New exhibit at Reynolda House in Winston-Salem highlights Black workers
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (WGHP) — Winston-Salem's Reynolda village is known for its beautiful grounds, main house, museum and deep history.
But there was a portion of the village not widely known that held many memories and history all on its own. Five Row was the section of Reynolda Village where Reynolda's Black employees and their families lived.
Five Row opened in 1916 as a small village containing two rows of five cottages. It was built specifically for Reynolda's Black workers since they were not allowed to live in the village with white workers.
"Five Row was entirely segregated—all Black. The schools were segregated. The churches were segregated all out of Reynolda," Reynolda House Deputy Director Phil Archer said.
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The Five Row workers held an array of jobs from domestic work to tending the farm and building structures on the land.
The faces of the people who worked on this land for generations are now on display inside Reynolda House. The museum had collected oral histories from former Five Row residents, but for a while, there were no pictures of the people who lived there. That is until Eugenia "Gigi" Parent gathered them. A class she took at Wake Forest University in the early 90s to fill her time during retirement piqued her interest in Reynolda's Black history.
"I took American foundations class which was a class between Wake Forest and Reynolda House. I was a business-econ major and never took any art classes, so I took it for fun so I could learn more about the art at Reynolda," Parent said.
The class included a trip to Monticello where Gigi found herself inquiring about Sally Hemmings, who was an enslaved woman who is said to be the concubine of former president Thomas Jefferson, and Mulberry Row, which is the place where some enslaved people lived on the property. She recalls inquiries being met with denials from Monticello staff that either of the two existed. She came back to North Carolina troubled and discouraged.
Hearing about the trip, Reynolda House founder Barbara Millhouse met with Parent and told her about Reynolda's Five Row. Millhouse expressed her desire for an exhibit dedicated to the Five Row families and asked Parent to curate it. Parent accepted.
"Once I started working on the exhibit and found out the role Blacks had played in this ... I felt like I owned the place. I could walk in here. I could see Harvey Miller or John Carter. I looked everywhere around here and felt such a sense of ownership," Parent said.
Parent was able to collect never-before-seen pictures and stories from the descendants of Five Row residents and compile them into a public exhibit that opened in 1990. It was titled The Spirit of Reynolda.
"It was the largest attendance in the history of Reynolda. It was Blacks, whites, every race," Parent said.
The exhibit also showed the progressive thinking of the Reynolds family at that time. Although they lived in separate quarters, Black workers were paid the same salary as white workers, and they shared common spaces like play areas and the swimming pool.
"Katherine Reynolds was a staunch segregationist. No doubt about it, but she did do separate but equal. Right down to the schools." Parent said. "They had the same books, the same curriculum pretty much. It was an eight-month school whereas Black schools were six months. A lot of the Black professionals, doctors and lawyers sent their kids to the Five Row school because it actually had a better curriculum."
One of the photos of two former Five Row residents — Flora Pledger and Lillie Hamlin — was chosen to be reimagined in a painting by artist Stephen Towns. The painting now hangs inside Reynolda House.
Today, some of the photos Parent gathered have been brought back in a newer, broader exhibit about the Black experience at Reynolda. It's called Still I Rise: The Black Experience at Reynolda.
"I think you can't come to love this place and enjoy its surroundings without thinking of the people that made it possible," Archer said.
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All that's left of Five Row today is a historical marker at the intersection of Silas Creek Parkway and Wake Forest Road.
The village was demolished in 1962 to create Silas Creek Parkway. The Still I Rise exhibit will be at Reynolda until Dec. 2025.
