The unknown slave had been strangled and left for dead, explained Terri Joelle Chambers after reading to a chartered bus-load of tourists those chilling words of a former slave from the book “50 Days on Board a Slave Ship.” Now those travelers would try to understand why they were recounting the lives of slaves and retracing their path from West Africa to the United States. They were doing it because slavery was a harsh but very real contributing factor to the African American history in Charlotte and America.

Each Saturday in February, despite sometimes cold, rainy weather, Charlotte’s Queen City Tours is conducting the Charlotte Black Heritage Tour and Pilgrimage 2000. The bus trip offers a history of North Carolina and Charlotte and demonstrates, by stopping at different sites in the county, the centuries-long influence of African-Americans. The tour is also designed to follow a path thought to be traveled by Africans through the city up Interstate 77.

“As you take this pilgrimage, I want you to stop and think as we visit the various sites, what our ancestors had to go through,”Chambers said to the integrated bus filled with interested adults and children. “But Ialso want you to think of everyone — African- Americans, Caucasians, Native Americans — who all fought for our freedom. “

Though Charlotte’s population of blacks is now about 26 percent, the “Queen City’s” link to Africa began even before the state’s and county’s declarations of independence were signed.

Chambers, the tour’s guide, said the first Africans used as slaves were brought to North Carolina in 1526. They were shipped to Charlotte — named after King George’s German wife, who was of African descent —in 1764. Ironically, 11 years later, the city was incorporated and the “Meck Deck” declaring Mecklenburg county’s emancipation from British rule, was signed, with some signatures belonging to slave owners.

There were many plantations, a number of which operated on Beatties Ford Road. So, the debate of slavery was never a matter of whether or not it was right — it was, because servants were considered only 40 percent human — but whether or not a “master” treated his “servant” well. For instance, whether a master “allowed”his servant to attend church.

On the tour’s itinerary is Mecklenburg County’s Hopewell Presbyterian Church on Beatties Ford Road, one of the oldest churches in Mecklenburg County and one of the few churches where slaves, most commonly referred to as “servants,” were allowed to attend.

Only the house servants could attend church because they “were like members of the family.” And, of course, those surrogate “family members” had to assist the master and his family to their service through the “white people’s way” before they would go, usually bare-footed, along a stone path that led to the servants’ entrance.

Hopewell’s pastor, Jeff Lowrance, led tourists through the narrow, insufficient doorway that opened to a steep, blind stairwell. At the top of the staircase was the “slave gallery” where only servants and poor whites sat; not only were they segregated from the white majority congregation who sat in the sanctuary, they were segregated from each other.

As the group sat aloft in the gallery, Lowrance explained that, after being examined and baptized, slaves were listed as regular, “full” members of the church. But, as the slave gallery indicated, that did not eradicate the discrimination they faced, even in church.

During communion, for instance, servants were the last allowed to partake because the cup of communion wine was commonly shared among all members and, although they were considered members, slaves were still less than human and did not deserve to drink from the same cup as the whites.

“But there is a little twist in that because, a lot of times, the people who served communion were the leaders and elders of the church and, more often than not, they were the people who owned the slaves. So, they would end up being the servants to the slaves, which is what Jesus preached in (one of the) the Gospel(s),” Lowrance pointed out.

Servants usually did not have last names and could not be credited for the “wonderful things”that they did in their community.

But Lowrance mentioned one slave, Louis Phifer, who worked on the Sample Farm and was probably one of the county’s best stone masons. So good that he cut the front steps to Hopewell that only whites could use, he cut the steps to the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charlotte. Phifer’s master would “rent him out to other people” and, eventually, Phifer’s worked forced many white local stone masons out of business.

When Phifer died, he had even cut his own headstone, which was uncommon among slaves since they generally were not allowed to be buried with headstones and had to use field stones as grave markers.

Servants were not even allowed to be buried in the same cemetery as whites and mostly were buried outside the cemetery walls. As a result, there were many slave cemeteries, like the one on Sixth Street in downtown Charlotte, which still accommodates the graves of slaves.

