Black Charlotte Is a Poetic Love Letter to the City, Flaws Included

A 15-year-old girl strides purposefully through a jeering, screaming white mob. Despite the maelstrom of malice that surrounds her, her eyes are fixed on what’s ahead of her.

Many have seen the photo of Dorothy Counts becoming the first Black student to integrate Harding High School in 1957, but Jah Smalls’ words dig deeper, going beyond high-flown, albeit accurate, rhetoric about lighting beacons and shattering barriers.

“Her assignment was simple: no escorts,” Smalls’ fine-grained baritone gently unfurls. “Eyes should never meet the pavement/ Baby girl, you are inferior to no one…”

Smalls’ poem “From a Seed” gets under the skin of history, unveiling the fear, courage and love behind the iconic image.

It’s just one of nine spoken-word poems, accompanied by music, that comprise Black Charlotte: A Poetic Celebration of Place & Folk, an album spearheaded by Jay Ward, Charlotte’s first poet laureate, with Smalls as executive producer.

The collection, which came under consideration for a Best Spoken Word Poetry Album Grammy nomination, is the basis for Black Charlotte: Live in Concert, a performance that fuses the music of 24 Charlotte Symphony Orchestra musicians with the verses of 13 Black spoken-word poets from the Queen City sharing their unique perspectives on the city’s paradoxical present, beckoning future and persistent past.

The event is scheduled for Nov. 19 at the newly restored Carolina Theatre, itself a symbol of Charlotte’s history and future colliding.

According to Smalls and Ward, who are presenting and curating the performance, Black Charlotte is a love letter to the city — one that doesn’t shy away from depicting its racist legacy.

“It’s not love when you can’t talk about the ugly things,” Ward says about the project, which frequently views Charlotte history through a looking glass darkly. “Otherwise, it’s just rose-colored glasses.”

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That determination gains added weight given the venue for the upcoming iteration of Black Charlotte.

Originally opened in 1927 and reopened in March 2025 after sitting shuttered for 47 years, the Carolina Theatre did not admit Black residents for the first four decades of its existence until 1963, when theaters around Charlotte began to desegregate. Even then, Black moviegoers were only admitted in small groups and required to reserve seating in advance.

Smalls sees the timing of the various iterations of the project — the initial live performance of the material at the Harvey B. Gantt Center in February 2023, the recording of the album in fall 2024, its release on Valentine’s Day 2025; and a presentation essayed by 15 unaccompanied spoken-word poets at Carolina Theatre in April — as more than serendipitous.

“This [performance] could not have come at a better time,” he says, noting America’s current disturbing status regarding voting rights, freedom of speech and discrimination based on race and sex.

“[Black Charlotte] covers all of those things, leading all the way up to the Carolina Theatre reopening,” Smalls continues. “Who would have thought [the theater] would reopen [at] the moment we are delivering a message to this city, to this world, saying, ‘We’ve come this far. Let us still not forget where we come from, [and] what we had to go through to get to this point.’”

In that sense, the meeting of Smalls and Ward may also be seen as fated, given the two men’s respective histories with poetry and storytelling.

Two poets team up for ‘Black Charlotte’

Ward started writing poetry and developing an appreciation for rap while attending elementary school in Rich Square near the Roanoke River in northeastern North Carolina. His fifth-grade teacher Ms. Tudors had the class read to each other from young adult novels and Ward was immediately hooked.

“I fell in love with the sonic nature of words, also the images that would come to you … [like] a movie in your head,” Ward remembers.

Tudors also introduced Ward to Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including poet, writer and activist Langston Hughes.

“I realized that poetry can be anything I want it to be,” Ward says.

A 2018 National Slam champion, a 2019 Individual World Poetry Slam champion and author, Ward stepped into the role of Charlotte’s inaugural poet laureate in 2022 after being selected by a committee of city staff and cultural leaders.

