1716 Patton Avenue

Built about 1954 for Rev. Cordell H. Kennedy, pastor of the Grier Heights Presbyterian Church, and his wife Ruth E. Kennedy, who taught at the Alexander Street School.

The Kennedys raised son Cordell Kennedy, Jr., in this house. During the late 1960s he served as a statewide coordinator for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

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Rev. Cordell Kennedy (died April 1, 1970) came to Charlotte in 1949 from Rogersville, Tennessee. In 1955 he was installed as pastor at Grier Heights Presbyterian Church, the largest church in the big African American neighborhood of Grier Heights on Charlotte’s east side. He took a leadership role in the regional governing body of the black Presbyterian Church, serving as Moderator of the Catawba Synod in 1964. Rev. Kennedy passed away in 1970 at the age of 56.

Ruth Ezell Kennedy (9.29.1910 – 2.16.1994) was a life-long Charlottean. After graduating from Winston Salem Teachers College (now Winston Salem State University), she joined the Charlotte school system in 1934. Like her husband she was an active Presbyterian — as were many residents in this neighborhood developed by Presbyterian minister and college president H.L. McCrorey. At Seventh Street Presbyterian Church downtown (now First United Presbyterian) she served in many volunteer roles including as Deacon and Elder. She and her husband raised one son, Cordell H. Kennedy, Jr.

In the mid 1960s, soon after graduating from West Charlotte High, Cordell Kennedy, Jr., went to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., had set up the organization to carry out voter education and coordinate other Civil Rights work. In 1965 the Charlotte Observer listed young Cordell Kennedy as a “SCLC field worker” when he was arrested in Plymouth, North Carolina, while picketing for year-round voter registration. A 1966 “Voter Education Project” proposal drafted by SCLC official Hosea Williams showed Kennedy as “assistant to the state field secretary” for North Carolina. In 1968 Kennedy was in Hillsborough, North Carolina, helping organize student demonstrators. Rev. King fell to an assassin’s bullet that spring; a year later Cordell Kennedy, Jr., served as coordinator and spokesperson for a planned march from Asheville to Raleigh commemorating the anniversary of King’s death.