EOT 437 Raleigh's Fourth Ward District

Raleigh's new Fourth Ward District, focusing on the entertainment block in the south downtown area, is named to commemorate and honor the Fourth Ward neighbourhood, a Black community that was destroyed in the 1970s. In this episode, Autumn Smith talks with Haley Kinsler, a PhD student at NC State and a member of the Fourth Ward Oral History Project to highlight the history of the area and community effort to preserve the memory of Fourth Ward.

Before that, WKNC public affairs creator Sydney Semel provides a weekly news summary, highlighting Raleigh efforts to address homelessness and how NC State plans to combat climate change.

Eye on the Triangle is a podcast produced by WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2, student-run radio from NC State University. Like what you hear? Consider supporting it with a gift to the WKNC Enhancement Fund. Visit our podcast page to hear more and follow us on all social media platforms @WKNC881. Thanks for listening.

Creators and Guests

Host

Autumn Smith

Public Affairs Director (2026-2027)

SS

Producer

Sydney Semel

Content Creator

What is Eye on the Triangle?

Eye on the Triangle is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2’s weekly public affairs programming with news, interviews, opinion, weather, sports, arts, music, events and issues that matter to NC State, Raleigh and the Triangle.

00:04
Autumn Smith
You are now listening to Eye on the Triangle, WKNC's weekly public affairs program from the campus of north carolina State university. Any views and opinions expressed during Eye on the Triangle do not represent NC State or student media. This is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1 raleigh. Hello and thank you so much for tuning in to Eye on the Triangle. My name is Autumn Smith. In this episode we will be discussing Raleigh's new 4th Ward entertainment district, where WKNC speaks with Haley Kinsler, a Ph.D. student at NC State who conducts oral history and research on Raleigh's historic Fourth Ward neighborhood. But first, here is WKNC Public affairs creator Sydney Semel with your weekly news roundup highlighting how Raleigh and NC State are addressing homelessness and climate change.

00:52
Sydney Semel
Good morning. Thanks for tuning in to WKNC 88.1 FM. My name is Sydney Semel and I'll be giving you all some news updates for this week. According to a recent article published by the Technician, new programs in Raleigh are being implemented to address homelessness, starting with the initiative Wake at Home. The program is a public private partnership with Wake County Continuum of Care to help connect people experiencing homelessness with stable housing. As the rate of homelessness in Raleigh rises, initiatives like these are becoming increasingly important. A count in 2025 showed that there's more than 1,000 individuals who are experiencing homelessness in Wake county and almost 10% of NC State students have experienced at least a short period of homelessness reported in a 2020 survey. As of July 2026.

01:36
Sydney Semel
The Wake at Home initiative aimed to connect 400 people living in encampments to stable housing and help 1,000 people leave shelters within the next 18 months. On August 28, 2026, Wake at Home reached its first milestone with the complete closure of an encampment, allowing 33 people to accept offers of housing and support. This support includes a year long rental subsidy and case management services, along with mental and behavioral health support to individuals who need it. Other initiatives in Raleigh are also helping move unhoused people into stable housing. Bringing Neighbors home cleared an encampment in Dorothy Dix park and moved 90% of individuals living there into housing. Another program, Raleigh Addressing Crises through outreach, referrals, networking and service, supports nonviolent responses and facilitate outreach by pairing social workers with police.

02:21
Sydney Semel
City Councilor Jane Harrison attributes Raleigh's high living and rent costs to the growing number of unhoused residents. She claims that there's around 80 homeless encampments in the city of Raleigh alone. Harrison also states that the public cost of homelessness can reach nearly $100,000 per individual per year because of needed medical care, potential jail time, shelter costs and more. She claims that direct vouchers, however, cost 24,000. She aims to work with a nonprofit affordable housing developer to build continuous affordable housing in Raleigh. Eileen Rosa, the Wake County Continuum of Care lead agency director, adds that once the amount of unsheltered homelessness is reduced, funding can hopefully be prioritized toward preventing homelessness in the first place. On November 3rd, Raleigh residents will be able to vote on a $101.5 million affordable housing bond with $12 million to be allocated to homelessness.

