Harding High School
civic
Also known as school
Harding High School — school, appearing in the Charlotte record across 33 documented year(s).
In the record (61)
1773
Despite lacking a royal charter, Queen's College's trustees continued to operate the school informally under the name 'Queen's Museum,' and in January 1773 inhabitants of Rowan and Mecklenburg counties petitioned to establish a 'public Seminary of Learning in the Western part of this Province,' though this second attempt produced little formal result.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolQueen's CollegeElizabeth CollegeMint Museum of ArtLevine Museum of the New SouthHarvey B. Gantt CenterNASCAR Hall of Fame
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1776
After independence was declared, the school in Charlotte formerly known as Queen's College/Queen's Museum became known as Liberty Hall Academy; its trustees supported the revolutionary cause, and notable students there reportedly included future North Carolina governor William R. Davie and future U.S. President Andrew Jackson.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolQueen's CollegeElizabeth CollegeMint Museum of ArtLevine Museum of the New SouthHarvey B. Gantt CenterNASCAR Hall of FameAndrew JacksonWilliam R. Davie
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867
Mary Deborah Baird Biddle of Philadelphia, widow of Union Major Henry J. Biddle (who was mortally wounded at the Battle of New Market in June 1862), pledged $1,400 toward the new Charlotte freedmen's school, which was named the Henry J. Biddle Memorial Institute in her late husband's honor.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstitutePhiladelphia Presbyterian ChurchMary Deborah Baird BiddleRobert HenryHenry J. Biddle
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867
Samuel C. Alexander, a Pennsylvania-born Presbyterian minister, and Willis L. Miller, a former Confederate soldier and slaveholder who became a Presbyterian minister, co-founded and served as the first two professors of the freedmen's school in Charlotte that became Biddle Memorial Institute.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderMary Deborah Baird BiddleWillis L. MillerHenry J. Biddle
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867
Stephen Mattoon served as the first president of Biddle Memorial Institute, leading the school for fourteen years following its 1867 founding.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteMary Deborah Baird BiddleHenry J. BiddleStephen Mattoon
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1867 · 1867-04-07
At a meeting on April 7, 1867 in Charlotte's old Presbyterian church, the Catawba Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church agreed on a plan to establish a school for training Black preachers and teachers among the formerly enslaved, and selected ministers Samuel C. Alexander and Willis L. Miller as the school's first two professors.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMecklenburg PresbyteryFirst United Presbyterian ChurchFirst Baptist Church WestCatawba NationGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderWillis L. Miller
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1867 · 1867-05-01
The Henry J. Biddle Memorial Institute, chartered by the state as a freedmen's school under the Presbyterian Church's Board of Missions for Freedmen, held its first classes on May 1, 1867, enrolling eight male students in a local church building in Charlotte.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMecklenburg PresbyteryFirst United Presbyterian ChurchFirst Baptist Church WestBiddle Memorial InstituteMary Deborah Baird BiddleRobert HenryHenry J. Biddle
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1876
In 1876, the North Carolina state legislature formally chartered the Charlotte freedmen's school and changed its name from Biddle Memorial Institute to Biddle University.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteMary Deborah Baird BiddleHenry J. Biddle
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1891
In 1891, Daniel Sanders — who had been born enslaved in South Carolina, was educated at Western Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, and had served as a pastor and school principal in Wilmington, NC — became Biddle University's first African American president, serving until his death in 1907, and making Biddle the first southern four-year institution to have both a Black professor and a Black president.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteMary Deborah Baird BiddleHenry J. BiddleDaniel Sanders
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1899
Between 1899 and 1903, Tompkins's own Observer Printing House published six of his books on Southern industrialization, including 'Cotton Mill, Commercial Features' and 'Cotton Mill Processes and Calculations,' texts used to train mill investors and textile-school students across the region.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolAlpha MillMecklenburg Cotton MillAda MillOrient MillVictor Cotton MillCharlotte ObserverObserver Printing House
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1903
In 1903, Good Samaritan Hospital established a School of Nursing to train Black women, described as the second nursing school open to Black students in the state of North Carolina.
