I had heard conflicting reviews of this exhibit from several of our guests on Charlotte’s “Original” Daily Black/African-American Heritage Tour™ by Queen City Tours^® and Travel. So when the opportunity knocked during our Charlotte Black/African-American Heritage Tour™ for the Faucette-Norwood Family Reunion on Saturday July 21, 2012, I decided to open the door and check it out for myself at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Cultural (a.k.a. Gantt Center) in Uptown Charlotte a.k.a. the Queen City.

The center is relatively new (3 years or so) and is part of what I call the new Cultural District in Uptown which includes the Mint Museum of Art, Knight Theatre for Performing Arts, and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, all completed in the last three to four years and in proximity to each other along South Tryon Street. We cover these venues on all of our QCT Charlotte Daily City Tours™ as well as our group tours. They are also covered in my new book entitled Charlotte From A Tour Guide’s Perspective currently available online via amazon.com.

The ride up the escalator is pretty neat in that it adds to ones anticipation as to what they will see and do once at the top. The first thing I noticed was loud music coming from the room to the left of the escalator. I thought that there was some type of day party going on but later learned that it was the exhibit’s intro. To the left and at the top of the escalator is a long glass exhibit along the wall that measures about 30 feet or so in length and about four feet tall. Displayed on that wall are busts, silhouettes, and full length figures of African-Americans, Afro Americans, Blacks, Negroes, and Colored individuals and groups dating back to the 1400’s.

The front desk attendant – Monique – was very cordial, pleasant, and polite; however, I was not too happy that she charged me $8 like everyone else in our group. Tour guides are often comp’d at these type venues. I was also disappointed when she could not identify nor provide me with a guide that identified each of the person(s) featured on the entrance wall. It would have been great to have that resource and for each of the person(s) to be numbered for easy identification and a short narrative about what they are known for would have come in handy as a teaching tool. One of our very observant family reunion guests pointed out that some of the names were lightly etched on the wall behind the glass exhibit. This was somewhat helpful – if you noticed the names -- but the fact that the featured person(s) were not numbered created an additional challenge to those that could not identify them from their picture alone; notable persons like W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) DuBois, Dred Scott (Sam), Frederick (Augustus Washington Bailey) Douglass, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree) Truth, Marcus (Mosiah) Garvey, W.C. (William Christopher) Handy, Paul (LeRoy Bustill) Robeson; George Washington Carver, Angela (Yvonne) Davis, James (Joseph) Brown, Jr., Dr. Maya Angelou (Marguerite Annie Johnson), Michael (Jeffrey) Jordan, and Oprah (Gail) Winfrey, to name a few.

We started our journey at approximately 11:40 AM. The intro film was loud and upbeat sort of like being inside a disco or whatever the young folks call them these days. It featured notable Blacks (and some whites) mostly in entertainment (past and present) and sports like Michael (Joseph) Jackson, Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.), and Gabby (Gabrielle Christina Victoria) Douglas (2012 Olympic Gymnast), to name a few. One of the young men in our group stated that he really liked the history portrayed in the film. Next, we entered the main exhibit to start our journey into our past and present. For $3 extra they offer a wand that corresponds to each exhibit which is narrated – I was told – by Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West. I passed on that option opting to read each exhibit’s narrative myself.

The first stage of the overall exhibit covers the period leading up to slavery when Afrikans came to this new world in the 1500’s with the Spaniards. Featured in this section are old masks. Next, they covered the early European trading. They did a great job pointing out that Afrikans initially began trading goods with the Europeans before Columbus so-called discovered America in 1492, and afterwards the trading of human goods began due to – in my opinion – sheer greed. This is where you enter the “Doors of No Return,” a replica of the Cape Coast Castle (Coast of Ghana, West Africa) from the 1700’s to 1800’s where 1,000 Afrikan men and boys, and 500 women were kept in underground dungeons. This is also where most people’s emotions begin the process of reflecting on what a terrible atrocity greed is and how human beings can become so possessed with it that another human life means absolutely nothing to them as so-called God-fearing Christians.

The exhibitors did well in re-creating some of what it must have been like to enter those doors of “no return” by displaying chains, a branding iron, a pistol, and shackles; a diagram of the hull of a Slave ship showing the layout of bodies, and by playing solemn music in the background that featured a small girl and a woman crying and speaking in their native Afrikan tongue. This was very moving, however, missing were the tales of those people/Slaves enduring their harsh and inhumane treatment which included being tossed overboard with other spoiled goods. Missing also was the mention of the frequent rape of women, men, girls and boys; by their captors.

Next up was the business of the Slave trade, how it operated, and a triangular system where empty ships would leave Great Britain and sail to West Africa, then to South America, the Caribbean, the United States, and then back to Great Britain, with whatever cargo was left from their voyage. They also point out the fact that tobacco Slaves made our first five U.S. Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe) very wealthy, and that South Carolina (Charleston area) reaped the economic rewards from its rice plantations conceived and maintained by their Slaves known today as the Gullah or Geechy people. I am fresh off our A Day in Charleston, SC, trip this past June and thoroughly enjoyed our Plantation tour, Harbor Cruise, and meal in Downtown.


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