Celebrating West Charlotte High School’s legacy

What’s happening: Alumni and community members will gather at West Charlotte High on April 30 from 9am until 5pm for “Celebration of Lion Pride Day: Remembering the past, Honoring the present and Roaring into the future.” The event will honor the school building that has been home since 1954, ahead of the West Charlotte’s move into a new building on the same site this fall.

• The day will include vendors, food trucks and speakers, such as alumni Rep. Kelly Alexander, Jr., who represents District 107 in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He will speak around noon.
• “I lived like, what 40 feet from the edge the campus, and still do,” Alexander, a 1966 graduate who taught there in the 1970s, told me. “I’ve watched the evolution of the school basically throughout my lifetime.”

Why it matters: For West Charlotte alumni and community members it’s a reminder of everything the city once strived to be — progressive, inclusive and full of promise.

Between the lines: Alumni described their teachers during segregation as “overqualified,” and Charlotte later became the model for how to use bussing to integrate schools nationwide.

• “It was a great experience for me at a very segregated time,” Gerald Johnson, a 1965 graduate and publisher of The Charlotte Post, told me. His older brother and co-publisher of the Black newspaper, Bob Johnson, graduated from West Charlotte in 1957.
• “We had the best of the best teachers, because they were just overqualified teachers, who, because they were African Americans, couldn’t get a job in the profession that they could have done in this day,” Johnson said.

• They give back to their alma mater through The Charlotte Post Foundation’s Top Senior program, which annually recognizes academic excellence in Black students across Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Flashback: West Charlotte, affectionately known as DubC, opened in 1938 at what is now Northwest School of the Arts (1415 Beatties Ford Road).

• In 1954 West Charlotte moved into 2219 Senior Drive, seeing renovations during its nearly 70-year history.

What’s next: While the building may change, the address remains the same, with the new school sitting further back on the property. The new school is nearly done, and teachers have their room assignments.

• West Charlotte Principal Donevin Hoskins told me they plan to offer multiple open houses before the first day of school, which is Aug. 29. 
• Demolition of the current building is expected this summer or fall. The site will become athletic fields and parking. It’s expected to be complete by fall 2023.
• “With progress requires some sacrifice,” Hoskins, who has been West Charlotte’s principal since 2019, and was previously Olympic High School’s principal in the early 2000s.

More than 1,100 people have expressed interest in attending Saturday’s event. Learn more here.

Worthy of your time: West Charlotte’s basketball team won the 3A North Carolina state title in March, but the school doesn’t have the $28,000 necessary to purchase championship rings for the players. A group of alumni stepped in, raising $16,000 so far. They hope to raise the remaining $12,000 by May 2.

• Donations are not being accepted online, but checks may be made out to West Charlotte High School with a memo that the donation is for the basketball team’s rings.
• “As a basketball player who never got to that level, I’m just proud of them,” former Charlotte City Council member James “Smuggie” Mitchell told me, adding when he played basketball there, West Charlotte was everybody’s big game.

Mitchell is usually the first person in a crowd to shout “DubC”, which is met with a resounding “you know!” and told me “school spirit” best describes his experience at West Charlotte during the early days of integration.

• He was one of many students who experienced the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, which as Axios’ Michael Graff wrote, “made Charlotte the birthplace of using buses to desegregate schools” in 1971. 
• “Everyone was there to prove a point that your skin color was not a determination for how successful you could be in the classroom,” Mitchell said.

Zoom out: West Charlotte started as a Black high school, and because Black schools weren’t funded equally compared to their white counterparts, communities had to fill the void. The school was a beacon during segregation.

• “Many Black high schools across the South ended up closing or being turned into junior high schools,” Historian Pamela Grundy, author of “Color and Character, West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Education Equality,” told me.
• Second Ward High School, a Black high school in Brooklyn, closed because of urban renewal, through which the city razed the largest Black neighborhood at the time. Urban renewal displaced 1,007 families and demolished 1,408 buildings during the 1960s and ’70s, according to the city of Charlotte.

The closure of Black high schools wasn’t just a Charlotte phenomenon. It happened all over the country, and schools that were able to remain open, like West Charlotte, had to fight to do so, Grundy added. West Charlotte later became a model of successful integration when students were bused in from other parts of the city.

• “It was just a place where students felt like they belonged,” Grundy said. “They were cared for, and they were able to succeed.”

Other notable West Charlotte alumni include:

Thereasea Clark Elder, who became Mecklenburg County’s first Black public health nurse in 1962. She died in 2021 at age 93.

Anthony Foxx, former United States Secretary of Transportation and Charlotte Mayor.

• Steve Wilks, Carolina Panthers defensive pass game coordinator and secondary coach.
• Mo Collins, former NFL player who came back to coach football at West Charlotte. He died in 2014.
• Kennedy Meeks, became the first West Charlotte alumnus to win an NCAA championship in 2017 with North Carolina. He went on to play professional basketball.
• Pettis Norman, former NFL player.
• Pep Hamilton, Houston Texans offensvie coordinator.
• Everett Withers, college and NFL coach.
• Patrick Williams, who plays for the Chicago Bulls.
• Dave Waymer, former NFL player. He died in 1993.
• Anne Tompkins, former U.S. Attorney for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. 
• Mike Sprayberry, NC’s Director of Emergency Management. 
• Wali Rainer, former NFL player.
• Jeff McInnis, the former Charlotte Bobcats player transferred from West Charlotte to Oak Hill.
• Keith Belton, former NFL player.
• Calvin Brock, former boxer.