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African American Album

Foreword

This is a special project of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in celebration of the Library's centennial year. It addresses a long-standing need to record and preserve the visual history of the African American Community.

The project has stimulated the collection and preservation of photographs depicting family life, work sites, schools, churches, neighborhoods and events which illustrate the African American heritage of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in the years before 1950.

About the Project

Photographer Al Ricks volunteers his time to copy photographs for the project. Photo by Jane Johnson.

 

This album grew out of a year long project developed to address a gap in this community's local historical record and a need to preserve the visual history of the black community in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the following individuals and organizations who generously loaned photographs or otherwise contributed to the project:

Mrs. Kelly Alexander, Sr.

Mildred P. Alridge

Anita Baldwin

Mrs. Miriam Grigsby Bates

Marjorie Belton

Minnie Alma Blake

Geraldine Johnson Blenman

The Reverend and Mrs. Ray A. Booton

Mrs. Jeanne Brayboy

Bernard L. Brown

Ethel Bryant

Ethel M. Cannon

Joan and John Carrothers

Introduction

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. The institution of Jim Crow laws in the post Civil War era necessitated continuing the tradition of uplift and protest. Churches established or supported homes for the aged and for orphans in addition to organizing day nurseries, kindergartens, gymnasiums and social and literary clubs.

The Dragons

 

The Dragons, 1935. Left to right, front row: Ed Durham, Albert Phillips, Kelly Alexander, J. B. Lauren, Matthew Lindsay, Bill Lytle. Second Row: Leonard "Chicken" Barksdale, Marco Glenn, Harold McKnight, David Williams, Bill Haygood. Back row: Albert Kennedy, Tom Simmons, Weldon Brown, Johnny Gray, Lovette Warner.

THEODORA HENDRY WASHINGTON.