Durham Colored Library, Inc. To Celebrate Legacy Of Its Founder Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore
DURHAM, NC – On Sunday, October 23, 2022, from 3 to 5 pm EST at Hayti Heritage Center (804 Fayetteville Street), Durham Colored Library, Inc. (DCL) will celebrate the legacy of its founder Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, the city’s first African American doctor and the subject of a biography recently released by UNC Press.
Dr. Moore was a pioneering leader who founded DCL in 1918 after helping to establish Durham’s Black Wall Street. He cared deeply about the arts and culture of Durham’s Black community, as well as its prosperity, health, education, and mutual uplift. This event will honor his work through a musical journey set at the turn of the last century. It will feature a concert by acclaimed operatic soprano Shana Blake Hill-Saya, who is Dr. Moore’s great-great-granddaughter and the author of his definitive biography. At the piano will be the prominent collaborative artist and Director of Duke Opera Theater, David Heid.
The afternoon program will include carefully selected classical songs, American standards, spirituals, and hymns, along with stories and historical context illustrating the four major eras of Dr. Moore’s life. Designed as an artist’s salon, this event will take place in a venue styled to resemble the intimate parlor of Dr. Moore’s home at 606 Fayetteville Street. His house was a regular venue for family music-making and a place where visiting thought leaders, poets, artists, and musicians could stop by to debate, discuss, rehearse, and perform.
The program will be 90 minutes long, including a twenty-minute intermission, and will be followed by a book signing. Funds raised from this event will enable Durham Colored Library, one of the oldest nonprofit organizations in Durham, to continue to fulfill its mission to “lift up stories of African American figures both current and historic, to create a more comprehensive figure of the American experience.” These funds will position DCL to grow and expand its impact, providing resources that amplify Black stories, leaders, and culture for adults and children both now and throughout our next hundred years.
For more information, visit www.durhamcl.org/.
Thank you Phyllis. If you’d like to attend or send a photographer and reporter I can accommodate them and you. Thank you for so publishing the article and quickly making the correction on location.
Dr. Moore event is great but to pricey for the average citizen. There should have been a ticket price for $25.00, these events never consider the average citizen ability to pay and attend these type of events!!!!!!!!