DSS building rename honors trailblazing social worker

LISA TUCKER GRIER

Caterine Wilson, a trailblazing Mecklenburg County social worker who became the first Black program director over a 37-year career, will be honored with the renaming of DSS headquarters.

The Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services building is getting a new name.

County commissioners voted last year to rename Wallace H. Kuralt Centre on 301 Billingsley Road the Catherine M. Wilson Center. Wilson, who was born in 1924, rose through the ranks during the Jim Crow era. A Charlotte native, Wilson graduated Second Ward High School and Johnson C. Smith University before attending Clark Atlanta University for graduate studies. She went to work as a social worker in 1949 with the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services. 

“In 1949, North Carolina was officially segregated,” Commissioner Arthur Griffin said. “She had to work through and around a lot of the Jim Crow laws and issues that presented themselves during that time in history. She stayed with Mecklenburg County for 37 years and worked her way up to become their first African American program director. She was the program director for Youth and Family Services.”
Wilson, who died at age 82 in 2007, will finally get the recognition she deserves.

“Myself and the county commission felt like it was time to put her name on the building,” Griffin said. “They have been working on this for a while, trying to get the building renamed. The actual renaming event is on Sept. 27, and they are going to have a renaming program at the site there at 301 Billingsley Road.”

The ceremony will start at 10:30 a.m. and light refreshments will be served. 

In 1968, Wilson was the only Black social worker on a DSS staff of 101, Griffin said, so her impact was felt by many in a time where Black voices were suppressed. 

Kuralt, whose name has been on the facility since 1994, was social services director from 1945-72. He supervised the county’s eugenics program in which people – usually poor and Black – were sterilized without their consent. Kuralt was on record as saying that “mentality low-income families tend to produce the largest number of children.” He claimed sterilization was key to saving taxpayers money and eliminating poverty.  

Three decades after Kuralt’s retirement, advocates pushed North Carolina government to compensate people subjected to sterilization. In 2012, Gov. Bev Perdue proposed a budget that included $10.3 million in compensation. 

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