Fayetteville Street, in the Hayti district, 1944. Photographer unknown.

CDS is pleased to offer Then and Now: A Hayti Civics Course, a unique new continuing education course led by a knowledgeable and committed group of instructors. Students will record oral histories and use archival material to produce a series of short documentaries about Durham’s Hayti community, a vibrant African-American section of Durham, North Carolina, that flourished for most of the 20th century. Participants in this class will explore Hayti’s fascinating, rich history while creating a multimedia portfolio and contributing to an ongoing project about Hayti, which includes a documentary film, sponsored by Triangle Virtual Media, Inc. 

The Hayti website compares the district—a regular stopping place for African Americans traveling throughout the Jim Crow South—to “… Memphis’ Beale Street and the area around Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn . . .  an island of African American culture and business in a hostile society . . . a  place where African Americans could eat in restaurants, practice their trades, and call each other ‘Mr.’ ‘Mrs.’—where they  could stop being ‘colored,’ and simply be people.” Ironically, later civil rights victories contributed to the demise of communities like Hayti, which was finally dealt a death blow by urban renewal in the ’60s and ’70s.

Click here to watch a recent video from Triangle Virtual Media that offers a glimpse of Hayti’s “meteoric rise and devastating decline.”

Click here for more information on the course and the instructors, and to register. The weekly class starts on February 2 and runs through March 29, meeting every Thursday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.