On Sunday morning March 12, 1944, the men’s basketball team from the North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) competed against a squad from the Duke School of Medicine on the campus of NCCU. Only the teams, the coaches, and the referee were allowed inside the gymnasium. A few students watched through a window. It was the first racially integrated college-level basketball game in the South.

Historian and Duke alumnus Scott Ellsworth wrote about the historic game in a New York Times Magazine article published on March 31, 1996. Read it here.

NC College for Negroes, 1944 Men's Basketball Team

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking in Page Auditorium at Duke University, 13 November 1964
Duke University Archives

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking in Page Auditorium at Duke University, 13 November 1964

Duke University Archives

Duke Chapel, Durham, NC
Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer [1938]

Duke Chapel, Durham, NC

Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer [1938]