INC NEWS - Years in the making, Durham: A Self-Portrait premieres Friday (Indy Weekly)

[John Schelp]

Years in the making, Durham: A Self-Portrait premieres
Friday
By Neil Morris, Indy Weekly, 14 Nov 2007

Nearly an hour into our interview, Steve Channing
suddenly rose from his chair and sauntered toward the
interior brick wall of his downtown Durham video
production office, located within the old Penny
Furniture Co. building.

"Let me illuminate our conversation a bit," said
Channing wryly as he clicked the pull-chain switch on
a wall sign that, at first blush, looked more
befitting the offbeat decorative taste of a college
dorm room.

Suddenly, the neon tubing encasing the sign flickered
to life, its soft green and white glow spelling out a
more luminous lineage: Royal Ice Cream. Fifty years
ago, the sign hung inside the old Royal Ice Cream
parlor located at the intersection of Roxboro and Dowd
streets on the day seven African Americans, led by the
Rev. Douglas E. Moore, staged North Carolina's first
"sit-in" of the civil rights era, two and a half years
before the launch of the Greensboro sit-ins. The
building that housed the parlor, and later Charles
Dunham's soul food restaurant, was demolished last
year. "This sign really belongs in a local historical
museum," Channing said. "Maybe one day somebody will
build one."

Indeed, Channing, a former college professor and
current filmmaker, might have assembled the foundation
of such an endeavor with the completion of Durham: A
Self-Portrait, his long-awaited, long-suffering
documentary ode to the Bull City. The nearly 80-minute
finished product debuts Friday, Nov. 16 in the
1,000-seat Fletcher Hall at Durham's Carolina Theatre.
As I spoke with Channing, more than a week before the
screening, he learned that all tickets to the 7:30
p.m. show had been distributed and two additional free
screenings would be scheduled.

The enthusiasm with which Durhamites are receiving
Channing's film is indicative of the city's proud,
diverse and sometimes combustible history. The central
issue permeating the documentary, and Durham itself,
is race. Yet, its historical context here is somewhat
atypical of many Southern cities. "Ever since the 19th
century, Durham's population has been roughly 40
percent African American," says Channing. "So, for
most of its history, Durham has been regarded by
African Americans as a 'sanctuary city.' The tobacco
markets and cotton mills provided opportunities for
work. During the 1930s, this was the only stop between
D.C. and Atlanta for performers such as Duke
Ellington. Meanwhile, some of the first black-owned
businesses flourished in the Hayti district and along
Parrish Street, which prompted visits by and praise
from both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois."

"Indeed, the same year of the Wilmington Race Riots
[1898], the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance
Company was chartered in Durham. That is an amazing
contrast in the same year and in the same state."

To that end, the springboard for the story of the
so-called "Secret Game" in 1944 between the all-white
Duke Navy Medical School intramural squad and Coach
John McLendon's all-black varsity team from the N.C.
College for Negroes, later to become N.C. Central
University. The game took place on a Sunday morning
inside a locked gymnasium on the N.C. College's
campus, and remained relatively unknown for nearly 50
years after it took place.

"You just know that any movie about Durham has to
begin with a basketball game," jokes Channing.
"Seriously, that game is the heart of the film. Here
we are in the heart of the Jim Crow era, and a group
of white and black students risk expulsion, arrest and
maybe more to play a game of basketball. And, not only
do they play each other, but they mix players and play
'shirts and skins' for a second game."

Channing purposely avoided interviewing sitting
political office-holders, nor did he solicit or accept
city or county funding for the project, all designed
to preserve the film's objectivity and avoid turning
it into a promotional propaganda piece. Channing's
first on-camera interview took place in 2004 with the
late Dr. Charles Watts, founder of the Lincoln
Community Health Center and the first African American
certified by a surgical board in North Carolina. The
rest of the 37 interviews featured range from former
mayors to historian John Hope Franklin to Reynolds
Price to Mary Semans—granddaughter to Benjamin Duke
and chair of the Duke Endowment—to business leaders
such as Capital Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon, West
Village developer Tom Niemann and retired Liggett CEO
K.V. Dey. "As a child of the 1960s," recalls Channing,
"I came from a background that saw corporate
businessmen as evildoers. The truth is that they are
the real change agents because they possess the
philanthropic resources to facilitate progress."

Structurally, Durham: A Self-Portrait melds the
interviews, voiceover narration, vintage film footage
and a few re-enactments into six chronological
chapters. "Chicago of the South" begins during the
Civil War era and follows through the rise of Durham's
industrial elite, particularly its tobacco industry
and the Duke family. That segues into "Brothers Under
the Skin," which details the rise of the
African-American business community, including the
secret collaboration between the Duke family and
pioneering African-American business leaders such as
Dr. Aaron Moore, John Moore and C.C. Spaulding. Then,
"Bells and Whistles All Over the Town" follows the
1930s and 1940s industrial heyday, particularly the
rise of the textile mills.

"Durham Gets the Blues" runs from World War II through
the Royal Ice Cream sit-in. Ironically, it is during
this time that Channing contends the optimism and
incremental progress built upon Durham's long-standing
black/ labor alliance gave way to a civil rights storm
that, while necessary, also played on white fear of
racial equality and created a rift between the white
and black communities that continues in large part
today. "Twilight of the Game" tracks the 1960s rise of
street politics and integration of retail and
employment institutions, as well as the ascendance of
Duke University.

Finally, "All One Place, All One Story" documents the
city's recent struggles, from the exodus of the city's
manufacturing base to ongoing racial strife, including
a brief mention of a certain court case involving Duke
lacrosse players. It also speaks to the city's efforts
at rebirth, from refurbishing the historic warehouse
district to the downtown renewal project. As Channing
observes, "Durham's renaissance is literally being
built upon its history."

It is a history that also finds ways of repeating
itself. Several years ago, the N.C. Highway Historic
Marker Advisory Committee denied a request to erect a
state historic marker at the site of the Royal Ice
Cream parlor, finding that the 1957 sit-in "did not
rise to the requisite level of statewide historical
significance." An appeal hearing of that decision has
been scheduled for the Dec. 17 meeting of the full
Historic Marker Committee in Raleigh. Until then,
perhaps the only tangible memorial to the sit-in
remains hanging on Steve Channing's office wall.

Free tickets for the newly added screenings of Durham:
A Self-Portrait at 9:40 p.m., Friday, Nov. 16, and 2
p.m., Sunday, Nov. 18, can be picked up at the
Carolina Theatre box office or by calling 560-3030.
For more on the film, visit www.portraitofdurham.com.