Book excerpt: Sedalia, North Carolina, has a rich and diverse history. In 1901, the American Missionary Association hired a young woman, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, to teach at a small school in eastern Guilford County. The school closed in 1902, and at the request of the local residents, Brown remained and opened the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, which in later years became a world renowned African-American preparatory school that educated children from the wealthiest families in the United States and six foreign nations. Sedalia and the Palmer Memorial Institute traces the growth and development of a rural Southern community that made an impact on the nation.