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Berman's Clothing Store

"I remember here in Chapel Hill, way back. There was a store called Berman's Clothing Store. They sold some of everything...but they catered to Blacks. If you're prejudiced, you better put it in your pocket and not let anybody know you are."

- Doug Clark, Sr.

Sam and Mary Berman, Lithuanian immigrants, opened stores in Chapel Hill and Durham in 1914 and were some of the first permanent Jewish residents in the community. Their store moved locations a few times, but wound up at 119-120 East Franklin Street by the 1940s. When Sam Berman died in 1961, his eulogy remembered, "The little store keeper fellow playing dumb when all the time everybody knew he was knowing as a fox."

Sources: Leonard Rogoff, Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham-Chapel Hill and North Carolina, and The Daily Tar Heel, March 14, 1944

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Citation: “Berman's Clothing Store,” From the Rock Wall, accessed December 21, 2024, https://fromtherockwall.org/places/bermans-clothing-store.

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 Doug Clark, Sr. - On growing up in Chapel Hill and high school

Doug Clark, Sr., a musician, was born in Chapel Hill in 1936, where he lived in a close-knit Black neighborhood and attended Orange County Training School, which became Lincoln High School. He reflects on his family life and experiences growing up, such as seeing lines of Black children walk to…
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