Second Ward alumni to mark 50th anniversary of school’s closure

In 1969, Charlotte’s first high school for African Americans was bulldozed.

Second Ward High School, which anchored the black neighborhood once known as Brooklyn, was supposed to be replaced with a newer structure — one community members were told they would help name and design.

But that never happened. Fifty years later, not much is left of the school beyond a plaque and the school’s former gymnasium.

On Saturday, Second Ward alumni will be reuniting in that gymnasium in an effort to commemorate the school’s destruction and preserve its history before it fades away, they say. The event will take place from 1 to 3 p.m.

“We want to continue the legacy of Second Ward,” said Ted Kenedy, who has chaired efforts to organize the reunion. “What we’re trying to do is to bring us up to date, to see what has transpired since the closing.”

Kenedy, who was part of the school’s last class of graduates in 1969, said that Second Ward is an especially notorious casualty of urban renewal in Charlotte because it served as the center of life in Brooklyn, what was then a thriving black neighborhood.

Despite, or perhaps because of, a history of segregation — before the school was built in 1923, blacks had to either head outside the city or go to church-run schools — Second Ward was wrapped into a tight-knit community.

“It was a family more than a school,” Kenedy said. “We don’t actually have a school, but we still try to stay together.”

Robert Parks, a 1966 graduate, said teachers often lived in the neighborhood, right beside students, and set high standards for those students to excel — including in the school’s longstanding rivalry with West Charlotte High School.

After broken promises about a new school, an alumni foundation has worked to preserve the school’s history, including the creation of a museum and archive.

“Everybody still believed we were going to get another Second Ward, and that’s something that we continue to work for,” Kenedy said.

This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 7:22 PM.