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An Anthology

Let There Be Light Exploring how Charlotte's historic West End Is Shaping a new South

Foreword

by Dr. ronAlD l. CArtEr

In January 2009, shortly after I had been named president of

Johnson C. Smith University, a colleague and I went for a drive around Char-

lotte’s Center City. I already knew about Charlotte’s reputation as a growing, exciting, and progressive Southern city, and what I saw as we drove through Uptown only reaffirmed that reputation.

But then, we drove under the I-77 bridge on North Tryon Street, came up

to Five Points and proceeded down Beatties Ford Road, also known as the Northwest Corridor.

I thought I had entered another world. It wasn’t a gradual decline, but rather

an abrupt and dramatic demarcation between the city’s haves and have-nots.

There were no new office buildings—or new buildings of any kind—very

little retail, and the housing was often dilapidated. The streetscape was dreary, and there were a lot of vacant, boarded-up buildings. All the signs

of multi-generational, institutional poverty, and community decline were there, made all the more stark because of the obvious wealth of the other

in-town neighborhoods—all predominately white—surrounding Uptown,

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Let There Be Light

My colleague looked at me with equal surprise, asking, “What have you

gotten yourself into?”

But despite those disturbing images, I remained convinced that I had made

the right decision in accepting the post of president of JCSU, which once

called itself the “colored Princeton of the South,” and which today is the city’s premier urban university on the growing edge with a bright and promising

future. I felt then as I do now that JCSU is a place where I can demonstrate how policy, practice, research, and higher education can, in tandem, create optimism and progress in depressed urban districts.

But I have remained haunted by that abrupt borderline that marks the

boundary between Charlotte’s two very different worlds. And I came to learn all too painfully that it is as much a mindset as a physical place. For I met a

surprising number of Charlotteans who had never visited the JCSU campus or had only driven on Beatties Ford Road as a quick connection between I-77 and their final destination someplace else, a place to get through as quickly as possible with their car doors locked.

I was further disturbed when no one could clearly tell me how or why

this division had occurred. Some people had no idea at all; others answered

me with vague platitudes. The few who thought they knew never had the same narrative—and their answers never included historically documented

facts and figures. Still, it was clear that at one point, the Northwest Corridor was the religious, cultural, and social center of a vital and vibrant African-

American community of which many were greatly—and deservedly—proud.

This lack of knowledge and awareness that created a vacuum in place of

answers is a tragedy on many levels. If we do not understand how a significant

part of our city was, at best, simply ignored and neglected, or, at worst, deliberately made to remain poor so that other parts could thrive, there is no way

we can stop the process or make sure it doesn’t happen again. No one is held

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which the city boasted as being the second-largest financial center in the U.S.

A Guided Tour of the Northwest Corridor

by Dr. toM hAnChEtt

Drive west these days away from the gleaming bank towers in

the central business district of Charlotte, North Carolina, along West Trade Street and onto Beatties Ford Road, and a landscape of community revital-

ization slowly comes into view. To your left, as you cruise beneath the I-77 overpass there’s the Mosaic Village apartment complex and retail center, and JCSU Arts Factory, both structures erected amidst a renaissance at Johnson

C. Smith University. Deeper into the community, you’ll notice, too, residen-

tial areas that were economically challenged a generation ago are now attracting residents of ethnic and income diversity. And if you listen closely you’ll hear Charlotte’s leaders talk of a new streetcar line that connects JCSU firmly

with Johnson & Wales University, the bustling Center City and Government

Center, Central Piedmont Community College, and Presbyterian Hospital, all strung like beads along Trade Street.

Sure, it’s been a long time coming but the Northwest Corridor—after

languishing for decades—is suddenly bursting with possibility. Its neighborhoods, schools, and businesses are taking center stage in some of Charlotte’s

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Let There Be Light

toward the future, it is critical that we take a step back—natives and newcomers alike—to explore and appreciate the rich history of the Corridor, from the cozy streets of Biddleville that date back to the 1870s, to the handsome 1920s

bungalows of Wesley Heights, to the mid-century modern dwellings of McCrorey Heights and University Park.

