A Lesson in Local History

A service-learning course focuses on two of the first Black students to integrate Duke‘s undergraduate program

A photo of local elementary school students

This is a summary of a story on Service-Learning.

Duke students living in the Mitchell-White House get more than just an education in African culture. They get a lesson in important local Black history – the role Durham played in integrating the university.

The Mitchell-White House is a Living Learning Community dedicated to exploring the cultures and history of the African diaspora. It focuses on the contributions of the house’s namesakes – Mary Mitchell Harris and Nathaniel White, two Durham natives who were among the “First Five” Black students to integrate Duke’s undergraduate program in 1963.

Called Dream Keepers: Exploring the Legacy of Mitchell and White, the service-learning course emphasizes that the university and the city where it resides have been connected for generations.

“It didn’t start with Duke,” said Kisha Daniels, Duke faculty advisor for the Mitchell-White House and assistant professor of the practice of education. “It started with Durham.”

Harris and White grew up in Durham and attended Hillside High School – Mitchell the valedictorian, White the salutatorian – before enrolling at Duke. Their lives and experiences are the basis for the course, which examines Durham’s geography, the history of black-owned businesses there, the role of Hillside high, and other important details.

Each semester, students put together a team project based on their work. The first cohort imagined what the Carolina Times — Durham's historic Black newspaper — might have published the week the First Five arrived at Duke. The second created a short documentary comparing the Black student experience then and now, based on interviews and archival sources. The current class is developing a coloring book for elementary school students, tracing the African American experience in Durham and at Duke. That coloring book will eventually be a teaching tool in Durham public school classrooms.

Dream Keepers is required for Mitchell-White House residents and open to all Duke students by permission. It is offered both semesters. Read the full story on Service-Learning.