The businesses of Black Wall Street and Hayti prospered because of their connection to their community.
Across the railroad tracks from Black Wall Street, Hayti was home to thousands of people and hundreds of smaller black businesses. Hayti’s businesses were part of a thriving neighborhood. Shopping at a black-owned grocery or supporting a black-owned funeral home meant investing in your neighbors.
Fayetteville Street in Hayti, in front of White Rock Baptist Church, for NC Mutual President C.C. Spaulding’s funeral, 1952.
Courtesy Durham Herald Co. Newspaper Photograph Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Hayti’s businesses succeeded because black Durhamites spent their paychecks there. They offered goods and services that were often denied to African Americans elsewhere. Many residents felt that they had everything they needed in Hayti, away from the indignities of Jim Crow.
Durham’s Hayti neighborhood, ca. 1965.
Black worker housing in Hayti, 1940.
Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.
The Biltmore Hotel, ca. 1940. Notice the Regal Theater and the Donut Shop next door. Built by Dr. Clyde Donnell, staff physician for NC Mutual, it served African Americans from across the US and hosted celebrities when they came through town. It was home to a grill, a coffee shop, and a drugstore on its ground floor.
Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library
She came down here because she knew it was a thriving community.
DeShazor Beauty College, ca. 1950. Madam Jacqueline DeShazor Jackson moved to Durham from Brooklyn, New York, in the 1930s and opened the DeShazor Beauty Salon. Expanding her operations, she bought the building for her school in 1945.
Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library.
Inside Service Printing Company, the leading printer for Durham’s black businesses, ca. 1960.
Daisy E. Scarborough Nursery School, ca. 1950. Clydie F. Scarborough (front left) and her husband, John C. Scarborough Sr., founded the nursery school so that women could work.
Courtesy Clydie F. Scarborough Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
Videos courtesy Dr. Jim C. Harper, II, Chair, Department of History, North Carolina Central University
Dr. LaVonia Allison is a native of Durham. She attended Hillside High School. Dr. Allison grew up surrounded by some of Durham’s early leaders in business and education. Her father, Charles J. Ingram, was the founder of Dunbar Reality, which bought and sold several hundred properties in the Hayti area. She chaired the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People for fourteen years.
Ferdinand Vincent “Pete” Allison was a former president of the Mutual Savings and Loan Association. He also served as chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People.
Alice Sharpe is a Durham native. She attended Durham public schools, including G. Pearson Elementary, Whitted School, and Hillside High School. She is an alum of both Duke University and North Carolina Central University. Alice serves on the board of The Forest at Duke. She is a broker at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services York Simpson Underwood Realty.
Joanne Abel served as the Humanities and Adult Programming Coordinator and librarian at the Durham County Library. She attended Georgia Southern College, North Carolina Central University, and Duke University. Joanne wrote her thesis on Durham’s Jeanes Teachers and the schools they helped to build in the African American community, 1900-30.
Ellis H. Smith is a Durham native. He grew up in The West End neighborhood. He is a graduate of Hillside High School and North Carolina Central University. He served as the Director of Alumni Affairs at North Carolina Central University. He is the third eldest of eight and a Life Member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated.
Virginia Williams moved to Durham when she was 19 years old. She worked at Duke Medical Center as a food service employee and lived at the Young Women’s Christian Association. She participated along with six other African Americans who demanded to be served inside the segregated Royal Ice Cream Parlor in north Durham at 904 North Roxboro Street and faced arrest in May of 1957.
Nathan T. Garrett, Sr. moved to Durham in the 1930s. His father owned Garrett Pharmacy, located inside the Biltmore Hotel in Hayti. Garrett opened the first black-owned accounting firm in the state of North Carolina. His Durham-based CPA Firm became the largest and oldest minority-owned firm in North Carolina.