A century ago, Greensboro and the whole world was changed by the Great War. The Greensboro Historical Museum has mounted a new exhibit, Lest We Forget: WWI through the Eyes of Nine Nine, which looks at how Greensboro experienced and continues to remember World War I.
Wartime mobilization, beginning in 1917, affected everyone differently. Artist and Buffalo Soldier Malvin Gray Johnson marched across the battlefields of France with a sketch pad in his pocket. Red Cross army nurse Dorothy Hayden witnessed war’s carnage in evacuation hospital operating rooms. At home, Professor Harriet Elliott organized college women on the home front while C. M. Vanstory coordinated civil defense efforts.
The memories of wartime are etched into Greensboro in other different ways too. Marked by the War Memorial Stadium or embroidered on a uniform patch, the effects of the war, and the lives it changed or ended, come down to us in traces large and small. War hero Lt. Robert Campbell won the Croix de Guerre and has a building named for him at NC A&T State University. Private Maceo Alston was one of five black soldiers who died in the war but left no no known photo of himself.
In addition to individual stories, the exhibit includes glimpses into local volunteer companies, the Red Cross, the 1918 influenza outbreak and more. Artifacts, personal items, and photos from the museum’s collections and special items on loan offer a sweeping picture of the Gate City during wartime.
About the nine:
Maceo Alston was drafted into the army at age 22 and died in France in 1919. Greensboro’s American Legion Post No. 183 was named after him by 1937, but there is no known photo of him.
John Bean went from weaving cotton at White Oak mill to working in the army medical department of the 36th Infantry Division. His regiment set up field hospitals and ambulance services during the Meuse-Argonne Operation in France. His uniform is on display.
A&T College instructor Robert Campbell had already fought overseas before WWI. A student of Booker T. Washington at Tuskeegee Institute, he signed up to fight in the Spanish-American War. After he came home a decorated war hero, Campbell returned to A&T College and was appointed the first Professor of Military Science.
Historian and political scientist Harriet Elliott lectured across the state on the causes of the war while she was a professor at the State Normal and Industrial College (today UNC Greensboro). President Wilson appointed her to the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense. Later, President Roosevelt appointed her to the Advisory Defense Commission during World War II and then served as an advisor for the commission that helped create UNESCO (the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization).
Margaret Falkener delivered home services for needy African-American families as a member of the Florence Nightingales, the segregated branch of the Greensboro Red Cross. She also established the music department at A & M College (now NC A&T) and was the first female supervisor of Greensboro’s African-American schools.
Mary Mendenhall Hobbs wrote forcefully against the war and urged fellow Quakers to find alternate ways to serve their country. Her son, Richard Hobbs, took her advice and joined a unit of the American Friends Service Committee to aid war refugees in France during the war.
Greensboro-born Malvin Johnson was living in New York City and studying art at the National Academy of Design when he was drafted and sent overseas to fight as part of a segregated army. He returned to painting after the war and was recognized as a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s.
Dorothy Hayden Conyers earned four service stars as a Red Cross army nurse working in evacuation hospital operating rooms near the front lines. As Guilford County’s first public health nurse, Conyers was later administrator of the Sternberger Women and Children’s Hospital.
Businessman C. M. Vanstory worked to maintain order at home during wartime, running the local Council of Defense, Food Bureau and American Protective League. Having made his name in clothing and real estate, Vanstory served on the boards of the North Carolina Auto Association, Eastern Star Masonic Home, and A&T College.
The Greensboro History Museum, located at 130 Summit Avenue, is open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. and Sunday 2:00–5:00 p.m.
Glenn Perkins is Curator of Community History, Greensboro History Museum
Facts about Greensboro and The Great War
• 1,621 Greensboro area men entered the military as draftees
or volunteers.
• 166,000 soldiers and Marines stepped off trains at Greensboro’s
railroad depot on South Elm Street during the war to receive
coffee and doughnuts from the Greensboro Red Cross.
• A company of engineers organized in Greensboro was part of
a regiment that helped break through the Hindenberg Line,
among the Germany army’s strongest defenses.
• The Red Cross signed up more than 6,000 people to support
soldiers, their families, and wartime medical services.
Entire schools signed up as Red Cross Junior Extensions.
• 84 Greensboro area men died during the war from disease and
in battle.
• Nurse Anna Reveley, who caught pneumonia in France at the
front lines, was the one Greensboro woman to die in service
during the war.
• War Memorial Stadium was dedicated in 1926 to the memory
of the wartime dead. Two bronze plaques list the names of
the city’s war dead from 1917 to 1919. The names of five black
servicemen who died during the war are given separately.