Oral history interview with Harriet Gentry Love, June 17, 1998

This interview does not focus a great deal of attention on race, integration, and education in Charlotte, NC, but Harriet Love, an African American woman who has spent most of her life in Charlotte, details her high regard for West Charlotte High School and in doing so offers some revealing points on race in a southern city. Love attended West Charlotte before integration and her two children enrolled there afterward, so she is able to discuss the school's two identities: as a core element of the African American community, and as a model of successful integration. Many of Love's recollections were not excerpted because they did not deal directly with integration and race at West Charlotte. Interviewers interested in the details of life as a West Charlotte student outside of the role of race in its history should read this interview in its entirety.