100 years in Durham, Orange, and Person counties!
Plan to join our celebrations:
Saturday, Oct. 2, complete with a 100th birthday cake at the FOX Family Festival, American Tobacco Warehouse.
Sunday, Oct. 3, at our Corps Community Center.
While we can't begin to sum up 100 years in just a few lines, here are some highlights of our first 100 years of service.
1910: Capt. and Mrs. James V. Breazeale initiate the work of The Salvation Army in Durham at 321 W. Main St.
1912: Ensign and Mrs. William Bouterse succeed the Breazeales, working person-to-person with illiterate individuals and providing charitable services so effectively that when the city’s charity system was reorganized, Ensign Bouterse was given general oversight of this work.
1914-1918: The Salvation Army is the dispenser of all of the City of Durham’s charities until the Department of Social Services is established in 1918.
1916: The Salvation Army briefly relocates to 309 Roxboro St. while the Morris Street facility is completed.
1917: The new facility at 101-103 Morris Street is completed.
An outpost at the mill section of Edgemont focused on children. Girls were organized into a uniformed corps of Girl Guards.
The Salvation Army Girl Guards, 1920s
1931: The Salvation Army Home and Hospital for unmarried pregnant women moves to Durham and is located in the building of the former Southern Conservatory of Music.
1937: A Red Shield Club for boys begins, the precursor of today’s Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club, which is the oldest such organization in the city. Durham alumni include Durham County Sheriff Worth Hill, former Milwaukee Buck David Noel, former Miami Dolphin Emmett Tilley, Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter John D. Loudermilk (“Cherokee People”), and Jacksonville Jaguar David Garrard.
1968: The current building at Liberty and Alston is dedicated, with space for the Boys & Girls Club (with its full-size gymnasium), social services, a chapel, and several large meeting rooms, one of which will serve as a Durham County branch library for many years.
1972: The Morris Street location is taken during urban renewal. An Emergency Transient Lodge for homeless people and a thrift store are operated from other down-town locations.
1973: In response to changing times, the Home and Hospital closes.
Durham's Salvation Army corps officer, Major Bruce Smith, grew up in the Salvation Army. He's the second tuba from the left in this 1970s photo of a Youth Band in downtown Durham.
1998: We contribute to welfare reform with a highly successful Life Skills training program that will ultimately show a 50 percent job placement rate.
2008: With support from the NC Governor’s Crime Commission and Durham County, we formally add service to teenagers at the Boys & Girls Club. Teens take on responsibility as Junior Staff, and in Torch and Keystone leadership clubs.
2009: 450 youth play in a new summer baseball league, formed in cooperation with the Durham Bulls Youth Athletic League and the Cal Ripken, Jr. Foundation. With support from the Social Work program at NCCU and the Department of Social Services, we open a satellite social services office in Hillsborough to more conveniently serve clients from Orange County.
2010: For the first time, we sweep divisional basketball in all three age groups and win NCCU’s Black History Quiz Bowl.
Parents ask us to begin elite competitive basketball teams in the USSSA league. This is the first time in recent memory that North-East Central Durham has offered play at this elite level to neighborhood children. As of May 5, the 11 and unders team is ranked 23 in the nation; 3 in North Carolina.
Today’s Durham Corps, under the leadership of Majors Bruce and Sandra Smith, focuses on spiritual and social needs, in the tradition of founder William Booth.
- Spanish- and English-speaking staff meet emergency needs and provide Life Skills and ESL training to help people prepare for jobs when the market turns.
- A wide range of social and spiritual activities engages hundreds of volunteers in providing Christmas cheer to shut-ins and needy families, visiting lonely residents of nursing homes, and collecting food and toys to fill empty tummies and Christmas dreams.
The Durham Corps draws a diverse community membership.
The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club boasts a distinguished alumni cadre, many of whom came from our neighborhood, where, today, the median household income is less than $28,000 and as many as 15 gangs are reported to be active. We consistently send members to college, even though our members come from a neighborhood where only a third of the students graduate from high school.