Making A Way Out of No Way

Making A Way Out of No Way brings lesser-known histories about Stagville descendants to light. Through this exhibit, we invite you to explore how formerly enslaved folks and their descendants contributed to the making of early Durham and its surrounding areas from the post-Emancipation era until around the 1930s. Many of these contributions are still reverberating today. The findings we have uncovered for use in this exhibit will be relied upon for other forthcoming exhibits and the creation of public art in Durham.

The exhibit is divided into the following sections:

Introduction: Here you can learn more about Stagville Plantation, how slavery impacted folks there, and the founding of early Black neighborhoods
Descendant Spotlight: A few Stagville descendants who contributed to the strength of their community
Family Photos: Photos submitted by living descendants of their relatives to help bring the discussed themes to life
Exhibit Narratives: Stories of how descendants shaped Durham in the areas of culture, economy, education, and politics
Timeline: Events related to local and national histories for a broader historical context

Right: Map of Durham plantations and surrounding areas, 1887.

Courtesy of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Introduction

STAGVILLE: AN INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND AND SITE HISTORY

By 1865, around 900 people had built their lives and families as best they could while enslaved by Paul Cameron and his relatives on the 30,000 acres of Stagville and Fairntosh Plantations. Although this exhibit mainly focuses on the lives and legacies of formerly enslaved people after Emancipation, some background on their experience while enslaved will provide context.

Many families lived in Horton Grove, a group of four two-story homes with eight rooms each, with one source noting that as many as 40 people could have lived together in each house. Enslaved people built the houses themselves, although under the direction of Paul Cameron for the design. The fingerprints of adults and children remain in the bricks of a Horton Grove chimney: the builders left their marks on their homes.

In oral histories completed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, formerly enslaved men Doc Edwards, Abner Jordan, and Cy Hart discussed the kinds of jobs that enslaved people did at Stagville. Enslaved people worked to grow, harvest, and process wheat—the main crop—into flour with a machine. Abner Jordan’s father, Obed, was a blacksmith, and would have worked making nails and other metal farming tools. Doc Edwards stated, "We had big work shops where we made all the tools." After the wheat harvest concluded in the fall, Doc Edwards noted they used hand looms with cotton to make "the cloth that was to make the clothes for [enslaved people] to wear." Edwards also mentioned there was a cobbler's shop, where the cobbler made wooden soled shoes. A blacksmith, like Obed Jordan, would use a strip of metal to secure the sole to the shoe. Some people continued working in the jobs they learned at Stagville after they were emancipated and migrated from the plantation.

The men interviewed in the WPA Slave Narratives did not focus on domestic work at Stagville or provide much insight about their personal lives or opinions. However, historians have noted that enslaved people who lived and worked in the enslavers' home, rather than working in the fields and living in their own quarters, could have felt more psychologically trapped because they were under more constant scrutiny. When Edwards was a cook and "houseman," he said, "My health failed from doing so much work in the house and so I would go for a couple of hours each and work in the field to be outdoors and get well again." Edwards and Jordan also told similar stories about how there were so many people enslaved at Stagville that Cameron did not recognize everyone by name: when they were outside of Cameron's or his overseers' view, in their homes at Horton Grove, this anonymity might have given them a little more independence.

Enslaved people at Stagville, other than trying to have what little independence they could in their homes at Horton Grove, also found community and hope in practicing faith. Either during or shortly after the end of slavery, they established Cameron Grove Baptist Church at Stagville. As more people moved away from Stagville to nearby Bragtown, the church also moved there.

After Emancipation, whether they stayed at Stagville, migrated to nearby rural communities like Bragtown, or settled farther into Durham, the portion of their lives as enslaved people left a mark like a fingerprint on brick: they carried on the desire to help their families and build independent communities.

A dramatic reading of an interview with WPA worker Daisy Whaley and Abner Jordan between 1936 and 1938. Original transcript courtesy of the Library of Congress, reading courtesy of the Museum of Durham History and North Carolina Central University.

