Doretha Leak

Ms. Doretha Leak’s remembrance of the Brooklyn community was stronger than the tape recorder, which only captured about 30 minutes of her reflections. However, between my notes and her voice, we managed to reproduce the Brooklyn that was and is. Born in 1933, Ms. Leak remembered her childhood as a time when her family compensated for the appliances they lacked. Her youth was a youth of church, school, and work. She was baptized at Ebenezer Baptist Church (located in Brooklyn) at the age of eight, and remained a member there until she married in 1952. Then, she joined her husband at Friendship Baptist Church and remains there to this day. Ms. Leak reflected on Brooklyn’s churches, businesses, schools, and other organizations. She attended Second Ward High School, and went to the Queen City Classics in which Second Ward played its first football game each year against West Charlotte, the only other black high school in Charlotte at that time. Ms. Leak recalled that at one point, Brooklyn was home to 13 black churches. Grace AMEZ (African Methodist Episcopal Zion) Church is the only black Brooklyn church that remains where it was before urban renewal. Her current church, Friendship Baptist, moved from its Brooklyn location to Northwest School, then from Northwest School to its current location on Beatties Ford Road. The church she was baptized in, Ebenezer Baptist, had to move twice because it was burned down. At one point, Ebenezer held its services at Second Ward High School. Ms. Leak remembered some of the businesses that dotted Brooklyn, like shoe shops, grocery stores, restaurants, laundry services, ice houses, movie theaters, and funeral homes. During World War II, a USO house on McDowell Street catered to black soldiers. She recalled the laundry service that came to customers’ homes to pick up and return their laundry. Her family patronized an ice house because they had no refrigerator. To keep from having to empty the pan that contained the water that dripped from the ice box, she and her siblings bored a hole through the floor and let the water from the ice box run into the ground. Although a Baptist, Ms. Leak occasionally visited the House of Prayer’s services. She talked about the convocations the House holds every September, and praised the children of House of Prayer members for their obedience and devotion to their church. Ms. Leak, a retired elementary school teacher, said she had few problems out of children that attended House of Prayer services.