We must also remember the adversity that shaped this area—including a

Civil Rights era house bombing—and also a long legacy of African-American

achievement. Stories of courageous residents offer role models: education pioneers George and Marie G. Davis, businessmen Jimmy McKee and John McDonald, political leaders Fred Alexander and Sarah Stevenson, civil rights stalwarts Kelly Alexander and Reginald Hawkins, national sit-in activist Charles Jones, and more.

Economic energy, racial diversity—and even that streetcar line—all have

roots deep in neighborhood history.

In thE bEgInnIng: thE CAMpuS, bIDDlEvIllE AnD SEvErSvIllE

The taproot of this part of Charlotte is, not surprisingly, Johnson C. Smith

University itself. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Presbyterian elders in

Charlotte formed a plan to build a school to educate leaders among the formerly enslaved African Americans. It was a large population, forty percent of Mecklenburg County. Railroads were just reaching into the rolling hills of

the North Carolina/South Carolina Piedmont, bringing an era of prosperity

and growth to the fledgling New South city of Charlotte. The school trustees took custody of wooden buildings that had been part of the Confederate Na-

val Yard close to the site of today’s EpiCentre complex in the heart of the city.

Col. William R. Myers offered a prominent hilltop site just west of Charlotte’s border and the buildings were moved there. The widow of a Union

soldier, Henry J. Biddle of Pennsylvania who had died fighting for freedom

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most important civic conversations and policy debates. But as the area rushes

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t In the fall of 1966, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., drew some three thousand people to Hartley-Woods Gymnasium at Johnson C. Smith University. Charlotte dentist and Presbyterian minister Reginald Hawkins (right) appears with Martin Luther King, Jr. (Courtesy of Reginald A. Hawkins Papers, UNC Charlotte Library.)

Martin Luther King, Jr., on the campus of JCSU. (Courtesy of the Inez Moore Parker Archive Musical act performs at Johnson C. Smith at the Excelsior Club University, James Gibson in the 1950s. (Courtesy Peeler Collection. All of Robinson-Spangler Rights Reserved.)

Carolina Room, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.)

Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.)

The 1951 student council on school steps at West Charlotte High School. From left Red Cross volunteer Mrs. Fulton Tadlock (left) and nurse Mrs. T.L. Strong help a patient select a to right, Mable Haynes, Mildred Smith, William Johnson, Rosa Davis, and Carolyn bouquet at the Good Samaritan Hospital in 1970. (Courtesy of The Charlotte Observer.)

Martin. (Courtesy of Carolyn Martin Wilson/Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation, Inc.)

Senior prom night at West Charlotte High School in 1950. (Courtesy of RobinsonSpangler Carolina Room, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.)

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t Harvey Gantt and his son Adam leave a voting booth at Hidden Valley School in Charlotte after voting in the September 1979 election. Gantt served on the Charlotte City Council from 1974 until 1983. He was elected to two terms as the first African-American mayor of Charlotte from 1983–1987.

(Courtesy of The Charlotte Observer.)

Let There Be Light timers are hostile to newcomers, or vice versa.

Ike Heard Jr. grew up in McCrorey Heights and went on to become a Har-

vard-educated planner, a developer, run a nonprofit community development

corporation, and be an all-around expert on affordable housing and transi-

tioning city neighborhoods. I phoned him to discuss the areas near Johnson C. Smith, their past and their future.

“So,” I asked, “is gentrification good or bad?”

It depends, he says. “If it’s a gradual process that’s happening organically,

if it’s not about people being abruptly pushed out, and the newcomers can

adapt and blend in with the existing residents, it can be a healthy process.”

Where it pushes people out, it’s not a good thing, he says.

I asked Helen Kirk what she predicted for Wesley Heights. “I’m mighty

afraid that it’s going back mostly all white,” she says. Later, I ask about other nearby neighborhoods. “I think that Seversville will make the change that Wesley Heights made,” she says. She foresees that entire part of the city being predominantly white again. But, she predicts, “Biddleville is going to always be predominantly black, I believe.”

Ike Heard’s parents, Ike Sr. and Gwen live there still. What does he see

as the area’s future? Does he, like Helen Kirk, think Wesley Heights will

become a predominantly white neighborhood again, while Biddleville stays predominantly black?

“They’re going to have different futures going forward,” he says. Areas

nearer Uptown will continue to see rising values and rising interest. And he sees new interest in McCrorey Heights.

