DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Duke University is honoring the service of two long-time custodians and renaming its east campus union.
The building will be named the "George and George-Frank Wall Center for Student Life" after its first janitor George Wall.
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Wall was newly freed from slavery when he was hired as a janitor at the university when it was still Trinity College.
His son George Frank was the oldest of nine children and also worked as a custodian at Duke for more than 50 years until he died in 1953.
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The Durham neighborhood Walltown is named in honor of George Wall, who purchased one of the first plots of land next to Duke's east campus in 1899.
Wall's son left $100 dollars to Duke University in his will which was a gift that was added to the scholarship fund decades before there were black Duke faculty members, and before black students were first admitted to the university.