Oaklawn

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

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.

Read More ...

Built 1968-1969 for Mildred P. Aldridge and her second husband Theodore A. Aldridge. She earned degrees at Shaw University, University of Cincinnati and Columbia University in New York City. She taught elementary school in Charlotte for many years at the Morgan, Biddleville, Oaklawn and Paw Creek schools.

Mrs. Aldridge had an impressive family background. Her father Edgar was a local business leader who owned the Service Barber Shop downtown, known for its elite white clients. Her first husband, Dr. Milledge Brodie, was a physician and the son of the pastor of Charlotte’s imposing Brooklyn Presbyterian Church. When Dr. Brodie passed away, Mildred married Theodore Aldridge, about whom little is known.

Read More ...

First Baptist Church West dedicated this new sanctuary on Oaklawn Avenue in 1977. The institution is said to be Charlotte’s oldest black Baptist congregation, founded in 1867 and housed for many years in a handsome brick building at 1020 South College Street in the center city.

The building on Oaklawn Avenue is architecturally significant as the work of important African American architect Harvey Gantt. Gantt integrated Clemson University as an architecture student, established the long running Charlotte firm Gantt-Huberman in 1971, and won two terms as Charlotte’s first black mayor in the 1980s. The church’s boxy, geometrical massing, a Gantt-Huberman hallmark, projects a sense of simplicity, clarity and power.

Read More ...

Built in the mid 1910s, this is one of the earliest residences on Oaklawn Avenue. The street was first called Double Oaks Avenue (until about 1930) and was initially considered part of the Washington Heights streetcar suburb, which had been developed on the other side of Beatties Ford Road in the early 1910s.

Elias L. Foster and wife Mary were listed as living in “Washington Heights” starting in the 1914 city directory, then residing on “Double Oaks Avenue, Washington Heights” beginning in 1918. He was a barber downtown on South Mint Street. In that era there were few white barbers; African Americans had largely controlled the trade since slavery days. Barbers who owned their own shops often became important community leaders.

Read More ...

1907 Oaklawn Avenue first appeared in the 1932 city directory, occupied by Rev. William Moore and wife Sallie. Subsequent directories through 1937 listed him as Rev. Wade H. Moore, but did not indicate his church, nor give an occupation for her.

About 1938, Alexander W. Davis and wife Leila bought the house, living here for twenty years. He was a porter at Pound and Moore, the city’s leading office supply store, and she taught at Myers Street School. Most businesses in that era employed a “porter” as a jack-of-all trades delivering packages, running errands and doing light building maintenance. Davis eventually joined the Federal Reserve Bank, one of Charlotte’s most prestigious institutions, where he was initially listed as “porter” and later as “clerk.”

In 1956-57 the couple built a new brick house next door at 1911 Oaklawn Avenue. They kept 1907 Oaklawn as a rental property, along with adjoining 1901 Oaklawn, into the 1970s.

Read More ...

Alexander W. Davis took out the permit to build this house in 1956, contracting with Ervin Construction, then the city’s busiest contractor and developer of suburban housing. Davis was a “porter” at the Federal Reserve uptown. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most Charlotte businesses employed a “porter,” a trusted jack-of-all-trades who ran errands and handled building upkeep. His wife Leila M. Davis worked as a public schoolteacher at the Myers Street School.

Read More ...

Oaklawn Avenue became a favored suburban location for leading African American physicians and ministers starting in the 1920s-30s, with additional fine houses filling out the street during the 1950s-60s. AME Zion minister Rev. Samuel W. Hamilton lived here for three decades starting in 1926, becoming a regional leader in the denomination. His wife Helen worked as an office manager at the AME Zion Publishing House in downtown Charlotte during the 1950s and 1960s.

Read More ...

In 1924 Edward O’Daniel bought this lot from next door neighbor J. Henry Warren and had this Bungalow built for himself and wife Bonnie. O’Daniel worked as porter/bellman at the Mecklenburg Hotel, one of the city’s largest downtown hotels. Porter/bellman was considered a good job by African Americans in that era, where a hard-working, dependable man could earn an income that allowed a middle-class lifestyle.

Read More ...

This house is among the earliest on prestigious Oaklawn Avenue, built sometime around 1917 for J. Henry Warren, a barber and civic leader, and his wife Lula, daughter of noted AME Zion Bishop Thomas Henry Lomax.

Soon after graduating from what is now Johnson C. Smith University in 1894, J. Henry Warren helped chose the school colors of gold and navy blue. He opened a barber shop for white clients in the heart of downtown and by 1920 the Charlotte News recognized him as one of the “leaders in public life among the [N]egro population of Charlotte.” Warren served on many civic committees: raising funds to expand Good Samaritan Hospital; urging black men to volunteer for World War I military duty; asking Charlotte to create a public park for African Americans. His passion was the creation of Sunday Schools; in an era when public schooling was scarce, especially for low-income African Americans, church-related schooling often provided not only faith training but also practical skills. In 1923 Warren served as president of a national convention of Sunday School activists held in Cleveland, Ohio, under auspices of the AME Zion denomination.

Warren and his wife Lula evidently lost the house in the Great Depression. Subsequent occupants during the 1930s were Rev. Benjamin Swain, Presiding Elder of AME Zion’s Charlotte District, then Rev. William A. Blackwell, Editor of the Star of Zion, the denomination’s national newspaper.

Read More ...

This residence first appeared in the city directory in 1932. Owners for over fifty years were Rev. Abraham H. Prince and wife Susan Prince. Rev. Prince ranked among the leading ministers in the southeastern United States. He pastored Brooklyn Presbyterian Church in Charlotte during the 1930s, then in 1939 stepped into the top administrative position in Presbyterian denomination’s Synod of the Atlantic: Field Representative covering South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. His wife Susan Peacock Prince taught in Charlotte’s public schools.

Read More ...

During the 1920s-1930s Oaklawn Avenue became a prestigious address for African American doctors, ministers and other Charlotte leaders. This substantial house on a corner lot was constructed in 1937 for physician Dr. Robert H. Greene.

Dr. Greene became a plaintiff in the 1951 lawsuit to desegregate the golf course at Revolution Park. The case, watched widely across the United States, helped invalidate the deed covenants that barred African Americans from public parks. Dr. Greene served as statewide president of the black Old North State Medical Society; in 1970 it named him Doctor of the Year.

Read More ...

2009 Oaklawn Avenue first appeared in city directories in 1939 occupied by Frederick L. Wiley and wife Grace E. Wiley. The couple were life-long educators in Charlotte’s public schools, he at Second Ward High and she at Isabella Wyche Elementary. Mr. Wylie served on the three-person committee that raised half the funds to construct West Charlotte’s athletic stadium in 1948, spurring the School Board to provide a matching amount.

Read More ...