Charlotte Mecklenburg Library

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Turbulent Times 1960-1979

1971 - Nixon and Graham

October 15, 1971 - President Richard Nixon visits the Queen City to help honor native Charlottean Reverend Billy Graham. The event becomes even more famous for the actions of officers, called the Secret Service, who protect the president. The Secret Service keeps out some men with long hair, because the officers suspect the men are activists, people who speak out against U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

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1965 - Dangerous Times

November 22, 1965Eight-year-old Kelly Alexander, Jr. lies asleep in his bed. Kelly's father has been working to obtain the same rights for black Americans that whites enjoy. But on this night, a bomb explodes in Kelly Jr.'s bedroom and in the homes of three other Charlotte civil rights workers. The victims are the families of Julius Chambers, Reginald Hawkins, Fred Alexander and his brother, Kelly Alexander, Sr. Miraculously, no one is killed. No one will be arrested for these crimes. House destroyed by fire

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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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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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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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1974 - Citizens Pull Together

The school board has failed to devise an acceptable busing plan, but the Citizens' Advisory Group has their own ideas. These parents, educators and concerned citizens have met many times. They convince the skeptics that their strategy can work. Now, they present their plan to Judge McMillan. He accepts the plan.

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1962 - Lake Norman

March 4, 1962  - Water trickles into a lake bed that has been dug along the Catawba River. By the time the dam is completed at a river crossing called Cowan's Ford in May, Lake Norman will be on its way to becoming North Carolina's largest man-made lake. It has been designed to provide water power that helps generate electricity for Mecklenburg County. In the future, homes and recreational areas be developed along Lake Norman. 

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1974 - Leading the Way on School Integration

October 15, 1974 - Nationally, Charlotte becomes known as the city that made integration work. School children write letters to Boston's newspaper, the Globe, and share their stories. After the letters appear in the Globe, the children are invited to visit Boston, a city still grappling with the problems of integration. 

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1963 - MLK in Charlotte

May 31, 1963 - A young, energetic black preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks in Charlotte to a gathering of six black high schools. Just 10 days earlier, Johnson C. Smith University students marched downtown to protest segregation, laws that separate people according to race. Black and white civic leaders responded to the protest by agreeing to have lunch together. Dr. King commends the solution that has begun to chip away at segregation in Charlotte's public places.

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