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Durham, North Carolina

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Durham, North Carolina
City
Duke's East Campus and Durham Skyline
Duke's East Campus and Durham Skyline
Flag of Durham, North Carolina
Flag
Nickname(s): 
"Bull City", "City of Medicine"
Location in North Carolina
Location in North Carolina
CountryUnited States
StateNorth Carolina
CountiesDurham, Orange, Wake
Government
 • MayorBill Bell
Area
 • Total
94.9 sq mi (245.8 km2)
 • Land94.6 sq mi (245.1 km2)
 • Water0.3 sq mi (0.7 km2)
Elevation
404 ft (123 m)
Population
 (2005)
 • Total
208,816
Time zoneUTC-5 (EST)
 • Summer (DST)UTC-4 (EDT)
Area code919
FIPS code37-19000Template:GR
GNIS feature ID1020059Template:GR
WebsiteDurham, NC

Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham CountyTemplate:GR and is the fourth-largest city in the state by population. It is the home of Duke University and North Carolina Central University, and is also one of the vertices of the Research Triangle (home of the Research Triangle Park).[1]

Durham is the core of the four county Durham, NC MSA, which has a population of 451,212 as of July 1, 2004. The US Office of Management and Budget also defines Durham as a part of the Raleigh-Durham-Cary Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 1,565,223 as of July 1, 2006.

History

Durham originated in 1853 with the search for a suitable railroad depot for the North Carolina Railroad between Raleigh and Hillsborough. The wood-burning steam locomotives of the time had to stop frequently to refuel, and depots supplying wood and water could not be more than 25-30 miles apart. An earlier post office known as Herndon's existed in the area from 1827, and another at nearby Prattsburg was established in 1836. The landowners at Prattsburg refused to sell land to the railroad. Somewhat further to the northwest, a country physician named Bartlett S. Durham lived and practiced along the route. He donated land to the railroad, which named the subsequent depot Durham Station. Prior to the arrival of the railroad, the area now known as Durham was almost entirely agricultural, with a few businesses catering to travelers (particularly livestock drivers) along the Hillsborough Road. This road, eventually followed by US Route 70, was the major east-west route in North Carolina from colonial times until the construction of interstate highways.

The town grew slowly before the Civil War, but grew rapidly following the war; the present city charter dates from 1869. Much of this growth can be attributed to the establishment of a thriving tobacco industry. Soldiers, both Union and Confederate, were encamped at Bennett Place, just outside the town, during surrender proceedings. During their long encampment, they liberally sampled the area's Brightleaf Tobacco, which purportedly had a milder flavor than other tobacco varieties. After returning to their homes, numerous orders were mailed to Green's tobacco company requesting more of the Durham tobacco. W.T. Blackwell would partner with Green, and rename the company the "Bull Durham Tobacco Company". The name "Bull Durham" is said to have been taken from the bull on the British Colman's Mustard, which Mr. Blackwell (mistakenly) believed was manufactured in Durham, England.

20th Century

Looking west along Parrish Street, towards CCB (SunTrust) Building

The rapid growth and prosperity of the Bull Durham Tobacco Company, and Washington Duke's Duke & Sons Tobacco Company, would result in the rapid growth of the city of Durham. While the tobacco industry dominated the city's economy initially, it was soon rivaled by the establishment of multiple textile mills, particularly in East and West Durham. Much of the early city architecture, both commercial and residential, dates from the period of 1890 - 1930.

Durham quickly developed a vibrant African-American community, the center of which was an area known as 'Hayti' (pronounced HAY-tie), just south of the center of town, where some of the most prominent and successful black-owned businesses in the country during the early 20th century were established. These businesses — the best known of which are North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company and Mechanics & Farmers' Bank — were centered on Parrish St., which would come to be known as "Black Wall Street."