Hand and Footprints left in the bricks at Stagville

Images of Stagville State Historic Site. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

NEIGHBORHOOD FORMATION

Some newly emancipated families, like Emma and Dempsey Henderson, sought new dwellings away from their former enslavers right away in 1865. The Hendersons bought land in what would later become the West End neighborhood, including what is now Maplewood Cemetery. Others continued living and working on Cameron’s land as free people. Some stayed there for decades in the homes their ancestors had built at Horton Grove. Some moved later during Reconstruction, forming what would later become Durham neighborhoods like West End, East End, and Hayti, as well as others, or developing communities like Bragtown that would eventually be annexed by Durham. Whether they stayed or moved, they kept the community ties they had built during slavery.

Each section of this exhibit to follow demonstrates the continuing connections among Stagville descendants, as family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, for decades to come during a period of intense growth for Durham, amidst both oppression and opportunity.

DURHAM FROM 1884 TO 1913

This map shows the digitized Sanborn® maps available for Durham, NC as neighborhoods developed from 1884 to 1913. For instructions on how to change backgrounds or map overlays, click the "i" button in the top right corner of the interactive map. Courtesy of UNC Chapel Hill.

This chart was made by researchers for this exhibit with statistics from the 1897 City Directory. The labels show the number of Black and white residents per neighborhood. 868 Black people lived in Hayti, with only 11 white neighbors.

Descendant Spotlight

DESCENDANT CONNECTIONS

SPOTLIGHTS

These descendants’ stories relate to the exhibit’s themes of Durham’s early culture, economy, education, and politics through family records and other primary documents.

Scroll through and click to learn more about family members from six different lineages at Stagville

CHARLES CLINTON AMEY

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SADIE CHRISTMAS ESCOFFERY

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INEZ CLEOPATRA SUITT

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FAMILY PHOTOS

Click on the camera icon below to view the full collection of images from descendant relatives and project contributors

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Exhibit Narratives

EXHIBIT NARRATIVES

Select a tab to read about Stagville descendants' lives post-Emancipation via our thematic groupings

ECONOMY

NARRATIVE OVERVIEW

Once emancipated, Stagville residents leveraged their skills to acquire increased wages, capital, and opportunities to cultivate an economy of their own in Orange County. As Black schools and trade businesses began to establish across the county, many Stagville descendants chose to relocate in waves, first to Bragtown, an agricultural community north of Durham that would later be annexed, then to Hayti, a railroad neighborhood in South Durham, then to East End, a factory neighborhood in East Durham.

STAGVILLE: A NEW DIRECTION

“The Stagville hands refused to cart any more wheat without a bargain for their pay for the work.”

Samuel Piper, 1865

Courtesy of Cameron Family Papers, Folder 1252, Scan 60

After the end of the Civil War, people newly emancipated from Stagville asserted their rights through a strike. Overseers like Samuel Piper struggled to accept that the same people who had previously worked under slavery now demanded payment and threatened to hide tools so that potential strikebreakers would not be able to work. Newly emancipated people fought to secure their freedom and improve their economic situations, and some would later establish communities away from Stagville.

LANDOWNERSHIP

Although people freed from slavery and their children sought new economic opportunities in Durham, they did not leave the community they had built at Stagville behind. Those who bought land in Durham would often pass it down or sell it between each other. Landownership gave them some financial stability and served as a way to help maintain connections between Stagville descendants, with some streets even getting named after the families who lived there. Tracing landownership can give some indication of continuing friendships and families through generations of Stagville descendants in Durham.

For example, Isiah and Essek Sparkman bought land in what would become Hayti around 1870, purchasing their initial plots from David Justice and Robert Justice. David Justice was one of the first to buy land in Hayti after leaving Stagville, according to historian Jean Bradley Anderson. The Sparkmans lived on the same street as the Justices, along with other Stagville descendants like Jasper Jones (who had married Millie Sparkman) and his family, and Cornelius Jordan and his family. The Sparkmans transferred land amongst themselves and worked together to buy more land, living around Pettigrew and Fayetteville Streets, and Sparkman Alley, which was named after them.

