(upbeat jazz music) - [Bea] How lasting are the impressions we have of our high school days?

Remembering friends, looking forward to the next steps in life.

For many high school reminiscing ends up as mental pictures of the past.

- Look there.

Who is that?

- [Bea] Yet ask any who attended Second Ward High School in Charlotte And you realize the lessons learned there, resulted in leaders for the future.

- Service for all of us that graduate from Second Ward it's like our DNA.

- Mecklenburg County Commissioner Arthur Griffin, is a proud Second Ward Tiger, class of '66.

Along with other black students, he attended the city's first black high school, which was open from 1923 until 1969.

And it was the educators, who made sure that their students learning in a segregated system, had the tools to do better with their lives and to impact others.

- They wanted us to make sure that there was some impact, whatever we'd do, whether it was in business, whether it was in politics, or it was in service in the community, they wanted us to have impact.

(fast upbeat jazz music) - [Bea] And they did.

Starting with Fred Alexander, graduate of the class of 1926, who went on to become Charlotte's first African American City Councilman in 1965, exactly 100 years after the Civil War.

It was Alexander who led the effort, to tear down a fence, that divided the black and white cemeteries, Pinewood and Elmwood on West Fifth Street, ending segregation even in death.

And Jim Richardson, who served 10 years in the State House and Senate, then four more as a Mecklenburg County Commissioner.

Yet it was during the final years of Second Ward High School, that America saw the beginning years of the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Ward tigers rose to the challenge.

- We were children of the Civil rights era.

1954, the Brown decision, we were all like in first grade.

But by 1966, the early '60s, we were engaged as students.

- You go to a school like Second Ward, you learn not to get caught up in a revolution going nowhere.

You learn to fight for something and more importantly, you learn to fight for and with other people.

- Waddell had attended the prestigious Palmer Institute called a beacon of Black excellence.

Palmer Institute was a school for upper class African Americans, a private school that operated from 1902 to 1971.

Yet Second Ward was a place where he found his direction.

- I came to Second Ward because I wanted to play basketball and I had a scholarship to A&T, but I wanted the experience of a public high school.

- He went on from Second Ward to become an attorney, head of the Mecklenburg County Minority Affairs Office and ultimately headed up a national committee on the US Census.

But make no mistake about it, it was the impact of Second Ward, that was the guiding beacon.

- You reach out to train, to motivate, to inspire the average and maintain model for the gifted.

I learned that at Second Ward.

- [Bea] For Arthur Griffin, editor of the school paper at Second Ward.

That involvement included being a member of Leadership, Charlotte's first class back in 1977, at the behest of his Second Ward teacher, Shirley Johnson, That led to a career at Legal Aid.

17 years on the school board, five as the chair.

A Vice President's position with McGraw Hill Education and currently as an at large, Mecklenburg County Commissioner.

- What Second Ward did for me and all of my fellow graduates, they made us believe that we could do anything we wanted to do.

- [Bea] As for Kermit Waddell, while he has done much to bring respect to his alma mater, you may have been wondering why you know that name.

Well, here's why.

- This is a picture of Dr. E. E. Waddell.

He was the last principal of Second Ward High School.

He's a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University.

He got a master's at New York University and got a PhD from Duke University.

He's my father's twin brother.

He was my uncle.

- [Bea] While there may never be another Second Ward, the impact of his administrators and teachers, continues to be felt.

(waves crashing) (water splashing) And just like a rock causes waves when thrown into a pond, so do the waves of knowledge and caring of the Second Ward High School continue to flow and influence the lives of so many.

For CarolinaIMPACT, I'm Bea Thompson.