INC NEWS - Hayti walking tour: Sierra Club hike is April 28 at 9AM

[John Schelp]

Reminder to please join us...

Saturday, April 28 at 9AM
Stanford Warren Library 
1201 Fayetteville St (at Simmons St)
Led by Andre Vann, NC Central University

The tour will begin at the second oldest black library
(1913) in North Carolina known currently as the
Stanford L. Warren Branch Library. 

The library became the new home of the historic Durham
Colored Library on January 17, 1940. The building is
named for Dr. Stanford L. Warren, president of the
Library Board, who donated $4,000 during the late days
of the Great Depression to secure the site for the new
building. The newly renovated structure reopened on
September 7, 2006 after a major renovation and
expansion.

Background and a description of notable homes on the
tour is below.

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Helpful background from our tour guide, Andre Vann:

Durham, like most Southern cities in the 1880s and
1900s, had rigidly segregated communities. The
majority of African Americans resided in the southern
and southeastern sections known as Hayti, pronounced
as "hay-tie." By the 1920s, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, a
prominent African American scholar and historian,
referred to Durham, specifically the Hayti area, as
the "Negro business mecca of the South." He wrote,
"There is in this small city a group of five thousand
or more colored people, whose social and economic
development is perhaps more striking than that of any
similar group in the nation."  

Booker T. Washington, the noted African American
leader and educator at Tuskegee Institute, agreed with
DuBois that Durham provided an opportunity for African
Americans to excel economically. But Washington also
recognized the existence of friendly relations between
African Americans and whites. He stated, "Of all the
southern cities that I have visited I found here the
sanest attitude (among) white people toward the
blacks."

With this interracial and economically progressive
environment as the back drop, Durham emerged during
the Jim Crow era as one of the centers of African
American middle class in North Carolina and the South.
Many members of this middle class resided in
impressive, large residences in the Hayti district.
The architecture of the houses was Victorian. They had
spacious porches and large lawns. Also located in
Hayti were churches, stores, a hospital, a library,
several funeral homes, a college, clubs, and fraternal
lodges.

Also, many working class communities developed in the
midst of the middle class neighborhoods-that was
fueled by the tobacco industry created in a city
within a city. The sound of blues music dominated the
streets of Hayti, where the Biltmore Hotel played host
to entertainers such as Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway,
and Count Basie. Musicians like Blind Boy Fuller and
Gary Davis made much of their early money singing on
the streets of Hayti. African Americans living in
Durham enjoyed a strong and independent social,
economic, and cultural life.

>From the Introduction of Black America Series-Durham's
Hayti, By Andre D. Vann and Beverly Washington Jones
(1999)

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Notable Homes Includes the following:

The Dr. Joseph Napoleon Mills House 

The Harris-Ingram House (Dunbar Realty) which is a
cross-gable roofed bungalow that is a Sears-Roebuck
house with rows of short and tall cypress shake
shingles that was built in 1921 and is located at 1213
Fayetteville Street.

The F. K. Watkins House is a two story frame house
that was built in 1915 for Frederick K. Watkins, "The
Movie King," who managed a chain of 16 theatres in
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, before
retiring in 1929 to enter the real estate business. In
1935, Mr. Watkins was elected a justice of the peace
and became the first black in the South to be elected
on the Democratic ticket. He developed property on
Pettigrew Street and built several stores and a
theater. The house is located at 1218 Fayetteville
Street.

The J. C. Scarborough House which is currently under
renovation was built in 1916 for John C. and Daisy
Scarborough  who were both pioneers in the mortician
business. The elder Scarborough holds the distinction
of being the first licensed black undertaker in North
Carolina and Durham. He was the owner of the
Scarborough and Hargett Funeral Home after coming to
Durham in 1906 from Kinston, North Carolina. The house
was constructed largely with materials that were
salvaged from one of Durham's earliest Queen Anne
houses, the Scarborough houses serves as a model of
extensive architectural wonder from the Victorian
period. The house is located at 1406 Fayetteville
Street.

The Charles Haddon Shepard House was formerly known as
the Lona Hayes house and was built in 1919 as a
residence for Dr. Charles Shepard who was a noted
physician and founder along with his brother Dr. James
E. Shepard of present day North Carolina Central
University. It is a conventional residence with over
3, 241 square feet of space. The house is located at
1608 Fayetteville Street.

North Carolina Central University Campus is located at
1801 Fayetteville Street on what was just woods and
gulley's on the outskirts of the county. The land
formerly belonged to Brodie Duke who gave land in the
early 1900s to Dr. James E. Shepard to begin his
school the National Religious Training School and
Chautauqua (1909) that eventually in 1925 became the
nations first state supported liberal arts school for
African Americans.  One of the notable buildings
includes the Clyde R. Hoey Administration Building
(No.9 Preservation Durham Plaque Recipients) was
completed in 1929, and serves as the centerpiece of
NCCU and serves as the most architecturally 
distinctive buildings on the campus. The three stories
high building and constructed of brick and limestone.
There are coins on each end of the entrance pavilions
and smooth faced blocks.

B. N. Duke Auditorium-was constructed in 1937 due to a
generous donation by Benjamin Newton Duke and Public
Works Administration (PWA) building campaign.

James E. Shepard House (Presidents House) is a Frank
Lloyd Wright Prairie Style house that is two story
with a brick façade. The newly renovated house opened
in September 2006 and is located at 1902 Fayetteville
Street.

The tour begins at 9:00 A.M. and will conclude back at
the Stanford Warren Library.

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