“My parents live on slightly less than a half-acre of ground, with a

3,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom house. From their back

porch they can see uptown Charlotte.” They’re seeing people driving through the neighborhood, looking for houses for sale in McCrorey Heights. “It was

the best-kept secret in Charlotte, ’cause nobody knew there were houses of that

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Mary Newsom

Like every city, Charlotte is an intricate place whose complexities play

out on a canvas we may be arrogant enough to think we understand, but that we can’t, in fact, hope to fully comprehend. Change isn’t necessarily a

one-way trajectory, whether heading down or up or any other one direction.

Whether we look at Wesley Heights or Seversville or Biddleville or Mc-

Crorey Heights or the now-forgotten neighborhoods of Western Heights and Roslyn Heights or all the other neighborhoods that surround them, all

we can ever see is one moment, stopped in a river of time. Buildings rise and fall. Money changes hands. Trees grow tall and are cut down. People

are born, marry, have children, and die. Their children do the same. If the story of a city includes urban “renewal” and its bulldozing of hundreds of

homes, does the story also have room for a small basket of tomatoes left on a neighbor’s front porch?

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size and that quality that close to uptown,” he says. “The secret is already out.”

Let There Be Light they could to understand and address his need, but it simply was not enough.

It would take many years—and unfortunately being arrested—for Brian to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2008.

In Charlotte, Brian sought refuge in the Northwest Corridor of the city,

sleeping under bridges, behind vacant buildings, and occasionally on the sofas

of kind people in the community who knew he belonged to me. Meanwhile, I lived with the constant fear and stress that’s part and parcel of any connec-

tion to a family member who bears the unholy trinity of mental illness, drug addiction, and homelessness.

Through the years, as I drove to and from my Uptown corporate office just

beyond the Trade Street Bridge and what is now Gateway Center, I’d see

my brother periodically. I’d catch glimpses of him wandering Beatties Ford, Rozzelles Ferry, and Tuckaseegee roads, stepping onto city buses in winter months with a garbage bag full of his scarce, material possessions, headed

for no destination. I’d imagined his only desire was to enjoy a heated space for the short ride to and from the Transit Center just beyond the Corridor’s

perimeter. The sightings broke my heart, and frankly, the weight of my superficial success became unbearable.

The irony is that I, too, had landed on Charlotte’s West Side—albeit

via a very different path than my brother. This I can easily explain: after

a couple of years living on Charlotte’s South Side, I began to feel tre-

mendously isolated and alone. Over the next five years I said goodbye to

the Arboretum and made a few more changes of address in South Side neighborhoods along the way. But no matter how much I appreciated the

amenities in these communities, the reality of living in a place where few “looked like me,” of feeling far removed from the people, community, and

cultural traditions I love—started to weigh heavily on me. The loneliness—

along with the revelation that Charlotte’s West Side had been unfairly stigmatized—spurred my migration away from the South Side of the city

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Robin Emmons

I found myself, absent any conscious intention, intrinsically moving closer

to the West Corridor. In essence, I found myself back to a Roxbury “right here in the South.”

By 1997, I’d crossed that invisible line of demarcation that separates the

Northwest Corridor of the city from points south of Gateway Center and the corporate towers of Uptown. Finally, I welcomed a long-desired kinship

with the West Corridor of the city, traversing its neighborhoods just beyond the overpass at Fifth and Trade streets in my day to day, reveling in the fellowship and in the footprint of the “Other Charlotte” that illustrated a sort of modern-day reality of the classic tale of two cities.

Occasionally, in the warmer months, I would see my brother on Walnut

and Summit avenues just blocks from my house on Grandin Road. On those occasions, I would plead with him to “come inside,” and I’d invite him

to enjoy a home-cooked meal and just rest. Sadly, he had no room to receive my invitation, as like with any disease that’s not treated, schizophrenia is

progressive. That fact, coupled with his “self-medication,” had years earlier overtaken his mind and his attention. Thus, his soft-spoken, incoherent words were reserved only for the multiple characters that resided and spoke to him audibly, in his mind.

Between the year I arrived in Charlotte and my migration to the Northwest

Corridor, nearly six years passed. Quite a bit had occurred during that time.

