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IN HIS History of Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte, D. A. Tompkins gives biographical sketches of eighty men who were prominent in Mecklenburg during and shortly after the Revolution. The most frequent phrase in these sketches is, "he was educated at . . .
AMERICA was plunged into World War II with the assault of the Japanese upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and once again Charlotte was selected as the site of war facilities.
IN America there were centuries of frontiers. The Piedmont frontier of the Carolinas was first described by an explorer sent out, in 1670, by Governor Berkeley of Virginia.
MOST authorities on the earliest known facts about Mecklenburg County rely on Lawson's History of North Carolina, by John Lawson (1714) and on A Journey to the Land of Eden, by William Byrd, written about 1733 but unpublished until 1841.
In the spring of 1954, the main library was moved into temporary quarters on College Street for the two years required to tear down in the Carnegie building and build the new facility.
From left to right, seated, are: J. E. Grisby, Second Ward High; C. L. Blake, West Charlotte High; Mrs. Cordelia E. Stiles, supervisor; W. G. Byers, Fairview Elementary; Mrs. Gwendolyn Cunningham, Double Oaks Elementary; and C. E. Moreland, Northwest Junior High.
York Road High School was completed in 1956, the last all-black school constructed. The school was never actually located on York Road, but it was given this name so that people could find it. It began as a junior high, but added grades until it became a senior high in 1959.
Myers Street School was the oldest black school in Charlotte. It began in an old tobacco barn on 5th Street in 1882. The students and faculty moved into a new wood-frame building in 1887, located on land that had belonged to the Myers family. A new brick building followed in 1931.
THROUGHOUT THE MONTHS Camp Greene was located in Charlotte, the men were overwhelmed with displays of hospitality.
INVENTION of the cotton gin had an almost immediately discernible effect upon the economic life of the South, including Mecklenburg, and, despite the fact that Charlotte, significantly and fortunately, would continue to develop as an industrial center, for the first several decades of the new cen
Mecklenburg County was one of the most heavily damaged areas of North Carolina from the unprecedented flood which swept western North Carolina July 14, 15, and 16, 1916. Rainfall at Charlotte which began on Thursday, July 13, increased to storm proportions on Friday the 14th.
But close it did. On the evening of June 30, 1939, the doors of the Charlotte Public Library were locked. The staff went home, and for the first time in almost fifty years the city was without a library.
Brevard Street Branch now had professional library staff for the first time. Allegra Westbrooks had been hired the previous year as Head of Negro Library Services for the system.
The new main library, with more than twice the space of the old facility, was planned to accommodate expanded services and changing technology.
One of the most important agencies for maintaining cohesion and rendering social welfare was the church. In slavery, the church played a vital role in attending to the spiritual and social needs of slaves as well as aided in the successful escape of slaves to freedom.
As the county’s population grew, the facility on Poor House Road became more and more inadequate. The local newspapers reported that its facilities were “inadequate and incomplete . . .