Select an image to view primary documents about Economy

INDUSTRY

“In these [tobacco] factories are employed 1047 whites and 468 blacks…the manufacture of smoking tobacco is the principal business, giving employment [to] mostly young girls and boys.”

The Star of Zion, June 1886

Many of those who moved from Stagville to Durham worked in the industries fueling the city's growth, like tobacco factories, cotton manufacturing, or hosiery mills. Jobs were often segregated by both race and gender, with some opportunities only open to white people, some open to Black men but not women, and others mainly employing Black women but not men. Wealthy white industrialists like the Dukes, W.T. Blackwell, and Julian Carr held power across almost all kinds of employment in Durham, whether it was in their factories or in their homes.

Mary Sparkman and her relatives provide an interesting example of the range of jobs that Stagville descendants had, as well as the gender divide between them. Many of Mary's male relatives worked for the American Tobacco Company, owned by the Duke family, or for Bull Durham tobacco business partners, Blackwell and Carr. There was a strike at Blackwell's factory in 1881: although researchers have not confirmed specific names involved, as newly emancipated people went on strike at Stagville in 1865, it's not too far-fetched to imagine their descendants also wanting to advocate for better working conditions.

Some of the Sparkman women worked as sack stringers, sewing bags that were sold to tobacco companies. Although sack stringing was later partially automated and brought into the Golden Belt Manufacturing Co. in the late 1880s, it began as a female-dominated profession when women sewed the bags at home, allowing them more flexibility for caretaking. Others worked as cooks, nurses, or housekeepers in the homes of the men who owned the factories where their relatives worked. Mary Sparkman worked for Carr, then Blackwell, then B.N. and Sarah Duke, sometimes alongside her daughters and sometimes living in the homes of her employers. A smaller number of Sparkman relatives became entrepreneurs, with Essek opening a grocery store.

The Sparkmans' careers illustrate the domination of tobacco industrialists over the kinds of jobs that the majority of Stagville descendants had, but even with the limited options, people tried to improve working conditions (likely) through participating in a strike or simply by switching between employers. Working alongside relatives and purchasing land together is a strong indicator of their determination to succeed as a family.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Orin B. Amey lived about the first decade of his life in slavery, before moving with his parents Charles and Bettie from Stagville to Durham onto the $100 worth of land Charles had bought sometime in the late 1860s. There, Orin started as a factory hand as a young teenager. A decade later, in 1880, he became a school teacher. He opened a store sometime later, advertising his "coffee, sugar, molasses, lard, meat candy, salt, soda, canned goods," in 1885. He assured his potential customers or people looking for him to stock their goods that he meant to "sell right and buy right." By 1887, Orin had become a real estate dealer as well and owned 9.5 acres of land worth $900. Getting this information from sources like the census, the city directory, and advertisements leaves gaps in Orin's story: how did he get to be a teacher, open a store, and sell real estate?

It's only possible to speculate. But other stories of Stagville descendants, like the Sparkmans, serve as examples that families and friends worked together to help each other buy land, get jobs, or start businesses. Many Amey relatives bought land on the same street, which was eventually named for them. The Amey’s landownership might show that they, too, helped each other succeed. While Orin Amey's story is unique, we can see the possibilities in entrepreneurship that Stagville descendants had in Durham.

EDUCATION

NARRATIVE OVERVIEW

Directly after Emancipation, formerly enslaved people hungered for education, both for their children and themselves. In the wake of slavery and the destruction of the Civil War, the Freedmen's Bureau worked to establish public schools for emancipated people and white people who did not have the means to pay for their education. The Durham school was located 12 miles southeast of Hillsborough, which was closer to the newly growing neighborhoods where people began to move from Stagville.

