American churches in Salem in this circa 1866 photograph by Henry Alexander Lineback. (courtesy of Old Salem, Inc.)
Fig. 3: A street map of Salem from 1870 shows the beginnings of Happy Hill, or Liberia as it was known then, in the upper right hand corner. (courtesy of Old Salem, Inc.)
Liberia
Just as slaves were not permitted to congregate with whites before emancipation, freed blacks were not allowed to purchase property within the Salem limits after the Civil War. As a compromise to keep blacks from building homes in Salem, they were instead allowed to build homes on the outskirts of town. In 1867, the first school for blacks in Salem was built where Happy Hill would soon be. The land for the school was given by the Salem Board of Trustees and the building was constructed by the Friends Association for the Relief of Colored Freedmen.
In 1872, streets and lots were laid out on the old Schumann Plantation. This area was officially called Liberia for a short while, to recognize Friedrich Schumann’s act of freeing his slaves and sending them to Liberia, West Africa. It is thought that although the area’s official name was “Liberia,” it was always called Happy Hill by its residents and reverted to that name by the 1900s. Ned Lemly was the first freed black to purchase a lot in Liberia that April.
By 1917, Happy Hill was thriving. A Sanborn map from that year shows a theater and dance hall, the Holiness Church on the Hill, a “Negro tenement,” and a store in addition to a mix of one- and two-story residential houses. Another map from 1921, in addition to these structures, shows an open air theater in Reynolds Park, a “colored” library, a public school, Rising Ebenezer Baptist Church, St. James C.M.E. Church with a cemetery, a barber shop, and a “colored hall.” Home ownership, by this time, was not common in Happy Hill. White landlords Jerry Newton, Cash Newton, and Nathaniel Mock owned a number of rental properties there in addition to other parts of the city.
Happy Hill Gardens
By the 1950s, Happy Hill had grown enough to have its own grocery store. Many houses had been replaced with more modern structures. St. James Church had been moved to a new location and Holiness Church, the library, school, and “colored hall” were all gone. Although Happy Hill was never an esteemed black neighborhood, residents called it a “respected place” and “sweet” in interviews for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Historic Resources Commission.
Happy Hill was the site of Winston-Salem’s first public housing project, Happy Hill Gardens, in the 1950s. The project removed 14 blocks of houses – about half the neighborhood – and replaced them with 488 apartment units. The neighborhood’s original character changed completely with many people moving out of the neighborhood and crime increasing. This housing project scraped away a tremendous amount of the city’s history just as historic preservation was beginning in North Carolina.
Old Salem
In 1948, the city of Winston-Salem designated Old Salem as a historic district, becoming the state’s first local historic district. The idea was first talked about in the 1930s and was inspired by the recent restoration of colonial Williamsburg.
The brick church, built for the African American congregation in Salem in 1861 was still in use until 1952 when the congregation began meeting at the Happy Hill Community Center. The church, now named St. Philips, was rented as a storage space to Old Salem, Inc., the caretaker of the new historic district, for $25 a month. A UNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 3
Fig. 4: The St. Philips Church complex at Old Salem includes the 1861 brick church (left) and a reconstruction of the 1823 log church (right).
Fig. 5: Today, a great deal of the Happy Hill area is under redevelopment.
new St. Philips Church was built in Happy Hill in 1959, moving away from the community center. In the mid-1960s the church had to move again, as a new north/south freeway was being built. St. Philips moved to its current home on Bon Air Avenue in the north of the city.
Freedmen’s Enclaves
There are few examples of free black towns from the period following the Civil War. Princeville, NC, and Eatonville, FL, both vie for the title of oldest all-black self-governed town, but do not have any of the protections of historic designation. Princeville, founded by ex-slave Turner Prince, was virtually destroyed by Hurricane Floyd in 1999, when 23 feet of water flowed down its Main Street. Although the town is being rebuilt on the ground it was founded on, all of the original buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged by the water. Eatonville was the home of author Zora Neale Hurston and the setting of her historical novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Freedmen’s Town in Houston, Texas, is the country’s only remaining post-Civil War national historic district where former slaves purchased the land and built the town. In the 1980s, more than 530 homes remained of the original community. Although only 30 homes and other historic structures remain today, it still may be the best-preserved district of its kind. Like Happy Hill, it was the center of black life in its city. Happy Hill, however, lost its defining characteristics decades ago.