Durham's fortunes declined during the mid-20th century. Textile mills began to close during the 1930s, and competition from other tobacco companies (as well as a decrease in smoking after the 1960s) reduced revenues to Durham's tobacco industry. Although the region benefited significantly from the establishment of Research Triangle Park in 1958, Durham did not experience the same early increases in housing development as neighboring Raleigh and Cary. Suburban flight also contributed to the slow but progressive decline of downtown Durham as a retail and economic center.

With a strong African-American community, a strong Civil Rights movement developed in Durham. Multiple sit-ins were held, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the city during the struggle for equal rights.

This strong community was not enough to prevent the demolition of portions of the Hayti district for the construction of the Durham Freeway during the late 1960s. The freeway construction also resulted in the loss of large parts of other historic neighborhoods, including Morehead Hills, West End, and West Durham. Combined with large-scale demolition using Urban Renewal funds, Durham suffered significant losses from its historic architectural base.

Durham's growth began to rekindle during the 1970s and 1980s, with the construction of multiple housing developments in the southern part of the city, nearest Research Triangle Park, and the beginnings of downtown revitalization. In 1975, the St. Joseph's Historical Foundation at the Hayti Heritage Center was incorporated to "preserve the heritage of the old Hayti community, and to promote the understanding of and appreciation for the African American experience and African Americans' contributions to world culture."[2] A new downtown baseball stadium was constructed for the Durham Bulls in 1994, and a large-scale historic renovation of the American Tobacco Company (formerly Bull Durham) complex commenced in 2003.

Education

Colleges and universities

Duke Chapel

Public education in Durham is provided by Durham Public Schools. Durham owns 45 schools, including a school for hospitalized children. Durham also is home to the state-run residential high school North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Sports and Entertainment

Durham Bulls logo
Durham Bulls logo

Durham's most famous professional sports team is the Durham Bulls International League baseball team. A movie involving the franchise, Bull Durham, was produced in 1988. The Bulls play in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, south of downtown, constructed in 1994. Designed by HOK-Sport, the designers of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, the stadium has 10,000 seats and is fronted by an office building, Diamond View I, built by the owner of the team, Raleigh's Capital Broadcasting. Construction of a second Diamond View office building and parking deck is currently underway. Now with one of the newest and most impressive stadiums in the minor leagues, the Bulls usually generate an annual attendance of around 500,000. Previously the Durham Athletic Park, located north of downtown, had served as the team's homebase. It has been preserved for the use of other minor league baseball teams as well as for concerts sponsored by the City of Durham and other events. The Durham Dragons, a women's fast pitch softball team, played in the Durham Athletic Park from 1998-2000.

NCAA Sports

Duke University offers 26 NCAA Division I sporting teams and competes in the ACC. Duke has won 3 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championships, and is third in NCAA Final Four appearances in Men's Basketball with 14.

North Carolina Central University offers NCAA Division I sporting teams and currently in transition to compete in the MEAC.

NCCU has won CIAA championships in football, volleyball, and cross country for two consecutive years. NCCU won the 1989 NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Championship.

The city also owns a national landmark downtown, the Carolina Theatre, which is operated by a nonprofit organization. The Carolina Theatre is the host of the North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival caters to documentary film makers all over the world. In addition, the American Dance Festival, a six-week series of dance performances, is held each summer at the Duke University Campus.

Points of interest

Culture

Events include jazz festivals, blues festivals, symphony concerts, art exhibitions, and a multitude[3] of cultural expositions, including the American Dance Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. A center of Durham's culture is its Carolina Theater, which shows both live performances and films, primarily independent releases. Notable dining establishments are primarily concentrated in the Ninth Street, Brightleaf, and University Drive areas. There is a resurgence of restaurants in and around the downtown area, including several new restaurants in the American Tobacco District.

The Durham Association for Downtown Arts (DADA) is a non-profit arts organization located in the downtown area. It was founded in 1998 and then incorporated in 2000. The organization's mission is a commitment to the development, presentation and fiscal sponsorship of original art and performance in Durham. DADA strives to support local artists working in a diversity of artistic media. Emphasizing community, DADA helps local residents gain access to these artists by providing free or low-cost venue admission.

