The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art and Culture, which sits in the heart of uptown Charlotte on South Tryon Street, turns 50 next year. A long list of events celebrating African American culture is planned to celebrate the golden anniversary through dance, art, music, food and community forums.
The center, named for Charlotte’s first Black mayor was originally called the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center. It was cofounded by professors Bertha Maxwell-Roddey and Mary Harper of UNC Charlotte where Maxwell-Roddey was founder and director of the school’s then Black Studies program, now the Department of Africana Studies. Maxwell-Roddey was working on her thesis when she came up with the idea for an African American cultural center. The two saw a need for a center on Black culture because of the devastation caused by urban renewal in the 1960s.
"If you translate urban renewal, that meant Black removal," said center cofounder Harper in a Gantt video. "And if you look at historical preservation, you begin to ask, whose history is being preserved when so much is being torn down, and thus arose the idea of an Afro-American Cultural Center, something that would capture, preserve, promote African American history."
The Gantt Center grew from its humble beginnings in one-room locations in a strip mall, then at Spirit Square. It later moved to a space in the Little Rock AME Zion Church on McDowell Street before moving to its current location in 2009 in the more than 46,000-square-foot, four-story building on South Tryon Street. The center’s mission to preserve African American culture has remained constant, but in an interview with WFAE's "All Things Considered" host Gwendolyn Glenn, Gantt COO Bonita Buford says the center has changed in many other ways.
"The staff for the most part was typically the executive director and a programs director, someone designing programs who would direct programs at schools and community spaces," Buford said. "So going from two to three people, to now a staff of 20, and a budget of $2 million in an award-winning building is a huge leap from an idea to an institution well regarded in Charlotte, but also around the country and around the world."
The list of events for the Gantt's 50th anniversary includes a February performance of the renowned Dance Theatre of Harlem in partnership with the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center; Stephen Satterfield, African American food writer and host of the Netflix series, "High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America," will design menus for three dinners around African American cuisine, farmers and chefs with entertainment; a talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones on the "1619 Project" she spearheaded for the New York Times; exhibits by Patrick Alston — "Post Traumatism: In Search of Freedom" — and Kehinde Wiley, founder of the Black Rock Senegal residency program who was commissioned to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
For a full list of the yearlong events to celebrate the Gantt Center's 50th anniversary, go to https://www.ganttcenter.org/about-the-center/news/2023/274/.* Please note that this is not a complete listing as other activities, events, programs and performances will be added to this schedule.
