The first step with any site that becomes the focus of the America’s Hallowed Ground team is to meet with and interview key stakeholders and community members to learn the history of their hallowed spaces and collaborate on the types of programs which might be helpful in the preservation and promotion of their stories.

America’s Hallowed Ground co-directors Charlie Thompson and Mike Wiley and members of the America’s Hallowed Ground team focused their initial work in Durham learning about key figures and sites in its history.

The team researched a variety of events and individuals within Durham history, including:

• • • The world of the Occaneechi, indigenous people who lived along the Eno River long before Europeans arrived.
    • The lives of many enslaved peoples forced to work at Stagville, part of the Bennehan-Cameron plantations and one of the largest sites of slavery in North Carolina.
    • The rise of historic and successful ventures launched by the city’s African-American scholars and entrepreneurs – Black Wall Street, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina Mutual Insurance to name just a few.
    • The ascendance of Pauli Murray, granddaughter of a woman enslaved near Durham, to a legendary theologian, feminist, womanist, and Civil Rights champion.
    • The importance of Bennett Place – site of surrender from the Confederate Army – as a sacred place of freedom for the enslaved.
    • The birth of the Piedmont Blues within the tobacco warehouses where workers gathered and integrated their joys, sorrows, and experiences into a new musical style.
    • The tragic death of Booker T. Spicely, an Army private on active duty who was killed by a bus driver in a tragic act of racial violence in 1944, after Spicely initially voiced his displeasure at having to move from his seat for a white passenger.
    • The city’s history as a testing ground for sit-ins, marches, and the “I Have A Dream” speech during the Civil Rights Movement.

These events show just how deep these stories go when we start looking at our own communities.