AfroCarolina Correspondence #1026
Walking with the Ancestors in Hayti
Until recently it never occurred to me to go on a tour in one of the cities that raised me, but as a recent returnee to Durham I’ve come to realize how little local history I’d been taught. Over the past few years gentrification has deeply shifted the local landscape and I’ve been yearning for some grounding in what and who Durham actually is. With that in mind, I found myself on a walking tour of Hayti- a historic Black community nestled between downtown & south Durham earlier this month. I’d been to poetry slams and film screenings in the Black church turned community arts center for years, but never had I learned the specifics of the lasting communal/spiritual work & cultural legacies that built the foundation of the Hayti community.
At the start of the tour, our spirited guide, Aya Shabu, invited us to take a Hayti ancestor along with us for the walk. We adorned lanyards with the faces and names of those who built up this community and had a brief conversation about what they represented.
Aya guided us through the lobby and into the sanctuary turned theater. Taking center stage, she squared her shoulders and donned the voice of Edian Markham, a freedman and minister who established the brush arbor that became St. Joseph’s AME church- now known as the Hayti Heritage Center. We sat enraptured as she wove the story of how this sacred space came to be. What started as a few wooden posts boarded up together by newly freed Black people, became a majestic Gothic Revival style cathedral and beacon of possibility for the community. With each iteration of leadership, and the small economic gains experienced during Reconstruction Era, the Black community in Durham was able to sow seeds of abundance and stability into community institutions like St. Joseph’s.
Looking up at the intricate, hand painted blue tin ceiling and the stained glass windows lining the walls of the church, I was struck by a sudden and sharp wave of grief. My grandmother’s church, Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, was also built in the 1890’s through the perseverance and spiritual fortitude of newly freed Black folks in Greenville, NC. But unlike St. Joseph’s, the original similarly styled edifice that housed Sycamore Hill did not survive the onslaught of “urban revitalization” of the 1960’s and 70’s that swept up and displaced Black communities throughout the country.
We moved outside where Aya shared some of the connections Hayti has to the country of Haiti. Apparently there were several mission trips that took place with local Durham leaders visiting the first (and only) country to experience a successful slave revolt. Through her research & time spent with the land, Aya learned that these trips had lasting impacts on the Black leadership in Durham. So much so, that a Haitian vèvè was placed on the steeple of St Joseph’s1. Vèvè are cosmograms, or symbols, that represent Lwa, or deities, within the Haitian Vodou spiritual tradition. The particular one selected to adorn St. Joseph’s is akin to depictions of Ezruli Dantor, a Lwa known to protect marginalized peoples2.
It seems to be more than a coincidence that the Hayti Center is one of the only communal spaces to survive and adapt to multiple waves of displacement. Of course, most of this can be attributed to the labor and activism of those who have been stewards of this sacred space. And, the vèvè seems to have held its role in protecting a treasured community edifice under threat.
We ended the tour outside of Stanford L. Warren Library, lifting our voices in song as an offering to the ancestors who we’d listened to and carried along on our journey through Hayti. As I walked back through the streets of Phoenix Fest which was also going on, I carried both the grief of all that has been stolen and pride for the ways Black people in North Carolina have continued to create legacies of resistance and community care from the eastern shores to the cities in the triangle. As Shaw University alumna Ella Baker once said, “the struggle is eternal. The tribe increases. Somebody else carries on”.
*If you would like to support the ongoing work of Whistle Stop Tours, check out the Hayti Heritage Center website for upcoming tour dates.
Shabu, Aya. “Hayti Neighborhood History Walking Tour.” 7 Oct. 2023, Durham, North Carolina, Hayti Heritage Center.
Baptiste, Costaguinov. “A Visual Guide to Vèvè: Vodou Symbols & Cosmograms.” Visit Haiti, 3 Mar. 2023, visithaiti.com/art-culture/veve-vodou-symbols-cosmograms/.