Community Relations History

00:00 Charlotte-Mecklenburg community 00:02 relations its place in charlotte history 00:04 then and now I'm Tom Hanson I'm 00:07 community historian and you can find 00:10 more of my work at WWDC South org I 00:14 retired recently from Levine Museum of 00:16 the new south where I was the staff 00:19 historian for many years I've also 00:20 worked with Historic Landmarks 00:22 Commission in Charlotte 00:24 Mecklenburg Community Relations is the 00:26 human relations agency for the City of 00:28 Charlotte and Mecklenburg County the 00:30 department seeks to enhance community 00:32 harmony and promote awareness of 00:33 Charlotte Mecklenburg growing 00:35 multiculturalism by facilitating 00:37 community dialogue addressing 00:39 discrimination through enforcement of 00:41 the city's fair housing ordinance 00:42 collaborating with the police 00:44 serving as mediators in conflict 00:46 resolution and ensuring Americans with 00:49 Disability Act compliance Charlotte 00:52 Mecklenburg community relations has its 00:54 roots in the civil rights movement in 00:56 Charlotte and what I'd like to do today 00:59 is give a sense of how the organization 01:03 came to be but also to place it in its 01:07 wider context I'm going to start out by 01:10 talking about the era of deepening 01:12 segregation from the 1900s into the 01:16 1960s that sets the stage for the civil 01:20 rights movement in general and 01:21 specifically for the Community Relations 01:23 office then I'll talk about that civil 01:26 rights movement and how the office got 01:29 its start in 1961 finally I'll talk 01:33 about Charlotte's changing ethic and 01:35 racial landscape today particularly with 01:37 regard to housing and geography part 1 01:43 deepening racial segregation today if 01:48 you go to Levine Museum of the new south 01:50 you can see the actual white and colored 01:53 signs from Charlotte city hall most of 01:56 us who are older Charlatans older 01:59 southerners remember these painful 02:02 symbols of segregation the 02:05 separate-but-equal world as it was 02:07 called it was always separate was never 02:09 equal and a few people though are 02:12 familiar with how 02:13 all of that got started the fact is that 02:17 racial segregation housing segregation 02:19 was not as pronounced in the late 19th 02:25 century as it was in my youth if you 02:30 look at Charlotte into the 1890s you can 02:33 see a surprising amount of mixture for 02:36 instance at the lower left of this slide 02:38 you'll see spirit square the white 02:41 Baptist Church built in the years right 02:44 after 1900 and at the top of the slide 02:46 with the blue dot is first United 02:49 Presbyterian Church a black church built 02:51 at a almost the same time it's cross 02:53 from Levine Museum of the new south in 02:56 my youth it would be inconceivable that 02:58 these two churches would be built so 03:00 close together my book sorting out the 03:03 New South City goes into this in more 03:05 detail if you're interested in in 03:07 checking out that history I apologize 03:10 for showing this slide this is a tough 03:12 part of our history but this is really 03:15 important because it was a time that was 03:19 a hinge in history for the south and 03:22 indeed for the United States in the 03:25 1890s there was an economic downturn an 03:29 honest-to-god depression much worse than 03:32 the recession that we've recently lived 03:34 through the 2008 recession and I don't 03:37 know about you but I've noticed that 03:40 politics has become kind of more ugly a 03:43 lot more name-calling a lot more 03:44 willingness to blame them 03:48 ever since 2008 well imagine what things 03:51 were like in the 1890s the beginning of 03:57 the tumult came as ordinary white folk 04:03 not the men of property and standing but 04:05 but ordinary working-class folks small 04:07 farmers joined with African Americans 04:11 who could still vote in North Carolina 04:14 well into the 1890s in something called 04:16 diffusion and they began using 04:19 government to help the little guy 04:22 it brought a backlash the men of 04:24 property and standing