By Alex Bass
Alex.bass@triangletribune.com
DURHAM – Duke University now is home to another “From Slavery to Freedom” legacy. The groundbreaking book authored by the late, legendary Duke historian and professor John Hope Franklin (with his own named campus center) is a fitting title for the journey of George W. Wall and his son, George-Frank Wall, whose names now adorn the East Campus’ Center for Student Life.
While Franklin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom after retiring from Duke, the elder Wall journeyed from slavery into his first days of freedom from the abhorrent institution. In 1892, he and his family moved to Durham where he served as a Trinity College property steward. Trinity College was renamed Duke University in 1924, and the latter is celebrating its centennial anniversary this year.
“It’s important to be honest about the past, and for everyone to understand the roots of this university and members of the Wall Family, and other members of the Durham community that built this institution but were prevented from being part of it,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, a Duke graduate and chair of the university’s Board of Trustees.
Silver noted the symmetry of Duke’s 100th year with the $100 bequest George-Frank Wall left Duke upon his 1953 death. That $100, with inflation, is worth approximately $1,150 in 2024. The younger Wall’s gesture, Silver said, must be a “springboard” for doing more to embrace the entire Durham community as vital to Duke’s continued growth.
George W. Wall, who died in 1930, began his own community (Walltown) by investing $50 in 1899 to buy land on which he built a one-story house with his own hands. The house stands today at 1015 Onslow Street.
On that same property, long before Duke University and the standing house, was a tree that stood until it was struck by lightning in 2014. The tree was cut down but lives in the writings of Vanessa Wall Smart, the elder Wall’s great-great granddaughter. Smart’s husband, Ken, secured and moved some of the wood to their Durham home. Smart had a writing pen with her name inscribed made from that very wood. She earned her Ph.D., and works as a new teacher support coach in UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education.
Her ability to use that pen as a “scribe” to share stories with her children and grandchildren is an extension of the legacy left by her grandfather, who was functionally illiterate but had his own school night ritual. “He would call my brother, my sister and I, and ask if we got our homework done,” Smart said. “He made sure that we were able to go far and beyond what he was able to do.”
The next generation did likewise. Among the elder Wall’s great-great-great grandchildren, Stephanie Joy Tisdale, Ph.D., is a lead instructional coach in the Urban Teaching Apprenticeship Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution. Great-great-great grandson Talib Graves-Manns holds an MBA from Wake Forest and is a wealth innovation fellow in the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program.
“We also get to come forward and speak for him in a very different way than he probably was ever able to do,” Tisdale said. “We represent an entire community and family. We come from generations of humans. Let’s talk about that, too.”
Duke President Vincent Price echoed Silver in affirming that the discussion of growing the Walls’ father and son legacy through meaningful action only has begun. Duke increased its employees’ minimum wage to $17 in 2022, and again last July 1 to $18. The U.S. and North Carolina minimum wage is $7.25. “We haven’t made enough progress yet,” Price said. “The way we work with and support our employees is where we start.”
In July 2023, Duke’s employee tuition reimbursement program afforded full-time employees 100% tuition remission for up to three courses per academic term, or for a total tuition value of $5,250 in a calendar year. Unlike George Wall and George-Frank Wall, all Duke employees, Price said, must be able to see clear pathways to boundless opportunities for career advancement.
Duke students now see portraits of George and George-Frank Wall by Mario Moore in the Center’s lobby. Both portraits offer a unique dual perspective of the men dressed in business attire but pictured in two of their distinguishing settings – father in front of the house he built and son bearing a broom in the Center’s lobby.
“It represents power. It represents hard work. It represents humbleness. And it represents ownership,” Graves-Manns said. “If you sow the seed the right way, then you’re going to have a strong harvest.”
