From slave owner to civil rights icon: Chambers High officially gets a new name
READ MORE
Name changes in Charlotte
Righting past wrongs and honoring civil rights heroes: Increasingly, local leaders are examining the history of Charlotte and choosing to rename some streets and buildings, including schools.
Expand All
Josh Vaughn sat quietly near the back of the auditorium at Charlotte’s Julius L. Chambers High School, a new football helmet with a new logo on his lap.
“I feel good about this,” said the 17-year-old football player for the Cougars. “My senior year, and a school name change to someone who fought for us in North Carolina. It’s really good.”
Vaughn was one of dozens of people who attended the official renaming ceremony Wednesday for Julius L. Chambers High School. The event drew dignitaries from across the city and state, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board and City Council members, CMS Superintendent Earnest Winston and U.S. Rep. Alma Adams.
“Thank you for honoring this African-American pillar of our community,” Adams told the crowd.
The CMS board unanimously voted last fall to change the school’s name to recognize Chambers, a civil rights icon and Charlotte attorney whose legal work led to the desegregation of the district in the 1970s.
The school was originally named for Zebulon B. Vance, who was a Confederate military captain and later a senator and the governor of North Carolina in the 1800s. Vance also owned slaves and, after the Civil War, continued to attempt to keep Black citizens from voting.
“Today is a celebration of progress,” school leader Erik Turner said. “I’m honored to be the first principal of Julius L. Chambers High.”
Turner earned his first degree from North Carolina Central University, where Chambers served as chancellor.
“Who would’ve known I would be serving in a school of his namesake?”
Chambers founded the first racially integrated law firm in the state and took eight cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, winning all eight. He is credited with winning the landmark case, Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, that federally mandated school busing, bringing about racial integration in schools here and throughout the country.
He died in 2013. District officials called the school’s name change honoring Chambers’ legacy long overdue.
“Today is historic for this school, this district and Charlotte,” Winston said.
Several of Chambers’ family members were in attendance, including his son Derrick Chambers, who encouraged current students to read up on his father, who he said was a “humble man” whose “actions spoke for him.”
When the phone call came saying CMS would name the high school after his father, he responded, “ ‘Thank you and go for it,’ ” Derrick Chambers said. “We honor this quiet giant of civil rights.”
The ceremony Wednesday included an unveiling of the new caps and gowns that seniors will wear for the 2022 graduation ceremony.
While community members remembered Chambers, the high school’s gym floor continued to undergo a facelift — the words “Z.B. Vance” were getting set to be erased.
“It’s great,” said Nailah King, a freshman who donned the new cap and gown during the unveiling. “The person before whose name was on this school had a bad history. Now, we have someone who helped us.”
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 1:11 PM.
