Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

On Sunday morning September 27th, 1998, over four-hundred Black and Latino Durham residents marched through the streets of Durham as the Campaign for Decent Housing. They demanded that they fix the holes in their apartment roofs, to pave their roads to school, and for the city government to address the sewage stench on the streets where they played. This Black and Latino coalition was organized and led Black and Latina community activists who lived in the predominantly Black and Latino East Durham neighborhood. In Durham, North Carolina White supremacy first underdeveloped the Black community. Nonetheless, Black residents created a tradition of grassroots organizing to fight the manifestations of White supremacist policy. In the 1990s, construction and development companies recruited undocumented Latino workers to Durham to exploit their labor. When undocumented Latinos arrived in Durham, they were directly and indirectly affected by White supremacy and the historical underdevelopment of the Black community. I also argue that in the 1990 and early 2000s, Black and Latino residents in Durham intentionally came together and created cross-racial coalitions in the form of grassroots organizations, civic campaigns and protests, credit unions, community centers, and schools. These coalitions were made to improve their community’s standard of living and to fight White supremacy in the form of decades of overall neglect of East Durham. Durham is an example of how Black and Latino people can overcome their own prejudices, strategize together, and disempower White Supremacy in the Deep South and in other regions of the United States.