By Cliff Bellamy

cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744

DURHAM -- While Americans are well versed in the history of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, they often are woefully ignorant about another important period, the late 19th and early 20th century. Walter B. Weare, a retired history professor, said the period before the signing of the Civil Rights Act is often considered "a long timeout."

In fact, that period is a very rich time in African-American history. Locally, Durham's Black Wall Street businesses -- most notably North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and Mechanics & Farmers Bank -- and North Carolina Central University became major influences during this long period of struggle for greater equality for African-Americans. North Carolina Mutual and NCCU became "engines of race uplift during this period -- one through economics and one through education."

Weare, associate professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, delivered his comments during a keynote address for a program titled "The Legacy of Durham's Black Wall Street and North Carolina Central University," Sunday at Hayti Heritage Center. The Parrish Street Advocacy group sponsored the address and panel discussion. That group is part of the Parrish Street Project, an ongoing attempt to attract new investment and pursue national heritage area status for Parrish Street.

In the 1890s, African-Americans faced an epidemic of lynching. The response to such oppression, Weare said, is either withdrawal, open resistance in various forms, or to move around the oppression, or "outwit it ... soften it, seek out its better angels." The educational and business leaders of Durham sought to produce black institutions that were parallels to white institutions and that would thrive, produce black self-sufficiency and beat Jim Crow.

The major leaders were James E. Shepard, founder of the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua (now NCCU), along with business leaders John Merrick (first president of Mechanics & Farmers Bank), C.C. Spaulding (a business leader who also was a founder of NCCU), and Dr. A. M. Moore (founder of Lincoln Hospital).

Their achievements did not happen in a vaccuum, Weare said. North Carolina Central University could not just be a school, and N.C. Mutual could not just be a business. Forty-three years ago, Weare did his graduate work on the history of North Carolina Mutual and had access to many of the company's archives. His research revealed to him how the company and the school supported each other in various ways, as an expression of what Weare called a "civil religion." Both were dedicated to "the gospel of progress."

In comments before the address, NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms pointed out that Shepard and the school's founders understood the crucial importance of both education and commerce.

During a panel discussion after the address, Beverly Jones, a retired professor of history at NCCU who also was active in the civil rights movement, said the work of that period helped lay the foundation for civil rights. While the leaders of that era are often criticized for accommodating too much to racism, Jones pointed out that African-Americans still kept finding ways to push forward and challenge segregation. "I think we have to understand the time in which these people lived," she said.

Before the keynote address, Durham Mayor Bill Bell said the city's downtown redevelopment efforts build on the Parrish Street legacy. Downtown is becoming a destination "and Parrish Street is a very important part of that," Bell said.

The buildings along Parrish Street, Weare said, also tell a story of the people who made the Black Wall Street era happen. "It's our heritage," he said, "if we can keep it."