News Flash

Mayor Allen Joines and the City Council invite citizens to attend a ribbon cutting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16 to celebrate the completion of Bethania Freedman’s Park at 1569 Bethania-Rural Hall Road near Fire Station 20. The budget of $874,119 for the park was paid for with bonds that voters approved in 2018. The park has a picnic shelter, restrooms, a fitness station, walking trail and display panels that explain the history of the area.

 Bethania Freedman’s Park and Fire Station 20 are located in the heart of a historically significant community founded by African Americans who acquired the land there after the Civil War. This area, along with Washington Town and Shouse Town communities and other unnamed enclaves, formed a halo of Black settlement around Bethania. 

 Before the Civil War, many African Americans had been enslaved on the farms and plantations in the countryside surrounding Bethania. These enslaved people, along with African Americans who were born free and worked in Bethania, gave Bethania the largest population of African Americans of any town in Forsyth County.