INC NEWS - Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project Exhibit Opens February 27 (303 E. Chapel Hill St, Durham)

[John Schelp]

Folks at the Durham County Library are asking to help
spread the word about this exciting event.

~John Schelp
Old West Durham

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Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project Exhibit Opens
February 27

The opening reception for the Durham Civil Rights
Heritage Project exhibit will be held Sunday, February
27, 3:00-6:00 p.m. at Through This Lens Gallery, 303
E. Chapel Hill Street in Durham.  The exhibit will run
through May 15, 2005.

This public art project features 6’ fabric banners
incorporating photographs, quotes from interviews with
local people, and text to depict some of the history
of the Civil Rights Movement in Durham.   The eleven
banners will be displayed in downtown storefront
windows at the following addresses: 111 E. Chapel Hill
Street, 303 E. Chapel Hill Street, 320 E. Chapel Hill
Street, and 118 W. Parrish Street.

The exhibit gives viewers an up-close view of several
Durham residents’ experiences of this period of
struggle and change in the 1950s and 1960s. One panel,
for example, depicts the events of June 1957, when six
young African Americans sought table service at the
segregated Royal Ice Cream Bar on Roxboro Street.
Virginia Williams, one of protestors, shared her
feelings about that experience with a Durham Civil
Rights Heritage Project interviewer when she said, “It
was exciting, because we went where we dared not to
go. I wasn’t frightened or anything of that sort
because either way, we could have made history.  If he
had served us ice cream, he would have made history. 
But, by refusing to, I guess we made history!” 

A web site offering a more in-depth look at selected
events from the Civil Rights Movement in Durham will
premiere at www.durhamcountylibrary.org at the time of
the exhibit opening.  The site is organized into nine
sections whose topics range from Martin Luther King’s
visit to Durham in 1960, to protests aimed at
desegregating local restaurants and the struggle for
employment opportunities, to the 1968 George C.
Wallace for President rally. The site includes
approximately 40 photographs from Durham’s civil
rights era and a time line that juxtaposes national
civil-rights-related events with local. 

Since 2003, volunteers for the Durham Civil Rights
Heritage Project have gathered more than 125
photographs and 17 oral histories from local people
and institutions.  The people involved in the project
hope that by working to preserve some of the
photographs and stories from this important era of
Durham’s history, future generations will gain a
deeper understanding of what has shaped Durham’s
heritage and culture.  

At 2:00 p.m. on February 27, the Historic Preservation
Society of Durham will be offering their Durham Civil
Rights Walking Tour.  Beginning in front of the Durham
Arts Council, 120 Morris Street, the 1 ½-hour tour
will include stops at the four sites on Chapel Hill
and Parrish streets that feature the exhibit banners,
in addition to its regular stops, and will deliver the
walkers to the site of the opening reception.  

The Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project exhibit was
made possible by a grant from the Friends of the
Durham County Library. The effort to collect,
preserve, and present Durham’s Civil Rights history
reflects the work of a coalition of individuals and
organizations, including the Center for Documentary
Studies at Duke University, Duke University Libraries,
Durham County Library, Historic Preservation Society
of Durham, North Carolina Central University, and
several community historians and photographers.


Questions: 

Lynn Richardson 
North Carolina Librarian
Durham County Library
lrichard at co.durham.nc.us