Oberlin Village was where freed slaves bought land in 1866 and built one of Raleigh’s initial Black communities. A thousand African Americans once lived there, with their own schools and churches. Then urban renewal hit in 1970. The city demolished most of it. Now developers plant $1.5 million luxury townhomes on the same dirt where formerly enslaved people created their American dream. Progress, they call it. The full story gets worse.
The townhomes sprouting up in Oberlin Village sit on land with a story most developers probably don’t mention at closing. This was freedmen’s land once, carved out around 1866 from old plantation holdings. James H. Harris and other formerly enslaved people bought these parcels from Duncan Cameron’s estate and Lewis Peck’s subdivisions.
Freedmen bought this land in 1866, transforming old plantation holdings into something entirely their own.
They built something remarkable here—one of Raleigh’s initial Black communities that actually survived intact until 1970. Back then, nearly 1,000 African Americans lived across twelve blocks. Carpenters, masons, seamstresses. They weren’t waiting for anyone’s permission to build their lives. The Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association helped them finance homes when banks wouldn’t. They established Wilson Chapel, opened the Oberlin Cemetery in 1873, built the Oberlin Graded School. Called it Oberlin after that abolitionist college up north. Before that, white folks called it “Peck’s Place” or “Morganton.” The residents had other ideas.
The community thrived for a century. Victorian homes lined Oberlin, Wade, and Clark Avenues. Several hundred structures at the peak. People owned their land, raised families, created something lasting. Or so they thought.
Then came 1970 and the wrecking ball. Urban renewal, they called it. The school got demolished. Homes started disappearing. Today, fewer than 90 original buildings remain from those several hundred. Five made it onto the National Register of Historic Places. Two got moved entirely—the Rev. Plummer T. Hall House from 1877 and the Graves-Fields House from 1885. Relocated for preservation, like museum pieces. The Willis and Eleanor Graves house now sits at 812 Oberlin, moved from its original location at 802 Oberlin. The new Wilson Temple AME Church, a brick Gothic Revival structure, replaced the original chapel in 1910-11.
The city ultimately established the Oberlin Village Historic Overlay District in 2018. Seventeen and a half acres, seven buildings. That’s what’s left to protect. Groups like Preservation North Carolina and Friends of Oberlin Village keep fighting, but the luxury townhomes and condos keep coming.
The historic district runs along the 800-1000 blocks of Oberlin Road, stretching to Bedford Avenue, Roberts Street, Van Dyke Avenue. The cemetery’s still there at 1014 Oberlin Road. The Latta House site too. Small farms and modest single-family homes have given way to mixed-use development and higher density housing. Progress, apparently.