Durham mural memorializes civil rights struggle

Doris Lyons was 16 when she refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger and was beaten by a Durham police officer who pushed a gun in her face and pulled her off the bus.

Her crime: forgetting her place as a black woman in 1943. Lyons was convicted of assault and battery and fined $5.

Her face, her story and others that Mayor Bill Bell called part of Durham’s “rich African-American heritage” has been preserved so future generations can learn from and remember the “foot soldiers” who won their freedoms.

“There are a lot of good things happening in our community,” Bell said. “This is one of them happening today.”

The Durham Civil Rights History Mural – behind the Durham Convention Center, on Morris Street beside the Durham Arts Council – was dedicated Saturday in a celebration of music and dance, art, poetry and memories.

The 2,400-square-foot mural is the culmination of a two-year project involving more than a hundred people of all ages who learned about the city’s history through performances, research, workshops and a lecture series featuring civil rights activists, leaders and scholars.

The mural reflects that collaborative effort, said muralist Brenda Miller Holmes, who helped participants give color and form to the vision. The project is being documented by Rodrigo Dorfman, an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia producer.

The public art project was funded with $20,000 from the city’s Cultural Master Plan implementation fund. Duke University, the Hayti Heritage Center and others supported the project, with 167 donations totaling more than $10,000 coming through an Indiegogo online campaign.

The struggle is not over, a panel of activists and leaders told the crowd, but it’s up to a new generation to carry it forward.

“When I think of the past, I think of the struggles we all overcame,” said state Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., a Democrat who represents Durham. “I sit here and look at the Carolina Theatre behind us and think about when it was a segregated facility.

“I also look at this street behind us and remember back in 1965, when about 300 Ku Klux Klansmen came and were marching down the street.”

Virginia Williams, one of seven arrested for trespassing during a sit-in at Royal Ice Cream in 1957, said young people during the civil rights movement were inspired by their parents and grandparents’ struggles. It is good to see young people getting involved again, she said.

“I think that they have not seen the struggles,” she said, “but it was there then, it’s still there now, and we must, along with the youth, continue to keep on, because there are people that would like to roll (the changes) back, and that’s just not happening.”

Young people also need to be taught the importance of voting, said Ann Atwater, who has voted in every election since casting her first ballot in 1958.

Atwater, a noted civil rights activist, is depicted in the mural alongside former Durham Klan leader C.P. Ellis. The two became friends after leading an integration forum in 1971 – a story that inspired a book and the documentary “An Unlikely Friendship.”

Atwater told parents not to be afraid to take responsibility for their children. “You’ve got to go home, gather your children together. This is what we can do to stop the crime on the streets,” she said. “Put God first and foremost in your life.”

DeMarcus Boone, 20, compared his generation to a blind soldier who doesn’t really know for what he’s fighting. A mural was the perfect way to tell others what he has learned about the city and its people over the past several years, Boone said, and why Durham’s a great place to live.

“It blew me away to find out a lot of the great figures we have here,” he said. “It gave me inspiration that I could fight, too – not with my hands – but with my mind.”

This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Durham mural memorializes civil rights struggle."