did not like that 04:27 how dare you take government out of the 04:29 hands of the men who own the property 04:30 and put it in the hands of those who are 04:32 ignorant and own no property said the 04:34 mayor of Charlotte it was time said the 04:37 Charlotte Observer which was very much 04:39 on the side of the men of property it 04:41 was there were their advertisers it is 04:44 time to end this rule of Negroes in the 04:47 lower-class of whites it's a statewide 04:50 movement to use white supremacy as a 04:54 wedge issue they called it the white 04:56 supremacy campaign and you can see here 05:00 that this cartoon and the Raleigh News 05:02 and Observer shows the monster Negro 05:06 rule having laid waste North Carolina 05:09 its foot is on our ballot box it's hands 05:12 are reaching out for our women and 05:14 children if you can convince people that 05:17 their economic interests are at stake 05:20 and that their safety of their women and 05:24 children is at stake then you got them 05:27 and indeed this campaign worked in 1900 05:31 North Carolina along with many other 05:33 southern states voted in a new 05:35 constitution with voter suppression poll 05:39 tax you had to pay to vote a literacy 05:41 test which sounds innocent but you had 05:44 to be able to read and interpret the 05:46 Constitution to the satisfaction of the 05:49 registrar voting participation nosedived 05:53 in North Carolina and all across the 05:55 south well that's the politics but what 06:00 happened with the hate that was stirred 06:02 up in the 1890s was the 06:07 separate-but-equal Jim Crow system that 06:11 I grew up with 50 60 years later 06:15 separate black and white water fountains 06:17 1896 first time in charlotte there are 06:20 separate black and white waiting rooms 06:23 at the Seaboard airline radiant railroad 06:26 station you have to sit at the back of 06:28 the bus if you're African American 06:30 that's a new state law in 1903 you know 06:33 you have to swear on a Bible in court 06:36 right after 1900 in the 06:38 charlotte-Mecklenburg courts there are 06:40 separate 06:40 eight and colored Bibles and that kind 06:44 of separation carries through to all 06:48 aspects of society there are deed 06:52 restrictions that suddenly appear out in 06:55 the suburbs of Elizabeth and Dilworth 06:57 places like that that say you cannot buy 07:00 property here unless it is to be used by 07:02 members of the Caucasian race for a 07:04 house costing not less than X number of 07:07 dollars which is not just racial 07:09 segregation but also economic 07:12 segregation and you can see it indeed in 07:15 the older parts of the city as well a 07:18 dramatic change this is a piece of first 07:21 Ward in 1875 first award is the area 07:24 around where Levine Museum of the new 07:26 south is Charlotte was big enough to be 07:29 split into four election districts four 07:31 Ward's and I've just picked one at 07:34 random here is where African Americans 07:38 and others lived in 1875 it was very 07:41 much as you saw with those churches 07:44 intermingled that's 1875 here is the 07:48 same part of first Ward in 1910 ten 07:51 years after the white supremacy campaign 07:55 before and after segregation did not 08:00 just happen 08:00 segregation happened at a particular 08:02 time of fear economic hardship and it 08:07 happened through decisions that were not 08:11 planned overall but were very 08:13 intentional government decisions private 08:16 decisions that split us apart 08:23 you can see that split in our landscape 08:25 if you know how to look for it if you've 08:27 been out to Noda the beautiful little 08:29 downtown that's now art galleries and 08:31 such across from heist brewery the old 08:34 Highland Park number three mill 1903 08:38 when that was built there was a downtown 08:40 minister who said just at this point in 08:43 the development of the mill people those 08:47 white working-class folks who'd voted 08:48 the wrong way in the 1890s just at this 08:52 point in the development of the mill 08:53 people perhaps it is better to let them 08:56 have their own churches and schools and 08:58 stores rather than