Movies filmed in Durham

For a complete listing of all television, video and commercials filmed in Durham, visit http://www.durham-nc.com/film/film_history.php

Famous natives and residents

Born in Durham

Residents of Durham

  • James M. DeVone, Sr., Internationally recognized Inventor, Scientist("Global Warming Solutions, 1976"-(See: www.wikipatents.com, US Patent no. 4045077) and a former student of Dr. Leroy T. Walker, lives in Durham, presently.
  • Michael W. Krzyzewski is the coach of the United States and Duke University basketball teams and has been a resident of Durham since 1980, when he became the coach at Duke. He is a member of the International Basketball Hall of Fame and his teams at Duke have won 3 national collegiate championships. He is widely known in the United States simply as "Coach K". He is also an adjunct professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and has written a number of books on the topic of leadership in organizations.
  • Dr. LeRoy T. Walker, former United States Olympic President and former Chancellor of North Carolina Central University(NCCU), presently lives in Durham.[9]

Associated with Durham

Politics

The area is predominantly Democratic, and has voted for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in every election since the county's founding in 1869. Durham is an activist community and politics are lively, visible, and often contentious,[citation needed] and like many communities, often dealing with issues of race and class.[citation needed] The shifting alliances of the area's political action committees since the 1980s has led to a very active local political scene. Notable groups include the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, the Durham People's Alliance, and the Friends of Durham. Compared to other similarly sized Southern cities, Durham has a larger than average population of middle class African-Americans and white liberals.[citation needed] Working together in coalition, these two groups have dominated city and county politics since the early 1980s.

Key political issues have been the redevelopment of Downtown Durham and revival of other historic neighborhoods and commercial districts, a 45% reduction of crime, a 10 year plan to end homelessness, initiatives to reduce truancy, issues related growth and development. Naturally, a merger of Durham City Schools (several inner city neighborhoods) and Durham County Schools in the early 1990s has not been without controversy.

Recent Issues

In 2005, racial tensions flared over the school board for the Durham Public School.[11] When a black principal at a local middle school was accused of unfairly targeting black students for punishments, local parents and leaders in the black community approached the school board to request the principal be punished. When the school board initially voted not to punish the principal, the group of petitioners and others began to become vocal about the issue of the racial divide of the school board, which had a one seat white majority. When one member of the school board visited the school with one of the concerned parents, they were removed from the school by the police for interrupting the school day and ordered not to return. Over the next several months, school board meetings were marred by shouted insults, including racial epithets, from the public forum as well as between members. In an attempt to control the presentation of issues, the Superintendent attempted to institute new rules for discussions at school board meetings, but this only caused more strife. Tied into this was a proposal to change the way the Durham County School Board is elected -- from a district-based system to at-large elections -- resulted in an adversarial relationship between board members and primarily black parents.[12] The proposal was seen as potentially reducing African-American representation, although Durham frequently elects African-Americans in at-large races such as mayor and County Commissioner.

During this same time, three crosses were burnt in the area, leading some to question if the burnings were related to the school board issues. However, citizens from communities city-wide turned out in the hundreds for candlelight vigils after the cross burnings. There were also several incidents of vandalism (spray-painting) related to the Ku Klux Klan — seemingly, both by and against — and Ku Klux Klan pamphlets were found distributed in several neighborhoods as recently as June 2007. [1]

Also in 2005, Reverend Fred Phelps's group came to protest the Durham School of the Arts's presentation of The Laramie Project; counter-protesters supporting the high school students were said to outnumber them 10-1.[13]

In 2006, racial and community tensions were stirred[citation needed] following allegations of a sexual assault by three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team in what is now known as the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case. The allegations were made by a female African American stripper and mother of two young children who was hired for a party that the team held in an off-campus house. In 2007, all charges in the case were dropped. Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was dismissed from his job and disbarred from legal practice for negligent mishandling of the case. There have been several other results from the case.

