African Americans Helped Build Durham Brick by Brick

Researchers have documented much about Durham's history, including dates and collateral events. For example, in his book Durham-A Bull City Story-journalist Jim Wise wrote: "Curing tobacco is sleepy work . . . a laborious thing . . . where everything of the last year's work and the next year's prospects can go absolutely wrong . . .So it must have been for Stephen. It was a rainy night, too, in the summer of 1839 and Stephen was a 18-year-old slave on the plantation of Abisha Slade . . . a prosperous planter and man of affairs in Caswell County . . .Stephen left no account of what was going on in his mind that night, as he watched beside the curing barn . . .In any case, as the hours inched by and the steady fire lulled his senses, he fell asleep on the job . . . When he awoke . . .the curing fire was nearly out . . .he thought fast (Stephen was also the village blacksmith) . . . he ran to his shop (where he kept a supply of charcoal) grabbed up several hunks of charred wood, hurried back and dumped them onto the failing fire. The fire caught up with a sudden burst of heat and an unexpected result. The tobacco, which, normally cured out brown, was turning yellow . . . Stephen had created brightleaf tobacco. Six hundred pounds of it like no one had ever seen, much less smoked or chewed. At the Danville market, that first yellow batch brought $40 per hundred pounds when the going rate for leaf was $10. Dumb luck and quick thinking had started an industry."

It's not farfetched, then, to conclude that without Stephen's quick thinking innovation, Washington, Brodie and James Buchanan, aka Buck-the Dukes might not have amassed such a huge tobacco fortune.

Here's a thought! Why not document this story in a public area of Brightleaf Square in Durham so everyone can read the origin of "bright leaf," the foundation of many family fortunes.

Timing also played a tremendous role in Durham's history as the nation struggled with a stupid and costly institution called slavery, a bloody Civil War, and the race driven political, social and economic consequences of its aftermath. Eight men-black and white-were born during a 34-year period from 1840 to 1874 who would later play significant roles in Durham history. Consider several examples.

Robert Fitzgerald was born in 1840
Richard Fitzgerald was born in 1847
B.N. Duke was born in 1855
James B. Duke was born in 1856
John Merrick was born in 1859
William G. Pearson was born in 1859
Aaron Moore was born in 1863
J.A. Dodson was born in 1865
C.C. Spaulding was born in 1874.

Durham County and its county seat Durham Station, a railroad mail drop, was

created in 1881. These eight men, all born during this pivotal 34-year period, were destined, sometimes working separately, and often working together, to have an impact on Durham, some of which history records, but few people today acknowledge.

Try this quick pop quiz, how many of these men were black and how many were white, and if you really want to go for the gold, what did they do for Durham?

Space and time here does not allow for a full answer to the last half of that question. For those of you in the know, I'm not going to focus on the usual names-the Dukes, or the triumvirate-Merrick, Moore and Spaulding.

In this article, I am going to examine the life and contributions of Robert and Richard Fitzgerald, and one of Richard's favorite business partners, J.A. Dodson, three names that, as far as I know, don't grace any buildings, streets or other monuments in Durham's African American community. Yet these three men played key roles in Durham's dynamic history.

First, let's set the stage-the historical context of the contributions by these three men, the times in which they lived.

The Civil War raged in bloody, albeit indecisive intensity throughout 1862, culminating in two back-to-back events that were destined to significantly alter this nation's direction. On Sept. 17, " . . .Confederates forces under General [Robert E] Lee were caught by General [George B.)McClellan near Sharpsburg, Maryland. This battle proved to be the bloodiest day of the war; 2,108 Union soldiers were killed and 9,549 wounded-2,700 Confederates were killed and 9,029 wounded. The battle had no clear winner, but because General Lee withdrew to Virginia, McClellan was considered the victor. The battle convinced the British and the French-who were contemplating official recognition of the Confederacy-to reserve action, and gave [President Abraham] Lincoln the opportunity to announce his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (September 22) which would free all slaves in areas rebelling against the United States, effective Jan. 1, 1863. (http://memory.loc.gov/amnem )

Less than two years later, April 1865, " . . . two battle weary adversaries, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and Union General William T. Sherman, met under a flag of truce to discuss a peaceful solution to a tragic Civil War. The military leaders and their escorts convened midway between their lines on the Hillsborough Road, seven miles from Durham Station. Johnston suggested they sit down together at a simple farmhouse a short distance away . . .Finally on April 26, the Bennitt home became the site of the largest troop surrender of the Civil War." (http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/)

Two months later, June 19, 1865, Union troops landed at Galveston, Texas where news of the Emancipation Proclamation was not known, and Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order Number 3 that said simply: "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free . . ." This led later to the establishment of Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. That celebration is 142 years old this year.

On Dec. 6, 1865, with the vote in Georgia, the 13^th amendment that supposedly unconditionally ended slavery in the United States was ratified.

Now that's the history you can get in some schools, or at least on the Internet, but you have to dig much, much deeper for the "rest of the story."