Good Samaritan Hospital siteSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolPresbyterian HospitalGood Samaritan HospitalMercy Hospital
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1916
Judge James Bryan McMillan, who would preside over the Swann case, was born in 1916; he earned his A.B. from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1937 and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1940 before serving as a Navy officer, private practitioner, and law lecturer, then was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1918
During the citywide quarantine, Charlotte's health department called on teachers left unemployed by school closures to help conduct a census of the city's flu victims and to volunteer as nurses at local hospitals.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1923
Before Second Ward High School opened, Black students in Charlotte seeking a high-school education had to leave the city or attend the high-school-level program at Johnson C. Smith University.
Johnson C. Smith UniversitySecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteW.W. WardJane Berry SmithJohnson C. Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1923
Second Ward High School opened at the corner of Alexander and First streets in Charlotte's Brooklyn neighborhood, becoming the city's first public high school for African American students; the same year the city opened Central High School for white students on Elizabeth Avenue.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1923
The Swank Social Club later operated on the former site of Second Ward High School after the school's demolition — one of the few post-renewal Black-owned social institutions to occupy former Brooklyn land, per Wikipedia; included here as a cross-check pointer pending a tier 1-2 corroborating source.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. Ward
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1928
By 1928 the City of Charlotte had annexed virtually all of Myers Park, and that year the neighborhood received its own C. C. Hook-designed public elementary school on Radcliffe Avenue.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMarshall ParkW.R. MyersC. C. Hook
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1934
Under CWA/WPA relief funding, several Charlotte-area school gymnasiums — including Berryhill, Oakhurst, Paw Creek, and Sharon Gymnasiums — were built as Depression-era public works projects; none of these structures survive today.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1954 · 1954-05-17
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), ruling unanimously that state-mandated racial segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal' — the national legal backdrop against which Charlotte's own school desegregation fight would later unfold.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolJohn L. Brown
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957
After withdrawing from Harding High School, Dorothy Counts' parents enrolled her in an integrated public school in Yeadon, Pennsylvania for her sophomore year, before she later attended the private, all-girls Allen School in Asheville, North Carolina.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy Counts
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1957 · 1957-09-04
Emma Marie Taylor Warlick, wife of a White Citizens' Council officer, helped incite the crowd confronting Dorothy Counts outside Harding High School on her first day, instructing girls in the crowd to 'spit on her' and boys to 'keep her out'; witnesses reported rocks thrown at Counts' feet as students formed a jeering gauntlet that parted only to let her pass.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy CountsEmma Marie Taylor Warlick
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957 · 1957-09-04
Getty Images archival captions from wire photographers describe the same September 4, 1957 scene as: 'Dorothy Geraldine Counts, 15, is followed by a crowd of jeering teenagers as she leaves Harding High School' and 'A crowd of youths taunts Dorothy Geraldine Counts as she walks to a previously all-white Harding High School to enroll' — corroborating the Wikipedia account of the mob's size and behavior from a separate photo-archive source.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy Counts
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957 · 1957-09-04
On Thursday, September 4, 1957 — the first day of court-ordered token integration at Harding High School in Charlotte — 15-year-old Dorothy Counts walked to the school as one of the first Black students to attempt to attend, confronted by a crowd of roughly 200-300 people, mostly students.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy Counts
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957 · 1957-09-04
Photographer Douglas Martin captured the iconic image of Dorothy Counts walking to Harding High School surrounded by a jeering crowd on her first day; the photograph won the 1957 World Press Photo of the Year award and became one of the most widely reproduced images of the American civil rights movement.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolNAACPDorothy CountsDouglas Martin
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957 · 1957-09-04
Fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts enrolled at Harding High School, one of four white Charlotte schools to receive their first African American students that day, walking stoically through a jeering, spitting mob in photographs that spread across the nation.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Dorothy Counts
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1957 · 1957-09-05
On her second day, Friday September 5, 1957, Dorothy Counts fell ill amid the ongoing harassment and stayed home from Harding High School.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy Counts
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1957 · 1957-09-11
On Wednesday, September 11, 1957 — her fourth day of attendance — Dorothy Counts faced escalated violence at Harding High School, including erasers thrown at her, and her family's car windows were shattered; her father contacted the superintendent and police, who could not guarantee her safety, and the family withdrew her from Harding that same day.
