Justice
With a New Curfew, Is Downtown Greensboro Telling Young Black People to Stay Away?
The city's redevelopment strategy is starting to pay off, but some familiar tensions have followed.
In Greensboro, North Carolina, the economic revitalization of downtown has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. But changing demographics in the area marked for reinvention have contributed to a new set of problems.
On a Saturday night late in June, some fights broke out among a large group of young, mostly black people who were in the area to do what they have done for years – hang out. There had been some youth-oriented events that night, including a movie screening in Festival Park. When some of the kids on the street started fighting, the fracas was caught on security cameras. Early reports said that as many as 400 people may have been involved, although it’s unclear where that number come from.