In a book about her family-Proud Shoes-first published in 1956, Pauli Murray, a trailblazer in her own right, and granddaughter of Robert Fitzgerald, connected the historical dots that brought these two brothers-Robert, the educator, and Richard the entrepreneur, eventually to Durham Station, later to be known as Durham, North Carolina, the Bull City. "The Civil War was the only war of importance in our family," Murray wrote, " . . .As a child I heard the names of mysterious places where Grandfather had been and fought-Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Culpeper, Frederickburg, Petersburg, Appomattox River, Boston, New Orleans-magic names which stuck in my memory . . .Grandfather Fitzgerald was delivering horses [he was in the Quartermaster's Corp of the Union Army] somewhere in Maryland in late September 1892 when news of Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation reached the battlefields . . ."

Apparently sometime between then and the official date of emancipation-Jan. 1, 1863-Robert Fitzgerald vowed to return to the South after the war ended and help teach the newly freed slaves how to survive and thrive as free men in the United States. His brothers, particularly Richard, didn't initially share Robert's enthusiasm. Frustrated the long, grueling and bloody, Richard, for example, quit the Union Army and gone to sea.

Yet the younger Fitzgerald brothers loved Robert and believed virtually everything he said. So if he declared that the Fitzgerald destiny was in the South generally and North Carolina in particularly, they believed him.

Murray explained his commitment in her book: "Grandfather was so convinced his future lay in North Carolina . . ."
Robert Fitzgerald ventured into North Carolina first, probably in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War, and after much persuasion, he convinced his family to join him. Therefore, by the summer of 1869, the two brothers-Robert, the educator and Richard, the entrepreneur were in Hillsboro, NC, a stone's throw from booming little postal stop on the railroad called Durham Station.

Jean Bradley Anderson picks up the Fitzgerald story in her extremely detailed history entitled Durham County. "On present Kent Street, then part of Chapel Hill Road (the Hack Road), the Fitzgerald brothers bought land in 1879. Richard B. Fitzgerald and his brother Robert, the latter of whom had come south first to teach the freedmen in Hillsborough, had established themselves as brick makers at their University Station farm. A commission to supply bricks for the new state penitentiary had given their business a boost. In Durham Richard Fitzgerald bought a large tract with a good vein of clay for brick in the vicinity of later Gattis and Wilkerson streets . . . Here, he began a brickyard and built an eighteen-room house shaded by a grove of maples and magnolias. His business prospered, and he became the leading brick maker in Durham.

On Kent Street Richard Fitzgerald built with his own bricks a handsome church called Emmanuel A.M.E. Church about 1888 and donated it to the congregation. Richard Fitzgerald also built the brick building that stands on the corner of Chapel Hill and Kent Streets as well as many other buildings in town."

Making brick was not Richard Burton Fitzgerald's only interest. Therefore, in 1895, he apparently led a partnership that launched the Durham Drug Company. The partners included Aaron Moore, Durham's first black doctor; W.G. Pearson, a renowned local educator and real estate investor; J.A, Dodson, a pharmacist and one of Fitzgerald's in-laws; along with James Shepard, who would just a few year later launch the school now known as North Carolina Central University. In 1901, after Fitzgerald apparently bought most of the partners out, the company became known as the Fitzgerald Drug Company.

In a 1925 book by William K. Boyd, we find facts that contradict popular word-of-mouth folklore in Durham, namely that Mechanics and Farmers Bank, known now as M&F Bank, currently celebrating its 100^th anniversary, was developed by the same minds that gave us NC Mutual Life Insurance. Boyd says differently. "Two Raleigh Negroes came to Durham in 1907 to work up a building and loan association, A meeting was called to discuss the matter, but it was evident that those present wanted a bank rather than a building and loan society. Leadership was then taken by R.B. Fitzgerald and William G. Pearson. They enlisted the cooperation of John Merrick, Dr. J.E. Shepard, a leading minister, J.A. Dodson, a druggist, and Dr. S.L. Warren. Soon $10,000 was subscribed and in February 1907, Mechanics and Farmers Bank was chartered, and the institution was opened in August 1908, in the building of the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association (aka NC Mutual Life Insurance). Fitzgerald was the first president, Merrick the Vice-President and Pearson the first cashier."

Later Fitzgerald, again with partners, ventured into textiles, this time in Cabarrus County, and one story I heard from longtime members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is that he traveled throughout North Carolina, provided brick and the labor to build and donate new churches to AME congregations.

Thus it's some strange as you move through the Durham community, particularly in the southeast part of the city where you see Merrick and Moore school, named for John Merrick and Aaron Moore; Shepard School, named for James Shepard; McDougald Terrace, name for R.L. McDougald, a former M&F Bank vice-president; and W.G. Pearson School named for William Gaston Pearson that you don't see and almost never hear the names Robert and Richard Fitzgerald.

Here's a thought, why not name the theater at Hayti Heritage Center, now known as the St. Joseph's Performance Hall, formerly the sanctuary of St. Joseph's AME Church, the R.B. Fitzgerald Performance Center. Afterall, those are Fitzgerald bricks.