INC NEWS - Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project On Display In City Hall

[RW Pickle]

>From the City PR Dept.
RWP
27 Beverly

Display Available For Public Viewing Until June 30
 
Durham, N.C. – Visitors to Durham’s City Hall will enjoy a visual and
historical treat thanks to a month-long display of the Durham Civil Rights
Heritage Project banners.  The City of Durham’s Office of Economic and
Employment Development (OEED), which is overseeing the Historic Parrish
Street Revitalization Project, invited the Durham Civil Rights Heritage
Project to bring this unique display to the lobby of City Hall until June
30, 2006.
 
“This exhibit is a model for our planned ‘Museum without Walls’ for
Parrish Street,” said Victor Gordon, project coordinator for the Parrish
Street Project with the City's OEED.  “We were very impressed with the
work this group has done to tell a very important chapter of Durham's
history.” 
 
According to Lynn Richardson, senior librarian in the North Carolina
Collection with the Durham County Library, the Durham Civil Rights
Heritage Project focuses on the rich African-American history of Durham.
 “From the neighborhood that was Hayti to the businesses on Parrish Street
to the Durham blues, from the first African-American female Episcopal
priest to the founders of the first black-owned insurance company in the
U.S., Durham has many stories to tell,” Richardson said.  “The Durham
Civil Rights Heritage Project focuses on one set of those stories – those
about the Civil Rights Movement in Durham.  The project's main focus has
been to collect photographs depicting the movement in Durham.  Oral
histories of Durham's civil rights era have also been gathered by the
project.  These stories and images only begin to tell the story of events
that happened here and changes that came about because of them.”
 
According to Richardson, 16 stories were recorded and nearly 125
photographs were collected from both private individuals and professional
photographers.  In addition, 11 six-foot fabric banners incorporate
photographs, quotes from interviews with local people and text to depict
some of the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Durham.
 
“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,”
Richardson said. 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 the
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!”
 
Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project sponsors and participants include the
Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University Libraries, Durham Business
and Professional Chain, Durham County Library, The Herald-Sun, Historic
Preservation Society of Durham, John Hope Franklin Institute for
Interdisciplinary and International Studies, McKissick Collection at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central
University, North Carolina Museum of History, St. Joseph's A.M.E. Church,
St. Joseph's Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center, White Rock Baptist
Church and Union Baptist Church.  The Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project
was made possible by grants from the Friends of the Durham County Library.
 
For additional information about this display, contact Richardson at (919)
560-0171or by e-mail at lrichard at co.durham.nc.us.