Former community leader and brother of a Charlotte civil right leader dies

Howard Algernon Counts, a devoted family man, community leader, IT wizard and spectator to one of Charlotte’s biggest racial equality fights died June 20. He was 75.

Given his natural inclination toward math and science, it’s no wonder, family members say, that Counts became a math and computer specialist, starting at IBM in 1969 and teaching at and directing a computer center at the University of Georgia in 1973.

Later, he served as the chief information officer for Celanese Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, where Counts was the highest-ranking minority employee.

And given his lifelong disposition for loyalty, it’s no wonder, family members said, that Counts remained devoted to his community and family, even though his home city was once at odds with his loved ones.

“He was probably the fairest person that I have ever known,” his wife Stephanie, 72, said.

‘A genius in math’

Even as a child, Counts was a thinker, family members said. Hand him a problem, and he’d solve it, humbly.

His intellect got him into one of the country’s top prep schools, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, a feat almost unheard of for a Black student in the 1960s.

He went on to graduate from West Charlotte High School and to get a mathematics degree from Johnson C. Smith University, the campus where Counts lived for the first 12 years of his life.

Counts father, Herman Counts Sr., was a professor at the Charlotte university. He was also the pastor of two rural churches in the area. That’s how Counts met Stephanie.

Stephanie lived in New Jersey but visited her grandmother in Concord. She attended one of Herman’s churches.

The rest, as they say, is history.

They married in 1969 and moved up and down the East Coast together as Counts’ career in IT took off.

And Counts supported Stephanie, first as a teacher (he would help design artwork for her classroom) then as a principal (Stephanie was named North Carolina Principal of the Year in 1991 and National Principal of the Year later) and finally as a co-founder of the nonprofit group Women’s Inter-Cultural Exchange.

Counts was the group’s de facto finance and IT person, roles he also held for the Memorial Presbyterian Church for more than 20 years.

“It was amazing that no matter what I did, he was always there,” Stephanie Counts said. “We were always working side-by-side.”

Wrote one friend in a text to Stephanie after Howard died: “Indeed, when we think of Howard Counts, we think of ‘Howard and Stephanie.’ Inseparable in love, and always busy doing the work of community-minded business leaders, serving mankind and empowering people.”

Integration in Charlotte

Counts got a behind-the-scenes look at an empowering movement in 1957.

Howard was 10 years old when his sister, Dorothy, was among the first Black students to attend Harry Harding High School, now Harding University High School. Dorothy, or “Dot,” as Howard called her, was 15.

Her white classmates screamed at her, threw ice at her and spat on her yellow-and-blue dress, the Observer previously reported. Teachers simply ignored her.

After a few days, Dorothy’s parents pulled her from Harding.

As a youngster, Howard never talked to Dorothy about the racism she endured. That’s not a surprise, she said. Howard was the youngest of her three brothers, and he liked to think though problems, by himself, quietly.

But, she said, Howard became her protector later in life.

He drove Dorothy, 80, to the doctor’s, fixed things around her house and, of course, answered her computer questions.

When she got an award for her bravery as a teenager or gave a presentation about her time at Harding, Howard was there.

“He would say to me, ‘Dot, I’m proud of you. I’m really proud of you.’” she said. “As I was proud of him.”