Harding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDorothy Counts
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1963
Friendship Baptist Church's original South Brevard Street sanctuary in Brooklyn was demolished as part of urban renewal; in October 1963 the congregation left the site and held worship services at Northwest Junior High School while awaiting a new church home.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolRedevelopment CommissionMecklenburg PresbyteryFirst United Presbyterian ChurchFirst Baptist Church WestFriendship Missionary Baptist ChurchEphraim Brevard
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1964
Dorothy Counts went on to earn a psychology degree from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte in 1964, seven years after the harassment that forced her withdrawal from Harding High School.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Johnson C. Smith UniversityHarding High School 1957 site (Dorothy Counts' walk)Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolBiddle Memorial InstituteDorothy CountsJane Berry SmithJohnson C. Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1965
According to named narrator James Ross II, interviewed for UNC Charlotte's Brooklyn Oral History Project, pre-demolition Brooklyn contained two movie theaters (including the Savoy Theatre on South McDowell Street), a library, two funeral homes, two colleges, a high school, an elementary school, roughly six nightclubs, about twenty restaurants, an Elks Club, a YMCA, a YWCA, two commercial laundries, a commercial icehouse, twenty-three churches, a pharmacy, doctors, dentists, and two newspapers — testimony describing the density of Black-owned institutions before urban renewal, not an independently verified inventory.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolRedevelopment Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1965
In 1965, attorney Julius Chambers filed suit on behalf of James Swann and nine other pairs of Black parents against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, the case that would become Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolJulius LeVonne Chambers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1965 · 1965-01-01
In January 1965, while Julius Chambers was speaking in New Bern, North Carolina, his car was destroyed by a bomb — one of the earliest acts of violent intimidation against him as he pursued school desegregation litigation.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolJulius LeVonne Chambers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1967
Charlotte voters approved a $35 million school bond that earmarked roughly $2 million for renovations to Second Ward High School; the renovation was never completed before the school board instead voted to close and later demolish the building.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. Ward
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1968
By 1968, only two large urban school districts nationwide — San Francisco and Toledo — were more desegregated than Charlotte-Mecklenburg on paper, even though large numbers of Black students still attended nearly all-Black schools in practice.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1968
By the 1968-69 school year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg served roughly 84,000 students including about 24,000 Black students, of whom about 14,000 attended schools that were at least 99 percent Black — evidence cited in the Swann litigation that the district's 'freedom of choice' desegregation approach had failed.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1968
The school board's response to years of NAACP and Chambers-led litigation before McMillan's 1969 ruling relied on 'school zone gerrymandering' rather than true integration, redrawing attendance boundaries in ways that left many Black students in effectively segregated schools despite formally ending explicit race-based assignment.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolNAACP
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1969
Second Ward High School was closed as part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' desegregation-era plan, one of five historically Black center-city schools (along with Fairview, Alexander Street, Bethune, and Isabella Wyche) that the school board voted to close that summer rather than fully integrate and maintain.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardGeorge AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. Alexander
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1969 · 1969-04-23
Judge James B. McMillan issued his key 1969 ruling in the Swann case (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 300 F. Supp. 1358, W.D.N.C. 1969), concluding that an illegal, race-based dual school system still existed in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools despite years of a 'freedom of choice' plan, and repeatedly ordered the school board through 1969 to submit a more effective desegregation plan.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1970
A 1970 photograph documents the demolition of the Second Ward High School building, among the last major Brooklyn institutions to fall to urban renewal.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolRedevelopment CommissionW.W. Ward
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1970
Second Ward High School's main building was demolished after the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board deemed the structure a hazard; only the school's gymnasium survived and now stands as a designated historic landmark on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardDouglas Martin
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1970 · 1970-03-05
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed McMillan's elementary school busing requirements in May 1970, issuing a decision (following an earlier March 5, 1970 stay) that affirmed the busing plan for secondary schools by a 3-2-1 vote but vacated and remanded the elementary school busing order; McMillan reaffirmed his original elementary plan on remand.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
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1970 · 1970-08-07
On August 7, 1970, the district court formally adopted the Finger plan for the full school system, setting the stage for districtwide busing implementation that fall.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
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1970 · 1970-09-01