03:11
Sydney Semel
Response Harrison adds that due to a lack of federal funding, Raleigh Housing Authority sites should be redeveloped to provide adequate public housing now turning to climate change A separate September article from the Technician examines how NC State and Raleigh are preparing for its impacts as severe weather continues to affect North Carolina, including storms like Hurricane Helene, as well as increasing wildfires and droughts. North Carolina State University has had a 12% reduction in campus emissions from 2008 to 2024 and has reduced its energy use per square foot by 30% since 2003. However, NC State is still working toward its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, meaning the university would remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as it emits. Because of this, student groups have protested for stronger sustainability commitments and further reductions in emissions.

04:00
Sydney Semel
The university strategy includes using less energy intensive practices, improving efficiency, transitioning towards lower emission energy sources, and offsetting emissions that cannot be eliminated. One example is the University's use of cogeneration, which captures waste heat from the Cates Avenue steam plant and uses it for the University's hot water system. The University also uses solar arrays like the rooftop array at Fitz-Woolard Hall on Centennial Campus. However, Walter Robinson, a professor in the College of Sciences and member of the University Sustainability Council, points out that the Cates Avenue plant still burns natural gas and produces carbon dioxide emissions. He also adds that the University needs to source more of its electricity from renewable sources, such as adding solar arrays to parking lots, structures and surplus land. Robinson also notes that climate change poses two major risks to the university increasing heat and risk of flooding.

04:53
Sydney Semel
To prepare for this, he suggests maintaining the University's tree canopy to cool campus and adding green roofs to lower temperatures and help with stormwater management. Jay Levine, a professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, states that Raleigh can do more to prepare for climate change impacts, including changes to food and agriculture systems and increased risks for people more susceptible to heat illness, such as unhoused people. Some of what he suggests include providing access to more cooling places and ensuring electricity is not cut off during extreme heat. As the technician mentions, Duke energy rates will likely increase by 18% over the next two years, while North Carolina has recently scrapped a mandate calling for a 70% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

05:38
Sydney Semel
As Robinson clarifies, this means reaction to climate change must be collective at a national and global level to make a difference, though, individual action can help, such as buying energy efficient appliances and being aware of heat health issues. Thank you for listening to WKNC 88.1 FM. I'm Sydney Semel and this has been your weekly news for Eye on the Triangle.

05:58
Autumn Smith
Thank you, Sydney. For this week's news summary, on September 3rd, the City of Raleigh established the 4th Ward Entertainment District in the South Downtown area. The designation is honoring Raleigh's historic Fourth Ward neighborhood, a thriving black community destroyed in the 1970s after urban planning projects such as the construction of Western Boulevard. The commemoration is attributed to the 4th Ward Neighborhood association and the Raleigh Convention. The commemoration is attributed to the 4th Ward Neighborhood association and the Raleigh Convention and Performing Arts Complex, according to the City of Raleigh. To discuss the history of the Fourth Ward and the new commemoration efforts, WKNC spoke with Haley Kinsler from the Fourth Ward Oral History Project for our listeners. Could you please State your name and tell us about what you do?

06:41
Haley Kinsler
Yeah, my name is Haley Kinsler. I'm a PhD student in the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program here at NC State. I'm also a two time alumnus. I got my bachelor's here and my master's in linguistics in the English Department. So I am one of the founding members of the Fourth Ward Oral History Project and I also am a member of the Fourth Ward Historic Neighborhood Association. So a lot of my research here at State focuses on kind of like making DIY maker projects and where that kind of intersects with various community research projects. And so in this case, mostly historical documentation and research about the Fourth Ward neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina.

07:25
Autumn Smith
That's amazing. So what is the Fourth Ward Oral History Project?

07:31
Haley Kinsler
So this is a project that, funnily enough, it started out of a class project in 2023. So while I in the Master's program here, I was familiar with the Language and Life Project at NC State, which is headed up in part through linguistics faculty. So Dr. Walt Wolfram, and he does a lot of outreach with local communities to celebrate language varieties and dialects across the State of North Carolina and beyond. And one of the things that we learned about through our coursework was like, community research and outreach and oral history projects. So I had a class with Dr. Wolfram, and. And it was supposed to be some sort of outreach project like that. I just so happened at the time to be doing a lot of housing organizing in the area.