mix promiscuously 09:01 with the better class segregation 09:05 economic very intentional 09:08 African American neighborhoods pop into 09:11 focus at this point the most impressive 09:14 of them was second Ward the Brooklyn 09:17 neighborhood where the government center 09:19 is today there's JT Williams one of the 09:22 last African American elected officials 09:24 until our era he would went on to be the 09:28 u.s. top diplomat to Sierra Leone in 09:31 West Africa that's his house at the 09:33 lower left his church in the center 09:35 actually still stands that's a Grace AME 09:38 Zion Church and also the office building 09:40 he helped build there was the first 09:43 black public library in North Carolina 09:46 the second Ward High School a complete 09:49 city within a city that's why they 09:51 called it Brooklyn it was a lot like the 09:54 community of Brooklyn in New York which 09:56 had become a city within a city in the 09:58 1890s well-to-do folks pulled away from 10:03 the city as well 10:05 Meyers Park 1911 beautiful greenways 10:09 curving streets gates at the front a 10:12 couple of those gates still exist was 10:15 where the men and property a property 10:16 and standing lived and have you ever 10:21 been lost in Myers Park I can't prove it 10:25 but I think that's intentional it's a 10:27 way of separating our residences from 10:31 the residences of the rest of the city 10:34 so that kind of separation in some 10:37 that began to come into being in the 10:39 first few years of the 20th century and 10:42 then accelerated in the 1930s and 40s 10:45 and 50s and indeed in the 1960s federal 10:50 government helped with that 10:51 inadvertently 1930s the depression was 10:56 on the mortgage market froze just like 10:59 it did in 2008 lenders just wouldn't 11:02 lend they were scared and so in the 30s 11:05 the federal government sent mappers 11:08 around to local communities talk with 11:11 the men of property and standing say 11:13 where the good neighborhoods are create 11:16 uniform maps that way somebody say in 11:19 Boston has money to lend they'll feel 11:21 confident lending in Charlotte or 11:23 Youngstown or wherever by asking the men 11:28 of property and standing where the good 11:29 neighborhoods were of course they picked 11:31 out their neighborhoods you can see the 11:33 green neighborhoods of Eastover and 11:35 Myers Park at the lower right Dilworth 11:38 Center right the country-club Berrien 11:41 Plaza Midwood in the upper right if you 11:44 drew a red line around a neighborhood it 11:47 meant that banks would be foolish to 11:50 lend there you really don't want to make 11:53 home loans in a red lined neighborhood 11:56 now if you think about that that's a 11:59 self-fulfilling prophecy because 12:02 African American neighborhoods even 12:04 mixed-race neighborhoods over time 12:06 become more and more of the province of 12:09 absentee landlords very hard to buy your 12:12 own home to invest in your neighborhood 12:15 in that way if you don't have help from 12:17 the bank and it got worse in the 1930s 12:23 the Federal Housing Administration got 12:24 started again a great program they 12:27 helped banks make long-term mortgages fa 12:30 mortgages VA mortgages Veterans 12:32 Administration mortgages but the new FHA 12:36 did not want to land in neighborhoods 12:38 that were going to go bad and so they 12:41 hired a sociologist in Chicago he went 12:43 around and talked to the men of property 12:44 and standing in Chicago and he said you 12:47 know what makes a good neighborhood and 12:48 they 12:48 they talked about ethnic groups the most 12:52 favorable come first in the list those 12:53 exerting the most detrimental effect 12:55 appear last this is the FHA underwriting 12:59 manual this is a federal document best 13:03 groups English Germans Scots Irish 13:05 Scandinavians second north Italians 13:08 third Bohemians or Czechoslovakians 13:10 those are my people maybe I should be 13:13 relieved to be third 13:16 I think I'm angry to be third fourth 13:18 poles fifth Lithuanian sixth Greeks 13:21 seventh Russian Jews of the lower class 13:23 eight South Italians