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About Us
Their History, Their Words.
The Westside History Club is a youth group focused on exposing local history to children living in or interested in the Charlotte’s West End. The program aims to immerse participants in local history in a way that will help club members see themselves in the history presented to them. The group will gather weekly to learn about the history, accomplishments and lasting legacies of the African-American pioneers interred in the Cedar Grove Cemetery, located in the shadows of Johnson C. Smith University.
The club’s primary objective is to offer an extra-curricular program for the participants to create their own interpretation of these stories which will be shared with the public. Cedar Grove Cemetery is the forever home of many of Charlotte’s Black Founding Mothers and Fathers and their stories are rich and present throughout the Westside corridor.
There are no grades, just an opportunity for these students to create their own uplifting stories in their own voices. What club members create will live on and be shared via our social media channels in addition to being displayed prominently throughout LC Coleman park which is located beside Cedar Grove Cemetery.
Learn more about Cedar Grove Cemetery
The Brooklyn Collective
The Westside History Club is proud to call The Brooklyn Collective Home. The Collective operates out of three historic buildings dating back to 1886 that were home to many “firsts” in Charlotte’s black community, including the first building financed, designed and built by black leaders exclusively for black professionals. The buildings are among the few to survive the 1960’s program of “urban renewal” that displaced nearly all of Uptown Charlotte’s Brooklyn Neighborhood.
We felt this monument of living history would serve as the perfect place to teach our youth about the deep roots of their city in an immersive, multigenerational way.
Learn more at brooklyncollectiveclt.org.