As the dark sky dropped cold rain upon “The Settlers Cemetery,” Chambers explained how slave graves were distinguished.

“Slaves were known as property and, therefore, meant property could not own property. That meant they couldn’t purchase tombstones as others could. What they would have to do is … find a slave who knew how to write and carve a name or marking onto the field stone. The field stone would then be placed at the head of the slave … and they would plant periwinkle around it” which symbolized everlasting life, she said.

Another distinction of slave cemeteries, she said, were the obvious slopes in the ground when the bodies would begin to decay because they were not buried six feet beneath the dirt, only a shallow three or four.

Unlike Phifer, even in his death, not many blacks, enslaved or free, were recognized for their accomplishments. Like Harvey Boyd, who, in 1965, responded to a contest and created the winning county seal which sits in front of the new Mecklenburg County Jail Central on Trade Street. After city officials discovered that Boyd was black, he was not rewarded the prize money for his winning entry. It was not until recently that he has been able to market and make revenue from the seal.

In spite of being disregarded, underestimated and often simply ignored, African-Americans were able to create for themselves a subsystem of communities in which they thrived and flourished as artists, educators and entertainers. In fact, in 1880, Charlotte’s black population reached approximately 57 percent.

Trade and Tryon streets divide Charlotte into four “wards.” First Ward is where some major accomplishments were made for blacks.

On McDowell Street, the Alexander Hotel was the first hotel built by African-Americans, not just in Charlotte, but in the Carolinas.

On Seventh Street was the former Little Rock African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which has been turned into the Afro-American Cultural Center. The AACC was spawned from a University of North Carolina at Charlotte project when it was agreed that more information on the history and culture of African-Americans was important.

Near the AACC are a few of the 12 old “shotgun houses” that are left in the city. The small houses were named as such because the African word that sounds like “shotgun” means “communal,” which is the way the houses are constructed. The house is set so that the rooms are lined up in a parallel fashion and there are no hallways. Communal societies and homes are traditional in Africa.

The other, more obvious, reason they were given that name, Chambers explained, is because it is said that a gunshot could go straight through the house, from front to back door.

Second Ward, which was also known as “Little Brooklyn,” is said to be where “most of the significant history of African- Americans was born during the 1800s.”

Here is where African- Americans had their most prominent businesses: It was the home of the first pharmacy, barber shop and movie theater for blacks. In the area, there were over 100 homes and businesses built to accommodate the large migration of blacks attracted to North Carolina’s growing textile industry.

This ward is also home to Marshall Park, which includes a statue of the late Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The monument was created by King’s friend, Dr. Thelma Burke, the same sculptor who designed the bust in the image of Roosevelt on the dime.

Third Ward is where the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company was established, the first insurance company opened in Charlotte by blacks .

Ericsson Stadium is also found in Third Ward but before it was home to the Carolina Panthers, it was the site of the Good Samaritan hospital, a teaching hospital where African Americans were treated without prejudice and where 78 lives were saved after a train wreck in Hamlet, N.C., forced 81 patients there because it was the closest medical facility.

Finally, Fourth Ward was where where Dorothy Counts’ desegregated Irwin Avenue Elementary School sat, despite her being spit at, having rocks thrown at her and more.

This ward was also the most affluent of them all. Here is where most of the doctors, lawyers and merchants of the 19th century lived. And, although it went through dramatic change which left it less than desirable, the city’s preservation society bought the land in the 1950s and renovated it. And now, again, it is the most affluent of all of the wards and is home to Mel Watt and Harvey Gantt.

Chambers ended the tour by thanking the tourists in Swahili and encouraging them to take their new knowledge with them to school and work and to use the information to understand themselves.

“With the Black Heritage Tour, the purpose of it is for you to learn a lot but also for you to have a desire to go back and read more about your history,” said Chambers, who is studying to be an Africologist.

“Because you won’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’re coming from. If you have knowledge of self, it’s easy for you to get along with others.”