Charlotte library program aims to tell Brooklyn’s story

What’s happening: The library’s Community Read, an annual program designed to spark discussion on current topics, runs through March, and the featured title is “Tomorrow’s Bread,” a novel by Charlotte native Anna Jean Mayhew.

• The characters in the novel are fictional, but it is based on the real history of Brooklyn, once the largest Black neighborhood in Charlotte.
• The city tore it down in the 1960s and ’70s through the federal urban renewal program, which removed Black residents from valuable land near downtown areas nationwide.

Why it matters: The destruction of nearly 1,500 structures and displacement of over 1,000 families produced a ripple effect on Charlotte’s Black community that is felt to this day.

Context: The former Brooklyn site is now valuable land Uptown, near the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Marshall Park and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.

• Mecklenburg County is working with developer BK Partners on plans to revamp 17 acres in the former Brooklyn neighborhood. It will include offices, shops, hotel rooms and homes.

What they’re saying: Community leaders say gentrification is having the same impact as urban renewal on historically Black communities.

• “What is the line between urban renewal and urban removal?” Darrell Anderson, a spokesperson for the library, tells Axios. “That’s really what we’re really trying to explore there.”

How to participate: The program runs all month, and the library will host an event with Mayhew on March 23.

• There are also books selected for youth exploring similar themes.
• Visit the program’s website for more info.