Winston-Salem - includes a related article on The National Black Theatre Festival - North Carolina's African American Culture: Advertising Travel Supplement - Cover Story

Think of Winston-Salem, NC and cigarettes probably approach to mind, and why not? This is the heart of tobacco land where the city's most popular visitors' attraction is the hourly tour of the RJ Reynolds cigarette factory at Whitaker Park. on the contrary don't be fooled; Winston-Salem has the cultural diversity of a city twice its size--and it has the tranquillity of a small town. It's a duality hard to match elsewhere; perhaps this is wherefore the poet Maya Angelou has made Winston-Salem her dwelling for some years now.

The city is replete of surprises; it lulls you into serenity and holds you there. Traffic, crowds, crime and sold-out [i]cabaret[/i]s are foreign words in Winston-Salem, and however this is the kind of family vacation mark that can be overlooked because of what it isn't.

A 15-minute video in Winston-Salem's visitor center stations the stage for appreciating the city's history and its charm. The town of Salem (which later merg with the larger surrounding village of Winston) was fixed in 1753 by Moravian immigrants from Germany and Czechoslovakia. This mercantile community was noted up and down the East Coast for its hardworking gunsmiths, tailors, wagonmakers and other craftsmen. The Moravians were also noted for establishing Salem body for Women (which is still render free of access today) and introducing the first trombone to America.

Although the Moravians generally scowled on the institution of slavery, enslaved Africans were crucial to the unravelling of Salem, in ways that many today would find surprising. Slaves accounted for 10 percent of the town's population, and, as it turn rounded out, the Moravian Church prov to be the best thing to happen to them since their abduction from the Mother Continent.

The Moravian house of worship put a heavy emphasis upon hard work and individual responsibility, and the feeling was that house of worship members would be less diligent if they had slaves available to do their work. The meeting-house owned all slaves in the community and leased them without as potters, carpenters and bricklayers to citizens when exigencyed White citizens addressed black residents as sister and brother, and house of worship leaders required that slaves be paid a nominal wage and be provided with adequate clothing and tools. In time, greatest in quantity of the African Americans became bilingual, since they had to speak German to communicate with whites, and the pair white and black townspeople attended church--and were buried--side by means of side. Salem's biracial harmony didn't last forever; by dint of the early 19th century, white Moravians began to adopt the segregationist perspective of the quiet of the South. In addition, many of the citizens felt that allowing blacks to worship with whites would give the slaves the impression that they were equal, and that could sole lead to slave revolts and other enigmas By 1822, sadly, Salem was individual community with two churches sitting side by the agency of side. St. Philip's, the black temple is one of the oldest churches in the southerly Today, it is a dilapidated configuration that Old Salem Inc. is trying to renovate as a national historic site; the congregation has mov to another part of the city.

Since of advanced age Salem is where it all began, it's solitary fitting that it be the first stop upon any tour of the city. aged Salem is, in fact, a functioning residential community perfect with sounds of college scholars strolling between classes and neighbors socializing upon porchies. The area includes 96 buildings spread above 25 city blocks. Seven of the buildings--including the bakery, the doctor's office, the tavern and the gift shop--are unclose to visitors who have purchased a pass at the advanced in years Salem visitors center.

At the Vogler House, built in 1819 a docent addresss guests at the door and mention one by ones the story of how the Vogler began as silversmiths on the other hand found that it was more profitable to exchange jewelry and flatware than to make them. As you impel through each of the expanses a guide dressed in traditional garb run overs you more about the family and demonstrates by what mode stoves, spinning wheels and other devices were used. A hardly any doors down the street at the Single Brothers House, you diocese what it was like to be a single stay in a Moravian community, living in what was, in substance a glorified dormitory. Here men lived from age 14 to age 21 studying a trade and receiving no pay.

On the nearest block is the Winkler Bakery, which is a popular mark in the mornings, when visitors globule by to see bread, sugar bread and ginger cookies made in the bakery's wood-stove oven It is not hard to find; the scents of sugar and ginger lead you right to it.

Not far from downtown, near Wake Forest University, is another smell--that of tobacco, which allows you know you have reached the RJ Reynolds Cigarette Manufacturing Center at Whitaker Park. The 45-minute tour here is fascinating, plane for nonsmokers. (But make no mistake, this is a tour that forwards tobacco, with no mention of cancer or any other cigarette-related health risks.

The tour begins with a discussion of by what means tobacco is grown, harvested and sold at auction. After a brief mention of the millions of dollars that tobacco companies pay daily in taxes, you are l into the factory itself, where 8000 cigarettes are made each minute. Giant interconnected machines make filters and attach them to make revolveed cigarettes, which are boxed, packed in cartons, and then wrapped in cellophane before being shipped on the outside Meanwhile, you pass by giant containers filled with defective cigarettes that are later recycled