nine Negros ten 13:28 Mexicans today I think that inspires a 13:34 touch of horror in us but that was a 13:37 federal policy and it gets worse in the 13:43 1950s and 60s there was federal money to 13:46 tear down blighted neighborhoods one of 13:49 the key metrics was whether a 13:51 neighborhood had a lot of run-down 13:52 absentee landlord housing well guess 13:56 what neighborhoods had those and in 13:59 reality usually it was the 14:01 African American neighborhood closest to 14:03 downtown that was demolished in 14:05 Charlotte 14:06 Brooklyn came down during the 1960's 14:09 more than a thousand families displaced 14:11 more than 200 black businesses closed 14:14 never reopened more than a dozen 14:15 churches kicked out of Brooklyn so all 14:20 of that that deepening segregation 14:23 brings us to the time of the civil 14:25 rights movement the civil rights 14:27 movement had been going on for a long 14:30 time before white America really became 14:33 aware of it in the late 1950s and early 14:35 1960s it had been going on for a long 14:38 time in Charlotte 1951 a lawyer named 14:42 Thomas white worked with his neighbors 14:46 to file a lawsuit attempting to 14:49 desegregate revolution' Park on the 14:52 southwest side of the city the golf 14:54 course in particular was the only 14:57 municipal golf course there were African 15:00 American professionals who liked to play 15:02 golf 15:02 they couldn't play 1951 they filed a 15:06 lawsuit if that lawsuit had been decided 15:10 quickly we probably would be reading 15:12 about public park desegregation in 15:14 Charlotte in all of the history books 15:17 the same way that we read about public 15:20 bus desegregation by Rosa Parks a few 15:22 years later in all the history books but 15:25 instead it took many years for that suit 15:28 to be decided but revolution Park was 15:31 desegregated similarly in 1954 Thomas 15:35 whites and African American dentist 15:37 Reginald Hawkins and some friends went 15:40 out to the brand new airport terminal 15:43 just open July of 1954 federal project 15:49 with federal money the federal world was 15:52 supposed to be desegregated interstate 15:54 transport was supposed to be 15:56 desegregated but the dining room at the 16:00 airport was not and they went they sat 16:04 in filed a court case in 1956 long 16:10 before the sit-in movement 16:12 Charlotte's Airport desegregated so 16:16 people here were working trying to find 16:18 some way to change this this world of 16:21 inequality 1957 16:25 Reginald Hawkins Thomas white Kelly 16:28 Alexander from the n-double-a-cp 16:30 chapter in Charlotte work with Herbert's 16:33 pas the superintendent of schools to win 16:38 admission of four black students to 16:42 white schools in Charlotte 16:45 this was belated the Supreme Court in 16:48 1954 had said in the brown decision the 16:52 desegregation had to happen but they 16:55 said with all deliberate speed what does 16:57 that mean well it took a long time 1957 17:02 for students went to black 17:05 students went to white schools here is 17:08 the most famous of them dorothy counts 17:10 who went to Harding High School was met 17:12 by a mob not a violent mob but 17:15 ugly mop these photos were on the front 17:17 pages of newspapers all across the 17:19 United States it really though wasn't 17:24 until 1960 when this became a mass 17:28 movement and the folks that did that 17:30 were not part of the African American 17:33 power structure as people like dr. 17:36 Hawkins and attorney White's had been 17:38 they were students and you know this 17:41 story 17:41 students at A&T University in Greensboro 17:44 including Franklin McCain later a 17:46 longtime Charlotte resident began the 17:49 sit-in movement in early February it 17:51 spread to historically black colleges 17:53 around North Carolina and then around 17:55 the South hit Charlotte about a week 17:58 later and that student movement here you 18:01 see folks sitting in in Charlotte took 18:05 months but it began to really bring a 18:09 change one of the people by the way who 18:13 led that is still around if you all have 18:15 not met Charles Jones