About the 12th District
The 12th District, North Carolina’s most urban congressional district, is comprised of parts of Cabarrus, Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Rowan Counties. The District includes all or most of the city centers of Charlotte, Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, as well as Davidson, East Spencer, Lexington, Spencer, Salisbury and Thomasville. While the district’s boundaries were the focus of several court decisions in the 1990s, in 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the district and the boundaries now appear to be set through the next census in 2010.
According to the 2000 Census, approximately 620,000 people live in the 12th District and the district is very diverse racially and ethnically (47% White/Caucasian, 45% African American, 7% Hispanic/Latino and 2% Asian) as well as economically.
There are many important landmarks in the 12th District:
The 12th District’s four-year colleges and universities are very highly regarded. They include (in alphabetical order) Bennett College for Women (Greensboro), Brookstone College (Charlotte), Catawba College (Salisbury), Davidson College, High Point University, Johnson C. Smith University (Charlotte), Johnson & Wales University (scheduled to open in Charlotte in the fall of 2004), Livingstone College (Salisbury), North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University (Greensboro), North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem), Salem College (Winston-Salem), the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem) and Winston-Salem State University. The 12th District also has an outstanding selection of community and technical colleges.
The 12th District is the second largest banking center in the country (after the New York congressional district in which Wall Street is located). It is also the home to the corporate headquarters of a growing number of businesses, including the Bank of America and Wachovia Bank, Duke Energy, Bojangles, Goodrich, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Lexington Home Brands, Meineke Discount Mufflers, Pharmacore, RF Micro Devices, Targacept Pharmaceuticals, Thomasville Furniture, TransTech Pharma and others. A number of other major businesses have corporate headquarters in close proxmity to the 12th District or employ large numbers of employees who live in the 12th District. Some of them include Branch Bank & Trust, Food Lion, Cheerwine Soft Drinks and R.J. Reynolds.
For more demographic information on the 12th District, please go to the U.S. Census District Profile.
