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B M & T ••• September/October 2026 ••• www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com 53 NORTH CAROLINA AREA GUIDES courses, rock climbing, kayaking and rafting on the world's largest man- made whitewater river. Another action-filled attraction, the Charlotte Motor Speedway, offers daily tours and multiple meeting and event spaces. GREENSBORO Located an hour and a half by car from Charlotte and an hour and 20 minutes from Raleigh, Greensboro stands out among Southeast meeting destinations for boasting the largest hotel and convention center between Atlanta and Washington, DC. Piedmont Triad International Airport services air travel to Greensboro, which is also easily accessible via inter- state and rail. The 250,000-square-feet Koury Convention Center shares a roof with the 985-room Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons. There also are three restaurants and a 200-store shopping mall on site. Another venue, the multi-facility Greensboro Complex offers amenities that include eight meeting rooms and three exhibition halls in the Special Events Center, as well as space for meetings and trade shows in the Novant Health Fieldhouse. Greensboro is home to the nation's largest HBCU, North Carolina A&T State University. A monument on the campus honors the A&T Four: stu- dents who led the legendary Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in in 1960. At the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in downtown Greensboro, visitors can tour exhibits housed in the store where the sit-in took place. Two other notable Black heritage attractions in Greensboro are the Historic Magnolia House—a restored former motel that hosted Black per- forming artists, writers and athletes during the Jim Crow era—and the African American Atelier art gallery. The Magnolia House has space to host corporate retreats, board meetings and other private events. The Greensboro Science Center, which also offers rentable event space, encompasses an aquarium, zoo, sci- ence museum and 3D theater. Another unique event venue is the Blandwood Carriage House on the grounds of the Blandwood Museum. The museum itself is a National Historic Landmark, built in 1795 as the home of North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead. Visiting history buffs might also like to explore Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, the site of a piv- otal battle in the Revolutionary War. WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Greensboro Area Convention & Visitors Bureau — 1-800-344-2282 https://www.visitgreensboronc.com/ RALEIGH Whether you're planning a regional or national event, North Carolina's cap- ital deserves consideration as an easy- to-reach and culturally vibrant destina- tion. Nearly 100 million U.S. residents are within a half-days drive of Raleigh, which is centered on the East Coast between New York City and Miami. Air travel accessibility includes more than 70 nonstop flights to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Anchoring the city's downtown meeting district is the 500,000-square- foot Raleigh Convention Center, which contains a 146,843-square-foot exhibit hall and 41 meeting rooms. The LEED Silver-certified facility is surrounded by five major convention hotels—the Raleigh Marriott City Center, Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, Homewood Suites by Hilton Raleigh Downtown, Tempo by Hilton Raleigh Downtown and Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown. Beyond the downtown area, Raleigh has four other meeting dis- tricts: Midtown, Airport, Cary and Raleigh West. Each meeting hub pro- vides ample hotel and dining accom- modations. The city's most visited attraction, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, is just steps away from the downtown convention cam- pus. The museum provides several options to rent space for staging events against a backdrop of dramatic exhibits, from whale bones and dinosaur fossils to a waterfall. To view a more modern and artistic interpre- tation of nature, visitors can head to Dorothea Dix Park, where the interna- tionally renowned artist Thoms Dambo has installed a family of five giant troll sculptures made of wood. Several notable sites showcase Raleigh's Black history, including Shaw University's Estey Hall, the first U.S. dormitory built for educating African- American women; a section of East Hargett Street once known as the city's Black Main Street; the Pope House Museum, built in 1901 as the home of a prominent local Black resi- dent; and North Carolina Freedom Park, which opened in 2023 as a cele- bration of the African-American expe- rience in the state. WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Greater Raleigh Convention & Visitors Bureau— 1-800-849-8499 https://www.visitraleigh.com/ Greensboro skyline photo credit: Greensboro Convention & Visitors Bureau