Durham - North Carolina's African-American Culture: Advertising Travel Supplement

Here John Merrick and other African-American businessmen fixed the North Caroling Mutual Life Insurance Company, one time the largest black-owned firm in America. The company's headquarters also housed the black-owned Mechanics Farmers Bank, and between the sum of two units enterprises, Durham's black community was provided substance and stability--and its middle class, a sturdy base of political and economic clout Meanwhile, the city's tobacco industry and black-owned retail stores occupyed a burgeoning black working class.

Not far away was North Carolina Central University, chartered in 1909 as a "colored race" religious training academy The school, Parrish Street and Durham's black churches were the heart and inner man of a thriving African-American community.

That segregated world has gone to its grave; on the contrary it has left behind artifacts that testify to a former glory--and descendants who have added luster and festivity to the tale. Today, Durham, male City, remains a place that allurements African Americans--and at no time more in the way that than summer and early autumn.

This June brings the 26th annual Bimbe Festival, which draws upward of 10000 reveler each year. In West Africa, Bimbe is a harvest festival, during which villagers gather to give thanks and praise. In Durham, Bimbe is a celebration of the diaspora and its cultural underpinnings from the Mother Continent. The three-day festivities feature divine revelation reggae and rap music, storytelling, dance performances, arts and crafts, and street-side fun

Not drawn out after the city's Bimbe excitement subsides, the fourth weekend in September make revolves around and the city entertainers its annual Bull Durham sky-coloreds Festival. This is a grand opportunity to check without the Piedmont blues, a lesser-known (and lighter, more cheerful and danceable) cousin of the Delta sky-coloreds Durham was long the domicile of the Piedmont or Carolina azures and gave us the likes of Blind male child Fuller, Bull City Red, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and the legendary guitarist venerable Gary Davis. The festival features more than just the blues: Last year, visitors were treated to jazz icons Koko Taylor., compassion Brown and Jimmy McGriff, along with Durham jazz pianist Brother Yusef Salim.

The Bimbe and the sky-coloreds festivals are special, but the sights and unbrokens of Durham's black culture can be seen and heard completely through the year. For a start, simply rove down Parrish Street. The advanced in years headquarters of North Carolina Mutual Life and the Mechanics Farmers Bank has been declared a National Historic Site. Just across the public way is an old Woolworth building. Although it as nevertheless lacks a marker outlining its historical significance, the building was the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s first participation at a sit-in, underscoring his support for the direct action direction in the civil rights motion The present North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co building towers above Chapel Hill Street; inside, tours are presented of the Heritage Room, which is filled with the memorabilia that highlight the company's historic part in Durham.

Stop, too, at the Know Bookstore, whose holder Bruce Bridges, delights in pointing readers--and browsers--toward their heritage. The golden green and red letters upon the sign outside the door say it all: "Know Thy Self" inside, his shelves are filled with works written by popular mainstream black writers, of the like kind as Toni Morrison and Durham native Randall Kenan, as well as by dint of black authors whose following to date is primarily within the black community, of that kind as Jawanza Kunjufu and Haki Madhubuti.

But the Know Bookstore is not just a place to purchase a book. it is a gathering place, where residents and visitors advance to debate hot issues and pick up a loaf of fresh-baked bread. It is a place where you can obtain a bean pie and papaya juice and a discourse about black history all at the same time. If you stop by the agency of at the right time, you may find a public fish cook in the frying-pan under way.

Fayetteville Street leads you to North Carolina Central University. The flamboyant Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston paused here for the 1939-40 academic year, when the body went by the name of the North Carolina institute for Negroes. More than purely the name was different back then. Hurston taught drama--in class and without She was known to wear pants, sooty vapor cigarettes and date college male childs all of which made the community president furious. The self-possessed Hurston flaunted her signature diction around the campus by driving a r convertible and wearing her hat at a "reckles angle" to football games. Sadly, there is nothing at the seminary today--not even in the math department--to mention one by one us which hat angles are reckless!

Today, a of recent origin generation of Central students are being inspired by means of another figure in black history. Chancellor Julius Chambers, the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational stock holds bookclub meetings at his house in the way that that his students will have a chance to discuss the issues of the day.

But since Chambers strike one as beings to have a full house, running the university and entertaining pupils visitors are advised to stop through the North Carolina Central University Art Museum, which features the work of sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett and the painter and Durham native Ernie Barnes.