Henry Richardson, Jr.
Henry Richardson, Jr. was an Indianapolis lawyer and politician who spent his career fighting for Civil Rights in Indiana. He is best known for his legal battles against segregation and racial inequality in education and housing [1]. Richardson was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1902. He moved to Indianapolis when he was seventeen in search of educational opportunities. While living at the YMCA, Richardson waited tables to support himself and graduated from Indianapolis Shortridge High School in 1921. He studied at the University of Illinois for two years before moving back to Indianapolis, earning his law degree from the Indiana University School of Law in 1928 [2].
By the early 1930s, Richardson was an established lawyer with an interest in politics. In 1930, he was appointed a temporary judge in the Marion County Superior Court [3] and ran for state representative. He did not win the nomination, but continued to build his reputation as a Democrat leader [4]. Richardson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1932, [5] becoming the first African American Democrat elected to the Indiana legislature [6]. During his first term, he sponsored a law requiring contracts for public buildings to contain “agreements not to discriminate because of race or color in the employment of workers" [7]. Richardson was re-elected to the House in 1934. During his second term, he and six other Democrats co-sponsored a bill to strengthen Indiana’s 1885 Civil Rights Law [8]. Richardson believed the existing law did not adequately protect African Americans from “discrimination and intimidation on account of race or color" [9]. However, the Indiana General Assembly did not introduce legislation that strengthened Civil Rights in the state until after World War II [10].
In 1947, Richardson and his wife Roselyn attempted to send their son to the neighborhood school. The school refused his enrollment, and instead, their son was sent to an all-black school located miles from their home. In response, Richardson presented a plan to the school board to end segregation in Indianapolis schools. Working with other Indianapolis lawyers and the NAACP, he took the time to build a strong case proving African American schools did not receive the same funds or facilities as white schools [11]. Two years later, Richardson coauthored a bill that sought to abolish segregation in Indiana schools. It passed quickly by the House of Representatives. The bill then went to the Republican-dominated Senate. Governor Schricker met with Democratic senators to ask for their support in passing the bill. Despite widespread support from the Indianapolis community and press, Republican senators still sought to restrict the bill with additional amendments. Finally, after some delaying tactics from the Republicans, the Senate passed the bill, becoming law [12].
In 1953, Richardson helped win a case for integrated housing in Evansville, Indiana [13]. Fulfilling his role as the Hoosier legal counsel for the NAACP, Richardson secured a court injunction against the Evansville Housing Authority. The order enforced integration of public housing “regardless of race, creed or color" [14].
In addition to his work fighting for desegregation in schools and housing, Henry Richardson was involved in a multitude of organizations. He organized the Indianapolis Urban League in 1965, worked for the Federal Civil Rights Commission throughout the 1960s, served as a board member of the Indianapolis Church Federation, supported the YMCA, and served on both the Mayor’s Advisory Council and the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee [15]. In 1971, he received the key to the city of Indianapolis from Mayor Richard Lugar [16]. Richardson died in 1983 [17]. The Indianapolis Recorder boasted about his legal prowess and lifelong battle for racial equality, deeming him the “Father of Civil Rights in Indiana" [18].
[1] “Henry J. Richardson, Jr. Receives the Key to the City from Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar,” Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indianapolis Historical Society, May 5, 1971, https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p0303/id/388.
[2] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice’: Indiana’s Pioneering Black Lawyers,” Indiana Legal Archive, February 23, 2015, http://www.indianalegalarchive.com/journal/2015/2/18/thirst-for-justice.
[3] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice.’”
[4] Emma Lou Thornburgh, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (Indiana University Press, 2000), 88.
[5] Thornburgh, 91.
[6] Henry Medge, “Who’s Who in the Community,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), November 23, 1974.
[7] Thornburgh, 91.
[8] Thornburgh, 91.
[9] Jae Jones, “Henry Richardson: Key Figure in Amending the State Constitution to Integrate the National Guard,” Black Then, June 16, 2020, https://blackthen.com/henry-richardson-key-figure-amending-state-constitution-integrate-national-guard/.
[10] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice.’”
[11] Thornburgh, 145.
[12] Thornburgh, 146.
[13] Jae Jones, “Henry Richardson.”
[14] Henry Medge, “Who’s Who in the Community.”
[15] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice.’”
[16] “Henry J. Richardson, Jr. Receives the Key to the City from Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar,” Indianapolis Historical Society.
