Moore
Biography
Aaron McDuffie Moore: African American Physician, Educator, and Founder of Durham’s Black Wall Street is the biography of the founder of the Durham Colored Library, published in 2020 by UNC Press. DCL promotes the book through author book talks and presentations that inform the community about his important work and how his impact is still being felt throughout Durham and the state of North Carolina. Our goal is to have the book available in every Durham public high school’s library and the information readily available to history teachers throughout the state. Dr. Moore’s struggles and successes through the post-Civil War and reconstruction decades are missing from published history textbooks – we intend to correct this.
Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore:
A Definitive Biography
Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore (1863-1923) was Durham, North Carolina’s first African American physician, as well as an important business and community leader. He was instrumental in the establishment of Durham's Black Wall Street at the turn of the twentieth century. He incorporated the Durham Colored Library, Inc. in 1918. DCL, Inc. has completed the initiative that began in 2013 of developing a well-researched biography of Moore’s life and contributions to Durham and the American experience. It is now available from the prestigious University of North Carolina Press and at a bookstore near you.
The DCL, Inc. board believes it is vital to bring Dr. Moore’s inspirational story into our community’s current conversation to preserve the knowledge of his unique journey for generations to come. We are immensely proud to share this readable and historically thorough work with you. Our promotions, book tour appearances, and speaking engagements are ongoing, and our author and president are available to your organizations for events and book signings, virtual or otherwise.
About
Dr. Moore
In 1863, one month after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Aaron McDuffie Moore was born to Anna Eliza Spaulding Moore and Israel Moore in Columbus County, North Carolina. He was the ninth of ten children and part of a third generation of free, yeoman farmers who came from Negro, Caucasian, and Lumbee Indian heritage. Over the course of his life, Moore was a physician, an entrepreneur, and a champion of education. His advocacy for rural schools for Black children enabled scores of families to rise from poverty. In fact, due to his organizing efforts and leadership, North Carolina opened more Rosenwald Schools than any other state, and there were more of these schools in Durham County than in any of North Carolina's other 99 counties.
Dr. Moore graduated in the second class of Black physicians to commence from Shaw University’s Leonard School of Medicine and moved to Durham in 1888 to begin the city’s first Black medical practice. Moore went on to found or partner in more than ten businesses, organizations, and institutions, including: Durham Colored Library, Inc. (the second library in the state to serve the Negro population), Bull Durham Drug Company, NC Mutual Life Insurance Company, Lincoln Hospital (the first secular hospital in the state that would serve the Negro population), Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, North Carolina College for Negroes (now NCCU), the Volkemenia and Schubert and Shakespeare Clubs, Durham Knitting/Textile Mill, and Mutual Savings & Loan Association.
Interviews
Learn more about the life and recent biography of Aaron McDuffie Moore in these interviews hosted by Duke Medicine, Durham Library Fest, and more!
January 21, 2021
April, 6th 2021
March 15, 2021
Dr. Damon Tweedy - Duke Professor and author of Black Man in a White Coat - interviews Eileen Watts Welch and Blake Hill-Saya about their research and writing of the biography of Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore.
Blake Hill-Saya and C. Eileen Watts Welch discuss the Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore Biography in a conversation moderated by John B. Gartrell, director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke University.
Learn more about the Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore Biography in this interview hosted by the Durham County Library for their annual Library Fest.