A Word From Hazel Mack, Founding Board Member

Carter G Woodson is about COMMUNITY -US-ism “No one person exists outside of environment – nor, with rare exception, outside of community. …People live in relation to those in their communities. There exists a rooted "us-ism" in communal living.”         

By Dr. Johnnie Larrie | Community Stewardship | legacybridgenc.org

On one Saturday morning in 1996,  at the East Winston Library, members of the East Winston community came together to discuss starting a charter school. The community came together to “do”something about its concerns for its children. That Saturday morning CGW was born out of a basic and fundamental belief in community, in the power of Us, the belief that we have what we need, and that if we work together, we can address what we want for our children.

Since that historic day, CGW has served thousands, of students and their families and still stands ready to continue to deliver on its promises to move forward, with all segments of the community, to address the most crucial educational needs of those most in need. The community spoke, and it said it wanted CGW to stand as an interrupter of the school to prison pipeline, as a beacon of endless possibilities for our children. The community said it wanted a caring environment for our children that recognizes their gifts, an environment that does not presuppose their destinies.

Over the years, CGW has fulfilled these goals by providing a loving, respectful, engaging environment that teaches children to know and love who they are. Not with standing the larger environment that often pushes influences harmful to their very being, CGW teaches children to seek their God-given universal talents within, and to build outward from there.

Twenty Eight years after its inception, Carter G continues to do community building work, teaching our children to be community builders themselves by first building themselves into conscious productive citizens of the earth who care about the collective. We teach them that they are not limited to Winston-Salem, North Carolina or the USA,  but that they have the ancestral blood of kings and queens running through their veins, and that their unlimited potential is connected to the cosmos itself.

Consequently, most of our graduates, and many who only  spent some time with us, are productive human beings living out their life goals. We have former CGW students who live abroad and travel the world, teachers, musicians, school administrators, entrepreneurs -local and across the country, and happy mothers and fathers now raising children of their own right here in their hometown. Many former students now enroll their children in CGW because they want to instill in them the sense of community.

Come and join our community as we press forward to advance all of US. Hazel Mack, Founding CGW Board Member & Legacy Bridge NC Board Member Emeritus