The complicated history of Durham's Hayti Business District sheds light on lost Black power and a divided community

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It seemed to be a proposal to good to be true. The federal government was offering the guarantee of resurrecting communities across America. Durham’s Hayti district was on their list.

Two-hundred acres in an area labeled blighted was identified by city leaders. It was 1957, and the $600,000 placed on the table was enough to launch the Durham Redevelopment Commission. Robinson O. Everett, who holds the record as the youngest faculty member in Duke’s history at twenty-two, was named the chair. Paul Brooks, who served as Durham’s planning director, was appointed the acting executive director until Ben T. Perry III took the reins in 1962.

The commission managed seven projects. Contracts were secured with mostly white-owned realty, construction, architectural and legal firms. A bond referendum was proposed to support the $8.6 million estimated to complete the urban renewal project.

The people who would lose their homes and businesses were assured they would be fully compensated. The debate was fierce with many people objecting to federal intervention in Durham’s affairs. There was talk about increased taxes to pay for the bond issue.

John Hervey Wheeler, president of Mechanics & Farmers Bank, used his influence as the Chair of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (now the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People) to lobby in support of the bond.

The bond passed by 3%.

“The bitterness caused by Hayti’s destruction was compounded by the failure on the part of Durham’s leaders to fulfill their promise and rebuild a better Hayti,” Jean Bradley Anderson writes in Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina. “Twenty-five years later the land that had bustled with life was still a wasteland overgrown with weeds.”

The freeway and six other projects cost $41.6 million. The federal government paid two-thirds of the cost. The ultimate price was paid by the 4,057 households and 502 businesses forced to move.

What followed was a ghastly chain reaction that must have felt like karma. In 1966, Southern Railroad decided to discontinue passenger service through Durham. Members of the city council didn’t oppose the decision. Duke University did their best to stop the decision along with the editorial board of the Durham Morning Herald and the Chamber of Commerce.

The old Southern flare that prompted memories of the benefits of tobacco money soon disappeared. It wasn’t just Hayti that was torn down, building by building, block by block, the old was replaced by the promise of something new. The change continued for over a decade with the demolition of the old Washington Duke Hotel striking concerns in 1975.

Beyond the loss of a once vibrant Black community, historical properties and the insertion of a highway connecting Durham to the Research Triangle Park, the pride and power of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs began to dwindle.

It was a painful miscalculation. Many people blamed Wheeler for supporting the bond.

Asa T. Spaulding, the former president of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance, was interviewed by Walter Wear for the Southern Oral History Program Collection on April 16, 1979. He was asked why Wheeler never ran for public office.

“He likes to succeed in what he’s trying to do and where he’s trying to lead people,” Spaulding said. “And sometimes, even no matter how much ambition you may have, if you’re going to put the good of the people above your own selfish interest, you may have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the people.”

Wheeler seemed to be good at placing the needs of others above his own. In 1968, he was part of an interracial group of businesspeople established to build one hundred single family houses for low-income residents. Durham Investment Company set aside $65,000 to develop units that sold for $10,000 to $12,000. Other members of the group included Mary Duke Semans, J.J. Henderson, Ben Ruffin, Floyd Flecther, and James R. Hawkins.

Spaulding said Wheeler made enemies due to his activism. He was able to harness his power because of his relationship with the Black community.

“You see, you can do some things if you’re independent that you can’t if you’re not. And because his livelihood and means of survival was not dependent on being the employee of a white institution – because his support came from the Black community,” Spaulding said. “I’m talking about economic support. And his base of his political strength was in the Black community. And being a Black, too, and if you’re going to be worthy, sometimes you have to give yourself for a cause if you believe in the cause. And if you don’t do that, then you become a hypocrite, and that soon will show up.”

Did Wheeler and the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs’ support of urban renewal impact relationships with the Black community? Maybe. Is there an opinion among older residents, who remember the days leading up to urban renewal, that class division played a role in Wheeler’s support of the bond issue? Maybe.

We do know the demolition of Hayti was a massive miscalculation.

The Hayti urban renewal project was completed in 1973. Wheeler died on July 6, 1978, at the age of 70. His legacy in supporting Black people and their causes transcends his decision to support the 1962 urban renewal bond. Still, questions linger.

Who made money on the seven projects supported by the Durham Redevelopment Commission? How many of the companies were Black owned?

What about the masses of dreams deferred?

The dust stirred by the bulldozers lingers like ghosts conjuring memories of broken promises. There’s work to be down among those weeds.

Hopefully, the next proposal won’t come packaged with a few acres of swamp land two miles outside of Creedmoor.