08:17
Haley Kinsler
I was being rezoned because of some zoning cases that were associated with the bus rapid transit along Western Boulevard. And I went to a community meeting with my city council representative, Jane Harrison, for District 3. And I met members of the 4th Ward there who talked about how they lived in this historically black community just south of downtown Raleigh that was essentially destroyed from 1968 to 1975. And there was really no publicly available information about the neighborhood. And I was really shocked when I went to that meeting and heard them telling their stories, and I thought, oh, my God, like, we need to do something here. And that was really how the project was born. Like, we met within a few weeks and kind of started putting together a website with their stories and photos and testimonies, and we really haven't looked back since.

09:09
Autumn Smith
It's an incredible effort. You guys just keep going with it. I will say, in doing research for this episode, it's been very hard to find information about the neighborhood besides what you guys have put together.

09:18
Haley Kinsler
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, like, one of the primary things that I try to tell people about this project is that it really is no exaggeration that when I started, I felt like I was being asked to look for something that, like, I believed existed because residents were sharing that with me. But I couldn't find anything. I went to the State archives. I went through, I mean, tens of thousands of photos that were digitized by the State archives here and shout out to their team. Like, I know that's some really tough work, but, you know, a lot of time there isn't metadata or information that's listed. And so I was having to kind of pick images out by hand that I thought might fit and then cross reference that with information from interviews. So it's kind of amazing.

10:03
Haley Kinsler
Like, this project, my hope with it has been to put the 4th Ward back on the map, at least in terms of the local historical record.

10:09
Autumn Smith
Absolutely. And that is very intricate work. I can't even imagine trying to get all of those together. It sounds like a real hard guessing game.

10:16
Haley Kinsler
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the thing that has made it so fun to work with residents. I mean, they feel like family at this point, and they're really wonderful to work with. So if I find A photo or something that I'm not sure about. I just have to call him up and ask. And that, I think is one of the things that makes it as an oral history project, really special.

10:36
Autumn Smith
Absolutely. So as you've been discovering more of the Fourth Ward, uncovering all of this lost history, what have you learned about what it was while it existed and how it thrived back in the history of Raleigh?

10:48
Haley Kinsler
The history of Raleigh is interesting. Like it was a planned city. So originally, like group of quote unquote, founding fathers of North Carolina, if you will, were like, we need a new capital. They purchased a thousand acres from him. And block by block, that's what divided and made up the city's like original founding. And the Fourth Ward is one of the first developments that starts to organically branch off from that planned city structure. It's just kind of like south of downtown. So if you're familiar with the Performing Arts center, is downtown or Red Hat kind of borders Boylan Heights to the west. And what's interesting about it is that like its history thus stretches that far back. So there used to be like our first governor's mansion was located there, for example. The first Rex Hospital was located in the Fourth Ward.

11:41
Haley Kinsler
And so I think that's a big part of what stands out to me is the history of the Fourth Ward is truly the history of Raleigh. By the turn of the 20th century, it was, you know, spatial segregation had fully taken hold there. And so what I've learned from residents is if you could go back in time and be there in the 60s, this was a thriving, very tight knit black community with businesses, historic churches, the first African American school in Raleigh, the Washington School, that started out of a church in the Fourth Ward. So I think that's what stood out the most to me is just how incredibly rich the history is of that area, how intimately tied it is to the history of Raleigh overall and how it is, how important it is at a moment like now to preserve that.

12:33
Haley Kinsler
While we still have so many residents who remember what it was like at that time.

12:37
Autumn Smith
Absolutely. The window to archive this is narrowing with the sort of slow destruction of the Fourth Ward neighborhood towards the latter part of the 20th century, what does that say about the history of Raleigh's urban planning and what happened to the neighborhood in general?

12:52
Haley Kinsler
That's a. For me, that's the million dollar question. Because I think it's important to understand that what happened in terms of urban renewal is not gentrification. It's a very different process. But there are also a Lot of analogs, or there's what I would call like a through line in terms of spatial segregation. What that's looked like in Raleigh over the course of the 20th century until now with urban renewal. Like, the Fourth Ward was essentially destroyed in the span of about seven years. I think it's December of 1968 that the city council votes on this urban renewal project, which, for those who don't know, this essentially meant that they had deemed that the area was, quote, unquote, like run down or blighted. And there was enabling legislation that had been passed by the Truman administration a couple of decades to prior. Prior.