My mother passed away. Following her death, my younger sister and her two

children moved in with me in Wesley Heights. And the Northwest Corridor, the place I had simultaneously both resisted and desired, would continue to teach me, grow me, support me, and shelter me, in ways that other parts of the city would not and could not. Over the next five years, the Corridor would

provide me sanctuary and serve as an ally as I faced the challenges that came

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in search of people and experiences that felt more akin to my natural self.

Eric Frazier At a finger-painting station, JCSU visual and performing arts professor

Cynthia Cole looked for evidence that learn-by-playing activities might be viable tools for getting parents more involved in helping their children with

schoolwork. She noticed that parents at a finger-painting station at first

seemed most concerned about keeping their kids from making messes by

sticking their hands in the paint. After a while, instead of just watching their children, the parents picked up brushes and started painting themselves. “The

parents went from controlling their children to visibly softening and looking

like young children the longer they painted,” Cole said. “At the end, we had to say, ‘Alright, it’s time to go’ to people who were still painting. It was fascinating for me to see.”

rEStorIng WhAt WAS loSt

On a Tuesday in April 1962, state highway department officials delivered

the bad news to Charlotte school officials. Biddleville School, the social and educational anchor of McCrorey Heights, then “one of the finest Negro resi-

dential areas in the city,” as the Charlotte News put it, would be torn down to make way for the future Brookshire Expressway.

School system officials said the 553 pupils would be reassigned, and Bid-

dleville’s two-acre site leveled once the highway department finished buying necessary properties. Four years later, at the same meeting in which they

heard from four members of the anti-integration Pupil Protective Association, the school board finalized the sale, agreeing to turn over the property for what board members said was the “very favorable” price of $251,350.

The actual closing didn’t come until 1968. The community didn’t let the

school go away without pausing to reflect on all it had meant to the area. A weeklong fine arts festival drew children, visitors, and parents back to the

campus whose roots stretched back to the 1880s. Its earliest classes had been staffed by members of sewing circle groups from what was then called Biddle

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Let There Be Light

the week of the arts fair, doctors, ministers, businessmen, and teachers had

learned to read and write there. A teacher, Mrs. Mabel Dillard, and Mrs.

S.P. Sasso, who had retired in 1964 after being principal for nearly 40 years, described the school as having been the anchor for a pleasant community of homeowners.

It was the community that Mabel Latimer grew up in. She chuckled as

she remembered her first day at Biddleville School, how terrified she was of not making any friends. Mrs. Sasso summoned another little girl over and

declared, “She’ll be your friend.” A little boy in the desk behind hers leaned

forward and whispered: “I’ll be your friend, too.” She would marry Otto Latimer years later.

It was a great community to be a child in, she said. Children back then al-

most always came from two-parent families. She could hardly remember any child she knew who didn’t. The adults poured a strong set of social values into

their children. You listen to your elders. You follow the rules. You work hard.

You value your education. And if you misbehave, any adult in the community

who catches you will correct you—and so will your parents when they find out.

She doesn’t have any theories on how to ease the economic re-segregation

of the school campuses along the Corridor. But she looks around today at the

well-meaning young teachers who turn up at West Charlotte and knows they are fighting an uphill battle. Some of the children she’s informally counseled

around the school are dealing with adult-sized problems that loom far larger than any upcoming math test. They are trying to figure out how to survive in

families where there might be a parent in jail or a parent on drugs, or a parent slaving away at two jobs who is so busy keeping the bills paid that they don’t have time to counterbalance the negative influences kids find in the

streets. Day-to-day stability just isn’t something today’s students can take for

granted, as she did. Regardless of what anyone else does for the schools, she

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University. According to a report in The Charlotte Observer published during

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Copyright 2014 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

ISBN: 978-0-9916393-0-4 Printed in the U.S.A. About the Cover A public art installation, Passing Through Light by artist Erwin Redl, shines myriad colors on steel beams and concrete walls at the West Trade Street and Interstate-77 underpass. The project, commissioned by Johnson C. Smith University, was designed to attract people from Charlotte’s central business district to the Northwest Corridor.

Photo credit: Tanner Latham/WFAE Book Design by Christine Long Photo Insert Edited by Wendy Yang

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