THE SMELL OF OLD WOOD and creaking sanctuary floorboards tip you off to the age of the Grace AME Zion Church on South Brevard Street in Second Ward. It’s one of the oldest black churches in Charlotte, dedicated in 1902 after a $2,000 fundraising campaign by the founding congregation. Next door, at 229 South Brevard, stands one of the oldest commercial structures in the city, the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building, completed in 1922.
A brightly colored mural, painted last year by young artist Abel Jackson, incorporates portraits of three black men critical to the MIC Building’s development and the neighborhood, Brooklyn, where it was developed: J.T. WIlliams, Thaddeus Tate, and William W. Smith. Williams and Tate were prominent business leaders in Brooklyn and investors in the building’s construction; Smith, the project’s contractor, was Charlotte’s first black architect. If you stand on Brevard and look at the building’s façade, you notice a strip of light-colored brick just below the roof line with dark, diamond patterns embedded along its length. The diamonds were Smith’s signature design.
This intersection of Brevard and East Third streets was one of the social and commercial hubs of Brooklyn, a historic black community razed and redeveloped in a series of urban renewal projects in the 1960s and ’70s. More than 1,000 homes and 216 businesses were demolished. Brooklyn remains the foremost symbol in Charlotte of a pattern that repeated itself in city after city in that era: Black communities with homes, businesses and fully formed identities condemned as slums and destroyed to make way for government buildings and developers’ plans.
This story is from the June 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without
