‘Brooklyn will never die.’ City completes street renaming for historic Black community

About 60 years ago, a thriving Black community in Charlotte was destroyed as part of an “urban renewal” project approved in 1958.

For the thousands of displaced Brooklyn residents, memories were all that remained of their neighborhood.

Seven of those former residents joined Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles Thursday morning to celebrate renaming the former Stonewall Street — named for Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson — to Brooklyn Village Avenue in memory of their childhood homes.

Brooklyn Village Avenue is the last of nine streets in Charlotte renamed by the Legacy Commission, a group of historians, journalists and public officials formed in June 2020 to examine “street names, monuments and other markers” across the city that honored Confederate generals, slave owners and other white supremacists.

The street’s new name was announced in April and pays homage to the community, Brooklyn, that was razed during the 1960s and ‘70s. A city of Charlotte news release said 1,408 buildings were demolished and 1,007 families were displaced over that time.

The new street shares a name with a planned development project in the area that was once Brooklyn to “honor a past and a future,” said Charlotte historian Tom Hanchett.

“This project is something that we know is the right thing to do,” Lyles said. “It’s proof that we can look at ourselves, be critical of the mistakes of our past, and move forward in a different direction — a direction of inclusion.”

Hanchett said the commission identified Stonewall Avenue as one to be renamed after discovering it was named in honor of Jackson thanks to minutes from the June 26, 1869, City Council meeting.

“Some folks said, ‘Well, it’s just named after a stone wall,’” Hanchett said. “Folks looked into the City Council minutes and after the Civil War, as Reconstruction ended and the old guard took hold of the city again, they found a little note in the minutes ... that four new streets at the edge of town would receive names: Stonewall, Vance, Hill and Lee.”

Each of the streets was named after a Confederate general or politician, Hanchett said.

Also present Thursday were members of the Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation — graduates of Brooklyn’s Second Ward High School, demolished with the rest of the neighborhood. Foundation member Arthur Griffin said the renaming is especially emotional for members of the group fighting to preserve their community’s legacy.

“For almost 50 years this organization has been in existence trying not only to keep the memories of Second Ward alive, but also the Brooklyn community alive,” Griffin said. “Brooklyn was more than a place. Brooklyn was a lifestyle, an attitude. Brooklyn had a soul ... Second Ward was the lifeblood, it was like the River Nile for all of us who experienced that.”

Second Ward High alumna Martha Parks lived in Brooklyn for four years before its destruction. Parks said she’s proud to see it remembered as a thriving “city within a city.”

Lyles said she’s hopeful Charlotte can serve as a model for how a city can recognize its past and take responsibility for its mistakes in the present.

“Now (people outside of Charlotte) will see what the New South Charlotte can look like,” Lyles said. “We know that this represents positive change. We know that it represents the willingness to examine who we are and to move forward.”

Marlin Price, another Second Ward alumnus, said the street’s renaming is a guarantee to former residents Brooklyn will not be forgotten.

“Now we know that Brooklyn will never die,” Price said.