Hoyle Martin strongly held his beliefs, and was never afraid to share them

Hoyle Martin Sr. never shied from offering his opinion.

Not as an editorial writer for the Charlotte Post. Not as a Democrat on Charlotte’s City Council and later Mecklenburg’s board of county commissioners.

Those opinions, particularly about the LGBTQ community, made Martin not only a maverick in his party but a lightning rod during a 1997 uproar that landed Charlotte in national headlines.

Martin, 93, died July 26. A funeral service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Aug. 15 at Parkwood CME Church.

Martin was a three-term City Council member when he lost the 1995 mayoral race to Republican and fellow councilman Pat McCrory. He was no stranger to controversy. But it was in 1997, after being elected to the county board, that he found his greatest notoriety.

Upset over a local production of “Angels in America,” a play about homosexuality in America in the 1980s, Martin joined the board’s four Republicans in voting to cut the county’s $2 million in funding for the arts. They became known as the “Gang of Five.” The controversy drew national attention to a city aspiring to be “world-class.”

Though affable in person, Martin had a history of homophobic comments. In 1995 he said Charlotte threatened to become “The Sodom and Gomorrah capital of the East Coast.” And speaking of gay people a year later, he told an Observer reporter, “If I had my way, we’d shove these people off the face of the earth.”

The late Democratic commissioner Jim Richardson, Martin’s predecessor, called Martin’s statements “mean-spirited.”

But Martin was unapologetic.

“Well, I can’t be sorry for what I say and what I am,” he told a reporter in 1997. “God made me what I am. So I have to speak my mind as I see it.’‘

The same year he sided with the Gang of Five he bucked fellow Democrats by voting to oust Democrat Parks Helms as chair of the commission in favor of a Republican.

“A lot of people did not forgive him for either of those (decisions),” says Charlotte Post Editor Herb White. “But I think especially with the Gang of Five. As a Democrat he was expected to toe the line, but as a Christian and a Black man he thought it was better to swing with (Republican) Bill James and that crowd, at least on that occasion.”

‘Not toeing anybody’s line’

Martin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1927. At 16, he dropped out of vocational high school and went to work as an apprentice machinist. Then it was on to the Merchant Marine and later the Army, where he finished high school and met his wife, Mary, while at Fort Bragg. He later earned a degree from Columbia’s Benedict College and a master’s from Syracuse University.

After coming to Charlotte, he ran a federal job training program and in 1968 began teaching economics at UNC Charlotte. From 1977 until 1989, he was the City of Charlotte’s housing development manager. He wrote for The Post as a second job.

His political career ended in 1998, when he tried and failed to get elected to the county commission as an independent.

Soon he had a new job: a teacher at New Life Theological Seminary — a small school that shared space with a Baptist church.

Faith was always important to Martin. Hand-lettered Bible verses used to hang on his kitchen wall. His spiritual life included stints as a Methodist, Christian Scientist, Episcopalian and Seventh-day Adventist, where he occasionally preached from the pulpit.

Martin never stopped confounding people with his opinions.

“The way I remember him is he couldn’t be neatly labeled,” says White. “And I think in a way that’s what frustrated people who thought he was politically their friend ….

“That in itself is a very good barometer of the kind of man he was. He wasn’t going to toe anybody’s line just for the sake of toeing.”

This story was originally published August 8, 2021 at 10:06 AM.