A model of Southern grace, Ann Wood also was a ‘warrior’ for women’s rights

Ann Wood always was a living testament to what her family steadfastly preached: “Put your body into battle.”

During the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, Wood marched in uptown Charlotte to integrate lunch counters. She was arrested for her activism.

More than 40 years later, Wood rode the bus to Raleigh numerous times to walk with Rev. William Barber Jr. in his Moral Monday demonstrations. She was regularly ejected from the North Carolina State Legislative Building.

Wood died May 16. She was 94.

“I knew her as a mentor,” Elyse Dashew, chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ board, said of Wood, “and a really, really smart, tough and lovely person.”

Or, in the words of Charlotte’s chapter of the National Organization for Women: a “bad-ass.”

“Ann Wood served on the Charlotte NOW Board for many years,” the organization wrote on its Facebook page. “She was a warrior for human rights and women’s rights. There will never be another Ann Wood — fun, witty and wise. I only wish we could all be half as ‘bad-ass’ as she was.”

A celebration of life service for Wood will be held at 1 p.m. July 22 at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church in Charlotte.

An activist and supporter

Dashew, who was elected as an at-large member of the CMS board in 2015 and reelected in 2019, turned to Wood in 2011 when she was first thinking of running for school board. Wood served as a guide and supporter for a lot of women who got involved in local politics, Dashew said.

“She really supported me to be independent and follow my own conscious and my own instincts,” Dashew said. “And she told me to be true to myself.”

Wood was a well-known activist and supporter of progressive issues, according to a passage the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library digital branch publication on Women of the Movement: Unsung Heroines.

She began her public service when the CMS board was designing its first busing plans following the 1971 Swann decision, which allowed public schools to bus students of difference races to integrate schools.

“She was one of the most vocal opponents to the early plans which were blatantly unfair to minority and low-income neighborhoods,” library officials wrote. “Those activities propelled her into numerous advocacy projects and leadership positions in the League of Women Voters of Charlotte Mecklenburg, ACLU, National Organization for Women and the Democratic Party, among others.”

Wood joined the League of Women Voters of Charlotte Mecklenburg in 1958, and was honored with their Lifetime Member award. The Democratic Women of Mecklenburg County honored Wood with the Doris Cromartie Award in 2019.

Wood launched the Charlotte chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and sat on its board as treasurer.

“She was irrepressible, that’s how I would describe her,” Dashew said.

Wood’s charm and wit

Lisa Ellsworth, chair of the 14th Congressional District for the NC Democratic Party, nominated Wood to the state-level Democratic Woman of the Year award in 2016.

Wood, who would’ve been 95 in July, wasn’t chosen that year. But in her nomination, Ellsworth called Wood a model of “Southern grace and hospitality.”

“Her charm and wit are matched by her sharp intellect and formidable backbone” Ellsworth said. “When Ann Wood throws one of her many fundraisers, people sit up and take notice – and they make sure to be there.”

Wood was born in Greenwood, South Carolina, and instrumental in establishing and supporting a number of charitable causes for women and children over the years. Those organizations include The Relatives, a center for troubled teenagers, Council for Children’s Rights and Women’s Alternative to Incarceration Residence, Ellsworth said.

Wood was the owner/operator of HVAC manufacturing business Addchek Coils, Inc. for 37 years. Ellsworth said Wood was the only woman in the industry when she started the business.

Wood and her husband Bill, who died in 1989, had five children.

The family, Dashew said, helped integrate schools in Charlotte. Wood’s two youngest children were part of the first group of white children to attend previously all Black schools.

Dashew remembers going to Wood’s house on Providence Road throughout the years.

“She had the best — prime real estate for yard signs,” Dashew said, laughing. “Everyone wanted to put an election sign in her yard because 1,000 people would see it.”

‘Why wouldn’t you vote?’

Wood was 92 when WSOC-TV, The Charlotte Observer’s news partner, interviewed her on the first day of in-person voting in October 2020. She was at the front of a long car line, waiting to cast her vote.

She told the station she hadn’t missed an election since she was 18. Voting, she believed, was one of the most important rights Americans should exercise.

“I’d like to see more people remember that every bite they eat, every drink they consume is controlled by politics,” she told WSOC. “Thinking about it that way, why wouldn’t you vote?”