[17] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice.’”
[18] Henry Medge, “Who’s Who in the Community.”
Student Author: Gwyneth Harris
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Henry J. Richardson, Jr. Desk Portrait, Indiana Historical Society, P0472.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/V0002/id/5923/rec/8
Robert Lee Bailey
Robert Lee Bailey was a successful Indianapolis lawyer and active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He fought tirelessly against segregation and discrimination throughout his life [1]. Bailey was born in Alabama in 1885. After graduation from Talladega College, he moved north for job opportunities. In 1912, he graduated from the Indiana University School of Law [2]. Prior to entering law school, he worked as a railway mail clerk. During this time, he founded the National Alliance of Postal Employees, and later served as their general counsel [3]. During the 1920s and ‘30s, he served as a special judge in the Marion Circuit Court, ran for state representative, and was involved with several organizations and movements [4]. Among his many activities, he was involved with the Bethel Church, Southern Cross Lodge, No. 39, F. and A.M., where he was past master. He was also the chairman of the committee on foreign relations for the Indiana Grand Lodge F. and A.M., chairman of the redress committee for the Indiana NAACP, and a local NAACP branch president [5].
During the height of Indiana’s Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s, Bailey helped lead the Indianapolis NAACP against the growing power of the Klan. Mirroring the Klan’s rapid growth during this decade, the Indianapolis branch of the NAACP grew considerably under the leadership of Bailey and fellow lawyers Robert Lee Brokenburr, W.S. Henry, and Freeman Ransom [6]. Bailey was involved in several critical moments in Indianapolis’s African American Civil Rights history.
In the early 1920s, Bailey represented NAACP in court, asking the Indianapolis school board to reconsider their decision to build an all-black high school. Bailey and two African American lawyers asked for an injunction, believing the proposed school promoted segregation and unequal opportunities for Indianapolis’s African American students [7]. Despite pleas from the NAACP, Crispus Attucks High School opened in September 1927 [8].
In 1931, Indiana Attorney General James Ogden appointed Bailey as the assistant attorney general. He was the first African American to hold the position. In the same year, Bailey faced one of his most difficult cases. Brokenburr and Bailey defended James Cameron, a sixteen-year-old boy from Marion, Indiana, who had been charged with murder. Cameron’s friends, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were beaten and hanged in what is known as the last lynching in Indiana’s history. Cameron narrowly escaped the same fate. If found guilty by the all-white jury, he faced life in prison or the death penalty. Bailey and Brokenburr provided evidence to reduce Cameron’s charges. He was found guilty as an accessory to voluntary manslaughter and served two years in the Indiana State Reformatory [9]. While Cameron’s narrow escape from the lynch mob was unique, lynching in Indiana was not. Besides Shipp and Smith, at least seven other African American men were lynched in Indiana between 1890 and 1902 [10].
Robert Bailey died in 1940 [11]. Newspaper accounts of his death remembered him as “one of the most brilliant attorneys ever to practice in the Indiana courts,” and an “honorable, straightforward…splendid citizen" [12]. Robert Lee Bailey was most known for his love for battle in the courtroom, which was “surpassed only by his thirst for justice" [13].
[1] “Our Branch History,” Indy NAACP, accessed March 19, 2021, https://www.indynaacp.org/branch-history.
[2] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice’: Indiana’s Pioneering Black Lawyers,” Indiana Legal Archive, February 23, 2015, http://www.indianalegalarchive.com/journal/2015/2/18/thirst-for-justice.
[3] “Great Man Who Had Thirst for Justice,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), March 9, 1940.
[4] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice’: Indiana’s Pioneering Black Lawyers.”
[5] “Great Man Who Had Thirst for Justice,” Indianapolis Recorder.
[6] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (Indiana University Press, 2000), 49. [7] Emma Lou Thornbrough, 57.
[8] Emma Lou Thornbrough, 58.
[9] Ryan Schwier and Ravay Smith, “’Thirst for Justice’: Indiana’s Pioneering Black Lawyers.”
[10] “Indiana Lynching Victims Memorial,” America’s Black Holocaust Museum, accessed March 22, 2021, https://www.abhmuseum.org/indiana-lynching-victims-memorial/.
[11] “Great Man Who Had Thirst for Justice,” Indianapolis Recorder.
[12] “Bailey’s Death Brings Grief to Multitudes,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), March 9, 1940.
