INC NEWS - Documentary explores class and race in Durham (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Documentary explores class and race in Durham
By Susan Broili, Herald-Sun, 16 Nov 2007

Documentary filmmaker Steven Channing began his look
at Durham long before the Duke lacrosse case turned
the national spotlight on the Bull City. 

His documentary, "Durham: A Self-Portrait," premieres
today with two showings at the Carolina Theatre. A 2
p.m. showing will take place Sunday. Admission is
free. 

In the 80-minute film, he tells "a unique story of
class and race in an American city," through the eyes
of a diverse group of Durhamites, from philanthropists
to scholars to former factory workers. 

Footage includes scenes of a vibrant downtown in 1960
as well as home movies of some of Durham's elite in
the 1920s and '30s. 

Over the past two decades, Channing's documentaries
have explored race and class in America, most recently
the nationally broadcast PBS special "February One:
The Story of the Greensboro Four," about the 1960
lunch counter sit-in that re-ignited the civil rights
movement. 

The Durham resident would like to see "Durham: A
Self-Portrait" air on PBS, and is also speaking with
Duke University and N.C. Central University about
screenings there, he said. 

He had been working on his film for over a year when
the lacrosse case started. "Questions have been raised
by the national and international media that gave an
instant analysis of Durham," he said. "I just thought
it was all very simplistic," Channing said. 

He hopes his film will give a fuller, truer picture
and encourage conversation and an appreciation of "the
richness of this community, both black and white and
now Hispanic," he said. 

Durham has been a welcoming place for both poor folks
and entrepreneurs since its beginnings, the filmmaker
said. 

He first became interested in Durham's history in 1967
while working on his doctorate at UNC. A friend,
Walter Weare, had been writing a dissertation about
Durham's N.C. Mutual Life Insurance Company. 

"At one time, N.C. Mutual was the largest black-owned
business in the world," Channing said. "It's a
remarkable story and countered the stereotype of what
black folks were doing then." 

The story of C.C. Spaulding, who founded N.C. Mutual,
and other black entrepreneurs who made what was known
as Black Wall Street during its heyday in Durham,
played an important role in the unique relationship
between blacks and whites in the city, Channing said. 

In "Bells & Whistles All Over Town," about the heyday
of the tobacco and textile industries, historian John
Hope Franklin speaks of one way that Durham has been
different. 

"The black upper class was able to work with factory
workers, speak their language, speak to their needs
and to wield influence with a larger community. ..."
You very seldom found this kind of relationship during
this period except in Durham, Franklin said. 

The Duke University social historian had been
referring to the organization now called the Durham
Committee on the Affairs of Black People that C.C.
Spaulding helped found and that, representing 40
percent of the city's population, worked for a higher
standard of living for all blue collar workers and
especially for black working people. 

The organization helped make it possible to sit at the
table with Durham's white elite like the Dukes, the
Carrs and the Hills, and to enlist their aid, the
filmmaker said. 

Those white elite had been very sympathetic to black
advancement and helped build Lincoln Hospital and the
college now called N.C. Central University, Channing
added. 

Channing sees a secret basketball game that took place
between a white Duke basketball team and a black NCCU
team in 1944 as emblematic of the relationship between
white and black elite largely working behind the
scenes. 

Hence, he chose to begin his film with historian
Franklin telling the story of that game that took
place on a Sunday morning at NCCU with no spectators.
After the game, which NCCU won, the players formed two
biracial teams and played again. This meeting had been
illegal under Jim Crow laws at the time, the filmmaker
said. 

The real relationships between Durham power brokers,
both black and white, who met and worked together
discreetly, had played a large role in making the town
a "safe zone" for blacks when elsewhere in the South
during the 1890s, blacks were being lynched every
third day, Channing said. 

Blacks here could start a business without fear of it
being burned, which happened elsewhere, including
Wilmington in 1898, he said. 

The uniqueness of Durham in this respect drew two
leading authorities on black life, Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, to Durham at separate
times, between 1908 and 1910, to see for themselves
what was happening here. Both wrote articles about it,
the filmmaker said. 

"They both were so taken by what they saw going on
here -- a kind of social peace that was an island in
the state and in the South," Channing said. 

The film also addresses Durham's past problems and
present challenges. 

In the past, textile mill owners had used race to keep
unions out by playing on the fear of whites that
blacks would take over textile jobs, philanthropist
Eli Evans says in the film. 

Textile workers had a hard life. Mattie Riley speaks
of working at Erwin Mills for 10 hours a day Monday
through Friday and a shorter day on Saturday. Back
then, she and other workers lived by the factory
whistle. 

"The whistle blows and you left the dinner table. I
don't care whether you was through eating or not, you
had to go," Riley said. 


[Tonight's premier at 7:30 is sold out. Tickets remain
for tonight at 9:40 and Sunday at 2PM.]