Rumor has it that Queen Sophia Charlotte — the city’s namesake — was black. I decided to spend an afternoon searching for the truth. First stop: Charlotte’s international airport. Sculptor Raymond Kaskey’s 16-foot-tall Queen Charlotte greets visitors as they exit the terminal. She looks as if she’s being carried away by the wind while trying to hold on to her crown — which actually may have been the case when her husband, King George III, had his first breakdown in 1765, leaving it up to her to hold it all together.

I stop at the Visitor Center and ask the trim Scottish(?) grandmother manning the desk for any information she might have on the queen. (My plan is to feign ignorance.) She hands me a visitor’s guide which recommends that I view the queen’s portrait at Charlotte’s Mint Museum of Art. As I continue to flip through the magazine, the attendant mentions that the queen was from Germany, and then, in a conspiratorial voice, says, “You might find this interesting; she’s part African American.” Indeed.

From the airport, it’s eight miles to the next clue, a statue of Queen Charlotte at the corner of 5th and College streets in, what locals call, Uptown. This version is life-size. Her facial features aren’t particularly African and, because she’s been aging outdoors, her face, skin, dress and two bronze puppies are all verdigris. She’s standing regally in the middle of a raised bed of tulips with three wooden park benches near her. On a work day, you might see bankers scurrying by, but today it’s peaceful. Still, I’m distracted by a construction site on my right and from the left, a tempting aroma wafting from Mert’s Heart & Soul Restaurant. I follow my nose. One block north on College Street is the Main Branch of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. Maybe they can help.

Charlotte’s library system is one of the best in the country. Its annual Novello Festival of Reading has featured award-winning writers and illustrators for nineteen years. Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, Jamaica Kincaid, and Colson Whitehead are among the hundreds who have participated in the festival. In addition, the library’s Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room holds the largest public genealogy collection in the state.

It’s deadly quiet in the Carolina Room. I tell the African American woman at the desk that I’m researching Queen Charlotte. She smiles slyly (or so it seems) and asks, “Are you looking for something specific?”

“No,” I say, because I’m undercover.

Another librarian invites me to sit at a long wooden table, pulls two books from a shelf and places them in front of me. She returns with three manila folders filled with yellowed-newspaper clippings, art exhibition brochures, pictures of portraits and copies of data gathered online. As she pulls the papers out of the folders, she says, “Some people think that the queen was African American.”

“Really?” I reply.

“Yeah, we get that question from time to time. Some say the queen’s of Moorish descent, but we’ve traced her genealogy back to the 1300s. The genealogy shows that she’s from an old European family.”

To their credit, the Charlotte library has written to their counterparts in England and Germany investigating the queen’s ancestry.

“They just think we’re crazy,” she concludes.

I feel like a sleuth as I rifle through the documents. There are pages tracing the queen’s family back eight generations. All of the recorded ancestors are German. I find a newspaper article written in 1958 which quotes Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford, who attended Queen Charlotte’s wedding. ‘… Her hair is delicate and fine,’ his description asserts, ‘…her forehead low, her nose very well except the nostrils spread far too wide. The mouth has the same fault, but the teeth are good.’ Aha! The nose. The mouth. This looks promising.

A brochure from an exhibition that the Mint Museum mounted in 1976, quotes the same Walpole as saying the queen’s ‘… hair is darkish and fine…’ Wait a minute. Is her hair delicate or is it darkish? A later article mentions the Allan Ramsay portrait at the museum. Ramsay was Queen Charlotte’s contemporary and it was his painting and descriptions of her that lead some historians to believe that the queen was black. Pictures in the folder depict the queen with light hair and blue eyes; others show her with chestnut hair and brown eyes.

It’s almost six o’clock and I want to get to the Mint before it closes. I consider stopping at Time Warner Cable Arena, a few blocks away, where Michael Jordan’s newly purchased Bobcats play basketball. There’s a 16- by 15-foot digital photograph of an elegant Queen Charlotte hanging there. Thousands glimpse her likeness during games and concerts, but don't realize that the model for this picture of the queen is African American.

Out of the library, the trail leads me past Mert’s restaurant again and this time I succumb to the aroma. I walk out with dinner and a plan to visit the Mint the next day.

In October 2010, a brand new Mint Museum will join the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art on a new cultural campus Uptown. The current Mint is three miles southeast on Randolph Road. In addition to the queen’s portrait, the museum houses an important collection of Charlotte-born artist Romare Bearden’s work.

I enter the Mint and tell the receptionist that I’m there to see the painting of Queen Charlotte. She directs me upstairs to the Alexander Gallery.

I turn back and ask, “Do you have any info about the Queen? Besides the portrait?”

She pulls out a copy of a guide titled, “Black White Other.” Ding. Ding. Ding.

“One of our docents did some research,” she begins, “it seems that the queen had a Moroccan branch in her family.” (Yes. She said Moroccan, not Moorish.)

Just inside the gallery to the left is Ramsay’s Queen Charlotte in all her coronation glory. A companion oil of her husband, King George III, hangs next to hers in a matching gilded frame. I’d read that Ramsay was an abolitionist and may have emphasized the queen’s ‘African’ features. In this portrait, Queen Charlotte is pale — very pale, almost stark white — in contrast to the rosy-hued king and other lords and ladies sharing the gallery. Charlotte’s lips are the same size as George’s. And her nostrils don’t look especially wide. I’d never guess that she was black from this painting.

To add to the confusion, artist Ken Aptekar has been commissioned to create an interpretation of this portrait to celebrate the opening of the Mint Museum’s new facility. Aptekar researched the queen’s heritage and declared her a descendant of a black Portuguese royal family. (Historian Mario de Valdes of Cocum agrees that the queen’s Portuguese ancestry answers the question in the affirmative. Others say the Portuguese branch were Germans who migrated there.)

The Mint’s painting just isn’t conclusive—at least not for me. Still, I’m intrigued. When I head to Paris for five days, I think I’ll detour to London to view the other images of Queen Charlotte in the Royal Collection. Maybe I can read the original Walpole descriptions of her at the wedding. Then I’ll learn the truth.

Posted in: Culture, Points of Interest
Features: Arts, Historical, Sightseeing