Second Ward vs. West Charlotte: How the Queen City Classic rivalry built lifelong bonds
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Carrying the legacy
Second Ward High School alums seek to preserve the history of Charlotte’s first Black high school.
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John Love is 79 years old, but he still talks about the old West Charlotte-Second Ward high school football rivalry as if it only happened last week.
For nearly 30 years, from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, the two proud all-Black schools played the Queen City Classic at Memorial Stadium in uptown Charlotte. Love remembers the parade preceding the game, the bragging rights that came after and the memories he still carries today — with a special kind of pride.
The game gave Black Charlotte something to call its own, Love said, something to look forward to — similar in the way folks look forward to seeing Beyoncé at Bank of America Stadium today.
“It was the game for the city of Charlotte during that time,” said Love, who was West Charlotte’s trainer from 1959-62 when he was a student. “It was ‘the rivalry.’ Man, it was an event. The first Classic I went to was in 1956. Second Ward beat us good.”
Back then, Love lived on Vinton Street in west Charlotte and set to attend the high school in 1955. Aside from one time when his father said to him “ ‘You ain’t going anywhere tonight,’ ” Love said, he never missed a game.
Second Ward, which opened in 1923, was Charlotte’s first all-Black high school.
The school drew notable figures: Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, once spoke at a night school, Carver College, that was run on the school’s uptown campus.
In 1963, the same year Second Ward won a football state championship — and six years before the school closed — Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the graduating class during commencement.
West Charlotte, another all-Black school, opened in 1938. In the ‘70s, it would become a model for national integration. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the school featured one of the southeast’s top academic and overall athletic programs, as well as being the launching pad for Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE). The program now has nearly 2,000 chapters in 46 states and in 1992 received the 875th Daily Point of Light Award from President George Bush.
The Queen City Classic
But before all of that, there was The Classic.
“As a kid,” said 78-year-old Willie Holmes, “just going to see all the people, the whole neighborhoods, that would come out was incredible. I came to Second Ward in eighth grade and I didn’t play. I was in the band, but, man, I couldn’t wait until I got out there on that field. I mean, the stadium was full and everybody was there.”
Holmes ultimately became a star in the Queen City Classic, eventually landing at North Carolina A&T. Over the years, a Who’s Who of players from that time played in the game. They include Jimmy Lee Kirkpatrick, who later transferred from Second Ward to Myers Park and now has a signature football award from the Charlotte Sports Foundation named in his honor.
In 1966, West Charlotte’s Titus Ivory joined Sylva-Webster running back Tommy Love as the first Black players to ever play in the N.C.-S.C. Shrine Bowl all-star football game.
“There were a lot of talented guys that came through,” Holmes said. “And that rivalry between the schools was something. A lot of those guys went off to college and got scholarships. It was a tremendous thing.”
Former rivals find best friends
About 13 years ago, a small group of Queen City Classic alums started a breakfast club that met every Thursday at the House of Prayer near Garinger High School. It started with nine members and before the pandemic hit in 2020, had been drawing more than 50.
Nowadays, about 30 guys meet each week at the House of Prayer near Garinger High School. They still talk a little trash about the old days but they’ve also turned the Breakfast Club into a social group. The former rivals turn lifelong friends, organize programs to give away thousands in scholarships annually to West Charlotte students and nominees from the Second Ward side that attend other schools.
On Labor Day weekend this year, hundreds of Second Ward graduates are expected to attend the school’s 100-year anniversary reunion at the Sheraton Hotel in uptown, which sits roughly on the same land Second Ward once did.
Second Ward didn’t have a football field. The players lugged their tackling dummies and practice gear about a half mile each way to a nearby Pearl Street Park. They played most home games at West Charlotte’s field. Everybody looked ahead to the final week of the regular-season when Charlotte’s two top Black schools would meet at Memorial Stadium.
“Sometimes, when we meet (at the Breakfast Club), those guys from ‘63 will have their (state championship) jackets and talk about that year,” Love said. ”I tell them, go check the records and see how many classics we won. We won more.”
The memories from those days never grow old.
“One of the things for us,” Holmes said, “was looking at the older guys who played before us and how they would come back and help out and that helped make the game so prestigious.
“It’s like, ‘You gotta win this one.’ And now we’ve got this breakfast club where we can all get together and be friends. That’s what’s amazing. In some of your rivals, we find some of (our) best friends.”
This story was originally published April 27, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
