Downtown Durham to host Obama celebration tonight -- and may make national TV to boot

Speaking of the election, the best place to watch the results tonight may just be in the heart of the Bull City.

Backers of the Obama campaign and downtown's Blue Coffee Cafe are hosting "Barack 'N' Roll," a celebration at and around the CCB Plaza to include a massive two-story projection (at the Woolworth site) of live election results as they come in:

Join us in Downtown for the biggest street party of the Century!  Historic Black Wall Street (Parrish Street) and Corcoran Street will be closed off to create a four block celebration zone, including music, drum lines, marching bands and souvenirs.  Watch live returns on a giant two-story tall projection screen.  Stand shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors from across the City when the election is officially called ... via live satellite feed.  

Cruise to different downtown restaurants and bars, each hosting their own election return parties.  Eat, drink, roam and experience downtown as the true civic center of our community.

The celebration starts tonight at 8:30pm and runs until the results are in, apparently.

Word from organizer Scott Harmon is that WTVD ABC 11 will have crews on-site live to capture the event -- and that there's a chance it could feed up nationally to ABC and CNN, to boot.

So if you want to watch the election results in a more social space than your couch, make it down to CCB Plaza tonight to watch them come in together.

Comments

[Will]

Does anyone else think today should be a national holiday? I'm not getting anything done at work.

[Andrew Edmonds]

Tonight's Barack N Roll election night rally site has some strong emotional connections to Durham's past. I hope that the significance of the event site isn't lost on folks.

The "pocket park" on Main and Corcoran next to the green wall was formerly occupied by the Geer Building, in which Woolworth's was located. Woolworth's, like the Kress and other department stores in the area, had a lunch counter at which blacks could not eat.

A week after the famous February, 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins, Durham students staged their own in many of the downtown buildings. (Of course, this all happened three years after Durham's first sit-in, at the Royal Ice Cream shop on North Mangum.) Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Durham within a few days to visit the Woolworth's and spoke at the White Rock Baptist Church.

Perhaps at some point the organizers/MC of the Barack N Roll party could mention the legacy of this site. It's a shame that such a historical building has been lost (and quite recently at that), but it's fortunate that the grounds will be used to help celebrate the election of a black man to the White House.

Profiles of the Geer Building, the Royal Ice Cream building, and MLK's visits may be found on Gary's blog, Endangered Durham, and the Durham County Public Library website.

[Andrew Edmonds]

Er, North Roxboro. The Royal Ice Cream shop was on North Roxboro. Darn too-quickly typing fingers and slow-moving brain!

[Will]

@ Andrew - thanks for adding that context. Now I'm going even if it rains. WOOT!

[weege]

It should be a national holiday! I can't get anything done at work either and I was glued to the TV at the gym this morning.

[Daniel Bagnell]

Election day SHOULD be a holiday! There have been attempts made to to make it so, but so far no luck... More info at ---> http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00063:

[Erik]

Here's a very interesting article about all the problems the GOP is having in Durham County from the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-nuxoll/election-day-mishaps-bumm_b_140907.html