The agent for the Freedmen's Bureau schools thought that Durham freedmen felt more strongly about education than poor white people, who he felt were more occupied working their crops at the time. Although both groups struggled economically and had to work hard after the Civil War, newly emancipated Black people in Durham may have felt more strongly about education because they had been legally denied it while enslaved.

JAMES A. WHITTED

Beginning his career in education as soon as he could with the Freedmen's Bureau, James A. Whitted continued his commitment to serve Durham's Black students until the day he died in 1892, a year before the school he helped found would be renamed in his honor.

James A. Whitted was born in 1848 in Orange County to Wilson Whitted and Cynthia Umstead. He married Mary Jones in 1866. Although researchers have not been able to pinpoint whether James, his parents, or his wife were enslaved by the Cameron family themselves, there are family connections between their relatives and people known to have been enslaved at Stagville.

The Freedmen's Bureau school records in 1868 show Whitted as a teacher for a school in Orange County that was either called Bains School or located in a place called Bains. Whitted later became the first principal of what was then called the Colored Graded School, the first of Durham's modern public school system, in 1887. He ran the school out of multiple temporary buildings and unfortunately did not live long enough to see the permanent building that would bear his name in 1893.

The 1893 Whitted School no longer exists, but various school buildings have been named after James A. Whitted since then, including a present-day preschool that shows his lasting impact on Durham.

Left: Whitted portrait, 1880s. Courtesy of the Durham Historical Photographic Collection. North Carolina Collection Digital Collections.

Middle: Whitted's obituary, 1892. Courtesy of DigitalNC.

Top and Bottom Right: These ninth-grade graduates were some of the first to go through the Whitted School. Although they are not yet identified, the timing lines up in a way that they could be Stagville descendants. One descendant, Sadie Christmas, made the Whitted School Honor Roll starting when she was in elementary school up through most of her education. She became a teacher at a young age. Teachers in Durham were expected to be pillars of their community. Outside of just teaching, they were expected to participate in community events and uphold social standards in their personal lives. People felt it was important for teachers to provide young Black students with an example contrary to negative stereotypes about their intelligence and potential for success.

HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Stagville descendants played a major role in the history of historically Black colleges and universities. Raford Edwards, an 1890's graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, earned his agricultural degree and returned to Stagville as a successful tenant farmer. Charles Clinton Amey, also a 1903 graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, earned his accounting credentials there and later served in North Carolina Central University’s business department until he retired. Senator Mary Jeanne Hopkins Lucas, a 1957 graduate of North Carolina Central University, later served as the first African American state senator for North Carolina. Dr. Elvira Mangum, also a 1970's graduate of North Carolina Central University, earned her history degree and later served as the first African American woman president of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Dr. Warren James Strudwick, an HBCU graduate, served as a surgeon instructor for the Howard University Medical School for over 40 years.

CULTURE

RELIGION

Stagville descendants played a significant role in the founding of some of Durham's Black churches in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Either during or shortly after the end of slavery, descendants established Cameron Grove Baptist Church at Stagville. As more people moved away from Stagville to nearby Bragtown, the church also moved there in 1901.

In 1883, David Justice, Charles Amey, Cornelius? Jordan, and Jasper Jones transferred some of their land to Robert Justice and Frank Davis, the deacons of the Colored Primitive Baptist Church. That church was also one of the temporary locations of the first Black school in Durham before it became permanent as the Whitted School in a different location. Cornelius Jordan also deeded land to the "trustees of the Colored Missionary Baptist Church" in 1877, which would become the location of White Rock Baptist Church. These two churches served as places of worship in the Hayti community until they were both demolished as part of urban renewal in 1967.

