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The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce serves the needs of businesses, non-profits, and government agencies of all sizes by helping to create and sustain a healthy economic climate. The collection largely contains photographs of Durham businesses, homes, schools, places of worship, and individuals. It also includes two bound volumes of meeting minutes, by-laws, and correspondence which date from 1915-1923 as well as material sent to members, such as newsletters.

Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company founded, 1884 by J. A., J. M., and W. R. Odell, W. H. Branson, and Julian S. Carr. Headquarters in Durham, N.C. Dissolved, 1940. Letterpress copybooks, invoices, cancelled checks, check stubs, receipt books, and invoices and accounts from Joshua L. Baily and Co., Philadelphia brokers who sold goods for the company. Most of the material represents the years 1915-1934. Includes information on fluctuations in cotton prices, export trade in cotton cloth, types of cloth and machinery, freight rates, salaries, workers' medical care, tenement rents, stockholders, dividends, and distribution of excess profits.

Durham County is located in the northeast central North Carolina; it was established in 1881 from lands in Wake and Orange counties. The city of Durham was incorporated in 1866 and then again in 1869. Collection was assembled by library staff, and is arranged in rough chronological order beginning in 1868. Within the chronology, decades are broken down by subject. Formats include correspondence, deeds, leaflets, articles, events programs, booklets, maps, pamphlets, and some photographs. Subjects include: activism, performing arts, business, churches, clubs, courts, education, libraries, historic sites and landmarks, parades, city and county politics, public works, publications, real estate, senior citizens, utilities, Watts Hospital, women's clubs and women's history, preservation of Eno River lands, and the YMCA/YWCA. Materials relating to African Americans in Durham County are found throughout.

Collection comprises letters, bills, time books, ledgers, check stubs, inventories, broadsides, stock certificates, dye house records, and other materials. The bulk of the letters, 1895-1897, date to George M. Graham's service as secretary and treasurer of the Durham Hosiery Company, as do many of the volumes. Topics include machinery and supplies purchased from firms in the North, newly organized textile mills in the South, the installation and repair of machinery, the sale of hosiery, the purchase of yarn, wages offered, and the hiring of laborers.

Group formed in the 1970s to draft a charter for the consolidation of the Durham, North Carolina City and County governments. Durham, North Carolina City/County Charter Commission records contain correspondence, financial records, reports, statements, memoranda, polls, minutes, maps, and other documents. Most materials date from 1971 to 1974.

The Durham Savoyards is a Durham (Durham Co.), N.C., production company for Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, founded in 1963 and incorporated in 1964. Collection comprises the archives of this organization and consist of minutes, reports, correspondence, programs, financial records, posters, director's notes, stage design, black-and-white and color photographs, music videocassettes, color slides, and clippings. Includes "The Savoyards, Durham Savoyards Limited, 1989" and "Mindful of the Whys and Wherefores; a Savoyard Producer's Journal" by James L. Parmentier. There are a few photographs that pre-date the founding of the Savoyards in 1963; they feature images of comic operas performed at the Southern Conservatory of Music in Durham.

Community theatre of Durham County, North Carolina. Established in 1947 and disbanded in 1994. The collection includes account books; tax and insurance records; board meeting minutes (dating from 1946-1994); scrapbooks and scrapbook files, arranged alphabetically (dating from 1950-1994); posters and handbills of the Durham Theatre Guild; audio and videocassettes; news clippings and photographs; and various ephemera, including buttons and t-shirts (dating from 1950-1993).

The Durham Traditional Arts Survey was conducted in the early 2000s as part of the Document Durham project within the Community Programs department at the Center for Documentary Studies. Participants consisted of folklorists and photographers who traveled through Durham County, attempting to document the diversity of various communities by focusing on traditional artists within those communities. One outcome of the DTAS was the Home Made Visible: Durham 2002 exhibition, which highlighted Durham traditional arts and crafts. Includes fieldwork reports, interview tapes, slides, photographs, and other documentary material from the research and observations conducted by participants in the Durham Traditional Arts Survey Project. Durham communities and artists represented in the project include African American, African immigrants, Latino, Middle Eastern, Jewish, South Indian, and Asian, as well as occupational traditions and rural community traditions. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts.

Dwayne Dixon was an employee in the Literacy Through Photography program at the Center for Documentary Studies. Collection includes 110 zines (150 items, ca. 1984-ca. 1995) produced across the United States and Central America and collected by Dixon throughout the 1990s. The majority of the zines demonstrate young men's search for life meaning, morality, and identity, especially through hardcore and punk music/lifestyle, including interviews with bands, album reviews, and criticism of the status quo. Other groups of zines were produced by children participating in various afterschool and enrichment programs in Durham, NC; by Central American women in Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador; and by American young women raging against rape and sexism and searching for a less traditional sexual identity. Many zines include erotica, drawings, copies of photographs, and cartoons.

D.W. (Dallas Walton) Newsom was an educational administrator, county manager, scholar, and poet. Newsom entered Trinity College in the fall of 1895 beginning a twenty-seven year association with the institution. The collection contains material correspondence between Newsom and Trinity College president John C. Kilgo and Tempe Battle Newsom; clippings of Kilgo's speeches, articles, visitations, and obituary from various local and regional newspapers; and some biographical writings regarding Kilgo. The materials in the collection date from 1894-1972.