Charlotte Woods

Charlotte Woods, was once described to students at our school as a woman who lived in a place with a bad reputation and made it better.

"For a long time, living on the South Side was a bad thing," Councilman Luis Aponte told some 350 children at the the school's dedication. Because Charlotte Woods refused to leave, it is a better place today, said Aponte. "It's easy to leave something we don't like, but it's harder to stay and make it better," Aponte said.

Woods once lived in public housing next door to where our school is located. Both the Charlotte Woods Elementary School and the Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. Elementary School were built in a single building known as the B. Jae Clanton Educational Complex. It emerged from the site of the Roger Williams public housing project, where 10 deteriorated buildings were razed in the 1970s and almost all the rest were flattened in 1992.

Woods lived in one of two surviving buildings, adjacent to the new elementary school complex. And she led the early phase of a long-running battle to rebuild the housing project. The number of low-income housing units lost when Roger Williams was abandoned have not yet been replaced. But the efforts of Woods and other tenant leaders led to investments of millions of dollars that helped the poor through improved housing conditions, expanded social programs, and enhanced career opportunities, according to a biography presented by a longtime friend and housing activist, Barbara Krank. One of those who took up Woods's crusade for low-income housing was her son, Joseph Buchanan.

Elizabeth Duffy, who met Woods when she came to South Providence in 1965, remembered her as a "very elegant lady" who was the "boss of the neighborhood." Woods belonged to as many as 14 or 15 community organizations, including the NAACP, the Urban League of Rhode Island, and the Providence community Action Program. Duffy said one of the smartest things Woods ever did was start the Roger Williams Day Care Center so that single mothers like herself could get an education.

Woods also started tutorial and teen drop-in centers and community food banks, and helped improve access to health care and employment opportunities for the poor.

When the Charlotte Woods School originally opened its mission was to teach and practice the "values, character and determination" that Woods embodied. Naming the school for Charlotte Woods "binds us to respect the dignity of all men and women," Diana Lam, Former Superintendent of Providence Schools said. "What she stood for will be celebrated in this school, and in such a way, Charlotte Woods will help shape the lives of children" for generations, Lam said.

Former State Sen. Charles Walton, describing Woods as a quiet, softspoken woman, asked his audience to think back to a time 40 years ago in public housing when it was "mighty difficult" to be heard by those with power. "I can't imagine what it must have been like for her to stand up" and make her voice heard, Walton said. "She was a wonderful woman who has left a great legacy," Walton said.

-From a Providence Journal article covering the school's dedication ceremony (1998).