Remembering Hayti

Durham’s Black Business District

The businesses of Black Wall Street and Hayti prospered because of their connection to their community.

Across the railroad tracks from Black Wall Street, Hayti was home to thousands of people and hundreds of smaller black businesses. Hayti’s businesses were part of a thriving neighborhood. Shopping at a black-owned grocery or supporting a black-owned funeral home meant investing in your neighbors. 

Fayetteville Street in Hayti, in front of White Rock Baptist Church, for NC Mutual President C.C. Spaulding’s funeral, 1952. 

Courtesy Durham Herald Co. Newspaper Photograph Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Hayti’s businesses succeeded because black Durhamites spent their paychecks there. They offered goods and services that were often denied to African Americans elsewhere. Many residents felt that they had everything they needed in Hayti, away from the indignities of Jim Crow.

Durham’s Hayti neighborhood, ca. 1965.

Courtesy Durham Herald Co. Newspaper Photograph Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Black worker housing in Hayti, 1940.

Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

The Biltmore Hotel, ca. 1940. Notice the Regal Theater and the Donut Shop next door. Built by Dr. Clyde Donnell, staff physician for NC Mutual, it served African Americans from across the US and hosted celebrities when they came through town. It was home to a grill, a coffee shop, and a drugstore on its ground floor. 

Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library

She came down here because she knew it was a thriving community.

Sarah B. Frazier, daughter of Jacqueline DeShazor, founder of DeShazor Beauty System, Inc.

DeShazor Beauty College, ca. 1950. Madam Jacqueline DeShazor Jackson moved to Durham from Brooklyn, New York, in the 1930s and opened the DeShazor Beauty Salon. Expanding her operations, she bought the building for her school in 1945.

Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library.

Inside Service Printing Company, the leading printer for Durham’s black businesses, ca. 1960.

Courtesy Durham Historic Photographic Archives, North Carolina Collection, Durham County Library

Daisy E. Scarborough Nursery School, ca. 1950. Clydie F. Scarborough (front left) and her husband, John C. Scarborough Sr., founded the nursery school so that women could work.

Courtesy Clydie F. Scarborough Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University