People who have worked, worshiped, and protested alongside Greg Drumwright describe the pastor and political activist in many ways: charismatic, complex, a “charlatan.”
Drumwright, the Democratic candidate for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners at-large seat, has eyed political office since rising to prominence after 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests.
He ran unsuccessfully for the Guilford County Board of Education in 2018 and for the board of commissioners in 2022. After Democrat Kay Cashion announced her retirement this year, Drumwright won a crowded Democratic primary and will face Republican newcomer Mike Perdue next month.
Drumwright is originally from Burlington but has built a name in Greensboro since attending North Carolina A&T State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and media studies and was the Student Government Association president. He founded a Christian youth-based ministry in 2003, which has grown to a 250-member church and on-campus group at his alma mater.
Drumwright led marches in Graham in 2020 that resulted in clashes with local law enforcement, arrests, and ensuing legal battles, propelling him onto the national stage. Many in the community speak highly of Drumwright’s ministry and activism. Some credit him with bettering their lives.
But questions about Drumwright’s wealth, church practices, and motivations have persisted. While many think his flamboyant style an asset, others have called it performative.
The Assembly reached out to Drumwright in mid-September for this story. A member of his campaign said they would follow up. But despite multiple attempts to reach the campaign in the weeks that followed, they never did. Earlier this month, Drumwright declined to be interviewed.
As the election draws near, it remains to be seen what voters will make of the candidate at the ballot box.
The Reverend
Drumwright appeared called to the ministry at a young age.
Rev. Fred James, minister of music at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, remembers meeting Drumwright as a high school student who led a church choir.
“I was impressed that a 17-year-old had this choir,” said James.
William McRae, who attended Hugh M. Cummings High School with Drumwright, said he was always friendly and popular.
“He was social, liked to laugh,” said McRae. “He always had people around him; he had a following.”
While a senior at A&T in 2003, Drumwright founded the Citadel of Praise Church—also called the Citadel Church—where he still serves as senior pastor. When James moved back to Greensboro in 2013, he reconnected with Drumwright.
“I went to his church a few times,” James said. “He had a lot of students, about 150 students who were really into it. He’s a positive influence.”
Around that time, Drumwright brought Citadel Campus Ministry to A&T’s campus. Church documents describe it as a “Christian environment within the Aggie community for fellowship, to help meet various needs within the student body through social enrichment opportunities and campus community service.”
Marissa Dick, the campus group’s adviser, remembers meeting Drumwright at a church revival when he was still a teenager.
“I was just astounded how the youth from the community gravitated to him,” she said. “By the end of the revival, the church was packed with children crying out to God, wanting to be saved.”
It wasn’t just young people.
After he enrolled at N.C. A&T, Dick called Drumwright into her office to ask for his religious counsel, Drumwright recently recounted in a sermon. She told him he had “the Holy Ghost in [him]” and asked for him to lay hands upon her, Drumwright said. Dick confirmed the exchange in an email.
“By the end of the revival, the church was packed with children crying out to God, wanting to be saved.”
Marissa Dick, NC A&T
Marlon Millner, a faculty member in the program in African-American and African Diaspora Studies at UNCG, said this account didn’t seem “particularly unusual” in Black churches, “where adults affirmed his gifts and abilities.”
But even as enthusiasm and attendance grew, Drumwright struggled to find a permanent location for his church. For more than 20 years, the main Citadel Church bounced around town, renting space in other churches and the Greensboro Marriott Downtown hotel. After a fundraising campaign last year netted more than $270,000, it was able to purchase the former Presbyterian Church of the Covenant on Mendenhall Street for $675,000, which it expects to open later this year.
The church has a strong social media presence, often livestreaming sermons on YouTube and posting on Instagram. Young people were drawn to it.
“He was positive,” said Autumn Clowe, a former church member who first met Drumwright in 2012, when she was a freshman at N.C. A&T. “He has this essence of power.”
“I adored Greg Drumwright when I first met him,” Clowe said. “He was very charismatic.”
But there was another side to him, Clowe said, and she came to see the church as “cultlike.” Her relationship with Drumwright shifted when she began dating a fellow congregant.
“Drumwright took me to the side and told me to dump him,” Clowe said. “I thought it was weird because there were plenty of other couples in the church.”