13:42
Haley Kinsler
And so they. The city went to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and requested funding to basically purchase or seize all of that land through imminent domain. And within the span of that seven years, they just. They destroyed the whole neighborhood. There's a picture of the mayor at that time, like, taking a sledgehammer to one of the building's foundations. That's in the NNO archive. And I've seen aerial photos of what that neighborhood looked like in. In the 1960s and then in the 1980s after it was destroyed. And it is really hard to capture just how massive of a loss this was. I mean, we're talking hundreds of homes, dozens of businesses. I once went on a walk around the perimeter of the fourth ward, and I think it took like 45 minutes to an hour to walk around the entire thing.

14:34
Haley Kinsler
And so when I talk to black folks in Raleigh who are like in their 60s and 70s and older, and I tell them that I remember the 4th Ward or that, like, I'm familiar with that area, there's always this kind of look of shock. And then we kind of get thrust into a conversation where it's like, wow, it's so different now. And the prevailing sense that I get is that in some ways urban planning feels different in Raleigh now, but there are also some ways in which it feels very much like the same. So the concerns that people have about the land around Shaw University, for example, or St. Augustine or in southeast Raleigh, I just see a lot of concerns that there are other kinds of mechanisms that can be utilized that would inevitably lead to residents being displaced.

15:26
Autumn Smith
Like you had mentioned earlier, different plans going on in Raleigh right now, like the bus rapid transit plan, as much as they're promoted to increase the businesses and the. The infrastructure around Raleigh, they very much have side effects which are trying to get rid of the parts of Raleigh which are considered less, you know, economically viable or just simply rooted in racism. Correct.

15:49
Haley Kinsler
Yeah. I mean, that's at least my perception of it. And this is a historical trend across the United States and beyond. I mean, urban renewal. What's interesting about it is that in a lot of places, part of the rationalization for the project was infrastructural development. So when they first had the urban renewal plan for the 4th Ward, the proposal was to create the interchange at McDowell and South Saunders so that like, I mean, you can't miss it if you're taking Western Boulevard and you're crossing over into mlk, that huge interchange. That whole area was the Fourth Ward neighborhood. And so that interchange was specifically a result of the urban renewal project. You know, this was advertised to Raleigh residents as a major infrastructural improvement. The traffic would improve.

16:37
Haley Kinsler
They were talking about amenities that would be built after the project, many of which were never built. Instead, a lot of that land was set aside and to this day is mostly empty. I think there's similar concerns with things like bus rapid transit and other kind of infrastructural projects here where I, you know, I love the bus, I love biking. That's like the majority of how I get around the city. I'm a huge proponent of density and walking ability. And these are things that I care about. But also I can see how sometimes there are things that are left unsaid with these projects.

17:12
Haley Kinsler
And so you really have to put equity and housing, justice and the focus of developing for the purposes of low income communities first and being very explicit about who is in those communities and what their needs are, as opposed to kind of assuming for them. So, yeah, I definitely see a connection between some of the motivations and justifications that drove the Fourth Ward, the urban renewal project that destroyed the Fourth Ward, and then some of the conversations that we're having about what planning and land use and transit practices look like today.

17:46
Autumn Smith
Yeah, of course, it was very humbling as well. I take Western Boulevard to NC State every single day. And in researching this, seeing how that Western Boulevard plan took out so much of it's when you say that I can visualize exactly where that district would be.

18:01
Haley Kinsler
Growing up, I always loved that stretch of road because you can see the city from it. And to me, that just felt like I could see my home, like I could see the Raleigh skyline and all of the places that I feel very tied to here and that I love. And the fact that it was only like a couple of years ago that I learned at what cost that we got that road, it changed my perspective. It makes It a little bit harder to come through that area and feel as excited when I know that, like hundreds of people that I care about were displaced in the process. Yeah. It is kind of remarkable in the fact that historically there hasn't been a lot of signage there.

18:42
Haley Kinsler
And so a lot of people who, if you didn't live in Raleigh at that time or you didn't live in that area and you live there now, you might not know what it looked like, you know, just 40, 50 years ago.

18:54
Autumn Smith
With recent efforts to highlight and commemorate the Fourth Ward district, there's the installation at the Martin Marietta Center. But now with downtown Raleigh putting in the new Fourth Ward entertainment district, have you been a part of that process or watching that process and what has that been like to commemorate the history of the Fourth Ward?

