My High Point in Black and White with a Dash of Color

For over fifteen years the writer Glenn Chavis authored a column in the News & Record about his hometown — High Point, North Carolina — and its African-American history. Often humorous, sometimes grave, always opinionated and thoroughly researched, Chavis’s articles cover the domestic (fashion, food, punishments, and remedies) to the civic (city ordinances, often blatantly racist). In between he heaps praise on Black educators, professionals, and entrepreneurs and remembers nostalgically the many blessings and joys of growing up in High Point’s African-American community, its neighborhoods and streets, its parks and recreation centers, the Boy Scouts and sports, and the devout emphasis on the arts in the schools of Leonard Street, Fairview Street, and William Penn.   

My High Point in Black and White with a Dash of Color collects the first one hundred of some three hundred Chavis articles. Through his many enthusiasms and vivacious personality, citizens everywhere and High Pointers of all stripes can step into a vivid world — segregated, with its degradations and bygone benefits — that reveals the values, condemnatory and laudatory, of a people, High Pointers, and ultimately Chavis’s profound love for his city.