of Charlotte.” They promised an event of Biblical proportions – “the largest Barbecue that has been given since the flood.”2 Nearly 20,000 people heeded the call, coming to eat, dance, hear speeches, view fireworks and take in what the local paper called “the most brilliant and glorious day that the history of Charlotte has furnished for seventy-odd years.”3 Little of the ensuing prosperity, however, would trickle down to the people who did the hardest work. Across the South, railroads were built by Black men and women whose freedom had been stolen. They cleared trees, dug and blasted rocks, shoveled dirt and gravel, battled rushing water to build bridge piers, constructed depots, cooked and cleaned. They built Charlotte and the South. Their labor brought most of them little in return. Most local histories, even today, describe Charlotte as shaped by hardworking Scots-Irish Presbyterians, whose thrift and independence helped fuel the American Revolution and laid the foundation for an industrial boom. Numbers tell a different story. In 1850, almost half of Charlotte’s residents – 47 percent – could trace their ancestry to Africa. The vast majority were enslaved. The stories of these Black residents and their descendants mingle strength and hardship, accomplishment and setback, joy and pain. Kidnapped from their homelands, imprisoned in a system that cast them as less than fully human, they nonetheless endured, bonding with each other, looking out for opportunity and building resilient, supportive cultures. Through slavery, through war, through Jim Crow segregation and into the 21st century, Black residents from all walks of life have played essential roles in making Charlotte the city it is today, doing much with little and rarely getting full credit for their contributions. Everyone in Charlotte needs to know their stories.
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