As Logtown grew into Brooklyn, racial lines hardened across Charlotte and the U.S. South in the 1890s. As Reconstruction’s end led to the rise of Jim Crow, white supremacy strictly enforced segregation. African Americans were not welcome on Charlotte’s main streets and many disenfranchised African Americans looked to Brooklyn as a refuge from segregationist laws and social customs.
By the 1920s, Charlotte’s Black main street in Brooklyn prospered. Over the next three decades, Brooklyn became the largest African American neighborhood in the Carolinas. While it was home to some of the city’s most impoverished people, Brooklyn also boasted a professional class of doctors, lawyers, teachers, ministers, community leaders, and elected officials.
