‘Tiger Day’ festival salutes legacy of Second Ward High

PHOTO | HANNAH MCCLELLAN

North Carolina State Board of Education member James Ford of Charlotte (left) reads a resolution on May 4 honoring Second Ward High School with alumni at a May 14 recognition at UNC Charlotte.

Second Ward High School made “Chatty Hatty” Leeper possible.

The legendary WGIV Radio personality grew up poor and often went hungry during the academic year. She was also berated and beaten by a teacher who was convinced she’d never graduate high school. Instead of resenting what qualifies as abusive behavior today – “I’d sit there with tears running down my cheeks,” Leeper said – she set about proving her antagonist wrong.  

“I had a teacher that was so strict on me, if I knew where she was buried, I’d go today and thank her over her grave,” Leeper, 89, said in May. “She pointed her finger at me one day in the classroom – it was a spelling class – and said ‘Let me tell you something. You’re not going to amount to very much in your life. You are not going to make it. You won’t graduate from high school.’ I’ve got two master’s [degrees] on the wall.”

Leeper, who went from opening WGIV fan mail after school as a 14-year-old to one of the first Black women broadcasters in the South, credits that admonition with inspiring her professional and academic development. Other Second Ward alumni will share their stories July 15 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. as part of Tiger Day at Metro School Gym, 405 South Davidson St. The free public festival is part of Second Ward’s centennial celebration. The gym is the lone surviving Second Ward building.

Second Ward, built in 1923 as Charlotte’s first high school for Black students, was recognized May 14  with a proclamation by the North Carolina Board of Education during a regional meeting at UNC Charlotte. A September gala will cap the celebrations.

Tiger Day “will be festive,” said Mecklenburg County Commissioner Arthur Griffin, a 1966 Second Ward graduate. “They’ll have blue and white cupcakes for kids, and it’ll be sort of family thing, but it's focused around Second Ward. We’re trying to get younger people more involved because we’re all getting old and there has to be the new generation that’s going to carry on the legacy of Second Ward and a lot of relatives here.”

Second Ward was the education and cultural hub of the all-Black Brooklyn neighborhood, which was eradicated in the 1960s by federal urban renewal initiatives that swept the country. Originally pitched to cities as a vehicle to remove blighted housing in favor of improved stock, it was used to carve up Black communities across the U.S. for redevelopment that scattered residents in addition to shuttering businesses, schools, and churches.

Second Ward was one of five Black high schools shuttered by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools after U.S. District Court Judge James McMillan’s 1969 ruling in favor of busing as an acceptable method of desegregating county campuses. Only West Charlotte High, which opened in 1938, remains.

Tiger Day will include exhibits, food trucks and music as well as living history lessons about racial segregation and its impact on Charlotte’s communities and education.

A replacement for Second Ward, which graduated its final class in 1969 and was razed a year later, was never realized as development of upscale apartments, government buildings, hotels, and a soon-to-be-built medical district have changed the neighborhood’s landscape. Alumni want to pass along the school’s history and legacy in Charlotte – especially through family connections that span generations.

“That’s the goal, because when you just run into people and someone just happens to mention Second Ward [they might say] ‘Oh, my grandmama went there … so there are lots of relationships because that was the only school for Black people,” Griffin said. “You know, if you got black groups in Mecklenburg County, somebody went there.”

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