From Brooklyn To Beatties Ford, This Is Our Sankofa Moment

In the native tongue of the Akan people of Ghana, the word Sankofa means “go back and get it.” It’s meant to always remind people of the importance of reaching back to the past for knowledge gained, in order to make progress in the present. That’s why it’s so important to fight for and preserve our history, while the outside world is so hellbent on gentrifying and burying it.

Most native Charlotteans are familiar with the historically Black heritage and legacy of the Beatties Ford Road corridor. It is widely considered ‘the heart’ of Charlotte’s African-American community. From Johnson C. Smith and West Charlotte, to the old school West Fest, Hornet’s Nest Park and the famous Nikki’s salad— chances are, if you’re Black and from Charlotte, you know about ‘The Ford.’ 

With so many people moving to Charlotte on a daily basis, there are probably more residents that learned of the neighborhood through tragic incidents like the protests turned riots by outside provocateurs, and the Juneteenth weekend shootings that never got solved.

What many of us may not know about, are the recently revealed plans to ‘revitalize’ the corridor as part of a plan spearheaded by Charlotte Center City Partners.

On September 9th of this year, it was reported that there are 11 development plans along the Beatties Ford/Rozzelles Ferry Corridor that are expected to break ground or be completed by the end of the year. Under the banner of ‘urban revitalization’ and the notion of making ‘economic investments’ and ‘small business developments,’ this definitely sounds interesting and perhaps even overdue. The problem is, we’ve seen this same song and dance over and over again.

Decade after decade, Black Charlotteans have watched their neighborhoods, businesses and livelihoods steadily decline as the city has literally paved the way for outside developers to run roughshod from zip code to zip code.

How are we not supposed to think this is going to be different?

There is a segment of Charlotte’s history that so often gets lost in the glow of the luxury Lynx line apartments, dog groomers and Lime scooters, yet the story is so eerily similar to what’s being proposed today for Beatties Ford. It’s the history of Charlotte’s largest and proudest Black neighborhood, Brooklyn, encompassing the entire area of what is now Second Ward in Uptown Charlotte. 

With records of its beginnings dating back as early as 1865, the people of Brooklyn quite literally created the city’s best lemonade with the tons of lemons afforded to them. Eventually giving birth to, and being led by great stalwarts like J.T. Williams (yes, that J.T. Williams) and Thaddeus Tate— Black people in Charlotte established their own schools, churches, libraries, hospitals, entertainment venues and jobs in the faces of their white counterparts who historically have never intended to help uplift Black communities.

A little over 70 years later in 1937, neighborhood assessments began for home loan corporations. As if right on cue, the Brooklyn neighborhood received the lowest rating as “undesirable,” and plans swiftly moved to ‘revitalize’ the area to spur ‘economic development’. 

Alexa, play Sunshine Anderson “Heard it all before”…

In 1944, the City of Charlotte announced “The Independence Boulevard” project (and they just now got that right, smh) that would cut right through the Brooklyn neighborhood with Federal support. 

That would begin a series of “urban renewal” initiatives that displaced thousands of Black Charlotteans, leveled over 1,400 buildings, cleared 263 acres of land and destroyed over 200 Black-owned businesses.

That’s 33 years of ‘revitalization’ and ‘economic development’ that did not include the Black residents of that community. Coincidentally, a good portion of Brooklyn’s displaced residents eventually settled in northwestern Charlotte, along the Beatties Ford corridor. The same exact corridor undergoing a new urban renewal initiative today.

The point is, we can’t allow the past to repeat itself.

“This is our Sankofa moment,” Mrs. Doris Boyd, former Brooklyn resident and Charlotte historian told The Block.

We must embrace this moment, and learn from the past, which is the exact aim of The Brooklyn Collective.

On the corner of 3rd St. and Brevard stands what remains of the old Brooklyn neighborhood. A hand-built monument to Black sustainability in the Mecklenburg Investment Company Building, The Studio @ 229 and The Grace AME Zion Church. Purchased by a private investment group with the aim to restore and preserve the legacy of the Brooklyn neighborhood, The Brooklyn Collective is proudly managed by Kevin and Monique Douglas, with the mission of providing a home base for Black creatives and small business owners in Charlotte.

With 2 floors of office space, a coffee shop/art gallery, bar and lounge, photography studio, and a 100-year church turned large venue space— The Brooklyn Collective is undoubtedly the most unique piece of Black history still standing in the shadows of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Spectrum Arena.

And it deserves our support, along with the preservation of Beatties Ford’s legacy.

We must learn from our past or we are doomed to repeat it. All of the signs are in place for the same things to happen to Beatties Ford, that happened to Brooklyn, and we can’t allow that to happen. Black history is Charlotte history, regardless of how you may feel individually about race relations. The sordid past behind the way Black people have been disenfranchised is not conjecture. It is very real, still very present and deserves all hands on deck to ultimately turn the tide.

It’s up to us to take the knowledge we’ve gained from 1865 to 1977, and bring it forward to 2020 and beyond.

This is our Sankofa moment.

For more information on the Beatties Ford/Five Points Corridor Projects click here. For more information on The Brooklyn Collective, visit www.makeitcharlotte.com.