Enlarge Crossroads Charlotte Website Cheat Sheet

Posted: October 20th, 2009 Tracy Russ

Creating a Crossroads Charlotte Group page is a great way for your non-profit organization or community group to connect with people and resources in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community!

On a Group page, you can describe what your organization does, how people can get involved, volunteer or donate, and post upcoming events and special programs!

Your organization's events will automatically appear in the Crossroads Charlotte calendar as you create them on your Group page. You can also post events, pictures and other information that you want to share!

It's free to set up!

To get started, select GROUPS at the top of the site, and then select Create A Group from the Get Involved box on the Groups page. If you haven't registered as a Crossroads Charlotte website user, you'll be asked to create an account.

For a downloadable guide with step-by-step visual instructions on how to create a Crossroads Charlotte Group, click here!

You can always find the Crossroads Charlotte Web Site Cheat Sheet in the Resources section at the bottom of the Crossroads Charlotte site.

If you need assistance after downloading the guide, contact Stacey Richards at srichards@fftc.org.

Please note that in order to maintain the quality of the Groups listed, all Groups submitted are subject to approval before posting on the Crossroads Charlotte website.

Posted: October 20th, 2009 Rhiannon Bowman

FOR MORE PHOTOS, please click HERE

The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture opens to the public on Saturday, Oct. 24, and you're all invited.

There's a lot of buzz about how much the center cost, who will visit it, who paid for it and how, and whether or not it will turn a profit. But, after the newness wears off, those sorts of conversations will be forgotten while the center's powerful legacy will live on.

The building – inside and out – was designed with a school known as "Jacob's Ladder" in mind.

According to Mary Kratt, a local historian, "Jacob's Ladder" was the first grade school for African Americans. It was built on Myers Street in 1882, in Second Ward, by J.T. Williams, one of the first African American physicians licensed in the state of North Carolina. The neigbhorhood was known as Brooklyn. Where Brooklyn used to be, the Gantt Center now stands.

The school was called Jacob's Ladder because of two outdoor staircases that masked the front of the building, a constant reminder to students reach for the sky.

When you look at the exterior of the new Gantt Center or up at the ceiling, or walk up the stairs, the center's designers want you to think of that first school, of that first doctor and of his sense of opportunity. They hope the building will remind you to reach for your dreams.

The center, named after Harvey Gantt, Charlotte's only African American mayor and the first African American admitted to Clemson University, may have a new face and a new name, but it's not new to Charlotte. From 1974 until now, it has been housed in a nearly 100-year-old building near Little Rock AME Zion Church, on the corner of Seventh and North McDowell streets.

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Posted: October 16th, 2009 Aleigh Acerni

The crowd that filled every seat at the Story Slam Charlotte theater on Oct. 12 was expecting a powerful experience—and they weren’t disappointed. The evening began with an introduction via Internet Webcast from Lincoln Center, featuring actor Glenn Close, who opened with the powerful words: “Tonight, we make history.”

Monday was the eleventh anniversary of October 12, 1998, the day Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, finally succumbed to the injuries he’d received days earlier after being kidnapped, tied to a fence, and brutally beaten. The tragic event spurred conversation worldwide about hate crimes and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

The reaction of the small community of Laramie, Wyoming, and the eventual trial of Shepard’s murderers were immortalized by members of the Tectonic Theatre Project, who spent months interviewing people in the town.

The resulting play, “The Laramie Project,” was a forceful portrait of a community responding to tragedy amidst rampant homophobia and impossible-to-ignore attention from media across the globe.

The theatre group returned to Laramie last year to once again interview residents of Laramie, in an attempt to examine how the town had changed in the decade after Shepard’s death—and how it’s stayed the same. On Monday night, the Tectonic Theatre Project performed the resulting play, “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, An Epilogue” in a live reading on stage at the Lincoln Theatre.

So did 150 other theaters across the world, in a historical simultaneous reading from Tel Aviv to Madrid—to Charlotte.

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Posted: October 15th, 2009 Crystal Dempsey

Interested in creating a more positive future for Charlotte and Mecklenburg county?

You're invited to attend Conversations @ The Crossroads: Charlotte East on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

You'll view the Crossroads Charlotte movie and then join your neighbors, community leaders and local connectors in an interactive session where you will have the opportunity to learn how Crossroads Charlotte can serve as a vehicle for moving our community towards a more positive future.

Conversations @ The Crossroads: Charlotte East
is 6-8 pm, Tuesday, Oct. 20, at Central United Methodist Church, 6030 Albemarle Road.

Refreshments will be provided.

RSVP: rsvp@communitybuildinginitiative.org; 704 973-4575

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