spokesperson for 18:19 Charlotte's 1960 sit-ins he is a 18:22 wonderful resource and has the ability 18:25 to make you laugh to make you angry at 18:28 the injustice as the past and the 18:30 present and to make you cry at the 18:34 courage of those who fought so long and 18:38 so hard well out of that student 18:44 movement this sense that students were 18:47 rising up and they couldn't be 18:48 controlled came the mayor's friendly 18:52 Relations Committee Mayor James s Smith 18:56 February 1960 brought together older 19:01 cooler heads to work with the students 19:04 black as well as white and it was a 19:09 courageous thing to do for a southern 19:12 political leader to say we are not going 19:15 to use police dogs and fire hoses as 19:18 Bull Connor did in Birmingham a few 19:20 years later but we are going to talk and 19:24 that tradition of talking at that 19:27 moment that became Charlotte's legacy 19:31 going forward here is the actual memo 19:34 it's the UNC Charlotte archives in which 19:38 the committee has worked out the 19:40 desegregation of key lunch counters 19:43 downtown at Belk grants five-and-dime 19:46 store Ivy's department store crass 19:49 Liggett's you can see that Sears isn't 19:51 quite sure at this moment and Woolworth 19:53 this is dated July 4th 1960 and indeed 19:57 Charlotte's lunch counters desegregated 20:00 at a time when many cities across the 20:03 South said no never and continued to 20:06 fight that itself would have been a good 20:10 thing if the mayor's friend relations 20:13 committee never did anything else but 20:16 then in 1961 mayor Stan Berkshire was 20:19 elected Stan Brookshire is the guy the 20:20 Berkshire freeway is named for and he 20:23 was a very much an activist mayor and he 20:27 looked at this committee and he said 20:30 let's make it a permanent thing he 20:32 renamed it the mayor's committee in the 20:35 mayor's Community Relations Committee in 20:37 1961 and expanded its scope don't just 20:41 deal with city in issues deal with 20:43 issues housing deal with issues of 20:45 Economic Opportunity make the 20:48 connections do the talking that we need 20:50 to begin to bring us together as a true 20:53 community just a few things that 20:58 happened in the next few years to give 21:01 you a sense and I'm not sure exactly how 21:04 the Community Relations Commission was a 21:06 committee was involved in these but I 21:09 know that the fact that people talk to 21:11 each other put Charlotte at the 21:13 forefront particularly in May of 1963 21:17 you know that May 20 is met that day the 21:21 day we celebrate our colonial freedom 21:23 well on May 20th 1963 dr. Reginald 21:27 Hawkins that African American dentist 21:29 led a march of Johnson C Smith students 21:32 down to City Hall and demanded the 21:35 segregation at upscale the end of 21:37 segregation at upscale restaurants 21:40 the lunch counters had desegregated but 21:42 then the white tablecloth restaurants 21:44 even cafeterias movie theaters we're 21:47 still segregated and Hawkins made a 21:50 stirring speech the time for tokenism is 21:54 over the kind of one by one token 21:58 desegregation that you saw with the 22:00 school so the time for tokenism is over 22:02 the time for gradualism is over we want 22:04 freedom and we want it now and a 22:08 remarkable thing happened Brookshire 22:11 listened it helped that that very month 22:14 was when Bull Connor in Birmingham had 22:17 the police dogs and fire hoses out was 22:20 on international television making the 22:24 South look like a police state 22:26 Brookshire said that's bad for business 22:29 Brooks forgot Chamber of Commerce 22:32 officials to invite African Americans to 22:35 lunch one or two at a time going to each 22:39 of those upscale restaurants they called 22:40 them in advance they talked with the 22:42 newspapers and said you don't want to 22:43 cover this until after it's happened and 22:45 it worked within a week most of the 22:51 upscale restaurants desegregated within 22:53 a few weeks the movie theaters 22:55 everything else desegregated was 22:58 mentioned in the New York Times the 23:00 folks at the Kennedy