In that role, he recruited world-renowned poet Paul Tran to work with LGBTQ+ teen writers at Time Out Youth, then teamed with Charlotte is Creative to establish a full scholarship for a local Black writer to attend the The Watering Hole Winter Retreat for poets of color.

Ward also developed a creative writing program for the Mecklenburg County Detention Center that is currently overseen and managed by Shane Manier.

Ward says he’s currently in the post, though it’s no longer affiliated with the city. He’s working to find a new home for the program and hopes to name a successor to the poet laureate position as soon as he does.

In addition to being co-executive producer of Black Charlotte with Ward, Smalls is a poet, an author, a creative writing coach and founder/director of WordsRmagic, a nonprofit that teaches creative writing.

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The eldest of eight brothers and sisters in a Brooklyn family of writers — his uncle, mother and aunt all composed verse — he grew up reading poetry.

In high school, he became a rapper and took part in rap battles throughout New York City. Smalls was working as a party promoter and DJ in NYC at age 19 when he was shot four times in a home invasion during which thieves tried to steal his DJ equipment. The robbery attempt left him suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and a partial loss of vision in his right eye. The bullet that damaged his vision is still in his jawbone today, as it can’t be removed.

Smalls moved to Charlotte in 1997. After sustaining a head injury while working in 2012, he returned to writing poetry and prose. In 2013, Smalls and his brother, Mr. Witz formed a duo called Grannae’s Boyz and started hosting open mics together.

To this day, the spoken-word duo performs and teaches writing classes and workshops. Smalls successfully competed for a spot on Charlotte’s Respect Da Mic Poetry Slam team, and subsequently coached the team from 2015-16.

Grannae’s Boyz were hosting an open mic at the since-closed Apostrophe Lounge in South End when Ward came in and stepped onstage.

“He just blew the night out of the water,” says Smalls, who subsequently asked Ward to feature at further events he hosted.

In the meantime, Ward applied for a Cultural Vision Grant with Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council to develop what he called a living exhibit. He pulled together a gathering of local spoken-word poets and asked each to compose a piece about some aspect of Charlotte’s Black history.

“We wanted poets with a wide range of experience, and we wanted poets who actually felt like Charlotte was their home,” Ward says.

He gave each of the participating poets a copy of Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina, written by Pamela Grundy and published by Queen City Nerve as a way to spur inspiration. The first iteration of the project that followed was performed at the Gantt Center during Black History Month in 2023.

The next step was to record an album comprising the material, for which he brought on Smalls to help. Smalls was already familiar with the project and had been itching to engage in some way.

Ward and Smalls worked with the poets to record their respective works at GrindHaus Studios. Studio owner and singer-songwriter Jason Jett produced the album alongside friend and collaborator Charlottean Tony “Tspoon” Witherspoon, who created the accompanying track music.

“Tspoon already had stuff in mind that he could use, but once he heard all the poems, he said, ‘Forget all that, I’m going to do all this from scratch,’” Ward says. “Witherspoon put all the tracks together and married them perfectly with our voices.”

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Jett did the final mixing and arrangements for the material while Ward and Smalls took it from there, handling the marketing and organizing the coming performance at Carolina Theatre.

This fall the album was submitted and shortlisted for a 2026 Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album, but did not make the final list of nominations announced on Nov. 7.

Every story has more stories behind it

The Nov. 19 Black Charlotte concert offers a fresh approach to the ever-evolving project. In addition to featuring Charlotte Symphony Orchestra plus 13 spoken-word poets performing their contributions to the album, the evening also spotlights the 2023 Founders Award-winning poet and storyteller Hannah Hasan, who will host.

One of the artists on the album who will sadly not be there that night is Leandrea Hill, who performed as Luvleeh before passing away in February 2025. The poem “Backbone” is a collaboration between Ward and Luvleeh.

