[1] It was founded as an independent black community shortly after the American Civil War on the southern edge of Durham by freedmen coming to work in tobacco warehouses and related jobs in the city.

By the early decades of the 20th century, African Americans owned and operated more than 200 businesses, which were located along Fayetteville, Pettigrew, and Pine Streets, the boundaries of Hayti.

The neighborhood continued to develop during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, through years of racial segregation imposed by white politicians in the state legislature, following the Reconstruction era in the South.

Hayti District, named after Haiti, the first independent black republic in the Western Hemisphere, eventually included a variety of businesses, schools, a library, a theatre, a hotel, the Lincoln Hospital (built in 1900), and other services, making it quite self-sufficient.

Efforts to remove substandard housing did not account for damage to the social fabric of communities by such projects; many residents and businesses were permanently displaced.

Planned to ease commuting for suburban (mostly white) residents and streamline traffic through older parts of the city, the project was intended to realign streets in coordination with construction of North Carolina Highway 147, a freeway that divided the Hayti district.

As most blacks had been excluded from the political system by the state's disfranchising constitution at the end of the 19th century, they were unable to influence the decisions on the location of the freeway.