“A Worthy Place”: Durham, Duke, and the World of the 1920s-1930s

"A black man may get up in the morning from a mattress made by black men, in a house which a black man built out of lumber which black men cut and planed; he may put on a suit which he bought at a colored haberdashery and socks knit at a colored mill; he may cook victuals from a colored grocery on a stove which black men fashioned; he may earn his living working for colored men, be sick in a colored hospital, and buried from a colored church; and the Negro insurance society will pay his widow enough to keep his children in a colored school. This is surely progress."

-W. E. B. Du Bois in "Upbuilding of Black Durham: The Success of the Negroes and Their Value to a Tolerant and Helpful Southern City", 1912.

This photo book surveys distinguished residences and landmarks in Durham's Black community. 

The city of Durham included Black and white communities, with schools, businesses, hospitals, and other entities segregated by race. New institutions, construction, and monuments helped shape the changing image of the city. In the first decade of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington both visited Durham and celebrated the notable strengths and self-sufficiency of its Black community. Washington focused on Black industry and economic uplift, while Du Bois pressed for political equality and civil rights. In the 1920s racial tensions, contradictions, and inequalities remained high, coupled with anxieties around immigration and secularization. The built environment reflected these changes. In 1925 the state legislature designated the institution that became NCCU as the first state-supported college of liberal arts for Black students. At the same time, other organizations were raising funds for public monuments celebrating Confederate heroes, like the one erected in downtown Durham in 1924.

The 1920s saw an increase in Confederate monuments in the South, including this one erected in 1924 in downtown Durham.

The downtown Durham monument was pulled down by anti-racist activists in 2017 soon after the deadly, white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The pedestal in downtown Durham was removed in 2020.  https://www.instagram.com/p/BXzJKftg_Df/  

The statue’s removal was part of a larger movement by legislators and activists to remove or reframe Confederate monuments in the United States, including a statue of General Lee at the Duke University Chapel.