Charlotte Mecklenburg Library

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History Timeline

1958 - I-85

The first section of Interstate 85 opens in Mecklenburg County. The super-highway will link the Charlotte to Atlanta, Durham, and other important business centers. By the time construction begins on Interstate 77, the Queen City's future as a fast-growing economic hub will be assured.

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1961 - Mayor Brookshire

May 8, 1961 - Charlotte businessman and journalist Stanford R. Brookshire begins his first of four terms as mayor. He will lead Charlotte through desegregation and preside over the re-development of downtown. Brookshire will be recognized nationally for his efforts and will serve as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson. 

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1960 - Students Protest

February 9, 1960

Black students from Johnson C. Smith University join their fellow protesters from Greensboro when they, too, sit down at a whites only lunch counter at Charlotte's Kress store. Mayor James Smith responds by forming a committee to solve the problems of segregation. Soon, lunch counters will be integrated.

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1959 - JFK visits Charlotte

January 15, 1959 - Senator John F. Kennedy gives the keynote speech at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce annual dinner. He has visited Charlotte before. In 1940, he attended a wedding at the Duke mansion in Myers Park. Kennedy will make a campaign stop in the Queen City next year, then will be elected president. 

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1973 - Long Ride Home

Many Charlotte-Mecklenburg students must endure long bus rides to faraway schools. Even people who support busing to achieve integration are frustrated. Slowly, blacks and whites begin to talk to each other constructively and ask questions. What does or doesn't work? What are our similarities? What can we change? What is fair?

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1957 - The Right to Vote

August 29, 1957 - President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits interfering with any American's right to vote. But not everyone supports the law that ultimately empowers blacks. South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond speaks against the Civil Rights Act for a record-breaking 24 hours!

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August 29, 1957

1959 - Bishop Daddy Grace

September 13, 1959  - Thousands of worshipers from the eastern U.S. take to the streets as the Daddy Grace parade makes its way through Charlotte's largest black neighborhood, Second Ward. Always held on the second Sunday in September, the parade honors Bishop C.M. Sweet Daddy Grace, the founder of the United House of Prayer for All People. Many believers find salvation and come forward at the church's mass baptisms. 

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1961 - Struggle for Equality

May 8, 1961 - The Freedom Riders are a group of civil rights workers traveling the South to challenge the system that separate people according to race, called segregation. In Charlotte, a black Freedom Rider named Joe Perkins tries to get for a shoe-shine from the bus station's white only barber shop. Perkins is jailed! This is only the first of numerous arrests the Freedom Riders will endure in their quest

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1957 - Children Lead

September 4, 1957  - Today, four brave, young black people will test the new laws against school segregation. As the nation watches, these desegregation pioneers arrive at four of Charlotte's all-white schools. The crowds who have gathered are angry. In the tense days that follow, people throw things at Dorothy Counts. They call Gus Roberts names. They shun Delois Huntley and Gus Roberts' little sister, Girvaud. Of the four, only Gus Roberts will stay long enough to graduate. 

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September 4, 1957

1949 - Television

July 15, 1949 - Charlotte's WBTV takes to the airwaves and becomes the first television station in the Carolinas. By 1967, there will be four other television stations: WSOC, WCCB, WTVI, and WCNC. 

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