Black alumni of Independence High School Class of 1980 returned to their old west Charlotte neighborhood Saturday and held a special gathering to feed more than 100 disenfranchised residents there.

Most of the estimated 200 black graduates grew up in the Lincoln Heights community, but court-ordered busing to desegregate local schools took them away from their home communities to Independence High in the Mint Hill area, across town.

Dorenda Metz, president of the Black students’ alumni club, said the former classmates felt compelled to do something back in the neighborhood where they grew up — an area with a high percentage of low-income and economically disenfranchised residents. Some alumni said it was like people they grew up with had been abandoned, left behind, unemployed, with many

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