White House were 23:02 aware of it it was a year before this 23:05 became a national requirement through 23:08 the 1964 Civil Rights Act 23:10 at that moment Birmingham was vying with 23:14 Atlanta to be the leading city of the 23:17 new south today Charlotte is three times 23:21 the size of Birmingham it was a moment 23:24 at which Charlotte staked its destiny on 23:27 equality hasn't been perfect still 23:33 working on it but this was a key moment 23:38 Reginald Hawkins paid a price for that 23:40 so did Kelly Alexander they end up lacy 23:43 P chief Fred Alexander the first black 23:46 public elected public official in that 23:49 era and Julius chambers the civil rights 23:52 attorney 23:53 November 1965 in the dark of night four 23:56 houses 23:57 bombed no one ever found out who did it 24:01 but folks kept on here's a little thing 24:05 Elmwood Cemetery had still does an area 24:09 at the back called Pinewood cemetery one 24:12 was the white section one was the black 24:13 section there was a fence between 24:16 Elmwood and Pinewood what the dead white 24:19 people and the dead black people were 24:21 gonna do that they needed a fence 24:22 separating them no one has ever 24:24 explained to me but finally in January 24:27 of 1969 Fred Alexander got that fence 24:31 torn down part three Charlotte's 24:39 changing ethnic and racial landscape 24:41 today so that segregation that we saw 24:47 coming into place which ironically got 24:50 worse during the 1960s is the result of 24:52 the demolition of the Brooklyn 24:54 neighborhood left a city that resembles 24:58 many other American cities because 24:59 they've been through the same forces the 25:03 well-to-do sector here it's in the 25:06 southeast a predominantly 25:08 African American sector on the opposite 25:10 side of town and some kind of in between 25:14 sectors South Boulevard the East Side 25:16 not particularly well-to-do but 25:19 originally white areas well a 25:23 fascinating thing has happened I'm going to 25:25 focus here on East Charlotte because 25:27 that's where I live that's what I know 25:28 but it's going on elsewhere as well 25:31 those middling kind of areas as the US 25:36 Fair Housing Act took hold in 1968 as 25:39 the Community Reinvestment Act requires 25:40 that lenders not let red line that they 25:43 lend in all neighborhoods a Charlotte 25:48 the South Boulevard area other parts of 25:51 the city went from being nearly a 25:53 hundred percent white to being about 25 25:56 percent African American which is 25:58 basically Charlotte they began to look 26:01 like Charlotte and in my part of town 26:04 there are black pockets and white 26:06 pockets but 26:07 overall it's been remarkably stable for 26:11 the last 35 40 years then in the 1990s 26:17 we began to experience a new kind of 26:20 newcomer wave for one thing a tremendous 26:25 increase in population if you don't take 26:28 any other one fact from this 26:30 presentation know that in 1990 26:34 Mecklenburg County had about half a 26:35 million people it just recently passed a 26:38 million doubling in size over 25 years 26:43 but a lot of those folks not a majority 26:47 but a significant new small number are 26:50 coming from other parts of the world and 26:53 this is a new thing for Charlotte 26:55 Charlotte had almost no immigrants for 26:58 most of its history and then suddenly in 27:01 the 1990s we were the fourth fastest 27:03 growing Latino city in the United States 27:06 since 2000 we've been the fastest 27:10 growing major Latino Metro in the US and 27:14 it's not just Latino folks are 27:17 coming from Mexico yep they're coming 27:18 from India they're coming from Vietnam 27:20 they're coming from El Salvador from 27:22 Korea from North Africa from the Middle 27:24 East and where are they going well 27:29 they're going to those old middling 27:32 areas as much as anywhere else to the 27:34 South Boulevard area Central Avenue to 27:36 the east side and they are not 27:39 segregating now that is hard to imagine 27:44 because when we think of ethnic America 27:47 we think of Chinatown so we think of 27:50 Little Italy's Charlotte doesn't have 27:53 