Bellamy Small:The greenway is another part of our way of showing our communities how we
can live, work and play. Not only you can come and walk and run and ride
your bicycle, but if you want to just talk about the stories, if you want to
talk about what was here and point out that. I think those can be
interesting things for children or adults because a lot of adults do not
know the story of Warnersville.
If you’re on this part on the greenway you’ll be able to look over and see what was
here, what is here now and sometimes you might even have a neighbor
or somebody who comes out and maybe is talking and they’re
saying, “Well I never knew about Warnersville.” Then they start telling
that story and Greensboro is rich in stories.
I will be interested when we get to the northern, northwestern phase of it because a lot
of times people don’t know about Fisher Park and some of the other
neighborhoods and how they came about. I think it’ll be a learning
experience for all of us.
This neighborhood, the Warnersville neighborhood, is the first African-American
established settlement in Greensboro so it’s the oldest. I think that if you
look at some of the public art that has been put here, it is trying to show
what this neighborhood has meant over all of these years. When you
realize that this neighborhood was started by freed slaves and that
because of a generous gift even then by Quakers for freed slaves to be
able to buy the land and to be able to build their homes.
Now look at this greenway where it’s saying we want you to continue your legacy, to be
the first to experience what it means to connect all of Greensboro
because this is an integral part of Greensboro and always has been and
hopefully will continue to be.