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charlotte-mecklenburg community relations its place in charlotte history then and now I'm Tom Hanson I'm
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community historian and you can find more of my work at WWDC South org I
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retired recently from Levine Museum of the new south where I was the staff historian for many years I've also
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worked with Historic Landmarks Commission in Charlotte Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Relations is the
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human relations agency for the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County the department seeks to enhance community
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harmony and promote awareness of Charlotte Mecklenburg growing multiculturalism by facilitating
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community dialogue addressing discrimination through enforcement of the city's fair housing ordinance collaborating with the police
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serving as mediators in conflict resolution and ensuring Americans with Disability Act compliance Charlotte
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Mecklenburg community relations has its roots in the civil rights movement in Charlotte and what I'd like to do today
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is give a sense of how the organization came to be but also to place it in its
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wider context I'm going to start out by talking about the era of deepening
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segregation from the 1900s into the 1960s that sets the stage for the civil
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rights movement in general and specifically for the Community Relations office then I'll talk about that civil
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rights movement and how the office got its start in 1961 finally I'll talk
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about Charlotte's changing ethic and racial landscape today particularly with regard to housing and geography part 1
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deepening racial segregation today if you go to Levine Museum of the new south
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you can see the actual white and colored signs from Charlotte city hall most of
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us who are older Charlatans older southerners remember these painful
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symbols of segregation the separate-but-equal world as it was called it was always separate was never
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equal and a few people though are familiar with how all of that got started the fact is that
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racial segregation housing segregation was not as pronounced in the late 19th
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century as it was in my youth if you
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look at Charlotte into the 1890s you can see a surprising amount of mixture for
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instance at the lower left of this slide you'll see spirit square the white Baptist Church built in the years right
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after 1900 and at the top of the slide with the blue dot is first United Presbyterian Church a black church built
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at a almost the same time it's cross from Levine Museum of the new south in my youth it would be inconceivable that
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these two churches would be built so close together my book sorting out the New South City goes into this in more
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detail if you're interested in in checking out that history I apologize for showing this slide this is a tough
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part of our history but this is really important because it was a time that was
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a hinge in history for the south and indeed for the United States in the
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1890s there was an economic downturn an honest-to-god depression much worse than
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the recession that we've recently lived through the 2008 recession and I don't know about you but I've noticed that
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politics has become kind of more ugly a lot more name-calling a lot more willingness to blame them
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ever since 2008 well imagine what things were like in the 1890s the beginning of
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the tumult came as ordinary white folk
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not the men of property and standing but but ordinary working-class folks small farmers joined with African Americans
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who could still vote in North Carolina well into the 1890s in something called
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diffusion and they began using government to help the little guy
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it brought a backlash the men of property and standing did not like that
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how dare you take government out of the hands of the men who own the property and put it in the hands of those who are
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ignorant and own no property said the mayor of Charlotte it was time said the
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Charlotte Observer which was very much on the side of the men of property it was there were their advertisers it is
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time to end this rule of Negroes in the lower-class of whites it's a statewide
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movement to use white supremacy as a wedge issue they called it the white
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supremacy campaign and you can see here that this cartoon and the Raleigh News
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and Observer shows the monster Negro rule having laid waste North Carolina
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its foot is on our ballot box it's hands are reaching out for our women and
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children if you can convince people that their economic interests are at stake
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and that their safety of their women and children is at stake then you got them
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and indeed this campaign worked in 1900 North Carolina along with many other
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southern states voted in a new constitution with voter suppression poll
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tax you had to pay to vote a literacy test which sounds innocent but you had
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to be able to read and interpret the Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar voting participation nosedived
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in North Carolina and all across the south well that's the politics but what
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happened with the hate that was stirred up in the 1890s was the
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separate-but-equal Jim Crow system that I grew up with 50 60 years later
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separate black and white water fountains 1896 first time in charlotte there are
