Blake Hill-Saya - Aaron McDuffie Moore: An African American Physician, Educator, and Founder of Durhams Black Wall Street

My relationship with Durham, North Carolina, spans many years, as an undergraduate and law student at North Carolina Central University and now as Durhams representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. Over these decades, I have embraced Durhams rich history. I especially enjoy the stories of those who transformed this outpost into a national leader in so many fields. For years, one name surfaced from podiums and pulpits, living rooms and community events, a name spoken with tremendous love and respect: Aaron McDuffie Moore.

As a student of history, I wanted to know more about this luminary. The more I learned, the more I found that Aaron and I shared identical priorities, including access to health care, educational opportunity, and economic empowerment. Where do you begin in describing a man who founded the states first independent black hospital and nursing school, a library, a bank, an insurance company, a pharmacy, and, believe it or not, a Shakespeare societyand who kept a closet full of shoes to give to children too ashamed to come to Sunday school without them?

A persistent campaigner for broader educational opportunities for black children, Aaron cooperated with Booker T. Washington in persuading Julius Rosenwald to construct eight hundred rural Rosenwald Schools in North Carolina, most of which were in my congressional district. This book describes the contributions of Aaron and his Durham contemporaries during an often-overlooked period in North Carolinas history.

His accomplishments were local, statewide, and national in scope, but they began and ended with the welfare of individuals. A 2016 program sponsored by the North Carolina Governors Office said Aaron Moore almost single-handedly built one of the most prosperous black communities in the nation and called him a visionary ahead of his time with a strong commitment to helping others. All this from a humble, hard-working farm boy, grounded in faith and family.

Where do you begin? I wondered. Indeed, where do you stop? Aarons accomplishments placed Durham alongside cities such as Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oberlin, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. as a beacon of black hope during the often-overlooked post-Reconstruction era of entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency, and civic progress by the newly emancipated. A man of tireless energy, relentless curiosity, and eternal optimism, Aaron Moore was not only Durhams first black physician but also Durhams own Renaissance man.

Aaron McDuffie Moore remains an icon in the Durham community. His is a story that goes beyond race. Although a commitment to his people was at the heart of every endeavor, that focus was never at the expense of others. He helped his neighborsboth black and whiteunderstand each other and work together.

Aarons inspiring narrative deserves to be told, and I am grateful to his great-great-granddaughter Blake Hill-Saya for telling it so well and giving us a glimpse into Aarons humor, enthusiasm, impatience, and heartbreak. I am equally grateful to his great-granddaughter C. Eileen Watts Welch, who continues working to sustain the nonprofit Durham Colored Library, Inc., which Aaron Moore founded almost 100 years ago. The DCL board shared in her vision through its support of this book.

Get to know Aaron for yourself through the pages that follow. You will be richer through his acquaintance.

G. K. Butterfield