- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Robert R. Sampson, October 9, 2002
- Creator:
- Sampson, Robert R.
- Contributor to Resource:
- Hornsby-Gutting, Angela
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 2002-10-09
- Subject:
- African American businesspeople--North Carolina--Greensboro
African American pharmacists--North Carolina--Greensboro
African Americans--Commerce--North Carolina--Greensboro
Urban renewal--North Carolina--Greensboro
Greensboro (N.C.)--Economic conditions
African American neighborhoods--North Carolina--Greensboro
African Americans--North Carolina--Greensboro--Social life and customs
Segregation--North Carolina--Greensboro - People:
- Sampson, Robert R.
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Guilford County, Greensboro, 36.07264, -79.79198
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- At the time of this interview, Robert Sampson was running a pharmacy on East Market Street in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sampson describes how urban renewal in the late 1950s and early 1960s affected Greensboro's thriving black shopping district on Market Street. Sampson himself managed to stay ahead of redevelopment efforts, leaving areas destined for change for places he thought more secure. However, most black businesspeople did not expect renewal efforts or see them as inevitable; as a result, they lost their businesses and often found it impossible to rebuild or relocate. While Sampson concedes that the dilapidated buildings on Market Street needed work, he suspects that the choice to seize and redevelop, rather than fund remodeling, was an effort by white Greensboro to dissolve a successful black business district. The effort worked, silencing a lively area and greatly damaging black businesses. This interview provides a look at a black business community's struggle to maintain its coherence in a changing economic climate.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/R-0182/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on June 13, 2008).
Interview participants: Robert R. Sampson, interviewee; Angela Hornsby, interviewer.
Duration: 00:45:17.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