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separate black and white waiting rooms at the Seaboard airline radient railroad
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station you have to sit at the back of the bus if you're african-american that's a new state law in 1903 you know
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you have to swear on a Bible in court right after 1900 in the charlotte-mecklenburg courts there are
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separate eight and colored Bibles and that kind of separation carries through to all
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aspects of society there are deed restrictions that suddenly appear out in
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the suburbs of Elizabeth and Dilworth places like that that say you cannot buy
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property here unless it is to be used by members of the Caucasian race for a house costing not less than X number of
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dollars which is not just racial segregation but also economic segregation and you can see it indeed in
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the older parts of the city as well a dramatic change this is a piece of first
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Ward in 1875 first award is the area around where Levine Museum of the new south is Charlotte was big enough to be
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split into four election districts four Ward's and I've just picked one at
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random here is where african-americans and others lived in 1875 it was very
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much as you saw with those churches intermingled that's 1875 here is the
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same part of first Ward in 1910 ten years after the white supremacy campaign
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before and after segregation did not just happen
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segregation happened at a particular time of fear economic hardship and it
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happened through decisions that were not planned overall but were very
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intentional government decisions private decisions that split us apart
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you can see that split in our landscape if you know how to look for it if you've been out to Noda the beautiful little
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downtown that's now art galleries and such across from heist brewery the old
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Highland Park number three mill 1903 when that was built there was a downtown
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minister who said just at this point in the development of the mill people those
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white working-class folks who'd voted the wrong way in the 1890s just at this
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point in the development of the mill people perhaps it is better to let them have their own churches and schools and
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stores rather than mix promiscuously with the better class segregation
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economic very intentional african-american neighborhoods pop into
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focus at this point the most impressive of them was second Ward the Brooklyn
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neighborhood where the government center is today there's JT Williams one of the
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last African American elected officials until our era he would went on to be the
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u.s. top diplomat to Sierra Leone in West Africa that's his house at the lower left his church in the center
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actually still stands that's a Grace AME Zion Church and also the office building he helped build there was the first
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black public library in North Carolina the second Ward High School a complete
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city within a city that's why they called it Brooklyn it was a lot like the community of Brooklyn in New York which
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had become a city within a city in the 1890s well-to-do folks pulled away from
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the city as well Meyers Park 1911 beautiful greenways
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curving streets gates at the front a couple of those gates still exist was
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where the men and property a property and standing lived and have you ever
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been lost in Myers Park I can't prove it but I think that's intentional it's a
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way of separating our residences from the residences of the rest of the city
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so that kind of separation in some that began to come into being in the first few years of the 20th century and
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then accelerated in the 1930s and 40s and 50s and indeed in the 1960s federal
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government helped with that inadvertently 1930s the depression was
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on the mortgage market froze just like it did in 2008 lenders just wouldn't
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lend they were scared and so in the 30s the federal government sent mappers
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around to local communities talk with the men of property and standing say
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where the good neighborhoods are create uniform maps that way somebody say in
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Boston has money to lend they'll feel confident lending in Charlotte or Youngstown or wherever by asking the men
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of property and standing where the good neighborhoods were of course they picked out their neighborhoods you can see the
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green neighborhoods of Eastover and Myers Park at the lower right Dilworth Center right the country-club Berrien
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Plaza Midwood in the upper right if you drew a red line around a neighborhood it
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meant that banks would be foolish to lend there you really don't want to make
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home loans in a red lined neighborhood now if you think about that that's a
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self-fulfilling prophecy because african-american neighborhoods even mixed-race neighborhoods over time
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become more and more of the province of absentee landlords very hard to buy your
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own home to invest in your neighborhood in that way if you don't have help from the bank and it got worse in the 1930s
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the Federal Housing Administration got started again a great program they helped banks make long-term mortgages fa
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mortgages VA mortgages Veterans Administration mortgages but the new FHA
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did not want to land in neighborhoods that were going to go bad and so they hired a sociologist in Chicago he went
