A People-Powered Victory

The state flag of North Carolina features two dates, one of certifiable significance, and the other, well, significant but not necessarily certifiable….

April 12, 1776 is the date of the Halifax Resolves, the first document produced in the colonies instructing their representatives to declare independence from Britain in the lead-up to the American Revolution. There is but one known colonial-era copy of this resolution. It is in the possession of the National Archives, and is currently on display in Halifax, NC, where it was created.

The top date, May 20, 1775, is a wee bit curiouser. It marks the date of the so-called “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence,” known here in Charlotte as the Meck Dec. As the story goes, a group of men gathered in northern Mecklenburg County, near the site of today’s Independence Hill Baptist Church, and declared their independence from British rule, more than one year prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

No one knows whether this actually happened. Thomas Jefferson was a skeptic. John Adams thought it might be true. No such document is extant prior to an 1819 newspaper article. Most historians outside Mecklenburg County–and even those within it–express some doubt. 

I have no idea whether the Meck Dec is an actual historic document or not. You can start a bitter argument among a small group of people here by publicly doubting it. Ultimately, I don’t think it matters very much. More interesting than the historicity of the document is how the date has become a blank slate for local political causes. As historian Pamela Grundy has shown, the following happened on Meck Dec Day:

Grundy helped me to see that whether Meck Dec happened or not is not that important.¹ What matters is that the idea has formed a useful backdrop for all kinds of popular movements. The Meck Dec is real because it keeps being reinterpreted.

When the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) convened on Wednesday, May 20, they likely did not have Meck Dec in mind. Nevertheless, the date left a strong impression once the result of the meeting became known.

For about seven months, Charlotte advocacy and organizing groups have been fighting a freeway expansion planned by the NC Department of Transportation. Their plan–which had received initial approval from CRTPO and Charlotte’s city council some years ago–was to build toll lanes on an eleven-mile stretch of Interstate 77 from downtown Charlotte to the South Carolina state line. The initial approvals escaped the attention of communities busy fighting other critical issues. But in October 2025, NCDOT maps and renderings were released showing two options. One widened the highway further into the same neighborhoods destroyed to build it in the first place. The other built elevated toll lanes to service wealthy commuters that would form a literal wall between those neighborhoods and downtown, the economic and cultural core of the region.

Anyone attentive to American history, including readers of my newsletter, knows intuitively that the neighborhoods facing the worst effects of this plan were Black neighborhoods. Not only that, but later reporting confirmed that NCDOT knew that their plan would not relieve congestion, which was the stated purpose of the new lanes. Rather, the toll lanes would offer those wealthy enough the opportunity to buy their way around congestion. Managed toll lanes increase prices based on congestion, running prices as high as necessary to keep the lanes free of traffic.

For seven months, organizations and coalitions spoke with great zeal against the project. The Black Political Caucus took strong positions and worked political leaders to help them see the coming damage. Sustain Charlotte held a competition seeking new visions for the 77 corridor. The results helped to shift imaginations about the possibilities. Neighborhood associations banded together to send hundreds of phone calls and emails. Action NC and Redress Movement activated member bases to speak up against the project. 

At the same time, the Chamber of Commerce (now called the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance) moved quietly behind the scenes in support of the project. So did the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (REBIC). 

The lines were drawn predictably: business interests on one side, neighborhood activists on the other. It is a well-worn path here, and the result is always the same. The business people win. The real estate developers win. Charlotte’s not that different, I don’t guess, than other places. But corporate suits have long had an iron grip on the city’s politics here, in such a way as to choke out any resistance. Us commoners might make some noise now and again, but we hardly ever win.

Until now. 

The 77-Lexus-Lane-Entrenched-Segregation plan was voted down. The people won.

In the celebratory text messages, phone calls, social media posts, and media interviews that happened afterwards, one question kept popping up: have we just witnessed some kind of social shift? Have the tides changed? 

These are the sorts of questions that can only be answered in hindsight. We’ll know a couple of decades from now whether rescinding the I-77 plan was merely an outlier in a long, unchanging history, or truly a watershed moment. Like the story of Meck Dec Day, it’s the kind of event that could have multiple meanings and uses in the coming years. Will it turn out to be a moment that solidified a rising popular movement against the elite rule of our cities, and towards a more democratic governance? Will it be a turning point that encourages the ruling class to tighten their grip on power? 

I won’t prognosticate, except to say that we now have yet another use for Meck Dec Day. But it is worth noting that the usual masters of the Charlotte universe are sweating a bit. One recent piece of local media asked whether “business still calls the shots” here.²

It quotes a few nervous suits, like Rob Nanfelt of the lobbying group Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition. In a written statement following the decision, he was sweating through his starched collar: “Are we beginning to see an unraveling that eventually puts us in the category of dying and poorly run cities such [as] Portland, Seattle, St. Louis and others?” 

Ah, Portland and Seattle. Nobody loves those places. 

The Ledger also quotes local economist Mark Vitner, who is concerned that the 77 rescission and other recent decisions “signal a slowdown in the public-private collaboration that built modern Charlotte….Good governance is a competitive advantage that may be at risk.” 

Likewise, other regional bosses are concerned. They want to protect their power. I take it as a good sign that they understand their power to be threatened at the moment. It’s probably worth noting, though, that the “good governance” of the past seventy five years has not been uniformly good. You might ask in retort, “good for whom?” Consider, for example, a few of the notable achievements of, in Vitner’s words, the public-private collaboration that built modern Charlotte:

If that’s what good governance got us, I’m open to bad governance. 

Perhaps we are witnessing a changing tide. Even better, we might be creating a changing tide. 

One Last Note: I’m still listening for hours on end to Sonny Rollins, whose recent death has been noted across the country. Sonny wrote a bunch of tunes that are now considered standards of the repertoire. He also played the songs of the Great American Songbook to tremendous effect across a career that spanned more than half a century. Students of the music learn all those songs as well, and often refer to Rollins’ recordings of them as part of the canon of the music.

Rollins records feature another category that regularly shows up: taking a corny show tune and turning it inside out. On the classic record Saxophone Colossus, he plays “Mack the Knife,” for instance. Probably my favorite example of this kind of work comes from the amazing Plus Four album, with Clifford Brown and Max Roach. The tune is “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep,” the Irving Berlin song written for the film White Christmas. At the risk of being a bit corny myself, here it is: