- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Narrator] Tonight on Echoes of the '60's, Peace, Love, and Progress.

It was a decade that rocked our nation and reshaped our region.

- This was the beginning of their thoughts about our skyline that we have today.

- [Narrator] As progress also brought protest.

- We are going to sit at the lunch counter and we are going to stay at the lunch counter.

- [Jeff] Yep.

The Carolinas were changing.

- Charlotte was growing so rapidly in the '60's.

- [Jeff] And so were the faces influencing our culture, capturing our imagination.

- This is Chatty Hattie, the Queen of the South coming to you on radio station, WGIV.

- [Jeff] Everybody looking for something different here, something better here.

- I think we was just looking forward to having a new track, and especially in Carolinas.

- For me, coming to Charlotte was like a dream.

- [NASA Employee] Three, two, one.

- [Narrator] We've also got some stories from the '60's that maybe you haven't seen or heard before.

- [Interviewee] The employees didn't know that they were weaving the material for the flag.

- [Jeff] So get ready for a journey of peace, love and progress, six decades in the making, as the '60's in the Carolinas and those black and white memories come flickering back to life.

- [Narrator] Funding for echoes of the '60's.

Peace, love, and progress is provided in part by Anne Waters Dowd, in loving memory of her husband, W Frank Dow III.

(upbeat music) - [Newscaster] Independence Square in Charlotte.

Some say center city for the Piedmont Carolina population in the millions.

About 40,000 cars passed this main intersection daily.

Impressive figures.

♪ Don't you know it's a good day ♪ ♪ And the days ♪ And the nights in the summer ♪ In the city ♪ Summer ♪ In the city - [Jeff] This 1960's documentary takes us on a tour of what was then called downtown, today's uptown, and how city leaders were already planning back in the '60's for Charlotte's future.

- [Newscaster] More money, more investment, more tourists, more traffic into downtown Charlotte, which with our widened streets.

- [Film Narrator] We're coming up here to the square.

- [Cheryl] This is the Odell plan that was produced in 1966.

- [Jeff] Charlotte Center City Partners gave us a peek at those plans 10 years ago.

The earliest maps and models, their 1960's vision of future office towers and high rise apartments, the large urban parks, even the stadium that we see in uptown now decades later.

- I mean, this was the beginning of their thoughts about our skyline that we have today - [Jeff] And west of the skyline, well, Charlotte's airport was also ready for takeoff back in the '60's.

♪ I'm leaving on a jet plane ♪ Don't know when I'll be back ♪ Oh babe - Ryan look, there's a new kind of plane.

- [Ryan] That's Eastern's new Boeing 727 jet.

Look how high the tail is.

- [Jeff] Eastern Airlines was the first to fly jets from Charlotte in 1962, and the first airline to establish a hub in 1967.

North Carolina based Piedmont Airlines was also growing as Charlotte was outgrowing its old airport terminal.

♪ But I'm leaving on a jet plane ♪ So more concourses were added and the airport built a longer second runway in the 1960's, as Charlotte boarded more than 700,000 passengers a year who wanted to get away and started planning in the 1960's for the new airport we have today.

But for those who wanted to stay.

♪ Mustang Sally Yeah, this is a 1966 Mustang convertible.

♪ Yes, you better slow your mustang down ♪ One of 25,000 cars a day during the '60's here on Independence Boulevard before it became a freeway.

♪ Mustang Sally now baby Speeding past the brand new seven story Urban Building built in 1964 and the still new Charlotte Coliseum.

Charlotte's first mall was here on Independence, so was Charlotte's first McDonald's, along with the sprawling '60's suburbs that surrounded those now gone but not forgotten shopping centers, with popular stops that are now just mostly memories.

- I mean, there were some great restaurants and there were some good repair shops and music shops and that type of thing that I miss.

- You travel down Independence, and of course you could not stop without visiting Krispy Kreme, especially with the Hot Donuts Now sign out.

♪ Ride Sally, ride - [Jeff] And today, well, you could still pull into what may be the last '60's survivor here on Independence, still serving it up '60's style.

- A hot dog and order of onion rings.

- [Cashier] Sir, what else?

- [Jeff] With the same great food and a few old photos to remind you how it used to be.

♪ Water ♪ Water ♪ It's just a whole lot of water ♪ ♪ Over the dam - [Andy] And that's Lake Norman.

This is what's going to be Lake Norman right there.

- [Jeff] Mooresville Library historian, Andy Poor shows us his collection of old photos and postcards of what today's Lake Norman used to be.

♪ Ah, water - My parents were both in the band in 1960, in the high school band, and they played at the breaking of the dam.

- [Jeff] Lake Norman was created in the early '60's, turning 32,000 acres of low-lying farmland into the southeast's largest, manmade body of water.

But Poor adds the real growth at Lake Norman came in 1968, when I-77 finally connected Charlotte to the lake.

- Everybody in this area that's around Lake Norman is trying to find that balance of what once was to what is now.

♪ Just a whole lot of water ♪ Over the dam (upbeat music) - Outside my office window were protests going on, on campus and defiance of tradition.

- [Jeff] Charlotte historian Dan Morrill remembers the growth that brought progress to the Carolinas, often brought protests too, especially in minority communities that felt split apart.

- [Group Together] We are not afraid.

- [Jeff] And left behind.

- [Group Together] We are not afraid.

- We're going to sit at the lunch counter and we're gonna stay at the lunch counter and they're going to have to arrest us and put us in jail.

- [Jeff] Dub Massey was a member of the Friendship nine, the South Carolina College students who in 1961 wound up behind bars, after their peaceful downtown Rock Hill sit-in.

Two years later, Dr.

Reginald Hawkins led a similar peaceful protest from the campus of Johnson C. Smith University to the center of Charlotte.

- Charlotte had one of the second largest sit-in movements in the country that lasted for most of the first half of the 1960's.

Off and on, they would target restaurants and other public facilities.

- [Jeff] Historian Willie Griffin says the Charlotte area protests and sit-ins weren't just about where African Americans couldn't eat, but also about where they couldn't live and work.

The Red Line city maps that kept many Charlotte neighborhoods all white, and the urban renewal programs that bulldozed segregated black neighborhoods like Brooklyn.

- In the middle of my second grade year is when we experienced urban renewal and my family had to leave the Brooklyn area.

- [Jeff] The problem, well, these areas weren't really slums.

While the housing was rundown due to overcrowding and poverty, Brooklyn was still a vibrant neighborhood, full of African American churches and schools and black owned businesses that were mostly lost along with the neighbors, 7,000 neighbors who had to move.

- It was really rough for some people because they had to find somewhere to go.

- That was a double edged sword because number one in the '60's you had civil rights unrest.

Campus unrest on all universities, anti-war protestors and all like that.

So I'm caught from both sides.

I'm caught from being a black man, you know, fighting for a country that don't even recognize me as a man, but I still have to do my part.

♪ And it's one two three ♪ What do we fight for - [Jeff] Mark Englander was one of those Vietnam war protestors.

♪ It's one two three During Vietnam, Englander founded the Red Hornets, a Charlotte anti-war protest group that got a lot of headlines at the time.

- [Englander] That's you, that's me.

- [Jeff] For their lawsuit against the police department.

Their protest of President Nixon's visit to Charlotte.

♪ Here at last The Red Hornets even got Englander on the ballot for Charlotte mayor.

♪ One that's dead.

- We kept having victories small, these small victories and getting attention.

- [Jeff] Englander says the focus of their Charlotte Vietnam protests was never these now old soldiers who fought the war, just the government that sent them off to war.

(patriotic music) - They realized when they came back, what a mistake the Vietnam War was.

How could you hold that against them?

- Those veterans of Vietnam came home in the 1960s to a booming economy here in the Carolinas.

And it wasn't just furniture factories, textile towns and tobacco farms anymore.

New jobs were coming south and our cities were growing, but toward the end of the '60's, well, so were prices.

You could still get a loaf of bread for a quarter.

Gas was also up a few pennies to 35 cents a gallon.

But if you were looking for a home here in North Carolina, well the cost was thousands more, with the median home price increasing more than 50% from $8,000 in 1960 to over $12,000 10 years later.

A lot of veterans returning to the Carolinas were also looking for a college education in the 1960's with new schools here at home, waiting for them.

- Charlotte was a growing community of about 200,000 in 1960.

Always been an entrepreneurial community with things going on and expansion.

- In 1963, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Community College Act, a bold move that created a network of public colleges to bridge the gap between education and opportunity.

The mission objective from the start, it was to be more than just a vocational training education program.

And so this, these were, this, these programs came in with the Central Industrial Education Center at Mecklenburg College.

It was also decided to include liberal arts transfer programs for a two year program that students could transfer, take a two year degree, and transfer onto four year colleges.

- [Jeff] Professor Hugh Dussek has been teaching history at Central Piedmont for over 20 years.

He says the city merged the two uniquely different institutions to create what became Central Piedmont Community College.

- It was called a second chance college because people had a second chance to make a different kind of living or to learn a skill that they were interested in and then get a better job.

- Mitchell Hagler spent decades as an educator and eventually an administrator at Central Piedmont.

He started back in 1966 and says the early years weren't easy.

- There was certainly growing pains.

- [Jeff] Central Piedmont had no central campus.

Classes were scattered across Charlotte in borrowed buildings, old army barracks, even church basements with limited staff and limited equipment.

- We started off with one little tiny building, but all around Central Piedmont were small houses and they had to be bought.

The land had to be bought and cleared in order for other buildings to be built.

- [Jeff] Central Piedmont's early leaders faced funding shortages, political hurdles and fierce skepticism too.

At the helm was Dr.

Richard Hagemeyer, the college's first president.

18-year-old John White moved to Charlotte to attend Central Piedmont in the fall of 1963.

And he still remembers walking on campus when a distinguished man in a suit and tie stopped to talk with him.

It was Dr.

Hagemeyer.

- I was like, wow, this is big time.

This is big time.

And it, it was just, it was just everything went with need and, and, and all the events that happened in the world.

It was just, when I look back, I'm just thankful for it.

- [Jeff] White who became a Pulitzer Prizewinning photojournalist and Marine veteran majored in art and says the school was a playground for great opportunities.

- But I remember Central Piedmont, when, you know, they provided a camera for this class.

And when I took a picture, it was a Nikon and I looked through it and it was like, opened up a whole new world.

- [Jeff] That's exactly what Dr.

Hagemeyer envisioned for Central Piedmont.

A permanent place where students of all ages and all backgrounds could come to learn, train, and prepare for a changing world.

From the beginning, the community college opened its doors to everyone.

Black and white students learned side by side, a progressive stance during the height of the civil rights movement.

- To see the diversity of students, you know, in the classroom was different than what I grew up with.

- [Jeff] For John White, it was a life changing experience.

- I attended all schools are all black, and I'm here and I think there was only a few BlAcks in the class and we became like a family.

- [Jeff] By 1967, Hagemeyer's vision started becoming reality.

On Elizabeth Avenue, construction began on what would become the college's central campus.

With community support and state funding, the first permanent building started rising, a major milestone in the college's young life.

- We let the enrollment happen and then we built the building.

So we were, it was always catch up.

- [Jeff] Hagemeyer remembers that enrollment grew at lightning speed.

Programs in nursing, engineering and business joined the trades.

There were night classes for working adults and vocational training for Vietnam veterans returning home.

- My first class, when I walked in, I was the youngest person because almost everyone in there were veterans.

They were going to college on the GI Bill.

They had been in foreign countries, they had seen things.

I'd never been outta Concord hardly.

- I call that one three on the side.

My name is Florence Jaffa and I started Central Piedmont Community College in the 1960's and was a student there until just a few years ago when I finally, it was too hard for me to get there.

- [Jeff] The 93-year-old painter and printmaker took her first class at Central Piedmont in 1966.

- I like this one.

- [Jeff] She went on to earn her associate degree in commercial art and advertising.

Back then, Jaffa was in her mid-30's and married with children.

- At that time, I had very little self-esteem and I think that my art skills were recognized.

I won awards, I was in different shows.

You know, it makes a difference when you have someplace to go that you feel at home and feel like you're getting something back.

- [Jeff] What began in 1963 as a local response to a statewide need, had become something more by decade's end, growing from a patchwork of classrooms into a vital public institution, Enrollment surpassed 1,600 students by the end of the '60's.

And today there are more than 52,000 students across six campuses.

The college, though, has always been more than just buildings.

It also builds futures.

And for White, who is now a photojournalism teacher, life has come full circle.

- Central Piedmont did for me what I try to do for others, is give wings to dreams.

- [Jeff] As the 1960's came to a close, Central Piedmont had not only survived its rocky start, it had planted roots that would grow for generations.

- [Cheerleaders Together] Hey, hey, take it away- (groups speaking over each other) - [Jeff] Right next door to the Central Piedmont Campus, you're looking at a photo of the 1966 Shrine Bowl at Memorial Stadium, which was the place for Charlotte High School football back in the '60's.

- So great memories of going to the Friday night football games at Memorial Stadium with the then 10 high schools in Charlotte, all playing each other, Northeast, Southwest, and all the others.

It was a great time.

(crowd cheering) (music playing) - [Jeff] Yep, high school football was just one of the sports that brought Charlotte together back then.

Long before the arrival of major league teams like the Hornets and the Panthers that bring us together today.

(thoughtful music) Many Charlotte sports fans joined the fold with the NBA and the NFL.

But the city's pro sports story began much earlier, on the baseball diamond in 1892.

That's when the Charlotte Hornets took the field and by 1960, they were still the city's pride and occasional joy.

Baseball at Griffith Stadium was more than just the pastime.

It was tradition.

- Different from any ballpark I've ever been in my life.

It smelled like baseball.

You know, the noises, the creaks, the rumbles of fans stomping their feet during rallies and you're underneath and you feel the it it was just a unique place.

- World Series champions, Greg Nettles and Rick Dempsey, along with Hall of Famer, Tony Oliva sharpened their skills at Griffith Stadium and in 1969 the team hit it its stride, clinching the Southern League championship.

But for Thomas, it wasn't the title that stood out, it was the bond he forged with Asheville's manager, Sparky Anderson.

- He liked me so much that he requested me be his boy every time they came to town, which meant I would bat boy for him.

I'd run errands for him.

His favorite was two hot dogs and a Coke.

I treasured the, just being around these guys listening to 'em.

They didn't talk down to us, you know, they knew we were just kids and we loved everything about baseball.

- [Jeff] From baseball's steady rhythm to racing's need for speed, Charlotte's love for sports shifted gears with the roar of engines in 1960, at the brand new Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Built on a foundation of local dirt tracks and a deep racing heritage, the speedway cemented the queen city as a motor sports powerhouse.

- We'd been running down at the fairgrounds on a half mile dirt.

And so Charlotte of all of a sudden was going to have a super speedway.

And I think all the racers looked forward to that.

- In the 1960's, It was called the Stock Car Racing Capital of the world.

- [Jeff] But the project was no Sunday Drive.

Original developers, Bruton Smith and Curtis Turner found themselves grappling with financial hurdles and construction woes.

Beneath the surface, stubborn granite deposits turned earth moving into a battle, while relentless weather delays added to the strain.

Even paving the speedway was a challenge.

- They'd done it so quick and people really didn't at that time, really know how to lay the asphalt and have put the base down.

- They were still paving it the morning of practice.

So the, the asphalt really didn't have time to set and that's why it was coming up in holes and big chunks.

And why when they got ready to run the first 600, they had screens on the front of the cars to keep the chunks of asphalt coming through the radiators.

- [Jeff] Charlotte Motor Speedway turned the World 600, already NASCAR's longest and most punishing race into a fierce test of endurance and determination, making victory at Charlotte all the more coveted.

- There was holes they were having to drive around on the track.

And that was actually what cost Bud Moore the victory with his driver Jack Smith in the first 600 and there was a chunk of asphalt came up and knocked the hole in the gas tank.

- The engine and stuff are so much better now.

The cars are better, the tires are better.

Back then, just finishing the race, 600 miles is a long way to go.

And especially back in those days.

(upbeat music) - [Jeff] Charlotte's appetite for high octane action wasn't just limited to the track.

In the ring, professional wrestling took center stage, trading horsepower for headlocks and turning arenas into battlegrounds of spectacle and drama that people from all backgrounds enjoy.

- Every Monday night we had wrestling at Park Center.

That building would vibrate.

That stomping, if they got in a rhythm, the scary part when something would happen that all of a sudden the building gets real quiet.

Uh-oh, you know, they're gonna rush the ring.

- [Jeff] Jim Crockett Promotions ruled the region, drawing stars like Rip Von, Swede Hansen, Skull Murphy, Haystacks Calhoun, and Buddy Rogers to the ring.

Their matches were so intense, they didn't just captivate arena crowds.

They spilled into living rooms.

- I've had cards from people saying and send me a bill for their TV set saying my grandfather shot the TV 'cause he got so mad.

You know, serious, think about that.

- [Jeff] If Charlotte Sports fans craved a spark, the Charlotte Checkers delivered, seeking a fresh start after leaving behind their smoldering past.

- The arena burnt down in Baltimore and they were just looking for a place to play.

- [Jeff] Hockey, a sport with roots very deep in the northern ice never ventured this far south until now.

Charlotte was its southern most outpost, and the fans embraced it with an unquenchable enthusiasm.

- They would sell that building out and it was nine or 10,000 people back then.

You couldn't get a ticket.

- [Jeff] And the fans did more than just pack the place.

Their cheers shook the rafters with boos echoing like thunder, and sometimes the passion in the stands matched the fiery clashes unfolding on the ice.

- They were booing you all night and screaming at you and yelling at you, and they'd have signs up on different places about this guy or that guy.

It was a wild place.

Some nights would be a fight on the ice and there'd be two or three fights in the stands start at the same time - [Jeff] As the checkers carved their place on the ice, Another game was quietly taking root in Charlotte's Rolling Hills.

In the late '50's, Quail Hollow Club began to take shape, laying the groundwork for a golfing legacy.

- Arnold Palmer had just won the '58 Masters and my dad asked him to come to Charlotte and to meet with 19 other men, and they wanted to build a golf course where they could enjoy each other's company.

- [Jeff] Arne made a bold promise to the 25 founding members.

If they built it right, he could bring the PGA tour to their doorstep.

So with just over 257 acres at his disposal, George Cobb crafted a masterpiece with sweeping fairways, challenging par fives and daring risk reward holes.

But one question still lingered, would it be enough?

- Do you think we can build a golf course good enough to attract the pros to come and play?

And he said, for enough money they'll play down Independence Boulevard.

- [Jeff] In 1969, Quail Hollow welcomed its first PGA tour event, the Kemper Open.

Since then, the course has hosted annual tournaments, the prestigious PGA championship in 2017, and again in 2025 and the President's Cup in 2022, all following the blueprint left by Palmer's visionary promise.

- He put his arms around me and he, like, he used to take his hands and put 'em around my neck to get my attention.

And he said, just remember, greatness is always under construction.

- [Jeff] Meanwhile, professional basketball struggled to find a home in Charlotte.

But that all changed in the spring of 1969 when the floundering Houston Mavericks of the American Basketball Association packed up and moved east, rebranding themselves as the Carolina Cougars.

Team management played to the region's strengths, finding standout college talent like Duke's all American Bob Virga and UNC stars, Doug Moe and Bill Bunton.

The Cougars enjoyed an exciting five year stint in North Carolina before relocating once again to St.

Louis in 1974.

And it wasn't just sports at the Charlotte Coliseum in the '60's.

♪ Yeah, mm ♪ Catch us if you can ♪ Mm Yeah, the Coliseum is where Charlotte also came to see and hear the stars of the '60's.

- Yeah, I saw my first concert there.

♪ Catch us if you can 65, December 65, the Dave Clark 5, the, you know, back, you know, the Beatle, the British Invasion era and caught some good shows there over the years.

- [TV Narrator] It's here, the color TV you've been waiting for.

- Plus Charlotte had its own galaxy of legendary local stars too.

Those familiar faces and voices on our TVs and transistor radios.

- [Grady] Good morning, this is Grad Cole and it's WBT Charlotte, North Carolina.

- People loved WBT Radio.

- [Jeff] Any discussion about Charlotte Broadcast Media has to begin with the original legend himself, Brady Cole.

- Brady was the the morning guy there, going all the back to the '30's.

- [Jeff] A young newspaper writer, Cole volunteered to read the news on the radio with the main goal of promoting that afternoon's newspaper.

- My family talked about him and he he was like one of the family.

Like Grady Cole, you know, we love Grady Cole.

We just, just down to earth, good old boy.

And that's, that's kind of the image that he portrayed.

- [Jeff] By the time Grady Cole retired in the early 1960's, the entire landscape of broadcast media was changing dramatically.

- But Charlotte was growing so rapidly in the '60's, that it was almost hard to keep up with what was going on.

- [Radio DJ] 61 Charlotte W-A-Y-S.

- [Jeff] On the Charlotte Radio dial, 61 Big Ways was the dominant local station playing top 40 hits.

- There's a guy named Jack Gale, who was the morning guy there, just owned mornings at that radio station.

- And I used to to play the dumb part.

My idea was to have a high ho come to the Fair Radio station - And in the mid '60's, the husband wife combo of Stan and Sis Kaplan bought big waves, leaving their own mark on the Queen City airwaves.

- The Charlotte radio market had never seen anything like Sis and Stan Kaplan.

I think prior to 1965, it was fairly sedate and not terribly competitive.

- [Radio DJ 2] Big Ways Radio, a way of life in the Carolinas.

- [Jeff] Prior to his 40 plus years on television reporting the weather for WCNC, Larry Sprinkle started his broadcasting career in the late '60's as the local radio DJ.

- 61 W-A-Y-S, Big Ways.

For me, coming to Charlotte was like a dream.

You know, I was in a, it was in a decent sized market.

It was not the Charlotte today, but still the largest city in North Carolina.

Very competitive radio market.

So it, at W-I-S-C I was working at night, going up against a guy named Long John Silver.

(upbeat music) - [Radio DJ 3] Here's Long John Silver going to the dogs.

Now here's Blue.

- Long John Silver's ratings were here mine, were here.

- [Jeff] Another Charlotte radio legend from the '50's and '60's is Hattie Leeper.

Better known to our local listeners as Chatty Hattie.

- This is Chatty Hattie, the Queen of the South coming to you on radio station, WGIV 1600 at the top of the dial, where listening is always worth it.

Let's get this show on the road.

- [Jeff] Hattie started as an intern at WGIV when she was just 14 years-old and when she graduated from high school, well, WGIV made her the first black female DJ, not just in Charlotte, but in all of North Carolina.

- Getting paid to sit down and talk, I said, that's my profession.

Surely I'm going to stick with this and do whatever I have to do to learn all of the techniques of being a broadcaster.

- Chatty Hattie is a piece of radio history.

I think she's a piece of Americana because she was in the foundation of black music, black formatted radio stations.

She was one of the first African American females to be on the radio.

So she was an innovator, she was a creator and well loved by everybody.

♪ Ooh ♪ All I'm askin' ♪ Is for a little respect from you ♪ ♪ C'mon ♪ Just a little bit ♪ Hey baby ♪ Just a little bit ♪ Come on - [Jeff] Chatty Hattie remembers that during the 1960's there were perks that came with being a DJ.

You didn't just play the records, you also got up close and personal with the performers, including recording sessions with superstars like Aretha Franklin.

- I was in New York on Broadway at a recording studio when Aretha cut this record.

"Respect", it was so entertaining.

You'd be the first to get a copy of that record and I would bring back and go on the air with it and play it.

- [Jeff] Hattie says her mom even did a little bit of home cooking here in Charlotte whenever James Brown came to town.

(upbeat music) - James was a really great friend, a great friend.

He would bring his band to town.

If they were gonna play a gig here at the Armor Auditorium, Grady Cole Center downtown.

They'd say, we're going to Miss Hattie's house first and eat.

♪ Ain't no thing ♪ Papa's got brand new bag - When he heard that Arthur Smith was opening up his studios down in Monroe Road, he came there in '65 before a gig and recorded "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" there.

- [Jeff] Photographer and music historian Daniel Costin has been capturing concert moments and memories for decades.

He says Charlotte in the '60's was a regular stop for many of music's future Hall of Famers.

- Seeing the Rolling Stones at the Coliseum in 1965, The Who in 1968.

I really wish I could have seen some of the Motown package shows.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Lookin' through you ♪ Where did she go - [Jeff] Local musicians made their mark in the '60's too, many getting their start in high school playing gigs at Charlotte Teen Clubs before the bigger bands started college.

- We got together and made a duo and eventually got a band together.

TC Atlantic is what it was called.

And it was a typical kid band.

We weren't all that great, but we were enthusiastic and we played Beatle music.

- [Jeff] Charlotte singer and bass player, Steve Stoeckel later played for the SpongeTones.

So guitarist Pat Walters, who was in four different teen bands of his own in the '60's.

- Within months we were on a show opening for Herman's Hermits at Memorial Stadium.

We didn't get paid.

We were about this tall and you know, he had these guitars up here and, but it really, it actually happened.