Preservation Challenges
There are numerous reasons why freedmen’s enclaves like Happy Hill are in no condition to preserve. They have many strikes against them. To begin with, these places were difficult for blacks to purchase the land in the first place. After the Civil War, white landowners were reluctant, at best, to sell land to recently freed slaves. With Happy Hill, the threat of blacks building within Salem forced the compromise of selling the land of the old Schumann Plantation. Eatonville is actually named for the white man who sold blacks the land where the town was founded. Whites, especially former slave-owners, were afraid of the ramifications of having freed slaves congregating nearby. They were afraid of revenge-seekers. They were also wary of attracting freed blacks from other areas where they couldn’t buy land.
The homes that these communities built were almost certainly modest by today’s standards. Shotgun houses, which were a popular building style in these neighborhoods, only measure about 500 square feet – smaller than a contemporary studio apartment – and were homes for entire families. Such small living spaces invite pressure to redevelop an area. This can be seen in Freedmen’s Town in Houston, where downtown development has encroached on this historic area. Houston does not have a local historic designation for the area, so there are no protections for the buildings.
Not only were these houses small, they were often built in undesirable areas, like flood plains. Princeville, NC’s low altitude almost certainly was its undoing when Hurricane Floyd hit the area. Happy Hill is close to Salem Creek, and residents had problems with rats climbing into windows when the neighborhood was first built.
Just as many African American neighborhoods are, these historic neighborhoods are often the least expensive neighborhoods in their cities. Such low property values have invited government projects to take place in these areas. When a government uses its power of eminent domain to take private land for public use, it takes the least expensive land available. The city of Houston itself was buying property in Freedmen’s Town for an affordable housing development. The Happy Hill Gardens housing project is another example of this. U.S. Highway 52, the four-lane north-south highway that UNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 4
Fig. 6: The Happy Hill Gardens housing project removed 14 blocks of the old neighborhood in the 1950s. (courtesy of the Winston-Salem Journal)
Fig. 7: Today, new apartments and townhouses have replaced the 1950s housing project.
Moravian Church.” Both structures house exhibits on the history of the church and its African American congregation and the African American experience in Salem. There is also an African American walking tour available.
In the 1990s, Old Salem, Inc. put together an exhibit called Across the Creek from Salem: The Story of Happy Hill, 1816 to 1952. The exhibit was based on genealogical research, interviews, and family photographs from people with connections to Happy Hill, showing more than 350 images. In the five months it was on display, approximately 25,000 people visited it.
At present, Happy Hill is in the midst of another redevelopment. The 1950s-era housing project is torn down and several new apartment buildings and town houses have been put up along the edge of the neighborhood. The Southside Community Development Corporation and the Local Initiative Support Corporation plan to build new houses in the neighborhood to serve poor families. Their plans call for the houses to echo 1920s vernacular architecture with large front porches as a link to the surrounding neighborhood. Two salvaged shotgun houses original to Happy Hill will be moved to Alder Street where they will be restored and turned into a cultural center to permanently house Old Salem’s “Across the Creek” exhibit.
Today, many lots in the neighborhood are still undeveloped and are waiting for private developers to invest in the area. As historic houses in the nearby Washington Park neighborhood sell for $100 a square foot and more, tree-lined streets with views of the downtown skyline sit without any homes in Happy Hill. The shotgun houses that are to become the neighborhood’s cultural center are boarded up, sitting on cinder blocks. Evelyn Terry, the Board President and Executive Director of the Southside Community Development Corporation said the original plan called
bisects Winston-Salem is another. When this highway was built, it did not just graze Happy Hill, adding air and noise pollution to the area, it took with it the new St. Philips Church that was built just a few years earlier. By contrast, in 1953, South Main Street was diverted from the Old Salem historic district to a newly constructed Old Salem Road, because the traffic was damaging to the historic area.
Besides being inexpensive, the property in these neighborhoods was often owned by outside landlords, not by people living in the neighborhood. This practice perpetuates neglect of the property: by the owner to save expenses and the resident because he should not invest in property he does not own. Happy Hill fell into this category, with outside landlords owning most of the property by the 1950s.
One aspect that has helped the preservation of African American historic sites has been ties to other aspects of history. Slave quarters on historic plantations have been rebuilt. Eatonville’s ties to Zora Neale Hurston attract tourists every year to a festival held in the author’s honor. Freedmen’s Town is the home of the Rutherford B. Yates Museum, as well as historic churches, a school and a graveyard, that help keep the area’s historic character. Happy Hill has connections to the Old Salem historic district through the St. Philips Moravian Church complex, which is one of the attractions on the tour there, but there is little left in Happy Hill that is of historic value.
