Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt has been named winner of the 2015 John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, which is awarded each year by the North Carolina Humanities Council.
Named after its first recipient, the late Dr. John Caldwell, former chancellor of North Carolina State University, the award is given each year to an individual whose life and work “illuminate one or more of the multiple dimensions of human life where humanities come into play: civic, personal, intellectual, and moral.”
Gantt, a native of Charleston, S.C., was the first black student to attend Clemson University. He later served two terms as mayor of Charlotte (from 1983 to 1987) and twice ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, narrowly losing to the late Republican Sen. Jesse Helms. In 2009, the Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte was named the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture.
The Caldwell Award ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 15 at the Mint Museum in Uptown. A reception will follow at the Gantt Center. Both events are free and open to the public. RSVP is required due to space limitation.
