‘We have big hearts, and we do big things’

By Lisa Thornton, Charlotte Observer

In 1978, a thousand dollars was a small fortune.

Back then, minimum wage stood at $2.65 an hour, a movie ticket cost a dollar and a gallon of gas ran around 63 cents.

That year, to nearly 80 local black men, a thousand dollars bought a home for a legacy both rich and unique.

Along Concord’s Old Speedway Drive, the men purchased a little better than an acre of wooded land surrounded by pastures of grazing cows and fields of soybeans.