Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photos: Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Anna Jean Mayhew.
The church she worshipped at is now part of Interstate 277. The NASCAR Hall of Fame hovers over where the shotgun house she lived in, along an alleyway on a dirt road, once stood.
Why it matters: Everything Stowe sees in her memory was part of Brooklyn, once the largest Black neighborhood in Charlotte.
She is part of a generation of Charlotteans who lost their community when Brooklyn was torn down in the name of urban renewal in the 1960s and ’70s. It is impossible to quantify the harm that razing a neighborhood and disrupting social connections causes.
The big picture: That loss of wealth rippled throughout Charlotte’s Black community and set families back for generations.
Many deeds listed the same sale price — $100. That was a standard practice for deeds in the post-war era, historian Michael Moore tells me. So it’s difficult to ascertain how much those property owners were actually compensated.
One of Charlotte’s most successful Black families at that time, the Alexanders, were paid just $13,000 for property at what was then 415 East Stonewall Street (now Brooklyn Village Avenue), near the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Kelly Alexander Sr. and his wife, Margaret Alexander, who died in June, were longtime civil rights activists with the NAACP. Kelly had three brothers, one of whom, Fred, became the first Black person to serve on Charlotte City Council since Reconstruction.
Using an inflation calculator, we determined that the four Alexander brothers and their wives brought in the equivalent of $125,823 in today’s dollars from the Stonewall Street sale, total.
The plaza in front of the NASCAR Hall of Fame now sits on the site of the Brevard Street Library, the first library serving the Black community in the state. Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photos: Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Danielle Chemtob/Axios.
As a child, Stowe swung her legs back and forth in the church pews, wondering when she would grow up and her feet would reach the floor.
In 1969, a court ordered the Charlotte Redevelopment Commission to pay the church Stowe still worships at, Bethel AME Church (now Greater Bethel), $62,500, plus interest, for its property.
The property doesn’t exist as it did then due to the construction of the highways and reconfiguration of streets. But land records for nearby sites provide a glimpse of the wealth that could have remained with Black landowners.
The former Bethel AME Church location. Photo courtesy of Greater Bethel AME Church.
For two years after it was forced out of Brooklyn, Bethel AME wandered in what felt like the wilderness, members describe, while looking for a permanent location.
At one point, they worshipped in a trailer-like building. Sometimes, they sat on cardboard boxes outside.
In 1971, deed records show, the church purchased property on Grandin Road at the intersection of West Fourth Street, before moving to Shannon Park, where it remains.
State Rep. Kelly Alexander Jr., son of Kelly Sr., says his childhood in Brooklyn was like growing up in a 1930s “Our Gang” film (later “The Little Rascals” franchise).
Brooklyn was also busy for adults, with everything from gambling houses and clubs to community fish fries.
The United House of Prayer parade. Photo: Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Originally known as Logtown, after the cabins built there, Brooklyn sprung up in the Jim Crow South, a time when Black people were shut out of virtually every opportunity.
But after World War II, industries moved to the outskirts of the city, and leaders turned their eye to the value sitting underneath Brooklyn.
The United House of Prayer’s old church on South McDowell Street, now part of Marshall Park. Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photos: Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Danielle Chemtob/Axios.
The federal government provided billions to cities for urban renewal, or as critics call it, “negro removal” (based on a quote from James Baldwin).
How it happened: Charlotte leaders and local media painted Brooklyn as a “slum.”
A famous photo of three boys looking on as Second Ward High School is destroyed. Abel Jackson’s “Historic Brooklyn” mural at 219 South Brevard St. depicts part of this image, but places the boys in front of Black leaders Thaddeus Lincoln Tate, J.T. Williams and William C. Smith — because Jackson wanted the boys to be looking up at something positive, instead of demolition. Image courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
In order to receive federal funding, local leaders had to prove that the area was legally a slum. Newspaper articles and government documents from the era often quote a statistic claiming Brooklyn was more than 77% blighted.
Shotgun homes. Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
At least half of Brooklyn residents owned their homes, Griffin says, and those who did maintained them. To get to the 77% figure, he says leaders persuaded homeowners to move to new west Charlotte neighborhoods like University Park and Oaklawn Park.
The home of Dr. John Taylor (J.T.) Williams, one of the first three Black doctors licensed in North Carolina. Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Between the lines: The biggest loss from Brooklyn’s demise was the social capital, Griffin says.
The Black community in Brooklyn was split after urban renewal: the middle- and upper-class went to those areas like University Park, and many poor residents relocated to low-income housing.
Kelly Alexander Sr. and the NAACP called on the city to build new housing for the Brooklyn residents it was forcing out. But Charlotte never did.
Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
The cycle of displacement didn’t stop with urban renewal. Around the same time, the building of interstates spliced and cut off Black neighborhoods.
Where a street now named for Martin Luther King Jr. meets Brevard, Charlotte razed the center of its Black main street.
The intersection was once the hub of one of two main Black business districts in Brooklyn.
Businesses along Second Street in Brooklyn. Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Alexander Funeral Home is one of the only ones still standing.
The move from its Brooklyn location at 323 South Brevard Street put pressure on the business, says Rep. Alexander, demanding a large amount of cash upfront.
An old ad for Alexander Funeral Home. Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
One of his first jobs at the funeral home was to sort case files in the basement. That’s where he found thousands in uncollected bills.
The site of Alexander Funeral Home, then and now. Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photos: Courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and Danielle Chemtob/Axios
Reparations are often brought up in the context of slavery, drawing controversy over who would receive money and who is responsible for actions that took place over 150 years ago.
But Brooklyn, Greenville and other areas were leveled in the 20th century. Many of their former residents — and their children and grandchildren — a re still alive.
And in recent years advocates, including some former residents, have pushed the city to make up for its actions.
Dr. Ricky A. Woods, senior minister at First Baptist Church-West, in front of an image of the church’s old location in Third Ward. Photo: Danielle Chemtob/Axios
Dr. Ricky A. Woods, senior minister at First Baptist Church-West, which was driven out of Third Ward in an urban renewal project in the 1970s, believes reparations are owed, but he says they should be about more than financial compensation.
Jacqueline Stowe with a map of the former Brooklyn neighborhood. Photo: Danielle Chemtob/Axios
Stowe questions why the city isn’t setting aside some of a $250 million racial equity fund for former residents like her.
Earlier this month, I stood beside her on the back side of the concrete parking deck for Whole Foods Uptown, looking over what was left of the church’s old location.
We looked across to the new Charlotte, the apartment towers in South End rising in the distance. Stowe told me on the one hand, she likes what Uptown has become.
But there was a cost to that progress. A cost that meant destroying the old Charlotte: the Charlotte that raised her. She calls it “root shock.”