By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- These are times, Duke University President Richard Brodhead said, when many people scarcely remember last week.

In a culture like that, he asked, "how are you going to remember significant history?"

Surrounded by photographs and documents, some dating back more than 100 years, the leaders of Duke and N.C. Central universities and North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance officially agreed Friday to work to remember and preserve that history.

In the Heritage Room of the Mutual Life building, Brodhead, NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms and Mutual President James Speed signed documents turning over the company's massive historical archive to the joint guardianship of the two schools. The archival collection -- dating from the founding of the nation's largest and oldest African-American insurance company -- includes 25,000 items, books, magazines, maps, drawings, correspondence, diaries and much more.

"The collection highlights the historic role the company has played both locally and nationally," said Speed. Transferring the collection, he added, "will allow [Duke and NCCU] to show to the world what North Carolina Mutual has meant to the world."

The collection will be moved to Duke's Library Service Center, an off-campus site that serves both institutions. It will be administered by the NCCU Archives, Records and History Center and the Duke Special Collections Library in conjunction with the John Hope Franklin Research Center. The materials in the collection will be catalogued and digitized while being made available both to scholars and the public.

It's appropriate that the collection be administered jointly by the two universities and remain in the community, Brodhead said.

"The city is in some profound way the results of the collaborations of these three institutions." he said, and transferring the collection is "committing it to permanent memory."

The agreement, Nelms said, is unique, because "it's a joint agreement. Normally, control over a collection like this is usually given to a sole provider."

As did the other speakers at the ceremony, the NCCU chancellor noted that the collection is not just about the past, but about the future, too.

"It will be very important in the future to look back and see what did these men do?" Nelms said. "What made this company successful? That is worthy studying. That is worth writing about. That is worth sharing with the world. This is a story worth telling and perpetuating."

In emphasizing the importance of the collection, Nelms recalled the -- possibly apocryphal, he acknowledged -- story about the lion.

"Until the lion has a historian," he said, "its story will always be told from the perspective of the hunter."