(upbeat jazz music) - [Jeff] The 1960's were also a heyday for local actors on stage and for theater audiences.

- You also had barn dinner theaters, the Barn Theater that most people associate with Raleigh.

There was one built in 1960 in Charlotte, and there was also a dinner theater in Matthews and in Pineville.

So you would go for dinner and then you would have a show and a lot of that was interactive and they would bring the audience into the production and it was just a great experience.

- [News Anchor] This is channel 3, WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The metropolis of the two Carolinas, the spearhead of the New South.

- [Jeff] It was during the 1960s that television took the reins from radio as the media that everybody turned to and across our region, there was just one station that pretty much everybody watched, mainly because it was the first one on the air.

- First with television in the Carolinas.

First with color television in the southeast.

First with color video tape in the nation.

- It was WBTV, I mean, that's what you saw.

- Good afternoon, this is Jim Patterson welcoming you to channel 3 television from WBTV Charlotte, North Carolina.

Our full power transmitter is located on Spencer Mountain in Gaston County.

- That's where the biggest population was.

And we used to say that a lot of TVs in Gaston County and Cleveland County had their dials just sort of cemented on Channel 3.

I mean, it never moved, you know, they turned the TV on in the morning and they just stayed there all day.

- [Jeff] Back in those days, the national networks provided much less programming than they do now.

So it was up to the local stations to create content and to fill time.

- There were quiz shows, comedies, musicals, interviews, kids shows, audience participation shows, how to do it shows, there was nothing we didn't try.

♪ Well, it's good morning neighbors ♪ ♪ Gotta greet you with a smile ♪ Gotta habit being happy ♪ Say it's great to be alive ♪ Carolina is calling you ♪ Another day is breaking through ♪ ♪ A good, good morning to you - Yes, good morning everybody.

Seven o'clock once again, it's time to rise and shine with Arthur Smith and all the Cracker Jacks with Carolina Calling.

- [Jeff] Shows like Arthur Smith and the Cracker Jacks were mainstays on the local airwaves.

- What a wonderful day has dawned here in the Carolinas again.

- I mean, that was a show that everybody loved.

It was just down home, country music, bluegrass, some pop music, spiritual music, a lot of humor, a lot of just really local, local humor.

A locally produced TV program, TV show that everyone watched.

- Jimmy Kilgo was another sort of cultural icon at Channel nine in the '60's and '70's.

He did the Teen Canteen show, Kilgo's Canteen every Saturday at noon.

Local high school kids would come in to dance and listen to music, a La Dick Clark.

(upbeat music) - [Betty Feezor Show Narrator] Time now for new ideas in creative homemaking.

Crafts and skills and better living for you, today's woman.

Now here's one of the nation's top television authorities, Betty Feezor.

- Hello.

Our show for today begins right here with the lesson in how to make a scarf, which can open up to go around your head for a wind cover or a rain cover for your hair, and then also it may be used as a scarf around your neck.

- [Jeff] The most popular, longest running show during the era was "The Betty Feezor Show" on WBTV, which ran for 24 years, from 1953 to 1977.

Feezor was sort of a 1960's Martha Stewart, sharing segments on cooking and sewing and crafting.

And in 1958, Feezor's program became the first show ever to be videotaped in color.

- I believe very sincerely that homemaking is the best profession there is.

- Feezor's warm, casual delivery and southern charm made viewers feel like friends and her cookbooks were always best sellers.

- You like the flavor of peanut butter?

Well, I talk to just as many adults who enjoy peanut butter as children it seems.

Of course it's kind of hard to beat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or to use peanut butter as the basis for bread pudding, have you tried that?

Or peanut butter on toast tastes mighty good in the morning too.

But today let's have a peanut butter pudding, which can be used as the last part of the meal.

- [Jeff] From cooking and crafting here in the Carolinas to hard news.

- Good evening from the Eyewitness News Communication Center.

Good evening from the Eyewitness News Communications Center.

Good evening from the Eyewitness News Communications Center, I'm Bill Walker reporting.

- [Jeff] Bill Walker arrived in Charlotte as a field reporter on WSOC in the late '60's.

And by the time he retired from Channel 9 in 2005, nobody had anchored the news in Charlotte as long as Bill Walker had.