The first brick White Rock Church

White Rock Baptist, 1922

White Rock Baptist, 1950s

The first brick White Rock Church

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at White Rock Baptist Church 1960

Images from the White Rock Baptist Church's history. In 1960, after sit-in demonstrations began in Greensboro, NC, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously delivered his "A Creative Protest" speech at the church. Dr. King traveled to Durham instead of Greensboro to deliver the speech following the invitation of Reverend Moore, a former graduate classmate of King's. In the speech, King urged Black demonstrators to be willing "to fill up the jails of the South." Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at UNC Chapel Hill and David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

POLITICS

VOTING

In 1875, in the earliest record researchers could find showing this statistic, at least six men formerly enslaved by the Camerons were registered to vote, indicated by their payment of a poll tax. The poll tax disenfranchised people who could not afford to pay it, but those emancipated from Stagville who could afford it sought to exercise their right to vote, established in the 15th Amendment in 1870. These men—Cornelius Toney Amey, Werter Hart, Monroe and Obed Jordan, Alvis Justice, and Smith Umstead Justice—may have used their votes in local issues like establishing a school system or parks for Black children or statewide issues like the prohibition of alcohol.

Overall, despite Jim Crow laws later restricting their citizenship rights, emancipated people and their descendants shaped Durham through various means of political involvement, from official activities like voting or jury duty, to community organizing around groups like freemasonry or planning Emancipation Celebrations and fundraisers.

"At the election in 1882, the colored people almost [no] man opposed the school, because no provision was made in the Act for a colored school...this failure to provide for a colored school was subsequently made a pretext by some of the white citizens who declined to pay the special tax...a final decision of the Supreme Court in 1886 [declared] the Act unconstitutional, on the grounds of discrimination...In 1887 [the people] secured the passage of an Act providing for a Graded School for BOTH races."

Mangum's directory of Durham and suburbs, 1897

Black people in Durham played a pivotal role in the establishment of Durham's public schools, then called "graded schools," for students of all races, in an election in 1882. Their votes showed that the Graded School Act discriminated against Black people by splitting the taxes that raised money for the schools by race, effectively underfunding Black schools.

Although the act passed, opposition to the discriminatory tax from some white Durhamites alongside their Black townspeople pushed the act to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which forced Durham's government to revise it. Stagville descendants valued education—other sections of this exhibit elaborate on that—and would have likely voted in the election and followed the North Carolina Supreme Court case.

This case, Riggsbee v. Town of Durham, ruled that it was unconstitutional to use taxes paid by Black people to Black schools and use taxes paid by white people to white schools. According to the Supreme Court Judge, splitting up the tax fund in this way meant that the "great bulk of it is appropriated to a graded school for white children, the residue to such a school for colored children." This was illegal racial discrimination.

After the Riggsbee v. Town of Durham decision, public schools for Black children in Durham were opened, with Stagville descendants involved both as educators and students. The Whitted School, pictured here, was the first permanent graded school for Black children after its construction in 1893. Another section of the exhibit focuses on James A. Whitted, its namesake.

Like voting rights, the prohibition of alcohol may have been a hot button political issue for Stagville descendants and other Black Durhamites in the late 1880s and early 1900s, leading up to the eventual nationwide ban in 1920. According to The Star of Zion, a newspaper from Charlotte affiliated with the AME Zion Church, an 1886 vote on prohibition was close in Durham, although it ended up that Durham did not ban alcohol. The Star of Zion saw the prohibition movement as an opportunity to show white people that Black people wielded significant political power.

A speaker at a 1908 Emancipation Day Celebration argued that "every race-loving colored man" ought to be a prohibitionist, and endorsed Governor Robert Glenn for his prohibitionist views. (And although the speaker did not mention it, Governor Glenn also spoke out against lynching and enforced legal consequences for a lynch mob in 1906, which might have been another reason that Black Durhamites supported him around that time.)

Researchers could not find any records that show outright any opinions that contradict The Star of Zion, but we can infer from the close vote that people disagreed about prohibition. For instance, some Stagville descendants worked as draymen, delivering goods for businesses, often breweries. These men might have had an economic interest in keeping alcohol legal, since the alcohol industry helped their delivery jobs.

