[Durham INC] NC approves first ‘Jim Crow’ state historical markers | Raleigh News & Observer

[John Schelp]

 No state historical marker includes a key phrase in NC history. That will soon change.Richard Stradling, News & Observer, 17 May 2023
There are more than 1,600 state historical markers along North Carolina’s streets and highways, and none of them uses the phrase “Jim Crow,” the system of laws, rules and customs that long enforced racial segregation and oppression in the state.

That will soon change.

A state highway historical marker approved Tuesday will refer to a single act of resistance to Jim Crow that resulted in the death of a U.S. Army soldier in Durham during World War II. A second marker approved moments later will highlight Black residents arrested under Jim Crow laws and put to work building the Western North Carolina Railroad in the late 19th century.

The silver cast-aluminum markers with black lettering should be erected by the end of the year.

The Durham marker is for Booker T. Spicely, a Black private from Philadelphia who had been based at nearby Camp Butner for about seven months when he boarded a bus on July 8, 1944. When three white soldiers who were also headed back to the base got on a short time later, the driver asked Spicely to move to the back.

Spicely, who was in uniform, initially balked, questioning why he needed to give up his seat. One of the white soldiers later told Army investigators that Spicely said to the white driver, Herbert Lee Council, “I thought I was fighting this war for democracy. I’m from Pennsylvania and not used to seeing things like this.”

Council and Spicely continued to exchange words until Spicely exited the rear door of the bus at the corner of West Club Boulevard and what is now Berkeley Street in the Walltown neighborhood. As Spicely was about to pass the front of the bus, Council emerged from the front door and shot him twice with a .38-caliber pistol. He then got back behind the wheel and finished his route.

Duke Power Company owned and operated the bus and put up the bail money that allowed Council to continue working until his murder trial two months later. The company also provided Council’s attorneys. After a full day of testimony from witnesses, an all-white jury took 28 minutes to return a verdict of not guilty.

More people will learn about Pvt. Spicely

John Schelp, a member of the committee that asked the state to put up the historical marker, said many Durham residents, especially young people, don’t know Spicely’s story.

“Now they will see the marker, and now they will ask their teacher — now they will ask their elders — about that marker,” Schelp said. “People driving by, kids in the neighborhood, more people will learn about the tragedy of Pvt. Booker Spicely.”

James Williams Jr., the retired public defender for Chatham and Orange counties, was not familiar with Spicely’s story when he stumbled on it while researching another case. Williams helped create and lead the committee that sought the marker, whose members include author and historian Timothy Tyson and civil rights attorney and N.C. Central University law professor Irving Joyner.

The killing of Spicely and the events that followed are worthy of the permanence and prominence of a state historical marker, Williams said.

“It says this is something that our state thinks merits attention and focus and commemoration,” he said. “I think who and what we remember says a lot about who and what we are as a society.”

What was the statewide significance?

The N.C. Highway Historical Marker Program was created by the General Assembly in 1935 and is run jointly by the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The secretary of Natural and Cultural Resources approves the markers, based on the recommendations of an advisory committee of historians from North Carolina colleges and universities.

The advisory committee initially considered the proposed marker for Spicely in December. Some members were uneasy commemorating what was essentially a lynching without being able to say what impact it had on the state.

“It’s obviously part of a national struggle, connected to this broader movement,” said Jaime Martinez, chair of the history department at UNC Pembroke. “But what’s the smoking gun on how this affects something statewide? I’m just not seeing it.”

Others made the connection between Spicely and Rosa Parks, whose arrest for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. As Spicely and others show, the story didn’t begin there, said Watson Jennison, a professor at UNC Greensboro.

“It changes the narrative about when the civil rights movement begins,” Jennison said. “It’s not Rosa Parks in ‘55. Instead, it’s all these Black men and women in the ‘40s who are doing similar struggles on an individual basis. So it really leads to something much larger.”

Once the committee approved the idea of a marker, then came a long discussion of how to tell the story in roughly two dozen words. Was it essential to say Spicely was based at Camp Butner? That he was in uniform when he was killed? That the bus driver was white?

The historians agreed it was important to say that Spicely had been killed “for resisting Jim Crow laws.” But when it appeared they needed to trim further, someone asked if they could shorten it to “Jim Crow.”

They decided to see how other historical markers referred to Jim Crow, and a staff member took a few minutes to search the database of all 1,600 markers. It was then that they realized the phase had never appeared on a state historical marker.

Among those watching was Adrienne Nirdé, associate director of the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, a state program that preserves and promotes Black history, arts and culture.

“Any opportunity for us to acknowledge and mark this significant history is important,” Nirdé said. “I think it’s also curious and significant to have the first marker that says Jim Crow on it in our statewide system. I think that’s really important. I’m excited.”

Williams says that while Jim Crow refers to the state law that required Spicely to move to the back of the bus, it also encompasses the idea that someone was entitled to take another person’s life because of the color of their skin.

“That’s why I think Herman Council felt so comfortable and so coolly and calmly shooting Booker Spicely and leaving him lying in the gutter to bleed to death,” he said. “And then just getting back on the bus and completing his route as if nothing had happened.”

Final marker language approved Tuesday

After the advisory committee signed off on language for the marker in December, the staff at the historical marker program thought the impact of Spicely’s killing still wasn’t clear enough. They asked for more research for the supporting essay, which now emphasizes how Spicely’s murder and Council’s trial and acquittal galvanized the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

On Tuesday, the advisory committee voted to approval the final language:

“Booker T. Spicely

1909-1944

Black U.S. Army soldier

shot nearby in 1944 for

resisting Jim Crow laws

on a bus. Aftermath of

killing helped revitalize
North Carolina’s NAACP.”

Caption: The death certificate for U.S. Army Pvt. Booker Spicely says he was “shot by bus driver” and died as a result of wounds to the heart and liver. Spicely, a Black soldier stationed at nearby Camp Butner, was killed in Durham on July 8, 1944, after objecting to being asked to move to the back of the bus.




      
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