Black History

Some scholars say legislative efforts to limit discussion of race in classrooms across the country underscore the need to make sure local Black history is taught and remembered.

While the Siloam School will stand for years to come, many other notable Black sites in Charlotte have been lost, often to development. These buildings, including Good Samaritan Hospital and the Brooklyn neighborhood, also constitute interesting and important aspects of the history of Charlotte’s Black community.

Artifacts that tell the trials and tribulations of the Black experience throughout American history are on display Thursday in Charlotte, ahead of the Juneteenth holiday. The Homage Exhibit imparts an emotional and personal understanding of U.S. history. It’s owned by a Charlotte couple who began collecting 20 years ago.

Three buildings in the former Brooklyn neighborhood were reborn into the Brooklyn Collective where small businesses, nonprofits and local artists come together to serve the community.

Answers found at the future site of North Carolina Freedom Park could tell more local history not just from records of the landowning white men, but the enslaved African Americans who labored and lived there and the Native Americans who may have predated all of them on the site.

The Wake County Register of Deeds office, Shaw University and other professional and volunteer historians are now working to decipher more than 30 deed books that have been digitized and put online to glean information about enslaved people who lived in North Carolina. Similar work, begun as a three-year grant-funded project at UNC Greensboro and the North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, is underway in 26 North Carolina counties.

The history of African American cuisine has connections to Africa, and how it's translated to American tables is receiving a lot of attention in the media these days. Last month, Charlotte Five had "The Skillet: How Black Cuisine Became America's Supper." WFAE's "All Things Considered" host Gwendolyn Glenn speaks with the host of that series, Emiene Wright, about Black cuisine and how its finding a place of prominence.

Researchers at Johnson C. Smith University received grants to preserve records and histories from several former Black neighborhoods in Charlotte. Their end goal is a virtual reality experience created with historical photos and 3-D models where viewers can experience long-gone neighborhoods.

There’s a figure in African American history that we don’t hear about very much-- during Black History month, or any other time of the year-- who has had…

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is perhaps America’s most prominent black history scholar. In the last decade, his genealogical research has been…