Elon student digs into Burlington’s past after historic hotel demolition
The Rockefeller Integrated Hotel stood on Burlington’s Maple Avenue before being demolished a few weeks ago. Created by McBride “Mack” Thompson, a prominent African American entrepreneur in the Jim Crow South, the hotel was both his home and a place for Black travelers to stay somewhere safe. A single box of papers was recovered from the demolition site by a neighbor. Marshall Sears, a sophomore researching African American entrepreneurship in Petersburg, digitizes documents including those found in the demolition, as a part of his undergraduate research.