[13] “Great Man Who Had Thirst for Justice,” Indianapolis Recorder.
Student Author: Gwyneth Harris
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Courtesy Indiana University https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/IUPUIphotos/id/31228/rec/1
George P. Stewart
George Pheldon Stewart was born in Vincennes, Indiana in 1874. As a young man, he moved to Indianapolis and joined Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. In his youth, George had learned a great deal of the printing trade from his brother, Charles [1]. At Bethel AME, Reverend D.A. Graham suggested Stewart take over the Church Recorder, hoping that the young man would expand the publication’s scope to include stories of African American involvement in Indianapolis fraternities and societies, in addition to existing church news [2]. In 1897, he took the advice of Graham and with his newspaper experience, cofounded the Indianapolis Recorder with Will Porter [3].
Stewart was a member of many Indianapolis organizations. His extensive involvement in the African American community allowed him to stay up to date with the latest news, which he published in the Recorder [4]. In addition to his religious ties to the AME Church, Stewart involved himself in political, business, and fraternal ventures.
On the political front, the paper’s creation coincided with the beginning of William McKinley’s presidency. Stewart was a Republican and, as a result, the Recorder highlighted his support of the Republican party [5]. His political involvement included chairman of the Colored Republican Committee, and membership in the National Negro Business League and Indiana Negro Welfare League [6]. Stewart was an officer of the Indiana Association of Colored Men, and used his print shop to supply handbills and printed items for their political cause [7].
Stewart was a part of many fraternal organizations as well, including the Waterford Lodge #13, F. & A.M. Marion Lodge #5, Persian Temple #46, Nobles Mystic Shrine, Indianapolis Camp of the American Woodsman, and Knights of Pythias [8]. He was most involved with the Knights, as he and Porter had been active in the Order since the creation of the black Pythians in Indiana [9]. Stewart’s devotion to his affiliations was evident in the ways he used his business and print shop to support them. He provided publicity to his fraternal and institutional connections in the Recorder and took care of the printing needs for many Black businesses, printing programs, handbills, cards, and stationary [10].
Stewart was well known and respected in Indianapolis’s Black community. His position as publisher and editor of the Recorder allowed him to serve as a mentor to many, and strangers and friends alike often sought his advice. He died in 1924 at age 50. His widow, Fannie Stewart, filled his roles as owner and publisher for the Recorder after his death. His family continued to work in various roles for the newspaper until 1988 [11]. Stewart’s hard work was essential in encouraging the Black community to become civically involved and to defend equality and Civil Rights in Indianapolis [12].
During George P. Stewart’s reign, the office for the Indianapolis Recorder moved multiple times. It was first located on New York Street, but was moved to Indiana Avenue in 1900. From there, it relocated to the Knights of Pythias building on West Walnut and by 1918 moved to a new location on Indiana Avenue, where it stayed until the 1970s [13]. The Indianapolis Recorder buildings during Stewart’s lifetime were all in the Ransom Place Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1992) for its association with influential African Americans in Indianapolis history [14].
[1] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, Indiana Historical Society, accessed March 15, 2021, https://ijhf.org/george-p-stewart.
[2] Marcus N. Mims, “The Recorder,” accessed March 15, 2021, https://www.marcusnmims.com/the-recorder.html.
[3] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, Indiana Historical Society, accessed March 15, 2021, https://ijhf.org/george-p-stewart.
[4] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart.”
[5] Connie Gaines Hates, “The Indianapolis Recorder; Still Strong after 96 Years,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), February 1, 1992.
[6] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart.”
[7] George P. Stewart Papers, 1894-CA. 1930s, 1990.0469. Indiana Historical Society Archives, Indianapolis, Indiana.
[8] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart.”
[9] George P. Stewart Papers, 1894-CA. 1930s, 1990.0469.
[10] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart.”
[11] Wilma Gibbs, “George P. Stewart.”
[12] “Living History, Every Week,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 12, 2020, https://indianapolisrecorder.com/ad6e0558-6468-11ea-b619-03b2fd7ecb47/.
[13] George P. Stewart Papers, 1894-CA. 1930s, 1990.0469.
[14] “Ransom Place Historic District,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed March 15, 2021, https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/ransom-place-historic-district/.