Across The Creek
Today, the story of African Americans in Salem can be learned in the 1861 St. Philips Church and the reconstructed log church, known as the “Negro UNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 5
Fig. 8: The St. Philips Church complex in Old Salem is in plain view from Happy Hill.
Fig. 9: The use of this shotgun house on Humphrey Street is part of the neighborhood’s proposed cultural center.
for three shotgun houses to be used, but one burned down when vagrants were using it.
Conclusion
Just as many other freedmen’s enclaves have disappeared, Happy Hill also shows little of its history that is central to Winston-Salem. The neighborhood’s oldest structures, two shotgun houses, are boarded up, waiting to be renovated. Little else of historic significance remains. As every historic neighborhood has pressure on it to redevelop, the added problems of low property values, small living spaces, and an undesirable site have played a large role in the ruin of this historic place. Perhaps interest in the history of this area came along too late to overcome the forces that stripped it of its past.
Bibliography
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Crews, D. (1998). Neither slave nor free: moravians, slavery, and a church that endures. Winston-Salem, NC: Moravian Archives.
Davis, L., Rice, W. & McLaughlin, J. (1999). African Americans in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County: a pictorial history. Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company.
Ellison, D. (2006, June 19). Juneteenth; The historic Freedmen’s Town is vanishing, but a group is working to preserve what’s left; History-saving effort. Houston Chronicle, p. B1. Retrieved October 24, 2006.
Griffin, F. (1985). Old Salem: An Adventure in Historic Preservation. Winston-Salem, NC: Old Salem Inc.
Hinton, J. (1998, June 8). Exhibit on Happy Hill comes to end with officials unsure about its fate. Winston-Salem Journal, p. A7. Retrieved November 13, 2006.
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Matthews, C. (1999). Twenty Years Interpreting African American History: A Colonial Williamsburg Revolution. History News, 54(3), 6-11.
Old Salem, Inc. (2004). About Old Salem: African American History. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://www.oldsalem.org/about/africanamericans.htm
Oppermann, L. (1993) Winston-Salem’s African American Neighborhoods. Winston-Salem, NC: Forsyth County Joint Historic Properties Commission.
Preston, S. (2005, February 13). Eatonville feels pride of ‘Town Freedom Built’. The Ledger, p. D1. Retrieved October 24, 2006.
Pugh, C. (2003, March 17). Home at last: Preservations plan culture park in ex-slave enclave of Freedman’s Town. Houston Chronicle, p. B1. Retrieved September 6, 2006.
Rodriguez, L. (2005, February 13). Fourth Ward: Road to renewal? A community in transition Freedmen’s Town, an area settled by emancipated slaves, is trying to reconcile progress with preserving its history. Houston Chronicle, p. B1. Retrieved September 6, 2006.
Schreiber, S. (2000). Interpreting Slavery at National Trust Sites; A Case Study in Addressing Difficult Topics. Cultural Resource Management, 23(5), 49-52.
Seibel, S. & Russ T. (2004). Archaeological Survey and Evaluation in the Happy Hill Redevelopment Area. Winston-Salem, NC: Forsyth County and Winston-Salem City-County Planning Board.
Vlach, J. (1999). Confronting Slavery: One example of the perils and promises of difficult history. History News, 54(3), 12-15.
Winston-Salem Local Initiative Support Corporation. (2005). Southside CDC. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://www.lisc.org/winston-salem/about_us/success_2408/southside_4551.shtmlUNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 6
Fig. 10: Much of the area in Happy Hill is still waiting for development.
Acknowledgements
Michelle McCullough, from the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Planning Board, provided two Historic Resources Commission documents that were instrumental in understanding the early history of Happy Hill.
Evelyn Terry, the Board President and Executive Director of the Southside Community Development Corporation agreed to an interview on the current state of the neighborhood along with plans for the future.
Jennifer Bean Bower, from Old Salem, and Julie Harris, from the Winston-Salem Journal library, provided several images of Happy Hill.
The Historic Dimension Series is a collection of briefs prepared by UNCG students under the direction of Professor Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll. For information on other topics in the series please visit the website at go.uncg.edu/hds