Clowe suspects Drumwright didn’t approve of the relationship because her boyfriend was what the church calls an “armor bearer.” The term is an Old Testament reference to someone who would bear the armor of a king leading his people into battle, Millner explained.
Within Drumwright’s church, Clowe said, these were young men who appeared to be at the pastor’s beck and call. “He would walk in as though they were his bodyguards,” Clowe said. “They would hold doors open for him … They would hold his big designer duffle bags.”
Adon Bey, who attended the church as an A&T student in 2014, also called the practice “cultlike.”
“People would take his shoes, tie his shoes, take the lint off his clothes,” said Bey. “People would put lotion on him, give him back massages. People would cook his food, drive his car. Everyone would work hard to become one of his armor bearers.”
Armor bearers have become a fad within certain religious communities, James said. It’s not a practice in his own church.
“People would take his shoes, tie his shoes, take the lint off his clothes… Everyone would work hard to become one of his armor bearers.”
Adon Bey, who attended Drumwright’s church as an A&T student
“Greg is one in a long line of people who have an entourage,” James said, pointing to megachurch leaders like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. “He has young people who are very impressionable, and they want to do those things.”
Religious leaders exist on a spectrum from servant leaders to the exploitative, Millner said, whatever their background or religious tradition.
“I think Greg is doing a good job with what he’s been called to do,” James said. “Of course, we all have things we could improve on.”
But the environment drove some church members away.
After Drumwright told Clowe to break up with her boyfriend, she said he called them both into a meeting.
“[Drumwright] told me that I had demons,” she said. “I’m hurt to the point that I’m crying. And then he puts his hand behind my neck to push it down, like to bow.”
Clowe said she began having a panic attack and struggled to breathe.
“The church really messed me up,” Clowe said. “I couldn’t step into a church for years.”
Bey, who uses they/them pronouns, initially felt welcome at Citadel Church, even though they were still defining their spirituality. That changed after a few weeks, when armor bearers began asking Bey about their faith. Then, Drumwright pulled them aside.
“He insinuated that I needed to become more in the doctrine, become more Christian,” Bey said. “That’s when I was like, ‘Okay, this is not my space anymore.’”
Bey and Clowe also said Drumwright asked members to make large donations to the church, even though they were college students.
“They were always raising funds around tax season,” Bey said, recalling how Drumwright would ask the congregants to donate any money they got from tax returns.
“In order to be a member in the church, you had to give money,” Clowe said. “These college kids [I knew] were paying him to the point they weren’t eating.”
At the same time, Clowe recalled Drumwright driving expensive cars and carrying designer bags. Clowe, whose father was a minister, said these were red flags in hindsight.
“That was weird,” she said. “Why do I have to pay to come to church?”
The Paradox
The Citadel Church has steadily grown in the decade since Clowe and Bey attended. And while the church appears to have become more financially stable over the years, that wasn’t always the case in Drumwright’s personal life.
Court records dating back to 1999 show nearly 100 cases, including evictions and unpaid bills to rental companies, automotive financial services firms, car detailers, and body shops.
Over the last 25 years, Drumwright racked up hundreds of dollars in unpaid debts, court fees, and bond payments. According to court records, Drumwright still owes more than $400 in one case.
Court records also show a long pattern of traffic violations during that same time period, including incidents in 2022, 2023, and 2025. A count shows 29 tickets for misdemeanors and infractions related to speeding and reckless driving. Drumwright was also charged with multiple instances of driving while his license was revoked and driving an unregistered vehicle. Records show Drumwright failed to appear in court and was ordered to pay a secured bond to be released from custody and to ensure his appearance at the next court date 10 times over this period. The bond amounts ranged from $100 to $1,025.
In a previous interview, Drumwright said he struggled financially because his work as a school teacher and minister didn’t bring in much money. Instead of “pursuing more gainful job opportunities” open to him, Drumwright said, he obeyed his “sense of calling.”
Property records show Drumwright purchased a home in Starmount Forest—one of Greensboro’s wealthiest neighborhoods—for $800,000 in 2020. Some questioned how he was able to purchase the home, which is currently valued at $1.6 million.
The house raised questions for Faith Cook, an activist who participated in the Graham protests. “I don’t know what he was doing for him to have a $1.6 million house,” Cook said. “I don’t know where the income comes from, but it has to be coming from somewhere.”