one I've been told that Charlotte 27:56 doesn't have much international presence 27:58 does it because it doesn't have that but 28:02 what it does instead is it has these 28:05 suburban salad bowls the old suburbs 50s 28:10 60s 70s 80s are now inexpensive they're 28:14 affordable and people are mingling like 28:19 like 28:20 items in a salad you know you could 28:22 still see the lettuce the tomatoes the 28:24 onions anchovies whatever the dressing 28:28 but it's a new dish and you go out in 28:33 the east side of town and there's the 28:34 Cambodian video store next to the 28:36 Salvadoran deli 28:37 there's the Saigon Bistro next to the 28:39 Arab meat market there is the European 28:42 grocery from Bosnia with those amazing 28:45 sausage sandwiches and the Vietnamese 28:48 poolhall with the bond me submarine 28:51 sandwiches that kind of mixture is a new 28:56 frontier for Charlotte you can see it in 28:59 the the little shopping centers you can 29:02 see it in the mix of housing here we are 29:05 on Central Avenue at Rose Haven down 29:07 below some old apartments above some 29:10 duplexes and single-family homes and if 29:13 you drive by quickly you say oh well 29:15 this is the Mexican part of town and 29:17 indeed there's a Mexican grocery store 29:19 but in the same shopping center there's 29:22 also a pupusas joint from El Salvador 29:26 Pusa they don't have tacos in El 29:28 Salvador they have pupusas little 29:30 cornmeal pancakes stuff them with beans 29:33 with cheese with chopped pork mmm YUM so 29:37 two different cultures here in this one 29:40 shopping center actually three different 29:42 cultures because there's a Vietnamese 29:44 soup parlor actually for different 29:47 cultures cedar land folks from Syria 29:50 Lebanon Egypt even Morocco in five 29:55 different cultures Jamila's 29:57 international cuisine Jamila and her 30:00 friend Hamza came here from Somalia in 30:03 the upper right hand corner of Africa 30:07 their mosque is around the corner on 30:09 progress lane in in Somalia women can't 30:13 start a business nobody can start a 30:15 business a civil war is on but here is 30:18 the came as refugees they found that the 30:21 workers at the airport a lot of them 30:23 from North Africa wanted the food from 30:26 home and the taxi drivers who came back 30:28 and forth carrying that food many of 30:30 them from North Africa they wanted a 30:32 place for their noon day prayer 30:33 so they found cheap rent on Central 30:37 Avenue the open Jamila's international 30:40 restaurant now it's a restaurant in a 30:41 grocery store it's the American dream 30:44 and that kind of mixed neighborhood 30:50 that's evolving on Central Avenue that 30:53 kind of new entrepreneurial class we 30:57 talked about wanting to welcome and 30:59 entrepreneurs to Charlotte to make sure 31:01 a place for new businesses and new ideas 31:04 that's what you're seeing in those kind 31:07 of places it's instructive to look at a 31:11 map of where foreign-born folks reside 31:15 in Charlotte indeed South Boulevard and 31:18 Central Avenue are heavy areas but as 31:23 you can see from the pink areas on this 31:25 map international communities are all 31:28 throughout the city very different from 31:31 the patterns of black and white that I 31:33 grew up with so change is happening and 31:39 Community Relations is in the middle of 31:41 that we've become a city in which there 31:43 is no longer a white majority rest of 31:46 the United States will be catching up 31:47 with us very soon and none of this has 31:50 heard our desirability like I said we 31:53 just hit 1 million 31:54 I haven't slowed down a bit even with 31:57 the 2008 recession so as community 32:01 relations goes about its work know that 32:04 it comes from history that it's part of 32:08 that grassroots movement for true civil 32:12 rights in a segregated south and that 32:16 Charlotte Mecklenburg Community 32:18 Relations is making history by helping 32:22 us talk together it's drawing on an 32:24 important heritage but it's a heritage 32:27 that is very important today as we are 32:31 becoming a more and more diverse 32:33 Charlotte