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around and talked to the men of property and standing in Chicago and he said you know what makes a good neighborhood and
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they they talked about ethnic groups the most favorable come first in the list those
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exerting the most detrimental effect appear last this is the FHA underwriting
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manual this is a federal document best groups English Germans Scots Irish
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Scandinavians second north Italians third Bohemians or czechoslovakians
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those are my people maybe I should be relieved to be third
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I think I'm angry to be third fourth poles fifth Lithuanian sixth Greeks seventh Russian Jews of the lower class
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eight South Italians nine Negros ten Mexicans today I think that inspires a
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touch of horror in us but that was a federal policy and it gets worse in the
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1950s and 60s there was federal money to tear down blighted neighborhoods one of
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the key metrics was whether a neighborhood had a lot of run-down absentee landlord housing well guess
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what neighborhoods had those and in reality usually it was the african-american neighborhood closest to
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downtown that was demolished in Charlotte Brooklyn came down during the 1960's
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more than a thousand families displaced more than 200 black businesses closed never reopened more than a dozen
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churches kicked out of Brooklyn so all of that that deepening segregation
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brings us to the time of the civil rights movement the civil rights movement had been going on for a long
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time before white America really became aware of it in the late 1950s and early
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1960s it had been going on for a long time in Charlotte 1951 a lawyer named
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Thomas white worked with his neighbors to file a lawsuit attempting to
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desegregate revolution' Park on the southwest side of the city the golf
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course in particular was the only municipal golf course there were African
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American professionals who liked to play golf they couldn't play 1951 they filed a
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lawsuit if that lawsuit had been decided quickly we probably would be reading
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about public park desegregation in Charlotte in all of the history books the same way that we read about public
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bus desegregation by Rosa Parks a few years later in all the history books but
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instead it took many years for that suit to be decided but revolution Park was
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desegregated similarly in 1954 Thomas whites and African American dentist
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Reginald Hawkins and some friends went out to the brand new airport terminal
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just open July of 1954 federal project
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with federal money the federal world was supposed to be desegregated interstate transport was supposed to be
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desegregated but the dining room at the airport was not and they went they sat
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in filed a court case in 1956 long
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before the sit-in movement Charlotte's Airport desegregated so
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people here were working trying to find some way to change this this world of
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inequality 1957 Reginald Hawkins Thomas white Kelly
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Alexander from the n-double-a-cp chapter in Charlotte work with Herbert's
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pas the superintendent of schools to win
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admission of four black students to white schools in Charlotte
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this was belated the Supreme Court in 1954 had said in the brown decision the
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desegregation had to happen but they said with all deliberate speed what does
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that mean well it took a long time 1957 for students went to black black
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students went to white schools here is the most famous of them dorothy counts who went to Harding High School was met
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by a mob not a violent mob but ugly mop these photos were on the front pages of newspapers all across the
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United States it really though wasn't until 1960 when this became a mass
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movement and the folks that did that were not part of the african-american
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power structure as people like dr. Hawkins and attorney White's had been they were students and you know this
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story students at A&T University in Greensboro including Franklin McCain later a
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longtime Charlotte resident began the sit-in movement in early February it
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spread to historically black colleges around North Carolina and then around the South hit Charlotte about a week
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later and that student movement here you see folks sitting in in Charlotte took
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months but it began to really bring a change one of the people by the way who
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led that is still around if you all have not met Charles Jones spokesperson for
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Charlotte's 1960 sit-ins he is a wonderful resource and has the ability
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to make you laugh to make you angry at the injustice as the past and the present and to make you cry at the
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courage of those who fought so long and so hard well out of that student
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movement this sense that students were rising up and they couldn't be controlled came the mayor's friendly
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Relations Committee Mayor James s Smith February 1960 brought together older
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cooler heads to work with the students black as well as white and it was a
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courageous thing to do for a southern political leader to say we are not going
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to use police dogs and fire hoses as Bull Connor did in Birmingham a few
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years later but we are going to talk and that tradition of talking at that
