R. J. Reynolds - Lasting Influence of Reynolds and His Family

Lasting Influence of Reynolds and His Family

Reynolds was generous with his workers, building schools and houses for them on his property. He also granted endowments to Guilford College, the Oxford Orphan Asylum, and the Baptist Orphanage, in addition to many other charities and churches in the Winston-Salem community. He became the first southern man to establish a hospital serving African-Americans in the South, the Slater Hospital. He started a savings and loan, served on the town board of Winston-Salem, and began a YMCA and an opera house.

Reynolds donated money to the establishment of the Slater Industrial School, which would later become Winston-Salem State University.

When Reynolds died, North Carolina's governor Thomas Walter Bickett said: "Therefore, the greatest eulogy that can be offered would be to refer to his life of rugged honesty, his wide usefulness and his kindly dealings with his fellowmen, which he himself deemed his first duty."

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