‘She blazed trails’: Charlotte community remembers Thereasea Clark Elder as pioneer, icon

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Thereasea Clark Elder, better known as TD Elder, died Tuesday, at the age of 93.

“She wanted to make sure people knew that African Americans in Charlotte Mecklenburg, that we had something, that we were something,” Kelley Eaves-Boykin said.

As chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Heritage Committee, Eaves-Boykin worked side by side with Elder.

“She blazed trails and she brought a lot of people with her,” Eaves-Boykin said.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles called Elder an icon, posting on Twitter, “She was my beloved mentor and loved on me for decades.”

Elder founded the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Heritage Committee, but she also served her community in a number of other ways.

A Johnson C. Smith University graduate, Elder entered into the U.S. Cadet Nursing Program in the 1940s. After World War II, Elder became the first African American public health nurse in Mecklenburg County.

She officially retired in 1989, but her work didn’t stop there.

In 2003, police told Channel 9 that it was Elder’s calls to them and city leaders that helped revive Charlotte’s Rockwell community. She ended up getting $2 million in grants to help the area.

In 2012, Elder brought the Charlotte Fire Department to Rockwell for a fire safety blitz.

If you walk through that community now, you’ll find the Thereasea Clark Elder Neighborhood Park, named after the woman who spent decades advocating for health and equality for Charlotte’s Black community.

“We don’t give up,” Elder told Channel 9 in 2003. “Hope is all the way to the very end.”

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