INC NEWS - Hayti edition of the Durham News

[RW Pickle]

For those of you who like history (or saw the recent screening of Durham:
A Self Portrait and are eager to learn more), this weeks edition of the
Durham News has a number of good stories about Hayti, then and today.
Hayti has been in the news recently because Council was asked to fund an
additional $3-6M toward revitalization. And as Eugene Brown said, it's
going to look like we're throwing more good money right in on top of the
bad. In recent years, over $30M of tax dollars has gone into rebuilding
much of the infrastructure in that area. It's the thoughts that if you fix
the bones, the rest will follow. It didn't and hasn't today. But it looks
like private development will finally git'er done this go around..

Not having grown up in Durham, but having heard about Hayti (and what
generally seemed to be the gripe by the black activists in Durham), I
understood there was not much support for the "Urban Renewal" that pretty
much wiped out old Hayti. But as I recently heard (at the screening of the
movie mentioned above) and read in the paper today, there was a great deal
of support in the black community for running 147 through Hayti and pretty
much leveling it in the process. According to the 83 year old black man I
sat beside at the screening, "it was all mostly rotten and falling down in
the first place. So had it not been torn down in the construction of 147,
it would have fallen down." He was in business in Durham then as he is
now. He was born here he said. there was no bitterness on his part.

So my question to whomever has the answer is, why does the myth that it
was an unwanted project (building 147 through Hayti) continue? Apparently
it had wide support in the black community. It would seem that those who
support this misinformation are doing everyone a great injustice and
should be called on this misinformation when it comes up. According to the
newspaper today, there was no interest in rebuilding Hayti when the time
finally came. This is one urban legend that needs to be addressed since I
keep hearing this same old misinformation time and time again from the
same tired sources. Do they just not know the real history of Hayti?

RWP
27 Beverly