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moment that became Charlotte's legacy going forward here is the actual memo
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it's the UNC Charlotte archives in which the committee has worked out the
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desegregation of key lunch counters downtown at Belk grants five-and-dime
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store Ivy's department store crass liggett's you can see that Sears isn't quite sure at this moment and Woolworth
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this is dated July 4th 1960 and indeed Charlotte's lunch counters desegregated
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at a time when many cities across the South said no never and continued to
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fight that itself would have been a good thing if the mayor's friend relations
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committee never did anything else but then in 1961 mayor Stan Berkshire was
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elected Stan Brookshire is the guy the Berkshire freeway is named for and he was a very much an activist mayor and he
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looked at this committee and he said let's make it a permanent thing he
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renamed it the mayor's committee in the mayor's Community Relations Committee in
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1961 and expanded its scope don't just deal with city in issues deal with
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issues housing deal with issues of Economic Opportunity make the connections do the talking that we need
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to begin to bring us together as a true community just a few things that
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happened in the next few years to give you a sense and I'm not sure exactly how
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the Community Relations Commission was a committee was involved in these but I know that the fact that people talk to
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each other put Charlotte at the forefront particularly in May of 1963
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you know that May 20 is met that day the day we celebrate our colonial freedom
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well on May 20th 1963 dr. Reginald Hawkins that African American dentist
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led a march of Johnson C Smith students down to City Hall and demanded the
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segregation at upscale the end of segregation at upscale restaurants
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the lunch counters had desegregated but then the white tablecloth restaurants even cafeterias movie theaters we're
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still segregated and Hawkins made a stirring speech the time for tokenism is
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over the kind of one by one token desegregation that you saw with the
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school so the time for tokenism is over the time for gradualism is over we want freedom and we want it now and a
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remarkable thing happened Brookshire listened it helped that that very month
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was when Bull Connor in Birmingham had the police dogs and fire hoses out was
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on international television making the South look like a police state
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Brookshire said that's bad for business Brooks forgot Chamber of Commerce
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officials to invite African Americans to lunch one or two at a time going to each
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of those upscale restaurants they called them in advance they talked with the newspapers and said you don't want to cover this until after it's happened and
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it worked within a week most of the
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upscale restaurants desegregated within a few weeks the movie theaters everything else desegregated was
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mentioned in the New York Times the folks at the Kennedy White House were aware of it it was a year before this
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became a national requirement through the 1964 Civil Rights Act
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at that moment Birmingham was vying with Atlanta to be the leading city of the
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new south today Charlotte is three times the size of Birmingham it was a moment
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at which Charlotte staked its destiny on equality hasn't been perfect still
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working on it but this was a key moment Reginald Hawkins paid a price for that
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so did Kelly Alexander they end up lacy P chief Fred Alexander the first black
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public elected public official in that era and Julius chambers the civil rights
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attorney November 1965 in the dark of night four houses
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bombed no one ever found out who did it but folks kept on here's a little thing
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Elmwood Cemetery had still does an area at the back called Pinewood cemetery one
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was the white section one was the black section there was a fence between Elmwood and Pinewood what the dead white
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people and the dead black people were gonna do that they needed a fence separating them no one has ever explained to me but finally in January
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of 1969 Fred Alexander got that fence torn down part three Charlotte's
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changing ethnic and racial landscape today so that segregation that we saw
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coming into place which ironically got worse during the 1960s is the result of
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the demolition of the Brooklyn neighborhood left a city that resembles
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many other American cities because they've been through the same forces the
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well-to-do sector here it's in the southeast a predominantly african-american sector on the opposite
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side of town and some kind of in between sectors South Boulevard the East Side
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not particularly well-to-do but originally white areas well a
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fascinating thing has happened I'm gonna focus here on East Charlotte because that's where I live that's what I know
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but it's going on elsewhere as well those middling kind of areas as the US
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Fair Housing Act took hold in 1968 as the Community Reinvestment Act requires that lenders not let red line that they
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lend in all neighborhoods a Charlotte the South Boulevard area other parts of
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the city went from being nearly a hundred percent white to being about 25
