Life and Career
Gantt was born in Charleston, South Carolina to Wilhelmina and Christopher C. Gantt, a shipyard worker. He started to participate in civil rights activism in high school. In 1963, he was the first African American to be admitted to Clemson University in South Carolina. He received a degree in architecture with Honors from Clemson and a Master's degree in City Planning from MIT.
From 1974 until 1983, Gantt served on the Charlotte City Council. He was elected to two terms as the first African-American mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, serving in that position from 1983 to 1987. He was defeated for a third term as mayor in 1987 by Sue Myrick. A Democrat, in the 1990s, he staged two unsuccessful U.S. Senatorial campaigns against the popular Republican Jesse Helms in 1990 and in 1996, gaining 47% and 46% of the vote, respectively.
He manages a successful architectural practice, Gantt Huberman Architects, and remains active in politics. He served on the North Carolina Democratic Party Executive Council, the Democratic National Committee, and was appointed as chair of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington, DC.
Together he and his wife Lucinda (Brawley) Gantt, who was the second black student at Clemson, had several children: Sonja, Erika, Angela and Adam. Their daughter, Sonja Gantt, is a news anchor at WCNC-TV in Charlotte.
Read more about this topic: Harvey Gantt
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