Beginning in fall 1970, students from West Mecklenburg, Harding, Garinger, North Mecklenburg, and Myers Park high schools were bused into West Charlotte High School under the Finger plan, and the initial rollout produced tension including riots at the school before it stabilized into an integrated campus.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMarshall ParkW.R. Myers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1970 · 1970-09-01
When the Finger desegregation plan was implemented in September 1970, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools bused approximately 43,000 students — more than double the number bused the previous school year — making it one of the largest school busing operations attempted in the country to that point.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1971
Chambers' law firm also successfully litigated Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (decided 1971) and Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody (decided 1975), both landmark Title VII employment-discrimination cases, alongside its school desegregation work.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolDuke Power CompanyJames B. Duke
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1971
The Swann decision made Charlotte-Mecklenburg the national test case for court-ordered busing to desegregate public schools, and the ruling's reasoning was subsequently applied to school districts across the country facing similar segregation patterns.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1971 · 1971-02-01
In February 1971, Julius Chambers' downtown Charlotte law office was firebombed — the third documented attack against him (after the January 1965 car bombing and November 1965 home bombing) tied to his civil rights and school-desegregation litigation.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolNAACPJulius LeVonne Chambers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1971 · 1971-04-20
On April 20, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9-0 decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971), written by Chief Justice Warren Burger, upholding busing as a constitutionally permissible remedial tool for achieving school desegregation.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolEarl Warren
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1971 · 1971-04-20
The Swann opinion held that federal district courts have broad equitable power to order remedies including busing, that desegregation plans 'cannot be limited to the walk-in school,' and that objections to transportation have merit only where travel time or distance risks children's health or significantly impairs the educational process.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1975
Over the following two decades after 1970, West Charlotte High School transformed into a nationally cited model of successful school integration, drawing educators and observers 'from as far as Boston' to study how the school had bridged racial divides.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1975 · 1975-07-01
In July 1975, Judge McMillan formally ended his court's supervision of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system's desegregation compliance and closed the Swann case docket, roughly a decade after Julius Chambers first filed suit and four years after the Supreme Court's ruling.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolJulius LeVonne Chambers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1977
In 1977, a biracial coalition won a Charlotte referendum establishing district-based (rather than at-large) city council elections, a political shift in the years after Swann that is sometimes linked to the era's broader push for more equitable representation following school desegregation.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1980
The Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation was established by former students Cecelia Jackson Wilson, Louis C. Coleman, and Dr. Mildred Baxter-Davis to preserve the school's memory and support its graduates.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. WardG.E. WilsonCecelia Jackson WilsonLouis C. ColemanMildred Baxter-Davis
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1988
By 1988, school integration nationally reached an all-time high, with nearly 45 percent of Black students attending previously all-white schools — a peak that followed the wave of busing programs the Swann decision had authorized, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg's.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1990
National researchers found that school segregation, which had declined rapidly nationwide during the late 1960s and early 1970s under rulings like Swann, appears to have increased again since 1990 — a broader trend that Charlotte-Mecklenburg's own post-2002 resegregation reflected.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
2001
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld the end of court-ordered busing and race-based school assignment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, with remaining desegregation remedies formally ending around 2002 after further appeals were exhausted.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
2002
In 2002, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools replaced mandatory busing with a 'School Choice Plan' allowing families to select schools, formally closing out more than three decades of court-supervised desegregation that began with Julius Chambers' 1965 filing.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolJulius LeVonne Chambers
Source · checked 2026-08-13
2005
West Charlotte High School, the showcase integrated school of the 1970s-80s busing era, saw its enrollment resegregate along racial and economic lines in the years after court-ordered busing ended, reversing the racial balance the school had maintained for roughly two decades.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
2016
In 2016 the City of Charlotte sold 11.4 acres of the former Eastland Mall site to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for $650,000 to construct a school, while retaining 69 acres for broader neighborhood revitalization.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High School
Source · checked 2026-08-13
2018
The final master plan for the Brooklyn Village redevelopment — a $700 million, 17-acre mixed-use project on the former Bob Walton Plaza, Marshall Park, and former school board property — was approved in June 2018.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Marshall ParkSecond Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolMarshall Park
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2023 · 2023-07-15
Alumni, their descendants, and hundreds of community members gathered on July 15, 2023 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Second Ward High School's founding.
Second Ward High SchoolCentral High SchoolW.W. Ward
Source · checked 2026-08-13