1721 Oaklawn Avenue

Built about 1950-51 for Roy S. Wynn, one of Charlotte’s leading medical men and the region’s only African American opthamologist.

Dr. Roy Spurgeon Wynn (9.25.1900 – 8.28.1989) hailed from Bertie County in northeastern North Carolina. He won admission to Howard University in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s most elite universities for African Americans. He graduated with a B.S. in 1929 and a M.D. in 1933. He launched his practice in Warrenton, not far from his birthplace, but soon moved to fast-growing Charlotte. He brought with him his new bride, a Warrenton girl named Maria Ellis.

When Dr. Wynn opened his Charlotte office in 1941, he initially practiced general medicine. In 1956, remembered colleague Dr. Emery Rann, “he went to Homer G.Phillips Hospital in St. Louis for specialized training in ophthalmology.” He returned to Charlotte as the city’s first black ophthalmologist — not just serving patients in need of eye care, but also publishing research such as “Retinoblastoma: Report of a Case and Review of the Literature” in the Journal of the National Medical Association. His colleagues made him president of the Charlotte Medical Society and then of the statewide Old North State Medical Society — both created by black doctors who were barred from joining white medical organizations.

In an era when simply belonging to the NAACP risked reprisals from whites, Dr. Wynn served as president of the Civil Rights organization’s Charlotte chapter. A 1945 issue of the NAACP’s national magazine The Crisis carried his portrait. In 1951 he signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit to open to African Americans the Bonnie Brae public golf course in Revolution Park, a first step toward the desegregation of all parks and public facilities in the city. McCrorey Heights neighbor Dr. Robert Green was a fellow plaintiff and another neighbor, Thomas Wyche, was the attorney. Dr. Wynn went to court again in 1961, joining yet another McCrorey Heights resident Dr. J. Dwight Martin (1622 Van Buren) in suing the city to stop construction of Carver College. The Carver campus on Beatties Ford Road, clearly aimed at African American students, was separate and inferior to the campus of Charlotte College begun at the same time — which eventually became UNC Charlotte.

Dr. Wynn became the first African American appointed to the board of Charlotte’s Housing Authority — an influential position since about half of the city’s public housing residents were African American.

Dr. Wynn was active in First Baptist Church West, almost certainly one of the decision-makers who helped it move to a striking new building by architect Harvey Gantt on Oaklawn Avenue in the 1980s. He took part in the fellowship of two fraternities: the Beta Delta Chapter of Sigma Pi Phi Boule; and Omega Psi Phi, which gave him its Scroll of Honor and named him Omega of the Year.