The work originally consisted of two poems, one by Luvleeh casting the historic Black neighborhood of Brooklyn as the backbone of Charlotte. In the second poem, Ward speaks through the Brooklyn Grace Church, one of the last original buildings in Brooklyn, lost to so-called urban renewal in the 1960s and ‘70s, as it witnesses the changes occurring around it.

“This whole street was paradise/ I whispered to every building/ I said, ‘Wake up, the mayor coming’/ I said, ‘Wake up, progress coming’/ I said, ‘Wake up, the bulldozer’s coming…’”

Boris “Bluz” Rogers’ contribution to the Carolina Theatre performance is his poem “And the Next,” in which he name checks music and arts venues across the city, both past and present:

“Found yourself commonly rocking at Common Market never moved its Evening Muse/ Kept it in a Snug Harbor after the Fire and Ice had faded/ It stayed fluid in a Liquid Lounge, defied gravity in a Moon Room…”

“The poem is dedicated to Charlotte’s music scene, particularly hip-hop,” Bluz says. “It … sends a shout out to the artists, DJs and spaces who have helped shape [the] scene and provided the soundtrack to our memories.”

Dionne D. Hunter and Kyla Alexis Jones will perform their shared poem “Representation Equals Power.” Jones says her inspiration for the piece came in a quote from Edith Strickland DeLaine: “You do not hear our voices very much. But you cannot look at a picture and not see a female in it.”

“I am a mathematician, a hidden figure, angry, Black woman/ Captain at capacity, a true freedom I’ve never seen/ Still, you cannot captivate me with your shallow self esteem…”

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“As a Black woman, it’s ironic how we are so often overlooked, while simultaneously leaned on.” Jones notes.

“‘Representation Equals Power’ uplifts the stories of several remarkable women,” Hunter adds. ‘[It] honors their history while building connection, awareness and pride within our community.”

Jaycee Cowan will also take the stage to essay his poem “Welcome Home,” inspired by the demolition of Charlotte public housing developments Earle Village and Piedmont Courts:

“It’s all about the draw, though/ Attracting higher incomes to low-minimum-wage cities, though somebody got to go/ That new QC that don’t even include me/ My home, my roots are here…”

Other poets who will take part in the event include Mr. Witz, Lady V Poetry, Sir Abstraxxx, Jordan Bailey, Lauren Chalaire, Porsha the Poet and A Poet Named Superman.

Despite their varied backgrounds and viewpoints, the poets who will command the Carolina Theatre stage on Nov. 19 have one thing in common: their conviction in the power of the spoken word. In this constantly changing city, poetry will continue to engage audiences’ thoughts and emotions while hopefully moving them to action.

Jones believes the Black Charlotte project has done a phenomenal job of unifying the city’s poets and spoken-word artists, but she hopes to see more women in leadership and hosting roles in the scene.

Similarly, Hunter says the city has an incredibly talented and collaborative spoken-word community that thrives on the creativity and connection that is fostered by events like Black Charlotte.

Bluz characterizes Charlotte’s spoken-word scene as vibrant and growing.

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“There are so many talented voices getting the space to be heard,” he says. “It feels like we are pushing boundaries and creating real community around the work.”

Cowan says spoken-word poetry is perhaps the most influential art form in the city.

“We have watched this city grow and exclude so many voices but they cannot ignore the voices of the spoken-word artist, because to this day they still hire us to tell someone’s story,” he notes.

“What I’m seeing now in Charlotte is that we have many [spoken-word poetry] scenes, but they’re not fractioned,” Ward says. “The [scenes] are working together. They are feeding each other.”

Smalls praises the collaboration and sense of community artists share.

“Even when there’s competition here, there’s love across the board, and I think that’s the most beautiful thing about this work,” Smalls notes.

Spoken-word poetry harnesses the power of compelling storytelling, enabling all of us to see ourselves through someone else’s narrative. Smalls describes the impact as looking in the mirror through someone else’s eyes and hearing a variation of your own story told with someone else’s voice. That is a worthwhile trip to take through the looking glass.