PHOTO | DAVID FLOWER

Charlotte and Mecklenburg County officials joined former residents of the Brooklyn community last week for the unveiling of Brooklyn Village Avenue, which pays homage to the Second Ward neighborhood. Brooklyn Village Avenue replaces Stonewall Street, named in honor of confederate leader Stonewall Jackson.

Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood has a permanent marker to its history and legacy.

City officials last week unveiled the new Brooklyn Village Avenue street sign, the final renaming of thoroughfares that honored confederate soldiers, slaveowners and segregationists.

Brooklyn Village Avenue replaces Stonewall Street, the last of nine signs removed following the city’s 2021 adoption of Legacy Commission recommendations.
“In order to move forward in unity, I think it is clear that we needed to dismantle the symbols of racism that still existed in Charlotte,” Mayor Vi Lyles said. “I take pride in the fact that we are now focusing on the positive and renaming this important city street to pay tribute to the thriving neighborhood that was once located in this area.”

Lyles charged the commission last year to compile a list of street names, monuments and markers that honored confederate leaders like Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. It also removed street names dedicated to white supremacists like former North Carolina governors Charles Brantley Aycock (1900-1904), father of the state’s white supremacy movement, and Cameron Morrison (1920-24), leader of the “Red Shirts” paramilitary wing of the state Democratic Party that suppressed and terrorized Black voters in the 1890s.

The Legacy Commission made recommendations on which streets to rename as well as a process for approving monuments and street names honoring historic figures. UNC Charlotte historian Willie Griffin conducted the research and compiled the list.

“I applaud the city’s thoughtful implementation of the Legacy Commission's recommendations,” commission chair Emily Zimmern said. “Community feedback has resulted in street names reflective of our dynamic and diverse city. I’m particularly delighted to see the legacy of a remarkable neighborhood celebrated by the renamed Brooklyn Village Avenue.”

Brooklyn Village Avenue honors the predominately Black neighborhood in Second Ward that was wiped out by urban renewal in the 1950s and ‘60s. Brooklyn was its own community within the city with businesses, schools, churches, restaurants, shops and entertainment when the 1958 approval of a city initiative covering more than 230 acres displaced 1,007 families and tore down 1,408 buildings over a decade.

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