Buried within the pages of the Green Book are addresses that tell stories much larger than the buildings themselves.

One of those places was the Excelsior Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, a site included in the 1963–64 and 1966–67 editions of the Green Book. That inclusion is significant. The Green Book connected Black travelers to spaces where they could expect hospitality, safety, and dignity. Through its pages, places like the Excelsior Club become more than addresses. They become entry points into larger stories about community, mobility, and everyday life.

Founded by James Robert McKee, commonly known as Jimmie McKee, the Excelsior Club opened in September 1944 after McKee purchased a seven-room, two-story house on Beatties Ford Road at a public sale for $3,510. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and raised in Charlotte's historic Biddleville neighborhood, McKee created something that would become much more than a club. Located amongst McCrorey Heights, Washington Heights and Biddleville, three of Charlotte's historic African American neighborhoods, the Excelsior Club occupied a space at the heart of the city's Black community.

Over several years, renovations transformed the original house into a cultural institution.

For decades, the Excelsior Club served as one of Charlotte's most significant spaces for African American entertainment and social life. During segregation, opportunities for Black residents to gather, celebrate, and build community were limited by law and custom. Spaces like the Excelsior Club helped fill that need.

Membership included many of Charlotte's Black professionals, including doctors, lawyers, educators, ministers, and business leaders. But beyond membership lists and titles, the club represented something larger: a place where Black excellence, community, and social life could exist on its own terms.

Over time, the Excelsior Club became known for more than entertainment. It functioned as a safe haven and gathering space where relationships, conversations, and community life unfolded. During a period shaped by segregation, spaces like the Excelsior Club provided an environment where people could gather with dignity and a sense of belonging.

Its stage welcomed local talent and nationally recognized performers including Sam Cooke, Louis Armstrong, James Brown, and Nat King Cole.

Yet the Excelsior Club's influence extended far beyond music and nightlife. Jimmie McKee became widely recognized as a community advocate within Charlotte's African American community and contributed financially to numerous organizations including the YMCA, the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, Hungarian Relief efforts, and Johnson C. Smith University.

McKee and the club became deeply connected to Charlotte's political life as well. Many in the community looked to McKee as a source of leadership and encouragement, while political figures increasingly recognized the significance of the Excelsior Club as a gathering place within Charlotte's Black community. Candidates frequently visited the club in efforts to engage Black voters. During his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton made the Excelsior Club one of his campaign stops.

What makes this story especially compelling is that the building still exists today.

So often, discussions of Black history involve places that have disappeared or survive only in photographs and memories. But the Excelsior Club remains physically present, a reminder that history is not always distant. Its future, however, has not always been certain. In 2019, the property was identified as an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Yet in 2020, an investment group purchased the property with plans to restore and preserve it as a historic space.

Sometimes history still stands at the end of a street, waiting not only to be recognized, but protected.

Places like the Excelsior Club remind us that history lives not only in famous landmarks, but also in gathering spaces, neighborhoods, and ordinary buildings that helped sustain everyday life.

How we tell those stories matters.

Dr. Justice Briscoe
Public Historian

Image Credits:

Figure 1. The Excelsior Club, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1944. Courtesy of the James "Jimmie" McKee Papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Figure 2. The Excelsior Club, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1944. Courtesy of the James "Jimmie" McKee Papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Figure 3. James & Minnie 25th Wedding Anniversary. Courtesy of the James "Jimmie" McKee Papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Figure 4. Travelers' Green Book: 1963-64 International Edition: For Vacation Without Aggravation. Courtesy of the James "Jimmie" McKee Papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Figure 5. Travelers' Green Book: 1966-67 International Edition: For Vacation Without Aggravation. Courtesy of the James "Jimmie" McKee Papers, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Figure 6. Excelsior Club, Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph by Dr. Justice Briscoe, 2026.

Figure 7. Excelsior Club, Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph by Dr. Justice Briscoe, 2026.