Author Blake Hill-Saya’s book, Aaron McDuffie Moore, will be the first book discussed in a series of author talks called Behind the Book, new for 2021 at Caltech as part of their ongoing Diversity initiatives. In it, the Los Angeles-based creative writer and classical vocalist takes us on a journey to the sights, sounds and realities of her great, great grandfather’s time. Her recent biography of him was published in 2020 by the University of North Carolina Press.

He was a towering figure in the Durham region at the turn of the 20th century. In her very warm and readable biography, Hill-Saya highlights the many contributions he made to the civic life of African Americans after Reconstruction in Durham and environs – as schools were set up, and the former enslaved families began to create institutions of business and education for themselves in the South and contributed to the rise of Durham’s Black Wall Street. He attended school to become a teacher and after teaching for several years, studied to become a doctor. He successfully became a noted physician and, while practicing, then turned his attention to many institutions the community needed and did not have. His many civic contributions are detailed in the praised book that fills in some of the gaps left in previous histories of the post Reconstruction era in Durham. Unlike Tulsa, Durham’s Black Wall Street never saw the kind of violent backlash from the white community in North Carolina, which was mostly due to Moore getting overall community support for black institutions as they were created.