Oaklawn Avenue

When this house was built about 1957, Bernard Lee Brown, Sr. taught at Charlotte’s Carver College and his wife Lucielle Hall Brown served as Assistant Librarian there.

Charlotte leaders founded Carver College, named for African American scientist George Washington Carver, about 1949 as a black counterpart to Charlotte College. In the mid 1960s when Charlotte College transformed into today’s UNC Charlotte, underfunded Carver College became part of Central Piedmont Community College.

Built about 1950. The first owner-occupant was Buel Hendrix, manager of Oaklawn Cemetery across the street. The Hendrix family was white, the only whites known to have lived in this black area. An important later resident in the mid 1960s was Isaac T. Graham, principal of rural Torrence-Lytle School 1937 – 1966 — one of the longest-serving principals ever in Charlotte-area schools.

Built about 1958 for Jimmy and Minnie McKee, community leaders who were best known as proprietors of their Excelsior Club on Beatties Ford Road. They also played large roles in Charlotte’s cultural life, helping launch black-format WGIV radio in the late 1940s and 1950s, serving as lay leaders for what became First Baptist Church West in McCrorey Heights, and working tirelessly to raise funds for Johnson C. Smith University and other organizations.

The house is of architectural interest as one of Charlotte’s early examples of split-level design, a variant of the Ranch style.

James G. Conner built this residence in 1963 for himself and his wife Elin Vaughn Conner. Conner was one of half a dozen brick masons who lived in McCrorey Heights. Historically, brick-making and brick-laying was the work of skilled African Americans in the era of slavery. From the Civil War into the 1960s, African Americans retained a key place in the building trades across the South. The ability of brick contractors to manage large projects, marshaling materials and work crews, put them in the “upper middle-class” economic and social bracket — thus part of the McCrorey Heights neighborhood.

When Mrs. Elin Vaughn Conner died, Mr. Conner remarried in 1967 to Allean Gatson Conner, an educator who became principal of Charlotte’s black Catholic school at Our Lady of Consolation Church. James and Allean Conner lived together in this house for over half a century, into the late 2010s.

Built 1957 – 58.  Original owner-occupants were Perty J. Dargan, a laborer at Douglas Aircraft’s missile assembly plant on Statesville Avenue, and his wife Elizabeth Dargan, a leading educator.

Mrs. Dargan taught math and science at York Road High School when she moved into this house. She went on to become an elementary school principal in the era of desegregation, finishing her career as head of what is now Barringer Academic Center. After retirement she became one of Charlotte’s most active philanthropists, giving many thousands of dollars to the Urban League, United Way and others. Today the Charlotte chapter of the United Negro College Fund presents an annual lifetime achievement award named in honor of Elizabeth Dargan and poet Maya Angelou.

Milton D. Cunningham took out the permit in 1951 to build this house for himself and wife Gwendolyn. Both were educators in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. 

Dr. Gwendolyn Davidson Cunningham won national notice for her deft handling of racial integration at Oaklawn Elementary School, where she was founding principal in 1964.

Thomas H. Wyche took out the permit to construct this house in 1949, making it one of the first post-World-War II residences in McCrorey Heights. Thomas and & Grace Wyche resided here all their lives, til his death in 1997 and her death at age 92 in 2016.

Thomas Wyche ranked as one of the Carolinas’ most important Civil Rights attorneys, part of the national network of NAACP lawyers who worked together to attack segregation during the 1940s – 1960s. Wyche played an active role in nearly every major and minor Civil Rights action that touched Charlotte, including desegregation of the airport, schools and health care, as well as the sit-in movement, the 1961 Freedom Ride and the trial of international Civil Rights rebel Robert Williams. Wyche later helped start Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont in 1967, today an important resource for low-income Charlotte-area residents. Wife Grace was a career school librarian who partnered with her husband in activism.

Built in 1949-50, this dwelling’s initial owner-occupants were physician Dr. Oliver B. Williams and his wife Ethel T.

In 1956 Carson H. Beckwith, a well-known community leader, bought the house. He owned Band’s Beauty College, the first cosmetology school for African Americans in this region of the Carolinas.

Widowed in 1965, he remarried to Ivestia “Peggy” Beckwith. She was a radio personality and fashion model in her youth who became director of Charlotte’s Sickle Cell Disease Association. She helped launch the C.W. Williams Community Health Center in 1981 on Wilkinson Boulevard, one of the first neighborhood clinics in Charlotte.

Mr. Beckwith’s son Calvin H. Beckwith became one of a group of three African American students in 1961 who integrated Charlotte College, today’s UNC Charlotte.

Built 1959-60 for Dr. Rudolph M. Wyche, one of Charlotte’s most distinguish physicians, and his wife Carolyne, a nurse. A 1924 graduate of JCSU (where he co-founded the local chapter of the Omega fraternity), he became Chief of Staff at Good Samaritan Hospital as well as having a private practice.

Dr. Wyche (no relation to attorney Thomas Wyche down the street) played an active role in civic affairs. He was part of the plaintiff group that won the 1951 lawsuit which desegregated Revolution Park, and in the mid 1950s he served as president of the black Old North State Medical Association as its members worked to end segregation in health care.

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

Dr. Wynn worked actively for Civil Rights. He served as president of the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP in the 1940s. In 1951 he signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit to desegregate Charlotte’s public golf course in Revolution Park, a first step toward the desegregation of all parks and public facilities in the city. He went to court again in 1961, suing the city to stop construction of Carver College; it would have created a campus for African Americans that was separate and inferior to what became UNC Charlotte. Dr. Wynn became the first African American appointed to the board of Charlotte’s Housing Authority.