One of the last remaining vestiges of the old Brooklyn neighborhood — once home to a thriving Black community — sits Grace AME Zion Church in Charlotte’s Second Ward.
Coffee bars, upscale businesses and expensive apartment buildings now surround the church at 219 S. Brevard St, which previously resided in an area that featured Black-owned businesses, schools, and places of worship.
Charlotte historian Thomas Hanchett described Brooklyn, named in homage to the New York borough, as “an African American city-within-the-city, complete with its own downtown.”
Part of that collective included Grace AME, one of several churches in the sprawling area, with origins dating back to the 1880s. Prohibitionists founded it, led by J.T. Williams, a prominent Black doctor and businessman of the time.
The church was not just considered a place of worship but one of the cultural centerpieces of the Brooklyn neighborhood.
“The church is an instrument for expression of black concerns for education and civic and cultural needs,” said then-pastor Rev. Smith Turner III , “a voice that will articulate the need for jobs and to make people aware of their involvement in the life and structure of the city. It can’t just serve to minister to the religious needs, but has to deal with those social needs and be an interpreter of them.”