The Star of Zion, 1886 . Courtesy of DigitalNC.

JURY DUTY

Serving on juries was another way that Stagville descendants participated in their community as citizens.

In 1897, Wesley Henderson served on the jury of a murder case. The defendant Reuben Barbee, a white man, shot another white man, Mr. Cole, in a fight at a bar. The jury had to decide whether Barbee murdered Cole or killed in self-defense. The Durham Daily Sun, a white newspaper, emphasized the importance of this jury, writing that "deputies have been out in all directions summoning the special venire of 250 men, out of which number the twelve men will be chosen to hold the life and destiny of one man in their hands."

Wesley, who served on the jury for this case, was the son of Emma and Dempsey Henderson, the first couple to move from Stagville to Durham. His skills were commended in the white newspaper The Durham Tobacco Plant when he worked managing the garden of Thomas D. Jones: they said he grew "luscious" peaches and "the finest [corn] we have ever seen." Henderson was also a pastor for the Primitive Baptist Church.

When he served on the jury for the Reuben Barbee murder trial in 1897, Henderson was the only Black juror. Serving on the jury was a huge responsibility. An author for The Durham Daily Sun felt that "it is almost like being in prison to be on a jury in a murder case, in fact, worse, if anything, for you don't have the liberty of talking to any one but the jurymen." What might that isolation have been like for Wesley Henderson, being the only Black juryman? Despite the pressure, we can imagine that Henderson might have felt proud to do his civic duty, taking part in the judicial system in a way that was not open to African Americans a generation before.

PUBLIC MEMORY

At least as early as 1901, Black people in Durham—including Stagville descendants—organized celebrations for Emancipation Day. Emancipation Day marked the anniversary of President Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863. Emancipation Day also celebrated pride in the Black community and what they had accomplished in the years since slavery. At these celebrations, people made political speeches (like the pro-temperance speaker referenced in a previous section), raised money for community organizations like Lincoln Hospital, and shared arts and culture through poetry readings, music, and prayer.

Emancipation Day celebrations served as an opportunity for women to participate in civic events that benefited their community, in ways that they could not do officially, without the right to vote. Sadie Christmas, a Stagville descendant and teacher, read a poem at the 1901 event, and other women sang or played music. Christmas worked on behalf of her community in many ways other than her teaching and involvement in Emancipation Day, also volunteering in a flu pandemic hospital in 1918. Historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham has argued that women helping their community through institutions some people might view as mainly cultural, like the church, is also political through their work organizing for social causes.

Emancipation Day celebrations also highlight another arena where Stagville descendants may have organized around political issues, outside of official things like voting. Masonic groups participated, and as an advertisement for the 1902 celebration said: "The various orders are invited to turn out in their regalias." Historian Robert Kenzer has written about Black freemasonry in North Carolina, explaining how masons would help fellow members financially, and contribute to causes in the interest of Black people nationwide, through donating to things like the United Negro College Fund and the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP.

Durham Daily Sun, 1901.

Courtesy of DigitalNC.

Emancipation Celebration Richmond Virginia

This photo is of a 1905 parade in Richmond, Virginia, celebrating Emancipation. Researchers were not able to find photographs of Emancipation Day celebrations in Durham. As Richmond and Durham had some similarities, both Southeastern industrial cities with significant Black-led economies, this parade in Richmond might look something like Durham's parades.

Timeline

TIMELINE

LOCAL AND NATIONAL HISTORY FROM 1865 TO 1930

This timeline discusses the history of post-Emancipation Black life locally and nationally, highlighting the contributions of Stagville descendants to these events and providing context for the exhibit narratives.

Click on the arrows to move forward or backward through events

MAKING A WAY OUT OF NO WAY

RESEARCH AND FURTHER READING

Public databases, archives, and indexes for more content on the descendants of Stagville Plantation beginning in the 1860s

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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