Drumwright, his campaign, and representatives from his church have declined to answer questions about his finances, insisting they are irrelevant to his political ambitions.
The Activist
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Drumwright traveled around the country, visiting Ahmaud Arbery’s family in Georgia and the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where someone had hung a noose in NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage.
But Drumwright’s moment in the national spotlight came when he returned to Alamance, where he grew up.
Michael Graves heard of Drumwright for the first time that summer. Graves had been pushing local efforts to relocate Graham’s Confederate statue, which has stood downtown for more than a century.
“We were handling that privately between the county commissioners and civic leaders,” said Graves, a past president of the Alamance County NAACP. “The newspapers got a hold of it and somehow [Drumwright] got involved. To me, it was simply attention seeking, something to add his name to something.”
Until then, Graves said, there had been several conversations on how to handle the matter “civilly.” That’s when Graves received an email from Drumwright asking to join.
“At the time, I was open to anybody joining,” Graves said. “But I told him, ‘This is how we’re doing it. It’s not a militant operation. We’re going to respect people’s feelings with the statue whether we agree with them or not.’”
“To me, it was simply attention seeking, something to add his name to something.”
Michael Graves, former president of the Alamance County NAACP
Graves has lived in Alamance County for decades and said he had a record of working across the political aisle. That included a good working relationship with county sheriff Terry Johnson, a staunch, pro-Trump conservative who has faced accusations of racism.
But Drumwright, he said, “pitted the races against each other.”
On July 11, Drumwright led a Black Lives Matter march from Burlington to downtown Graham. He became a fixture within Alamance, helping to plan multiple protests that year. The biggest and most notable was a march to the polls on October 31.
Bey, the former N.C. A&T student who was also involved in the protests, said their group planned to focus on safety while Drumwright worked on getting a permit.
But as marchers approached the monument on the day of the march, a confrontation ensued. Law enforcement pepper-sprayed dozens of people—including children and the elderly. The sheriff’s department claimed protesters had violated the permit terms, which prohibited them from bringing a gas generator.
The sheriff’s department arrested Drumwright for misdemeanor riot, resisting a public officer, and failure to disperse. A few weeks later, the sheriff’s office added charges of assaulting a law enforcement officer and obstructing justice.
Civil rights groups and Drumwright filed a civil lawsuit against the city of Graham, the Graham Police Department, and the Alamance County sheriff’s department, which was settled in 2022. The following year, the sheriff’s department dropped all charges against Drumwright. Other activists, including Bey, filed their own class-action lawsuit.
Barrett Brown, who was the Alamance County NAACP president at the time, said he had never had a problem coordinating with local law enforcement for marches or getting permits. Drumwright felt like an outsider, he said, using Alamance as a stepping stone.
“He didn’t have the connections and relationships,” said Brown. “So it seemed like he was coming in from some other county and he was being disputatious but not really trying to connect with the people who could respond to whatever his request was.”
In the months that followed, Drumwright appeared on national news networks and connected with high-profile civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who joined Drumwright’s legal team. In 2022, Drumwright appeared in the Netflix documentary Civil, which documented Crump’s fight for civil rights, including justice for the Floyd family.
After the protest-related charges were dropped, Brown said, Drumwright disappeared from Alamance County.
“I told other advocacy organizations that he was a charlatan and was interested in doing social justice for the primary reason of increasing his profile,” Brown said.
News reports, as well as findings from the court, placed a bulk of the blame for what happened at the October 31 protest on the sheriff’s department, calling its actions excessive. Most who participated in the protests agreed.
“Luckily no one died that day, but a lot of people’s spirits died that day,” Bey said. “A lot of people who were harmed that day didn’t show back up. They didn’t keep organizing; they were traumatized.”
The Showman
Brown and others were also put off by Drumwright’s flamboyant style. He recalled his first time meeting Drumwright. “He pulled up in a very expensive-looking car and had an entourage with him,” Brown said. “Someone had a camera.”
Cook also recalled a camera crew that followed Drumwright around. Other protesters felt it made it seem like “his work wasn’t genuine,” Cook said, though she didn’t judge him for his entourage. “It really did seem like he cared about his work.”
Ian Baltutis, the former mayor of Burlington and the Democratic candidate for state House District 63, said Drumwright raised eyebrows. “It was in stark contrast to our community here,” said Baltutis. “I hadn’t seen anyone participate like that before.”
