Parrish Street Legacy Bike, Run, Walk has been selected for Accelerate, a new festival initiative from Durham Next. Thirty organizations applied. Five were chosen.
The award is $100,000 in year one of a multi-year investment, supporting national marketing, cultural programming, public safety operations, and race technology, with the largest share going toward bringing visitors to Durham from outside the region.
Parrish Street is four blocks in downtown Durham that W.E.B. Du Bois visited in 1912 and described as an unmatched display of Black entrepreneurship in America. Black bankers, doctors, lawyers, and business owners built an entire economy there, inside a country that refused to include them in its own. Most people walk those blocks today without knowing what they are standing on.
The festival is built on four pillars: Move, Remember, Celebrate, and Connect. It brings cyclists, runners, and walkers of every level to the same start line on that street.
It is not a race that happens to take place in Durham. It is a celebration of Durham’s Black Wall Street that happens to include a race.
The inaugural Parrish Street Legacy Bike, Run, Walk takes place in Durham in 2027.
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