INC NEWS - Women in Durhams Civil Rights Movement (Hayti Center, July 24)

[John Schelp]

The Sisters Behind the Brothers: Women’s Participation
in Durham’s Civil Rights Movement, a panel
presentation featuring Dr. Christina Greene, followed
by a reception

Sunday, July 24, at 3 p.m.
Hayti Heritage Center
Corner of Fayetteville Street and Lakewood Avenue
(804 Old Fayetteville St.)
Free and open to the public

Durham’s Female Civil Rights Activists Focus of Panel
Presentation

"The Sisters Behind the Brothers: Women’s
Participation in Durham’s Civil Rights Movement" is
the intriguing title of the panel discussion being
presented by  Durham County Library’s North Carolina
Room and the Hayti Heritage Center on Sunday, July 24,
at 3 p.m. at the Hayti Heritage Center.  Moderated by
Dr. Christina Greene, author of the new book "Our
Separate Ways:  Women and the Black Freedom Movement
in Durham, North Carolina," the presentation will
include a brief reading by Greene and
question-and-answer sessions with Greene and panel
members, then audience and panel members.  

Panelists are Ann Atwater, Karen Bethea-Shields, Dr.
Beverly Washington Jones, Vivian McCoy, Joyce Thorpe
Nichols and Dr. Tim Tyson.  A reception in the upper
gallery will follow the presentation.

Greene’s thoroughly researched, well-documented book,
which came out of her doctoral work at Duke
University, is a much needed addition to the scant
literature on the Civil Rights Movement in Durham,
according to Lynn Richardson, senior librarian in the
North Carolina Room at Durham County’s Main Library,
who is working with Dianne Pledger, CEO and president
of St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation Inc. at Hayti
Heritage Center, to organize the program.  Although
the book focuses on women’s participation, it has much
to say about the Civil Rights Movement in general.

"The book has already proved invaluable for answering
questions in the North Carolina Room and is a good
read for anyone interested in this important part of
Durham’s history," said Richardson.

The author, who is an assistant professor of history
in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, teaches and writes
on African-American women’s activism.  Greene lived in
Durham for 12 years, where she directed the
Duke-University of North Carolina Center for Research
on Women and worked for the Institute for Southern
Studies.  

Panelist Ann Atwater grew up in Whiteville, N.C.  She
moved to Durham in 1953, after which divorce and
motherhood landed her in poverty.  She was a single
mother of two, living in a house "that was leanin’
toward the street
 with broken boards
 (and leaks in)
the bathroom" when community organizers Howard Fuller
and Charsie Hedgpath knocked on her door.  Within a
few years, Atwater had become one of the most
respected black community organizers in Durham and an
expert on public housing regulations.  She is well
known for her participation in a Durham schools
charrette on desegregation, which brought her into
contact with local Ku Klux Klan president C.P. Ellis,
who eventually became her friend, left the Klan, and
embraced desegregation.

Karen Bethea-Shields, who previously went by the name
Galloway, was one of the first black women to graduate
from Duke Law School.  She served as co-counsel in the
successful defense of Joan Little, a 21-year-old black
woman from Washington, N.C., who was accused of
killing her white jailer after he sexually attacked
her in 1974—a case that received international
publicity.  During the 1970s, Bethea-Shields worked
with longtime community activist Pat Jones Rogers to
develop grievance procedures for Durham tenants to
follow in disputes with landlords.  Today, she
continues to represent Durham’s indigent black
population, especially youth in trouble.

Durham native Beverly Washington Jones is the interim
provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at
North Carolina Central University.   She earned her
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from NCCU
and was the first black woman to graduate with a Ph.D.
in American history from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The author of four books and
30 articles, her works depict the lives of working
class women and the economic, political, and social
development of black communities in North Carolina. 
Jones has participated in several oral history
projects, including Jim Crow:  Behind the Veil, North
Carolina Oral History, Factory to Work Project, and
North Carolina Women’s History.  

Vivian McCoy, a Durham native, organized and led many
demonstrations in Durham, including the May 1963
demonstration at Howard Johnson’s restaurant, the
largest mass demonstration in the city’s history.  She
was a member of the NAACP youth group that local
lawyer and activist Floyd McKissick organized in 1957
and later a member of the NAACP Youth Commandos (a
select group of seasoned student activists, mostly
from Durham, who traveled to cities and towns
throughout the state, training local people in
nonviolent tactics and helping organize direct action
protests).  She was also one of a group of women who
picketed the Royal Ice Cream Company, located in a
traditionally black part of Durham, over a two-year
period to press for integration.

Joyce Thorpe Nichols grew up in Roxboro and moved to
Durham in the mid-1950s.  After Nichols’ marriage
broke up in the early 1960s, she and her children
moved from a middle-class life to the segregated
McDougald Terrace housing project.  Appalled at the
conditions there, she founded the McDougald Terrace
Mothers Club.  After asking Housing Authority
officials for meeting space to plan a child care
center, she was evicted.  Her case went all the way to
the Supreme Court. In a landmark victory for tenants’
rights, the Court ruled in 1969 that public housing
tenants cannot be removed without cause.

Tim Tyson is a professor of Afro-American Studies at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He earned a
Ph.D. from Duke University and is currently a fellow
at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle
Park.  In 1970, when Tyson was 10 years old, the
father and two brothers of one of his playmates killed
a local black man for making a suggestive comment to
the wife of one of the brothers.  As Tyson’s
self-described “Eleanor Roosevelt liberal” father
preached against segregation as the pastor of Oxford’s
all-white Methodist church, the trial, mass protests,
burning of buildings, and KKK activity consumed the
town.  Tyson’s acclaimed 2004 book about these events,
"Blood Done Sign My Name," chronicles these events.  

Hayti Heritage Center is at the corner of Fayetteville
Street and Lakewood Avenue near downtown Durham; the
street address is 804 Old Fayetteville Street.   From
now through July 31, 2005, the upper gallery, where
the reception will be held, is home to the Durham
Civil Rights Heritage Project banners.  The public art
venture, funded by the Friends of the Durham Library
Inc., features 11, 6-foot banners that incorporate
photographs, quotes from interviews with local people,
and text to depict some of the history of  the Civil
Rights Movement in Durham.  Behind the creation of the
banners was a concerted effort to collect, preserve,
and present Durham’s Civil Rights history by 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, NCCU, and
several community historians and photographers.  For
more information about the Durham Civil Rights
Heritage Project and the images and stories gathered,
go to www.durhamcountylibrary.org/dcrhp.

The mission of the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation at
Hayti Heritage Center is to serve as conservator of
the St. Joseph’s AME Church complex, which is now
known as Hayti Heritage Center, and to preserve,
restore, and develop the complex into a cultural and
educational institution that promotes the
understanding and appreciation of the African-American
experience and African-Americans’ contributions to the
world.

Cosponsoring the panel presentation is one of the many
ways Durham County Library strives to provide the
entire community with books, services, and other
resources that inform, inspire learning, cultivate
understanding, and excite the imagination.

July 1, 2005
CONTACT:  Lynn Richardson 
560-0171 or lrichard at co.durham.nc.us