Mapping the Historic West End: The Digital History of African American Neighborhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina

FAIN: HAA-256122-17

Johnson C. Smith University (Charlotte, NC 28216-5398)
Brandon Lunsford (Project Director: January 2017 to November 2024)

The creation of content to populate a digital interactive map of a 150-year-old African American neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina that is undergoing significant social change and gentrification. The project is intended to allow community residents to participate in a large-scale effort to document and engage with the city’s history.

This project will create a web and mobile app framework for publishing location-based content including historical photographs, documents, and oral histories that will populate a digital interactive map. The map will document the Historic West End, a vibrant 150 year old African American community that surrounds the university on the west side of Charlotte, North Carolina and is currently faced with gentrification and social change. This project will expand the boundaries of how libraries can use mobile technology to bring visual history and users together, and will utilize a partnership between academic and public libraries, museums, government agencies, and community members that will provide a model for other small and historically black college and university libraries that seek to bring their local history alive in the digital age.

Associated Products

Mapping the Historic West End site (Web Resource)
Title: Mapping the Historic West End site
Author: Brandon Lunsford
Abstract: This digital mapping project combines historical photographs, newspapers articles, documents, digital sites, and oral histories to tell the story of the Historic West End, a network of rich and vibrant African American neighborhoods that surround the campus of Johnson C. Smith University and are currently faced with rising concerns of displacement and change as Charlotte grows. The project seeks to tell the stories of these communities through the eyes of those who lived there and still do by conducting oral histories with long-time residents, and by documenting the businesses, churches, schools, nightclubs, parks, restaurants, and dynamic personalities and events that have shaped the corridor. This project uses a large archive of unseen photographs and negatives from the James G. Peeler Collection held at Johnson C. Smith University and also utilizes material from other local archives, libraries, institutions, and agencies including the Carolina Room of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library, Special Collections at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, the Charlotte Observer and the Charlotte Post, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://westendcharlotte.org
Primary URL Description: West End Digital Mapping entry site, map is accessed within.
Secondary URL: https://cdm16324.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16324coll4
Secondary URL Description: Completed and transcribed oral histories for the project in Digital Smith, JCSU's repository.

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