Charlotte, NC

On Monday, Sept. 10, the Queen City lost one of its legends to the hereafter. Dr. Reginald Hawkins — whose name is synonymous with the fight for equal rights in Charlotte and beyond — died at Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy campus.

“Doc Hawkins,” as his friends knew him, was a dentist and ordained minister who lived the cause of civil rights. He was vocal about it, with the spirit of the cause animating him like an evangelist: shouting, waving his arms, prancing about the stage, and telling his message ad-lib — he knew the message he had to get out, so there was no need for notes.

He actively fought for desegregation in local schools, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, Douglas (now Charlotte International) Airport, and the YWCA with the same passion that he brought to every podium, lecturn and audience. Outspoken and bluntly “laying it on the line” at times, he made a lot of whites (and some blacks) uneasy. But he had leagues of faithful followers.

Former mayor Harvey Gantt — the first African-American mayor of Charlotte — said, “Dr. Hawkins was a real pioneer, a fearless civil rights worker. He called it as he saw it.”

His “militant” (as the Charlotte Observer called him back in the early Sixties) stance came at a cost: in November, 1965, his house was bombed (along with fellow civil rights activists Kelly Alexander, Fred Alexander and Julius Chambers), and he was the target of harassing phone calls and shots fired at his house.

But Neitsche once said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” “Doc” Hawkins was the embodiment of that statement; he believed so strongly in what he was doing that he kept on going — in fact, the violence aimed at him only appeared to give him more strength and initiative.

In 1968, he announced his candidacy for Governor of NC. He was only 44 years old. On the day Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brutally gunned down, he (King) was scheduled to be in NC for Hawkins’ gubernatorial campaign. And, although he was defeated both in 1968 and another attempt in 1971, he stirred the state — in fact, America, with amazing oratory:

“The establishment has discounted the poor, the black, the low-income and liberal whites. It had been divide and conquer. This is the dream I have for North Carolina: to bring us together, black and white.”
“Too long have black people sought a place at the bargaining table, only to receive the crumbs after dinner is over.”

Today, we are seeing a togetherness in Charlotte as never before … people who no longer have to “beg” for crumbs, but have a large piece of the social, economic and political pie. And it’s due, in large part, to this human dynamo who truly believed in his cause …
Asked how he would like to be remembered, Doc Hawkins gave a very simple but poignant answer:

“Having made a difference … and having the guts to have tried.“