Qualla: Guilford County, North Carolina

Guilford County, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Census, Ruhrfisch, Public domain. The county is named for a man who never visited it. Francis North, the second Earl of Guilford and father of British Prime Minister Frederick North, lent his title to this stretch of central North Carolina in 1771, just five years before the colonies he had administered from afar declared their independence. The history that piled up on his nominal county turned out to be far more rebellious than its English name suggests. Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Underground Railroad with one of the country's most active Quaker abolitionists at its head. The first women's college funded by a state. The first Black land-grant college in North Carolina. The lunch counter sit-in that ignited a movement. Guilford County, population 541,299 at the 2020 census, has spent two and a half centuries refusing to be quiet.

Image: US Census, Ruhrfisch | Public domain

Guilford County, North Carolina: Quakers, Lutherans, and the First Settlements

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 5minutes, CC BY-SA 3.0 us. Before the English settlers came, the Siouan-speaking Cheraw lived in this part of the Piedmont. Beginning in the 1740s, three waves of European migration redrew the map: American Quakers from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New England arrived at what would become Greensboro; German...

Image: 5minutes | CC BY-SA 3.0 us

Guilford County, North Carolina: Cornwallis Bleeds Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Beyonce245 of English Wikipedia., Public domain. On March 15, 1781 the Battle of Guilford Court House was fought just north of present-day Greensboro between British General Charles Cornwallis and American General Nathanael Greene. Cornwallis held the field at the end of the day - a technical victory - but his army had been so ...

Image: Beyonce245 of English Wikipedia. | Public domain

Guilford County, North Carolina: Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charlottewitch1, CC BY-SA 4.0. Many Guilford County residents in the antebellum era opposed slavery: Quakers, Lutherans, Methodists. The county became a key stop on the Underground Railroad - the network of safe houses and guides that helped enslaved people reach freedom in the North. Levi Coffin, born in Guil...

Image: Charlottewitch1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guilford County, North Carolina: Two Colleges, One Year

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1891, Greensboro became simultaneously the home of two institutions that would define American higher education's expansion. North Carolina A&T - then the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race - became the second land-grant college established under the Seco...

Image: CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guilford County, North Carolina: February 1, 1960

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum, CC BY-SA 4.0. The defining day in Guilford County's modern history came at 4:30 in the afternoon on February 1, 1960, when four NC A&T freshmen - Ezell Blair Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond - sat at the F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Greensb...

Image: CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guilford County, North Carolina: Greensboro Massacre and Modern County

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not all of Guilford County's twentieth-century history was triumphant. On November 3, 1979, a march protesting the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups in southeastern Greensboro was attacked by Klan and American Nazi Party members. Five marchers from the Communist Wor...

Image: CharlotteHawkinsBrownMuseum | CC BY-SA 4.0