Black voters changed Charlotte. Why is interest lagging?

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Black voters have changed Charlotte’s political landscape since 1965 when the Voting Rights Act became law. Their clout has grown from the election of Fred Alexander as the first Black City Council representative in 1965 to determining the fate of contested ballot measures.

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

Mecklenburg County’s Black voters were all but ignored in 1965.

But legislation signed into law that year by President Lyndon Johnson removed barriers to ballot access, especially in the South. Seismic shifts in American society and politics followed.

Charlotte was no different.

There were modest, but immediate gains, starting with the election of Fred Alexander to the first of five two-year terms on Charlotte City Council. I. Elihue Alexander and Betty Miller won magistrate races in 1966; and Phil Berry was elected to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board in 1972.

But power remained in the hands of a select few – white political and business leaders who lived in Myers Park. Elections were determined by an at-large system that determined every city council seat. The landscape shifted in 1977 with the transition to a hybrid district/at-large format that put more control into neighborhood hands. Previously ignored segments of the city – namely the predominantly Black northwest – elected representatives who were directly responsible to their communities.

It “had many, many impacts on life in general,” said Charlotte historian and author Tom Hanchett. “Before that, there had been an at-large system, which was put in place in the early 20th century, when the old ward system kept coming close to electing Black candidates in a ward or district system. Because you’re dealing with smaller areas than the whole city or the whole county, it’s easier for somebody who is not incredibly well funded and has huge name recognition and lots of time to run at large.”

The Post is launching “The Franchise,” a series produced with support from the Pulitzer Center examining grassroots initiatives to empower, encourage and protect voter participation. The series will include conversations with voting rights advocates, election professionals and volunteers who make the process of casting a ballot essential to democracy. 

The Post is sponsoring The Green Chair Civic Lounge Oct. 15 from 6-7:30 p.m. at Goodwill Opportunity Campus, 5301 Wilkinson Blvd. The nonpartisan forum co-sponsored by the Crown Jewel chapter of The Links, includes a question-and-answer session with Mecklenburg County elections director Michael Dickerson.   

Political expediency ultimately unlocked the door to representation in Mecklenburg. Demographics expanded it – and Charlotte’s growth in the process. A new generation of Black political leaders – Harvey Gantt, Mel Watt and Ron Leeper among them – emerged. That momentum reached critical mass in the early 1970s when Charlotte was forced to grapple with exploding growth and the fall of state-sanctioned racial segregation backed by soft suppression of Black voting strength through at-large elections. 

“The shift away from (at-large elections) came as part of the debates over school busing and other issues … in the 1970s, and it culminated in 1977,” Hanchett said. “And in Charlotte, all of a sudden, you went from having one Black person and one woman on City Council to it looking like Charlotte. That’s when Charlie Dannelly gets elected. That’s when Ron Leeper gets elected. Harvey Gantt is already there, but now he becomes a viable mayoral candidate, and so that energy starts to build at that point.”

Gantt, a Democrat, was elected mayor in 1983, a result that marked Charlotte’s rise as a New South city, a progressive bastion of racial equity.
By the turn of the century, Black elected officials were the establishment and communities that fueled their ambitions powered Charlotte’s growth. Municipal initiatives ranging from mass transit to affordable housing needed their support – especially in competitive campaigns.

“That would not have happened without Black voters,” said Colette Forrest, founder of the Black Voter Project, a canvassing and outreach initiative. “Even though we look at the aggregate numbers and our numbers are going down, we also have to remember we have a tremendously high (number) of registrants that are in Mecklenburg County. We have over 800,000 people that are registered, and out of that number, at least 200,000 to 250,000 are Black registered voters, so there’s no way  the pendulum would have shifted without the Black vote.”

It also showed up in state politics. Presidential candidate Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008 – the first Democrat to do so since Jimmy Carter in 1976 – in large measure because of Black voter turnout. In recent election cycles, however, participation has lagged overall turnout. In 2024 – a presidential election year – 69% of Mecklenburg voters cast ballots compared to 73% statewide.

The previous year’s municipal election, which typically have lower turnout rates, 71,042 Black voters in Mecklenburg, or 15.5% of all voters to cast a ballot, did so. 

Between 2018 and 2022, Black turnout fell by 9 percentage points to 90,059, or 36% of registered voters.

VoteBrother, a national initiative to register 500,000 Black men over the next five years, found a correlation between gender and participation. 

The 527, or tax-exempt, political organization cites state and federal data showing turnout among Black men under age 30 was 25% in 2024, the lowest of any demographic group and concentrated almost entirely among those without a college degree. Approximately 6 million Black men are unregistered and of the 34.4 million Black eligible voters nationwide, half of them live in eight states.

North Carolina is among the outreach targets.

Why the dip in turnout? Disengaged people of voting age – especially young adults – often feel there’s nothing in it for them, Forrest contends. The key is convincing them there’s agency in the ballot.

“People have to know that you care about them,” she said. “They have to know that you're not just coming around during election cycle season. I need to see you every day. I need to see you more regularly. That's what we’re hearing when people are doing canvassing.”

That attention to detail on a grassroots level is why Forrest, former chair of the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, launched Black Voter Project. 

“You have to meet people where they are, and what I found out when I’ve done canvassing with my son … younger people, ironically, are more cynical,” Forrest said. “They're like ‘They’re going to do what they want to do anyway. I don’t know what’s important to them. It never seems like they’re tuned into what's important to me.’ 

“You can’t just vote. That’s only one half of your political muscle. You have to show up at these county commission meetings, school board meetings, city council meetings. You have to show up and you have to show out sometimes and let them know.”

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