But others felt Drumwright’s showmanship helped put Graham on the national stage. Protester Colin Dodd characterized Drumwright as earnest and committed; he was a co-plaintiff with Drumwright fighting the town’s protest ordinance that summer. Drumwright’s talents spread awareness of what was happening in Graham, Dodd said.
“He was a showman,” Dodd said. “He was really great at creating spectacle and getting people out, like a lot of students and a lot of young people.”
“I give him a lot of credit for bringing me into the movement,” said Avery Harvey, an Alamance community activist. “It changed me that day I met him. That’s when I started being a local activist.”
Fixating on Drumwright’s display of wealth misses the point, Harvey said: “If you get caught up in where he got [money] from and how he obtained it, you lose sight of what he’s doing, which is helping the community out.”
Graham business owner Renee’ Russell said she appreciates the visibility Drumwright generated. The town has been known for its connections to the Ku Klux Klan, something the area is pushing back against, she said.
“I give him a lot of credit for bringing me into the movement. It changed me that day I met him.”
Avery Harvey, Alamance community activist.
“We are highly connected as a community,” Russell said. “We’re helping each other, and really we’re not like that.”
Dreama Caldwell, an Alamance activist, remembers Drumwright from high school. They both lived in public housing and grew up “in the trenches,” she said, and she finds it hypocritical to nitpick about his finances, house, or car.
Voters should focus on what he stands for, said Caldwell, who made an unsuccessful bid for the Alamance County Board of Commissioners in 2020: “I don’t see this happen when there are not people of color on the ticket.”
The Politico
Growing up, Drumwright said his family’s faith “was deeply, deeply invested in the poor and bringing justice to the marginalized.” His own advocacy has included fighting for higher teacher wages, affordable housing, workforce training, and immigrant rights. While his campaign website says little about his policy positions, Drumwright has been a regular at community meetings on key issues in recent months.
When N.C. A&T and UNCG students advocated for an early-voting site on their campuses, Drumwright attended several of the board of elections meetings in support. In April, Drumwright’s Justice 4 the Next Generation organization hosted a town hall on policing. In late August, Drumwright participated in a prayer vigil protesting the reopening of the Rivers Correctional Institution as an immigration detention center. He’s also supported reducing or establishing a neutral local tax rate.
His sermons also touch on current political topics.
“I don’t understand how you can actually read history books that tell us we were visitors before we were owners and then deport people as if we created something that we came to,” Drumwright said in a September service.
Drumwright currently serves on Greensboro’s Minimum Housing Standards Commission and was on the N.C. Courts Commission from 2021 to 2025. In 2018, Gov. Roy Cooper awarded him the Old North State Award for his service as a minister, youth advocate, and community leader. Drumwright also serves as the president of the Pulpit Forum of Greensboro and Vicinity, a historically Black group of religious leaders who engage with civic issues and activism in the community.
The Guilford County Community PAC, the Replacements, Ltd. PAC, and state Sen. Gladys Robinson have endorsed Drumwright this year. The George C. Simkins PAC, a historically Black political action committee, did not endorse a candidate in the primary but is endorsing Drumwright in the general. Guilford For All, a left-leaning grassroots political organization, included Drumwright in its voter guide but omitted him from its endorsements for the general election. The organization endorsed Toby Hedgepeth in the Democratic primary.
Neither Graves nor Brown—the former NAACP chapter presidents—has supported Drumwright’s run for political office. “I don’t think Drumwright is about the community,” Graves said. “I think it’s about him.”
Brown, who is currently the town manager of Mt. Gilead, said he’s skeptical of Drumwright’s intentions.
“One thing you need to have to be a good elected official is good intentionality to do good for the community,” Brown said. “And I think Rev. Drumwright is trying to do the most good for Rev. Drumwright, and if it helps other people, so be it.”
Others say it’s not that cut and dried.
Bey, who criticized the way Drumwright ran his church, still believes Drumwright deserves credit for his political work, and would vote for him if they lived in the county.
“We harm ourselves by putting Drumwright on a pedestal,” Bey said. “If we were to put him on the same level as everybody else, this is a great man.”
Correction: The original version of this story misstated the affiliation of one of the protesters in Graham. It has been edited to correct that error.
