Durham's African-American Heritage - NC Cultural Heritage

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Tour Durham's African-American Heritage

Durham’s vibrant palette contains colors influenced by its African-American heritage. There’s the so-called “Black Wall Street,” named for its concentration of successful African-American financial enterprises. And the Piedmont Blues may not have been born here, but it moved here as a small child.

Let’s explore these and other colors as we see what Durham has to offer.

Our visit begins in the antebellum period. Once among the largest plantation holdings in the South, Historic Stagville is now dedicated to preservation and African-American cultural history. The range of 18th and 19th century buildings, including barns and original slave quarters at Horton Grove, offer insights into plantation life, society and culture.

Next, it’s on to the place where the Civil War actually ended: Durham’s Bennett Place State Historic Site. Seventeen days after Lee capitulated at Appomattax, General Johnston initiated the war’s largest Confederate surrender here. After the Civil War, Durham’s African-American community flourished. African-American businessmen – led by John Merrick – founded North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1898. Today it is the nation’s largest and oldest African-American life insurance company. So many African-American businesses were established in the Parrish Street neighborhood that the area became famous as “Black Wall Street.”

The Mechanics & Farmers Bank Building at 116 West Parish Street is a National Historic Landmark, and one of the original businesses of Black Wall Street. The bank, founded by Richard Fitzgerald and William G. Pearson, was the first African-American owned bank in the country. Today a mural at the Heritage Square shopping center celebrates its history.

The Piedmont, Carolina or East Coast Blues, is a proud resident of Durham. Cousin to the melancholy Delta Blues, the Piedmont Blues is a more sensitive, delicate and upbeat version pioneered in Durham during the 1920s and '30s. Durham has been home to some of the best bluesmen, like Sonny Terry, a harp stylist best known for his "whoopin" method of playing that is built around high, shrill sounds. Terry met and worked with legendary blues guitarists Blind Boy Fuller and Brownie McGhee on the streets of Durham. Bull City was alive with the music of other artists like Reverend Gary Davis and Bull City Red, too.

Today, blues guitarist John Dee Holeman upholds the tradition with an updated form colored by urban blues, jazz and R&B. In 1988, Holeman was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1994. You can often hear Holeman in September at the Bull Durham Blues Festival, an annual celebration of this home-grown music.

Durham has protected its African-American culture at places like Hayti Heritage Center and St. Joseph's AME Church, centerpieces of what was once one of America's most successful African-American marketplaces and neighborhoods. The Hayti includes an African-American Archives and Resource Center, art displays, exhibition galleries and a dance studio. It is adjacent to one of the first autonomous African-American churches in America, the 1891 St. Joseph AME Church.

These are just a few of the locations on the Durham African-American tour. Durham’s Convention and Visitor Bureau has put together a map and an itinerary for a tour of the city’s African-American sites of interest.