A response to “A trip down memory lane”

You don’t need to wait for a weekend trip to the Duke Homestead to learn about the Duke family or the history of Duke University (although it’s a trip well worth taking), as Antonio Segalini’s recent column, “A trip down memory lane,” suggests. Instead, stop by the soon-to-be-renamed David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where you’ll find the Duke family’s personal archives and the Duke University Archives.

If you stacked up all of the historical documents found in the University Archives, you’d have the equivalent of about 54 Duke University Chapel towers—and that doesn’t count the photographs, the digital files and websites, the basketball game films or the top hat that William Preston Few wore to his 1910 presidential inauguration. We can supply “personal tidbits,” too: Ask us about Pompey Ducklegs, the beloved dachshund of Samuel Fox Mordecai, dean of the Law School from 1904 to 1927.

As Mr. Segalini writes, it’s your University—and it’s your University Archives. Come and visit. Or, read historical articles on our website (http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/) and in Duke Magazine; check out 2,000-plus photos of Duke through the years on our Flickr photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dukeyearlook/), or visit our permanent exhibit about Duke’s history in Perkins Library’s Gothic Reading Room. We’re on Facebook, too (http://www.facebook.com/dukeuniversityarchives).

Being dutiful archivists, we need to comment on a few inaccuracies. Washington Duke (our true namesake) moved from his small farm into tobacco manufacturing after the Civil War. During the rise of Jim Crow, the Duke family generously supported African-American colleges, churches and hospitals, including Kittrell College and Durham’s Lincoln Hospital. By the time the Supreme Court dissolved the American Tobacco Company combination in 1911, Washington’s sons, James and Benjamin, were well established in the hydroelectric power industry. Their Southern Power Company (now Duke Power) was the source of the funds that transformed Trinity College into Duke University and supplied the financial means to create the Duke Endowment—which provides ongoing support for Davidson College, Furman University, Johnson C. Smith University and numerous other religious, social service and health care organizations throughout the Carolinas, in addition to Duke.

That’s not an attempt to gild a complicated history. Mr. Segalini is perfectly correct that our history—like any history—mingles the good and the bad, and we thank him for encouraging everyone to explore it.

Amy McDonald

Assistant University Archivist