1708 Van Buren Avenue

Built about 1959 and occupied by Herman L. Counts, Jr., and wife Doris H. Counts, members of a history-making family in Charlotte’s Civil Rights era.

His father, Dr. Herman Counts, Sr., was Professor of Theology at Johnson C. Smith University and also pastored a series of small churches in the Charlotte region. Professor Counts’ wife Oleathea (Herman Jr’s mother) taught at the Oaklawn Center, a social work site that aimed at assisting residents in the low-income Double Oaks and Fairview Homes housing projects. The couple would build in McCrorey Heights at 1604 Patton Avenue in about 1959.

In 1957, while the family still lived in a older cottage near JCSU, Herman, Sr’s daughter Dorothy Counts (younger sister of Herman Counts, Jr.,) made international headlines as she became the first black student at white Harding High School. Photos of her braving a mob of hecklers — with future McCrorey Heights neighbor Prof. Edwin Thomkins at her side — appeared in newspapers as far away as a Paris, France. Famed African American essayist James Baldwin credited the photo with inspiring his own involvement in the Civil Rights movement.

Herman L. Counts, Jr., continued his father’s tradition of involvement with JCSU. Young Herman worked in University administration as Inventories Officer when he and his wife moved into 1708 Van Buren Avenue. She was a teacher, first at Lincoln Heights Elementary nearby, and later at Druid Hills Elementary. In 1966, after seven years working at JSCU, Herman got an offer to become director of purchasing at Dennison College in Ohio, where he served into the 1970s.