Resources

For people who study or work at Duke University, below are ways to learn about Durham’s unique history and how Duke has been part of it. We also include information about a growing number of other academic health centers who are reckoning with their own histories of medical racism in relation to their local communities.

Local History:  Duke, Durham, Race, and Health


WEBSITES AND PHONE APP

BOOKS: HISTORY OF DURHAM AND NORTH CAROLINA

  • Leslie Brown, Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South (UNC Press, 2008). The story of Durham’s African American community from the Civil War to WWII, centering on women
     
  • Walter Campbell, Foundations for Excellence: 75 Years of Duke Medicine (Duke University Press, 2006).  Best overall history of Duke School of Medicine and Hospital
     
  • Osha Gray Davidson, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South (UNC Press, 2007).  Tells story of Durham’s history through two individuals, one a civil rights activist and the other a Klan leader, who against all odds came to recognize their commonalities and became friends. If you want to read one book about the complex interplay of race and social class in Durham), this might be it. The movie changes the story, leaving out Durham’s history.
     
  • Scott Ellsworth, The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph (Little Brown, 2015). The story of a “secret” game between the Duke School of Medicine squad and the NC Central’s groundbreaking team, set against the history of Duke and Durham in the Jim Crow Era
     
  • Hannah Gill, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina (UNC Press, 2010)
     
  • Christina Green, Our Separate Ways:  Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina. The Civil Rights movement in Durham, demonstrating the leadership roles of women activists
     
  • Blake Hill-Saya, Aaron McDuffie Moore: An African American Physician, Educator, and Founder of Durham’s Black Wall Street (UNC Press, 2020). New biography of founder of Lincoln Hospital
     
  • Spencie Love, One Blood:  The Death and Resurrection of Dr Charles Drew (UNC Press, 1996). Lively telling of the truth and mythology surrounding the dead of the great African American blood bank pioneer in Alamance County in the early 1950s. Duke Hospital plays a role in this story.
     
  • Cecelia Marquez, Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation (UNC press, 2023)
     
  • Theodor D. Segal, Point of Reckoning: The Fight for Racial Justice at Duke University (Duke Press, 2021). Recounts the Allen Building takeover and more, relying on personal interviews
     
  • Damon Tweedy, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine (New York: Picador, 2015). Penetrating memoir by a Duke physician on race and health, and the experience of being an African-American doctor. Not primarily on Duke’s history, but very relevant.
     

PLACES TO VISIT AND LEARN

Academic Health Centers and Local History

A growing number of academic health centers are engaging with their own histories, as they join with their communities to promote restorative justice; this is a partial list.