Walking Tour Performance as Reparative History: Aya Shabu’s Black Wall Street of Durham, NC

pdf
Published: Oct 4, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/ps2023.8374
Daniel Dilliplane
Abstract

Blending the theatricality of oral history performance with the site-specificity of the historical walking tour, Aya Shabu’s performance-based tour of the section of downtown Durham, North Carolina formerly known as Black Wall Street represents an innovative approach to the presentation of minoritarian histories. This essay examines Shabu’s Black Wall Street tour, situating it within the recent resurgence of critical walking art and arguing that its sensory reconstruction of place constitutes a mode of reparative history.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
References
Brown, L. (2008). Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, class, and Black community
development in the Jim Crow South. University of North Carolina Press.
Carter, C. (2022, July 13). Aya Shabu of Whistle Stop Tours. [Audio podcast episode.] In
Discover Durham. https://www.discoverdurham.com/blog/podcast-aya-shabu-whistle
stop-tours/
Hall, C. (2018). Doing reparatory history: bringing ‘race’ and slavery home. Race & Class,
(1), 3-21.
Hwang, Y. J. (2019) Aestheticizing the city through storytelling and walking: Dublin’s 1916
Rebellion walking tour. Lateral, 8(1), 1-12.
Morris, B. (2020). Walking networks: The development of an artistic medium. Routledge.
Springgay, S. & Truman, S. (2018). Walking methodologies in a more-than-human world:
WalkingLab. Routledge.
Weare, W. (1993). Black business in the new South: A social history of the North Carolina
Mutual Life Insurance Company. Duke University Press.