North Carolina’s Durham Colored Library will continue to preserve, share, and uplift stories of Black life in Durham as DCL at Duke

The Durham Colored Library (DCL) , one of North Carolina’s oldest Black-led nonprofit organizations, will enter a new era through a formal partnership and merger with the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. The collaboration, known as DCL at Duke, will continue the DCL’s century-long mission to preserve, share, and uplift stories of Black life in Durham, and provide an enduring foundation for the Rubenstein Library’s community engagement and outreach efforts. The Mellon Foundation has committed funding to support the program’s first three years while Duke and DCL establish sustainable, long-term support.

The Durham Colored Library began as a small collection of books donated in 1913 by Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, Durham’s first Black physician, and North Carolina Central University founder Dr. James E. Shepard. Both young men were prominent members of White Rock Baptist Church in Durham’s Hayti neighborhood, where the library first operated out of a Sunday School room.