The Charlotte Three, consisting of T.J. Reddy, James Grant, and Charles Parker, were a group of men arrested and convicted in Charlotte, North Carolina for the burning of Lazy B Stables, a horse stable. The burning took place on September 24, 1968, one year after Lazy B Stables was integrated. All three men were arrested and implicated in the arson in December 1971, a full three years after the incident. The men were eventually convicted for their presumed actions, and were unsuccessful in having their appeals accepted, with the Supreme Court rejecting their motions. They were all well known radical activists in Charlotte and some people claimed their arrest was aimed at stopping their political motives. Many observers believed that this case was a representation of the still heavily racist Southern United States of the 1970s, and the various underhanded methods prosecutors were willing to utilize to obtain convictions against African Americans. The Charlotte Three were victims in the eyes of some, of an American South that was still reeling from widespread integration and general mistrust in Black affairs. The men were held against their will incorrectly not for crimes that they did not commit, but because of the social change they worked hard to attain. Finally, in 1979, North Carolina Jim Hunt commuted all three men's sentences after a vigorous campaign by state, national, and international activists on their behalf.
Charlotte
Charlotte, North Carolina had a reputation as a forward-thinking city in that it wasn't supposed to have the same racial discrimination that the cities in the Deep South had. Charlotte was called a "New South city" but many of its residents still harbored the same racial discrimination, and "clung to Jim Crow segregation" as strongly as residents of Mobile, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi, stereotypical anti-black cities. African American dissent towards racism was however very prevalent in Charlotte, as the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education arose from a school district around Charlotte, and Reginald Hawkins spearheaded protests against segregation in the cities public and private institutions. When residents in Charlotte in January 1965 filed the court case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the car of civil rights leader "Julius Chambers was blown to bits" and a year later, "bombs exploded at the homes of four more civil rights leaders".
Biographical background
One of the residents of Charlotte who had experienced much racial discrimination in his lifetime was T.J. Reddy, who was enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. T.J. had been a poet and playwright who used his talents to help him pursue his goal of being an urban activist. He was with his girlfriend Vicky Minar, when he "happened upon a particularly humiliating experience of racial injustice" at the Lazy B Stables. In September 1967, Reddy, his girlfriend, and a group of friends went to Lazy B to enjoy their free time by horseback riding. When the group arrived at the stable, they were rejected from being able to ride since they were black. Since Reddy did not want to make a scene, he decided to leave and not do anything about the social injustice he just encountered.
After "following traditional protest strategies", the group returned mixed, with whites and blacks, and were allowed to ride the horses the next day. Reddy was a man who did not like to be treated unfairly or in a derogatory manner, as evidenced by his poetry "ain't nothing funny bout a cracker/calling me a n*****". However, he would not seek to create fights when unnecessary, as he liked to "keep his nose/just above" implying that he would not resort to arguments when the matter was cleared. Charles Parker, another black man who accompanied Reddy to the stable, was able to ride in public while being watched by the media, thus Reddy believed the matter to be closed. Reddy left the incident because in his mind; "management had a change of heart and was willing to allow black people to ride". Parker had been an honors student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and was engaged in antiwar activism through his clubs and activities, and was linked to the movement of "black consciousness".