This photograph of the Friday Evening Social Club was taken about 1907. The members were schoolteachers at the Myers Street School.
LAURA M. BOOTON
“Have you heard of the Leaf Social? It will be given at Varick Hall, Friday night, Jan 29. Come and see the leaves matched.”
Special announcement from the Star of Zion, January 28, 1897
Car advertising an appearance by Bishop C. M. Grace at the United House of Prayer for all People.
PLCMC.
“The main contribution of the church was to tell young people, 'You are somebody, you can be somebody.' Through the youth organizations, the church challenged young people to develop to their highest potential.”
The Reverend Curtis Kearns
Charlotte doctors who served in the Howard University ROTC, c. 1920.
Left to right: W. E. Hill, Russell Lewis, Hobart T. Allen, Lawrence McCrorey, J. N. Seabrooks, R. M. Wyche, Connie Jenkins.
CAROLYN WYCHE.
The Afro-American newspaper carriers, 1933. Seated: Ray A Booton. Standing, left to right: Eddie Spears, Edna Cathey, David Smith, William Cathey, Gerson Stroud, Addison Yongue, John Spears, Mrs. Martha Yongue Johnson, Reginald Wright.
"I taught all my children to work, but I gave them plenty of time to play. I saw to it that they learned the art of working and the importance of work."
The Library at Morgan School in the Cherry Community, c.1925
"Unless you take interest in young people, train them and help them to be first-class citizens, you have nobody to take your place when you pass into the great beyond."
Kelly M. Alexander, Sr.
The Kirkpatrick family on the porch of their farmhouse, c.1910
From The Samuel Kirkpatrick Family by Addie Pettice and Josephine Wade
CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG LIBRARY
"Our home was never a fine one from the sense of size or appointments, but it was a roomy, old-fashioned house with a big porch around it, and the home was filled with children and a good Mother's love."
Rose Leary Love
This is a special project of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in celebration of the Library's centennial year. It addresses a long-standing need to record and preserve the visual history of the African American Community.
The project has stimulated the collection and preservation of photographs depicting family life, work sites, schools, churches, neighborhoods and events which illustrate the African American heritage of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in the years before 1950.
One of the most important agencies for maintaining cohesion and rendering social welfare was the church. In slavery, the church played a vital role in attending to the spiritual and social needs of slaves as well as aided in the successful escape of slaves to freedom. The institution of Jim Crow laws in the post Civil War era necessitated continuing the tradition of uplift and protest. Churches established or supported homes for the aged and for orphans in addition to organizing day nurseries, kindergartens, gymnasiums and social and literary clubs.
