What stood where the government center stands now

Before 1960, Brooklyn was 238 acres of Charlotte's Second Ward — schools, churches, civic organizations, Black-owned businesses, and by most accounts more than a thousand families. On January 19, 1960, the Charlotte City Council approved a 'slum razing' project targeting the neighborhood for demolition under the federal urban renewal program. On December 20, 1961, Mayor Stan Brookshire ceremonially began the demolition himself, taking a sledgehammer to a house.

By 1968 the last residents had left, scattered to Double Oaks, University Park, Piedmont Courts, Earle Village, and neighborhoods including Biddleville, Belmont, Villa Heights, Washington Heights, Wesley Heights, and Wilmore. UNC Charlotte's Brooklyn Oral History Project puts the toll over the full 1960–1977 renewal period at more than 1,000 families and roughly 200 businesses — with no new residential or commercial structures built to replace what had been razed.

The cleared land became the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, Marshall Park, and, decades later, the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It is the least-told version of a story this city tells often about itself — that it replaces rather than preserves. Here, replacement had a name, an address, and a thousand families who did not choose to leave it.