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That frustrates African-American civic activist Madine Fails, president of the Urban League of Central Carolinas. "I could tell it was happening about 10 years ago, and the reason I could tell was because there were a lot of people moving here that wanted to touch bases with the Urban League for the job opportunities or for the social amenities the community offered," Fails said. "What I noticed was that they were all Northerners who were either retiring and were moving to Charlotte or young professionals who were moving here for opportunity."
Fails said she's tried unsuccessfully to point out the trend to other city elites. A few years ago, she said, a guy from the Charlotte Chamber gave a presentation about the growth of the Hispanic community to a workforce development board she served on. Fails pointed out that large numbers of middle and upper-middle class blacks seemed to be moving here.
"The guy was so off base, he was so out of touch that he said, 'Oh yeah, yeah, because we don't want any race riots or anything,'" Fails said. "This migration is occurring, but I'm not sure that all of our corporate leaders are in step."
That's pretty typical of cities across the South that are fast becoming destinations in the new African American migration, said Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. When Hispanics move in, it's big news, because not many Hispanics have lived here before, said Lang.
"If African-Americans have been there all along, nobody notices [the new ones]," he added.
Between 1990 and 2005, approximately 103,000 new African-Americans called the Charlotte area home. The Hispanic migration during that same period totaled about 60,000.
Though most experts say the real population numbers for Hispanics are likely much higher than the census count shows, the changing racial make-up in our schools also seems to indicate that the African-American migration is the bigger of the two. Since 1995, an additional 15,123 African-American children have enrolled in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, compared to an additional 10,700 Hispanic children.
Why Charlotte?
By the mid-1990s, Herman McKinney had had enough of Los Angeles. The housing prices had gotten so ridiculous that he could no longer afford to buy the house he grew up in. He had young kids and wanted something better.
So he and his wife narrowed the choices to Dallas, Nashville or Charlotte. After friends showed him around the Queen City, he was hooked. McKinney, who is 40, says he was attracted here for the same reasons just about anyone else at his stage of life would be.
"The cost of housing, number one, and traffic and crime, two and three," said McKinney. The climate helped too, and that everything looked new and fresh to him.
The local economy didn't hurt. McKinney started a mortgage firm that largely serves an African-American clientele. His client base is big enough that he makes a good living, he said.
McKinney's case is typical of how group migrations begin, said Charles Gallagher, a professor with the Center for Neighborhood and Metropolitan Studies at Georgia State. Economic opportunity attracts the first wave of people, he said. Then friends and family follow. Eventually, the growing presence of a particular ethnic group in a place becomes a draw on its own.
"What we call it in the field is a chain migration," said Gallagher. "What happens is in a relatively short period of time, you see a population just explode."
To Leslie Truelove, the size and mix of Charlotte's African-American population is a big draw. "People want to move places where their families are going to be comfortable, where they can mix and mingle and meet people that are similar to them and have similar values," said Truelove. "You want to go somewhere where you can see people like you doing well."
Truelove already has a good job in Denver as a brand marketing manager for Coors, but she and her husband have started thinking about how they can make a move to Charlotte. With a new baby in the house, the couple wants to be closer to family. Her aunt, uncle and sister already live here, and her parents live in Chapel Hill.
Like most new migrants CL interviewed - many of whom have lived in much larger, more progressive cities - Truelove said she couldn't have imagined herself living here 10 years ago. But she thinks Charlotte has changed.
"When I go to visit, I'm amazed at how it seems a lot like other places I've lived," she said. "You have progressive people there, progressive thinking in terms of not only just race, but restaurants. It is a lot more contemporary now, a lot more 'bigger city.'"