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percent african-american which is basically Charlotte they began to look
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like Charlotte and in my part of town there are black pockets and white pockets but
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overall it's been remarkably stable for the last 35 40 years then in the 1990s
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we began to experience a new kind of newcomer wave for one thing a tremendous
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increase in population if you don't take any other one fact from this
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presentation know that in 1990 Mecklenburg County had about half a million people it just recently passed a
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million doubling in size over 25 years but a lot of those folks not a majority
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but a significant new small number are coming from other parts of the world and
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this is a new thing for Charlotte Charlotte had almost no immigrants for most of its history and then suddenly in
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the 1990s we were the fourth fastest growing Latino city in the United States
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since 2000 we've been the fastest growing major Latino Metro in the US and
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it's not just Latino folks folks are coming from Mexico yep they're coming from India they're coming from Vietnam
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they're coming from El Salvador from Korea from North Africa from the Middle East and where are they going well
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they're going to those old middling areas as much as anywhere else to the
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South Boulevard area Central Avenue to the east side and they are not
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segregating now that is hard to imagine because when we think of ethnic America
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we think of Chinatown so we think of Little Italy's Charlotte doesn't have
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one I've been told that Charlotte doesn't have much international presence
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does it because it doesn't have that but what it does instead is it has these
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suburban salad bowls the old suburbs 50s
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60s 70s 80s are now inexpensive they're affordable and people are mingling like
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like items in a salad you know you could still see the lettuce the tomatoes the
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onions anchovies whatever the dressing but it's a new dish and you go out in
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the east side of town and there's the Cambodian video store next to the Salvadoran deli there's the Saigon Bistro next to the
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Arab meat market there is the European grocery from Bosnia with those amazing
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sausage sandwiches and the Vietnamese poolhall with the bond me submarine
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sandwiches that kind of mixture is a new frontier for Charlotte you can see it in
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the the little shopping centers you can see it in the mix of housing here we are
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on Central Avenue at Rose Haven down below some old apartments above some duplexes and single-family homes and if
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you drive by quickly you say oh well this is the Mexican part of town and indeed there's a Mexican grocery store
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but in the same shopping center there's also a pupusas joint from El Salvador
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Pusa they don't have tacos in El Salvador they have pupusas little cornmeal pancakes stuff them with beans
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with cheese with chopped pork mmm YUM so two different cultures here in this one
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shopping center actually three different cultures because there's a Vietnamese soup parlor actually for different
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cultures cedar land folks from Syria Lebanon Egypt even Morocco in five
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different cultures Jamila's international cuisine Jamila and her
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friend Hamza came here from Somalia in the upper right hand corner of Africa
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their mosque is around the corner on progress lane in in Somalia women can't
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start a business nobody can start a business a civil war is on but here is the came as refugees they found that the
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workers at the airport a lot of them from North Africa wanted the food from home and the taxi drivers who came back
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and forth carrying that food many of them from North Africa they wanted a place for their noon day prayer
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so they found cheap rent on Central Avenue the open Jamila's international
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restaurant now it's a restaurant in a grocery store it's the American dream and that kind of mixed neighborhood
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that's evolving on Central Avenue that kind of new entrepreneurial class we
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talked about wanting to welcome and entrepreneurs to Charlotte to make sure a place for new businesses and new ideas
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that's what you're seeing in those kind of places it's instructive to look at a
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map of where foreign-born folks reside in Charlotte indeed South Boulevard and
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Central Avenue are heavy areas but as you can see from the pink areas on this
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map international communities are all throughout the city very different from
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the patterns of black and white that I grew up with so change is happening and
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Community Relations is in the middle of that we've become a city in which there is no longer a white majority rest of
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the United States will be catching up with us very soon and none of this has heard our desirability like I said we
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just hit 1 million I haven't slowed down a bit even with the 2008 recession so as community
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relations goes about its work know that it comes from history that it's part of
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that grassroots movement for true civil rights in a segregated south and that
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Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Relations is making history by helping
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us talk together it's drawing on an important heritage but it's a heritage
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that is very important today as we are becoming a more and more diverse
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Charlotte