Student Author: Gwyneth Harris
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
George P. Stewart, Indianapolis Recorder Co-Founder, Indiana Historical Society, P0556.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll72/id/821/rec/53
D.C. Stephenson
David Curtiss Stephenson introduced himself to fellow Hoosiers in 1920 as the son of a wealthy businessman from South Bend. He professed he had quit college to work in the coal business until his patriotism called him to volunteer for the Army during World War I, where he fought the Germans in France. After his valiant work in the war, he supposedly returned home to find himself a millionaire due to the high value of stocks he had bought before the war.
However, this story was a complete fabrication that perfectly highlighted Stephenson’s routine of spouting bold lies and bravado. In reality, he was born in Houston, Texas in 1891, son of a sharecropper. His family later moved to Oklahoma, where he finished his schooling after graduating eighth grade, and then married, lost his newspaper job, abandoned his pregnant wife, and divorced. Stephenson volunteered for the Army and moved to Iowa to work as a recruiter. After the war, he worked as a traveling salesman and married a second time. The couple moved to Evansville, Indiana, and Stephenson began work as a coal salesman [1]. It was in Indiana that he launched his infamous career as a member of the burgeoning Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
By the 1920s, the KKK was at the peak of its power in Indiana. Stephenson became a marketer for the Indiana Klan, raising enormous amounts of funds to increase membership [2]. He commanded political power from the beginning of his membership. Stephenson and the Klan had a controlling hand in Indiana Governor Ed Jackson’s election, and he manipulated state legislators by using his money and the influence of the KKK to push bills that would plant more money in his pockets. Stephenson also helped fund the campaign for the KKK’s handpicked choice for Indianapolis’ mayor [3]. Stephenson used his “natural” charisma and leadership skills to snag increasingly important Indiana Klan positions [4]. On July 4, 1923, nearly 200,000 Klansmembers gathered at Malfalfa Park in Kokomo to celebrate Stephenson’s ascension to Grand Dragon of Indiana. The gathering was the largest Klan rally in the history of the United States. As Grand Dragon, Stephenson entertained U.S. senators, congressmen, judges, governors, and other political leaders on his yacht [5]. His relationship with National KKK Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, however, quickly soured. The men did not agree on financial matters and Klan priorities, and Stephenson eventually created a new Indiana Klan independent of the national group [6]. Stephenson appeared to be unstoppable. He believed his word was “the law” in Indiana [7].
His glory did not last long. Shortly after his arrival in Indiana, his drunken bouts of violence led to his second divorce. Soon after, he was charged with indecent exposure with his young secretary. Later, he drunkenly threatened and sexually assaulted a hotel manicurist [8]. In 1924, after a young actress relayed her story of being sexually attacked by Stephenson, Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans used Stephenson’s pattern of rape, physical abuse, and drunken violence as evidence against the man who had become his rival in the Klan. He published a fifty-page report on Stephenson’s questionable behavior in the hopes of having him dismissed, but Stephenson only responded that Evans’ accusations were fabricated by the southern Klan [9].
In January 1925, Stephenson met Madge Oberholtzer at a banquet in Indianapolis. After several dinners, Stephenson called her in March and insisted she come meet him at his Indianapolis home before he left for Chicago. He was wildly intoxicated upon her arrival. Stephenson, his chauffeur, and a third man forced Oberholtzer to drink alcohol against her will. Stephenson armed all the men with pistols and told Oberholtzer she had to accompany him to Chicago. She was forced into a car with the men while she begged to call home to her mother [10].
At the train station, Stephenson led Oberholtzer to a private compartment, where he sexually assaulted her, leaving her with bite wounds over her entire body. When they reached Hammond, Oberholtzer asked to leave to buy a hat and rouge to cover her bruises and ghastly bites. She bought mercury tablets instead and took them, intending to end her own life. Stephenson told her he would take her to the hospital if she agreed to marry him. She refused, and Stephenson had Oberholtzer driven 5 hours south to his home. After several days, she was taken to the doctor who discovered that several of her bites were badly infected. She died a few weeks later, after giving a lawyer every detail of her brutal assault. Although the official cause of death was mercury poisoning, her autopsy revealed that her body would have been able to fight the mercury had it not been for the infection in her bloodstream that resulted from Stephenson’s vicious bites [11].