Immigration policy

Since 2003 the city has had a policy to prohibit employees from inquiring into the citizenship status of persons unless they have otherwise been arrested or charged with a crime. A city council resolution mandates that police officers "...may not request specific documents for the sole purpose of determining a person's civil immigration status, and may not initiate police action based solely on a person's civil immigration status ..." [14]

Passenger transportation

See also: Durham, North Carolina (Amtrak station)

Law and government

Durham operates under a council-manager government. The current mayor is William V. "Bill" Bell (2001-present).

As of the November 2007 elections, the City Council members are: Cora Cole-McFadden (Ward 1; Mayor Pro Tem), Howard Clement, III (Ward 2), Mike Woodard (Ward 3), and at-large members Farad Ali, Eugene A. Brown and Diane Catotti.[15]

The City Manager, Patrick W. Baker is appointed by City Council and oversees the day-to-day functions of the city, ranging from budgetary decisions to departmental oversight.[16]

Geography

Durham is located at 35°59′19″N 78°54′26″W / 35.98861°N 78.90722°W / 35.98861; -78.90722Invalid arguments have been passed to the {{#coordinates:}} function (35.988644, -78.907167)Template:GR.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 245.8 km² (94.9 mi²). 245.1 km² (94.6 mi²) of it is land and 0.7 km² (0.3 mi²) of it (0.29%) is water.

Demographics

Historical populations
Census
year		 Population
1890 5,485
1900 6,679
1910 18,241
1920 21,719
1930 52,037
1940 60,195
1950 73,368
1960 84,642
1970 100,768
1980 100,831
1990 136,611
2000 187,035
2005 208,816

As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there were 201,726 people, 74,981 households, and 43,563 families residing in the city. The population density was 763.1/km² (1,976.4/mi²). There were 80,797 housing units at an average density of 329.7/km² (853.8/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 45.50% White, 43.81% African American, 0.31% Native American, 3.64% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 4.75% from other races, and 1.94% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.56% of the population.

There were 74,981 households, out of which 28.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.2% were married couples living together, 15.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.9% were non-families. 31.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37, and the average family size was 3.01.

In the city the population was spread out with 22.9% under the age of 18, 14.1% from 18 to 24, 35.6% from 25 to 44, 18.1% from 45 to 64, and 9.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 92.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.1 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $41,160, and the median income for a family was $51,162. Males had a median income of $35,202 versus $30,359 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,526. About 11.3% of families and 15.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.4% of those under age 18 and 13.2% of those age 65 or over.

Sister Cities

See also


References

  1. ^ "Where is RTP?". Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Retrieved 2007-10-09.
  2. ^ St. Joseph's Historical Foundation at Hayti Heritage Center.
  3. ^ "Visit Durham to Enjoy a Thriving Arts Community?". The Article Writer. Retrieved 2007-10-09.
  4. ^ "Roger Lee Craig". Baseball Almanac. Retrieved 2007-07-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  5. ^ "Rick Ferrell". The Baseball Page. Retrieved 2007-07-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. ^ "Brian Roberts Statistics". Sports Reference,Inc. Retrieved 2007-07-29. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ "Rick Ferrell". United States Olympic Committee. Retrieved 2007-07-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  8. ^ "Branford's bragging rights". News and Observer. Retrieved 2007-10-24. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  9. ^ "LeRoy Walker Bio". US Track and Field Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2007-10-24. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  10. ^ "Cartoonist Doug Marlette dies in wreck". Raleigh News and Observer. Retrieved 2007-07-16. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Racism Charges Leveled In Durham School Board Meeting
  12. ^ Petition Drive To Change Durham Schools Elections Fails
  13. ^ Westboro Baptist Church protest in Durham, NC
  14. ^ Matt Dies, "Durham may tweak checks for immigrants," "News and Observer" September 6, 2007 http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/694361.html
  15. ^ http://www.durhamnc.gov/council/ Retrieved 6 December 2007.
  16. ^ http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/manager/ Retrieved 6 December 2007.

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