A New Chapter for the Durham Colored Library

The library, which was founded in 1913, will reach new audiences for years to come with a new partnership

Photo postcard of patrons sitting at a table inside the Durham Colored Library

This is a summary of a blog post that originally appeared on the Duke University Libraries website.

In 1913, Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, Durham’s first Black physician, and North Carolina Central University founder James E. Shepard donated a small collection of books to serve as a library for Durham’s Black communities. Both young men were prominent members of White Rock Baptist Church in Durham’s Hayti neighborhood, where the library first operated out of a Sunday School room.

Thanks to a new partnership with Duke University Libraries, and support from the Mellon Foundation, the Durham Colored Library, now known as the DCL at Duke, will continue to educate campus and community patrons for generations to come.

The Durham Colored Library’s mission from the onset was to make available stories by and about Black Americans to the community.

After five years of service in the Sunday School Room at White Rock Baptist, the library was officially chartered in 1918 and moved into a two-story building on the corner of Fayetteville and Pettigrew streets. The building was owned by civic and business leader John Merrick, who had collaborated in 1898 with Moore to co-found the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the first Black-owned insurance company in the U.S.

The DCL was more than a library for Durham’s Black community. It was a haven where residents could gather, read, learn and share ideas. The library offered children’s programming, including Saturday morning film screenings and afterschool study space.

The DCL at Duke will become part of the Rubenstein Library’s Community Engagement Program, supporting K-12 teacher training, community programming and digital storytelling projects that extend the reach of Durham’s Black history.

“For more than a century, the Durham Colored Library has carried forward the vision of our founder, Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore. With Mellon’s generous support and Duke University Libraries as our partner, we can be confident that our community’s stories will be preserved, celebrated and shared with future generations,” said C. Eileen Watts Welch, chair of the DCL board and great-granddaughter of Moore.

For more information about the history of the Durham Colored Library, go to the Libraries website.