19:12
Haley Kinsler
So in regards to that exhibit at the Performing Arts center, so I am like the primary designer of that exhibit. It started out in the first year that I worked on the project. It basically was a year of research. And then we had our first exhibit at the City of Raleigh Museum downtown. And then the city approached myself and met other members of the 4th Ward Historic Neighborhood association and asked about creating a larger scale version of the exhibit to be on display for at least a year at the Performing Arts Center. And so that's kind of how that came to be and through continued partnerships with the Performing Arts center is when talk about the entertainment district came up. So were asked for input on things like the design of the logo, for example.

20:01
Haley Kinsler
And since the very first day that I was on this project, one of the number one things that every single 4th Ward resident has been asking for has been signage. Like something that visibly is marking the fact that the community was there. I can't think of the term like wayfinding signs so that people know as they're walking through West south street, for example, that was historically part of an entertainment district, a business district, it was a thriving black commercial district. And so to see that is happening now, it truly feels more rewarding than anything I could have expected as a graduate student, because that was what we wanted to see was material change. We wanted to see that there was something that was going to come out of it. And being a PhD student is hard.

20:53
Haley Kinsler
I was a master's student when I started this project, and now I am, oh gosh, my third year as a PhD student, I get tired. I can only imagine it's hard, but I remember when that exhibit opened, I go there sometimes during the monthly public hours. And you'll see people who lived in that neighborhood come through with their kids or their grandkids, and you see how excited they get. Oh, I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing more worth it than that. That is, like, the thing that makes this project keep going is just seeing that people are so excited to see that the city is recognizing the history of this neighborhood. And my hope here, too, is knowing that Raleigh was not the only, you know, metropolitan area that was affected by urban renewal. This happened in Charlotte, North Carolina. Happened.

21:43
Haley Kinsler
It happened across pretty much every major city across the United States in the mid 20th century. And so my hope is that maybe we're offering a model for what some sort of redress can look like on the part of the cities that allowed this to happen in the first place. We can't bring back 4th Ward as it was, but I think that hopefully this project offers a model for what it can look like in the future with community members at the front.

22:11
Autumn Smith
That is incredible input. I know you already kind of touched on it with that response, but what do you see for the future of Raleigh or the future of other urban cities in America as we continue to highlight these destroyed districts that previously existed?

22:24
Haley Kinsler
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is about acknowledging, like, acknowledging what happened and the fact that this was, you know, an intentionally racist planning practice. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the 4th Ward historically elected the most black representation to the. The. To local office at the city level. Right. And so that doesn't feel like a surprise to me that is one of the urban areas that was targeted first. That's the. The neighborhood that they went after first. And it very much seems like the purpose was to dilute the black vote here. So I think part of what I'm hoping for is for the city to recognize that, like, community engagement. Right. And equity and justice, these are not just terms. Right.

23:10
Haley Kinsler
That we can throw on a website or throw on a report or do some benchmarking for. I think, for the city of Raleigh and beyond, the fact of the matter is that, like, these residents need to be at the table. They need to be making their demands and expressing, like, what it is that has to be done to rectify what the city did in the past. And I think that's the way that we move toward a better future for the city. And I think when we have lessons like that at the back of our minds as planners, as city council members, as just neighbors who are giving input on these kinds of land use and transit decisions that are being made. Then we start to look for the things that aren't listed in the plans. We see the new interchange that's coming through.

23:57
Haley Kinsler
We see the new bus line. We're really excited. But I think with a story like this, we kind of start to ask ourselves, well, what am I not seeing out of this? Like who? Who possibly isn't being represented here? And how do we make sure to give them a voice too?

24:17
Autumn Smith
The Fourth Ward district is a big step in ensuring the forgotten neighborhood is honored as a part of Raleigh's legacy. Moving forward, the Magic of the Fourth Ward, A Journey Through Time and Culture exhibit is open to the public at the Martin Marietta center for the Performing Arts, with vital research collected by the Fourth Ward Oral History Project. Thank you so much to Haley Kinsler for joining us in discussing the city's new step forward. This has been Eye on the Triangle from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1 Raleigh. Our theme song is City Lights by BerryDeep, licensed under Creative Commons. To relisten to this or any other episode, visit WKNC.org/podcast or subscribe to Eye on the Triangle on your favorite podcast site or app. Thank you for listening.