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Duke + Durham Facts

Home Belonging Identity and Cultural Centers Mary Lou Williams Center For Black Culture Resources Duke + Durham Facts
Pictured above are Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke, Nathaniel White, and Mary Mitchell, three of the first Five Black undergraduate students at Duke.

BC Plaza Banner Facts

Showcased starting February 1st on the Plaza light-poles. Want to learn more about the person, group, or event highlighted? Click on each topic below to expand and learn more.

black wall street text with yellow, red, green and blue accents, with cut out photo of black wall street historical signSource: Duke Chronicle article from January 21, 2022

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Durham’s Black Wall Street housed a vibrant and successful variety of Black-owned businesses. A set of four blocks on Parrish Street, Black Wall Street served as a hub for Black Americans and was a thriving commercial area with tailors, barbers, drugstores and more. It put Durham on the map as the capital of the Black middle class in America, and the Bull City became nationally renowned for fostering Black entrepreneurship.

“Durham was known as the ‘mecca of the Black South’ because so much attention was paid to Durham’s economy,” said Paul Scott, founder of the Durham-based Black Messiah Movement and an activist who has worked to raise awareness about Black history in Durham.

Black Wall Street flourished during the Reconstruction era, at a time of racial tension and systematic discrimination against Black Americans.

The success of Black Wall Street was fueled by the efforts of two businesses that remain today: NC Mutual Life Insurance Company and Mechanics & Farmers Bank.

Today, NC Mutual Life Insurance Company is the largest Black-owned insurance business in the world. M&F Bank is the second oldest minority-owned bank in the United States and was also the first Black-owned bank in Durham.

dr. samuel dubois cook text with yellow, red, green and blue accents, with cut out photo of dr. cook with a red shadowDr. Samuel Cook - First Black tenured faculty member joined Duke in 1966 

Cook is Duke’s first black tenured professor, joining the faculty in 1966, three years after the university’s student body desegregated. He is also the first African American to hold a regular faculty appointment at any predominantly white college or university in the South. A graduate of Morehouse College, he was classmates with Martin Luther King, Jr. He later became the president of Dillard University, a historically black university in New Orleans. Now retired, Duke honors his legacy annually with an awards banquet.

black student alliance text with yellow, red, green and blue accents, with cut out photo of the group BSA, Black Student Alliance was established in 1967 and promotes academic achievement and intellectual pursuit, cultivates dynamic leadership, and strives to eliminate social barriers for all.

 

wilhelmina reuben-cooke text with yellow, red, green and blue accents, with a cutout folder of her from when she was a student in front of her namesake buildingWilhelmina Reuben-Cooke becomes the first Black woman to have a campus building named after her on September 24, 2020.