HISTORICALPERSPECTIVE
Race and Place: The Upbuilding of Hayti and Black Wall Street BY ANDRE D. VANN Coordinator of the University Archives and Instructor of Public History at North Carolina Central University.
“Go to Durham....You need the inspiration. Go to Durham and see Negro business with an aggregate capital of millions. Go to Durham and see twenty-two Negro men making modern history. Among your New Year’s resolves, resolve to go to Durham!” - Excerpted from a 1928 article written by the editor of the St. Luke Herald, a Black weekly newspaper in Richmond, Virginia The study of African Americans on Parrish Street (also known as “The Black Wall Street”) is the biography of a determined people who worked within the confines of Jim Crow to build an enduring legacy of leadership and service. Durham, North Carolina has served as a true role model of the “New South” since the 1880’s and throughout the early 1900’s. Durham’s leaders, both Black and White, represented a new breed of Southerners that were not content with the status quo and were willing to be a model throughout the South. This historical narrative explores the role of public and private memory in shaping interpretations of the past. Also, this research offers a more complex understanding of Durham’s rich history by examining the business, social, political, and cultural connections during significant periods of social change. This piece will trace the growth and development of the African American citizenry that has impacted and shaped the City of Durham from the Reconstruction era, during the Jim Crow era and during the post-desegregation years. Further, it is important to note that a majority of African Americans resided in the South in the early twentieth century and they exercised group economics by pooling resources and group politics by founding organizations that were representative of the African American citizenry that survive today. Over the years, the City of Durham, North Carolina, once called the “Chicago of the South,” has become a major
32
| NCCU SCHOOL OF LAW • OF COUNSEL MAGAZINE
center of economic, social and political advancement for African Americans. It, was much like most southern cities in the 1880s and 1900s, had rigidly segregated communities. The majority of African Americans resided in the southern and southeastern sections known as “Hayti,” (pronounced “haytie”). The first reference to the name Hayti appeared in an 1877 deed that was described as a lot “in the settlement of colored people near the South East end of Durham known as ‘Hayti’.” With this interracial and economically progressive environment, Durham emerged as one of the centers of the African American middle class in North Carolina and the South. Many members of this middle class resided in impressive, large residents in the Hayti district. The architecture of the houses was Victorian. They had spacious porches and large lawns. Also located in Hayti were churches, stores, funeral homes, a hospital, a library, a college, civic clubs, and fraternal lodges. By 1900, the Hayti business community grew rapidly, and was annexed into Durham City between 1901 and 1903. It emerged by the 1920s as a major center that supported an economy that included over 120 businesses that included restaurants, grocery stores, real estate, professional offices, shoe repair shops, florists, grocery stores and churches. In 1911, Dr. Booker T. Washington, the noted educator at Tuskegee Institute and founder of the National Negro Business League, noted in an article entitled “Durham, North Carolina, A City of Negro Enterprise” published in the Independent Magazine that Durham provided an opportunity for African Americans to excel economically. This conclusion was based on his visit to Durham in 1910 to view the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua Incorporated for the Colored Race, Inc. and the progress of the African American race. But, Washington also recognized the existence of amicable relations between African Americans and the White community. He stated, “Of all the southern cities that I have visited I found here the sanest attitude (among) White people toward the Blacks.” In 1912, prominent sociologist and African American historian Dr. W. E. B. DuBois referred to Durham, specifically the Hayti area, as the “Negro business mecca of the South.” Published in World’s Work magazine, the article,
