Why do you think the Beat Duke Parade fizzled out?
There may be a lot of reasons why college parades with whacky floats are things of the past. The Rose Bowl still has a parade, so does the Orange Bowl and other corporate-sponsored events.
UNC had an annual Homecoming Parade like almost every other big university in the country. If I am correct, the Beat Duke Parade outlasted it because, yes, beating Duke was more important than showing off a homecoming queen or having a vote for the best float.
According to the Chapel Hill Historical Society, the Beat Duke Parade started losing its popularity in the 1990s and was gone by the end of the decade and century. I remember it when driving past Sup Dogs on Franklin Street that lists menu specials over the front door.
That list ends with “Duke Sucks.” That is also the title of a best-selling paperback book and its sequel, “Duke STILL Sucks.” Students supposedly care less about the camaraderie of building floats for their dorms or Greek houses in favor of flooding Franklin after big basketball wins, where hundreds of photos are taken on phones.
Trouble with that is the Tar Heels have to win for thousands to rush from the game and share their joy and not their misery. I love that because people engage with each other and not their cell phones. The best thing about the Beat Duke Parade: it came before the game.
People lined the street on that Saturday morning, whether the game was in Kenan Stadium or in Durham. To my knowledge Duke never had a “Carolina Sucks Parade” because Ninth Street wasn’t yet developed. Or it was beneath the Dukies to do that.
A sign from a “Beat Duke Parade” on Franklin Street. (Image via UNC Libraries)
Certainly, we need that togetherness today more than ever. Grand desocialization began and grew with the creation of digital phones and other devices, where eyes and heads are buried in screens.
And the Beat Duke Parade wasn’t only for students. Any organization could build a float and get in line near the Carolina Inn before the long snaking turned left on Columbia Street and right at the light.
And it didn’t matter whether the Tar Heels won 50-0 at Wallace Wade Stadium in 1959 or the Devils won 41-0 at Kenan 30 years later and they took the famous picture in front of the scoreboard.
The floats and upfitted cars didn’t change much, but the creativity of costumes mirrored styles of the day. The parade was still going gangbusters in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when protests paused.
Students and young alumni today don’t know much about the Beat Duke Parade unless their parents or grandparents told them about it and maybe pulled out some old pictures from their scrapbooks.
There have been efforts to revive the parade over the years, but not enough interest or budget to clean up the street when it ended. So, Saturday morning, let’s all imagine.
Featured image via Chapel Hill Media Group
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