- I ended up staying in Charlotte at the same station for 37 years, which is rather phenomenal in most businesses, I guess, but especially in TV news.

Would a victory in North Carolina be the knockout punch we talked about for you?

- It would be very helpful.

- Walker's, the guy who interviewed presidents and covered the pulp, the local news anchor that the Carolinas trusted most for nearly four decades.

Much like the network news anchors who walker himself admired back in the early days.

- So I was very plugged into Huntley and Brinkley and ultimately Walter Cronkite and all the others we think about when we think about the icons of TV news.

- Back then, Charlotte felt more like a big town instead of a city, and it showed in the way that local news and events were covered.

- There was no live coverage then.

There was no video tape.

- The Billy Graham Crusades were big TV events.

- During this Charlotte, North Carolina crusade, it's been one of the great privileges of my life to be here.

This is the town that I was born and reared in.

- Festival in the Park was, you know, that was obviously something that was always well attended and well covered by the media.

- [Jeff] Yep, before the days of 24-hour cable headlines and talk shows, nonstop live reports and breaking news, coverage of the day's events happened at a much slower pace.

- It was a very low tech world compared to today in TV news.

But everything was on film.

We had to have film in the lab, the processing laboratory by four o'clock in the afternoon in order for it to be on the air at six.

If we sent people to cover the legislature in Raleigh, those stories would be flown in by airplane from Raleigh and dropped in a bag on our front lawn.

And that's how we got the coverage of the legislature.

We didn't have any electronic hookups or nothing that you have today.

- It was during those early days in 1965 that WTVI also signed on the air, with its license held by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, airing in the beginning, mostly in school instruction programs.

- The WTVI building itself was an elementary school, which was upfitted to become a television station.

- [Jeff] But as the need for that waned, the license was transferred to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Broadcasting Authority, a division of the county.

And that's when WTVI started creating more local shows for more local viewers.

- And then telethons, I did, I can't tell many telethons I did over here for WTVI, maybe half dozen or more televised.

- Later, the station became a viewer supported service of Central Piedmont Community College.

And since then, PBS Charlotte's local content has earned two national PBS awards and six Emmys.

This year marks the station's 60th anniversary.

- I consider myself a great friend of WTVI.

I've participated in fundraisers for the station.

I just think public broadcasting is essential in today's world and has proved its worth over the years.

So I'm a big supporter of public television.

- And as we celebrate our 60th anniversary of public television here at PBS Charlotte, well let's also take a moment to remember a moment.

From those turbulent 1960s, the one single moment at the end of the '60's that brought us all together as one.

- [NASA Employee] Six, five, four, three, two, one.

Lift off.

We have a lift off.

♪ Fly me too the moon ♪ Let me play among the stars Got her cleared.

- [Jeff] Seeing with our own eyes, the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969.

♪ Jupiter and Mars - [Jeff] The world watching that one small step for man and the American flag planted on the moon's surface.

But here's what the world didn't know, that the flag itself was made here in the Carolinas, out of fabric from old Burlington Mill, number two in the textile town of Rhodhiss.

- The employees didn't know that they were weaving the material for the flag until the company put a notice up on the board telling us, now this was after the fact, when they landed on the moon, when everybody read about it, we was excited, you know, but.

- They had a big party.

Daddy came home and I mean, we were emotional.

I'm here to tell you, I mean, everybody in this town was so proud.

- Yeah, that's just one of the stories here in the Carolinas that we've been proud to tell since 1965.

Your moments and memories that we've been proud to share with neighbors who were proud to serve today, and for the past 60 years, right here at WTVI PBS Charlotte.

Thanks for watching.

- [Narrator] Funding for Echoes of the '60's, Peace, Love and Progress is provided in part by Anne Waters Dowd in loving memory of her husband, W Frank Dowd III.

- Larry Sprinkle just doesn't sound like a great name for a radio DJ.

So I came up with a name, Larry Lawrence.

I would come out break and go WCS, WIST.

This is Larry's, Larry's Larry, Larry Lawrence.

So I got a phone call from a guy, guy that says, man, lemme tell you something.

Find out who you are and where you work for and then get back on the air, okay?

- Well I'm gonna stop because it'll be nighttime and I'll still be sitting here telling you about my life.

I'm so happy.

- I like to just go back, relive it all so I can remember it.

(upbeat music) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] A production of PBS Charlotte.