The city blocks just a short walk south of Moore Square Park are rife with Black history landmarks.

There’s Lincoln Theatre on Carrabus Street, where Black residents enjoyed films during a time when many theaters were segregated. Around the corner, there’s the Pope House Museum, where Dr. Manassa T. Pope, one of North Carolina’s first licensed African American doctors, lived. And just down the block, one can pass by the campus of Shaw University, the first Historically Black University in the South.

Soon, Raleigh will collect these places together by a trail to celebrate the stories, places, and people who have lived in the historic East Raleigh-South Park neighborhood.

The South Park Heritage Trail, approved by Raleigh City Council in November, will encompass roughly two miles in the historically Black neighborhood in the southeast part of the city. City staff will install signage and public art along a path that will run through about a dozen landmarks that served as important spaces for Black communities. That includes Shaw University, the now-closed Hamlin Drug store, the John “Top” Greene African American Cultural Center, and Mount Hope Cemetery.

Funding for the $4.5 million trail project comes largely from the 2022 parks bond referendum and a $1.5 million federal grant secured by Congresswoman Deborah Ross. The project is undergoing design development and environmental assessment, and construction is expected to begin in fall 2027 and finish in spring 2029.

For many years, city officials did not want to fund efforts to preserve and promote Black history and cultural spaces of southeastern Raleigh, said longtime resident Lonnette Williams. The South Park Heritage Trail came out of more than two decades of advocacy, she said, and many of the neighbors she worked with have since passed away.

The work has only become more vital in recent years, as the population of Raleigh continues to rapidly grow and gentrification brings more people to neighborhoods like East Raleigh-South Park.

“This neighborhood has been at the heart of Black Raleigh for more than 100 years,” Williams said. “And in that hundred years, a lot has taken place to build this city. The people who were reared here, educated here, worked here have done a lot to contribute to things that have flourished that people don’t know anything about.”

Williams, a retired schoolteacher, grew up on Ottawa Avenue in East Raleigh. She now resides in a house in South Park that was built in 1922 and belonged to her godfather, the late community activist John “Top” Greene.

Williams said that when she returned to Raleigh in the mid-2000s, she attended citizen advisory council meetings. She became active in advocating for renovations to the Top Greene Center and restoring John Chavis Memorial Park. Williams also opposed the city’s efforts to conduct concentrated code enforcement, which intended to address blight in specific neighborhoods — though Williams described it as a “land grab effort” that would identify old homes as not meeting building codes and force residents out. She, along with other residents of the South Park-East Raleigh Neighborhood Association, began working with the N.C. State College of Design to develop a neighborhood revitalization strategy.

“We wanted to have something that would improve the quality of life for the people who were here and wanted to stay here,” Williams said.

At the time, which was around 2008, the N.C. State College of Design had a studio in downtown Raleigh, said Kofi Boone, a landscape architecture professor at the university. The collaboration with the South Park-East Raleigh Neighborhood Association involved recording oral histories from longtime residents and creating posters to tell the area’s history.

Eventually, the idea of developing a trail came out of conversations to preserve the area’s stories and legacy. When funding was approved for the project, a community advisory group came together, along with multiple open houses in 2024, to provide input on the plan.

Boone said that the South Park Heritage Trail project could potentially have economic and tourism benefits in the same way the Freedom Trail does in Boston or the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

“The Cultural Trail in Indianapolis was really important to helping people look at parts of that city in a new light,” Boone said. “There were biases and there were stereotypes and there were all kinds of reasons why people weren’t encouraged to get out and walk the streets of Indianapolis, but that (trail) communicated to people that it was a welcoming place, it was a place for them, and they have enjoyed quite a bit of economic development associated with it.”

Regarding the South Park Heritage Trail project, he added: “The trail was not the goal, but it was something that emerged. The trail has many benefits it could provide, but there are other challenges that have nothing to do with the trail that this community faces. I hope that it doesn’t distract people from understanding the range of issues that this community’s facing.”

Williams noted that older residents like her who are on fixed incomes are struggling with the rising property taxes, brought on by escalating property values, new construction, and overall gentrification in the area.

But as Raleigh continues to grow, she hopes the trail will show newcomers the history that the city was built on.

“It’s going to give them a sense of place and knowing they are part of something that has a history that has been important to people in the past and it will be viewed as something worth knowing that they can share with their children and for generations to come,” Williams said.

Landmarks along the planned South Park Heritage Trail:

• Shaw University
• Pope House Museum
• John “Top” Greene African American Cultural Center 
• John Chavis Memorial Park
• Hamlin Drug
• Mount Hope Cemetery
• Former Carolinian Newspaper site
• Former Carolina Trailways Terminal site
• Lincoln Theater
• Tupper Memorial Church
• Harris Barber College
• Leonard Medical School