In November 1925, D.C. Stephenson was sentenced to life in prison for her murder. He patiently waited for Governor Ed Jackson to get him out of jail. When Jackson offered no assistance, Stephenson started revealing names of people who were part of the intricate, corrupt web of Indiana Klan politics [12]. Stephenson’s arrest and revelations spread like wildfire, leading to the Klan’s rapid decline in Indiana [13]. By 1928, membership had dropped from half a million to 4,000 [14]. Stephenson was paroled in 1950, but was sent back to prison in Michigan City after breaking parole. Only six years later, he was released [15]. In 1962, he was arrested again for attempting to force a teenage girl into his car. After leading a life of lies, violence, and corruption, he died in 1966 in Tennessee [16]. His home in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis still stands.
[1] Karen Abbot, “’Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty’: The Rise and Fall of D.C. Stephenson,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 30, 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/murder-wasnt-very-pretty-the-rise-and-fall-of-dc-stephenson-18935042/.
[2] Charles C. Alexander, “Kleagles and Cash: The Ku Klux Klan as a Business Organization, 1915-1930,” The Business History Review 39, no. 3 (1965): 359.
[3] Karen Abbot, “’Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty.’”
[4] Velma A. Frame, “Some Patterns of Ku Klux Klan Activities in Delaware County During the 1920’s,” (master’s thesis, Ball State Teachers College, 1947), 19.
[5] Douglas O. Linder, “The D.C. Stephenson Trial: An Account,” Famous Trials, accessed February 15, 2021, https://famous-trials.com/stephenson/74-home.
[6] Douglas O. Linder, “The D.C. Stephenson Trial: An Account.”
[7] “Facts Back Up Dying Story – Remy,” Indianapolis Times (Indianapolis, IN), November 12, 1925.
[8] Karen Abbot, “’Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty.’”
[9] Douglas O. Linder, “The D.C. Stephenson Trial: An Account.”
[10] Stephenson v. State, 179 N.E. 633, 205 (Ind. 141 1932).
[11] Stephenson v. State, 179 N.E. 633, 205 (Ind. 141 1932).
[12] Douglas O. Linder, “The D.C. Stephenson Trial: An Account.”
[13] Charles C. Alexander, “Kleagles and Cash,” 366.
[14] Karen Abbot, “’Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty.’”
[15] “Facts Back Up Dying Story – Remy,” November 12, 1925.
[16] Douglas O. Linder, “The D.C. Stephenson Trial: An Account.”
Student Author: Gwyneth Harris
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
D. C. Stephenson Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan in Indiana, c 1922, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D._C._Stephenson_Grand_Dragon_of_the_Klu_Klux_Klan_in_Indiana,_c_1922.jpg
Reverend Julius James
Julius James was born in 1918 [1]. After serving in the U.S Army, James graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1952, and the Morehouse School of Religion in 1954 [2]. James was a close friend with fellow Morehouse classmate Martin Luther King, Jr. [3] Reverend James served as pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church and Zion Hill Baptist Church in Georgia, [4] before accepting the call to become the Pastor of St. John Baptist Church in Gary, Indiana in October 1955 [5]. From 1959 to 1960, James served as president of the Baptist Minister’s Conference in Gary [6]. He was also involved in labor movements in Gary, walking among the picketers in the 1959 Steel Strike and supplying meals to protestors [7].
Reverend James brought the Civil Rights movement to St. John Baptist Church by hosting meetings and planning sessions for civil rights organizations in the late 1950’s and early 1960s. He invited prominent African American leaders to speak, including Jesse Jackson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [8] His civil rights work in the community included serving as president of the Gary branch of the NAACP in the late 1950s [9]. James founded the “Gary Freedom Movement,” which coordinated economic boycotts of businesses that opposed civil rights legislation [10]. On posters, citizens were urged to “Sacrifice for Freedom in Gary. Don’t Buy Anything Anywhere for Easter. Wear Your Old Clothes for New Dignity. Boycott" [11]. In 1964, James organized a Christmas shopping boycott to protest businesses who opposed the Omnibus Civil Rights Bill [12].This organization later became the Gary Freedom Movement Council, and James served as chairman [13]. In the mid-1960s, he brought famous African Americans to the Gary for speaking engagements, including comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who encouraged 900 Gary residents to practice “selective shopping” at stores outside of Gary to protest continued racial injustice [14].
In recognition of his civil rights leadership, Reverend James was awarded the NAACP’s Mary White Ovington Award in 1964 for outstanding contributions to sustaining civil rights [15]. In March 1965, James bussed a group of congregants from St. John Baptist Church south to Atlanta to join the march from Selma to the state’s capital in Montgomery led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The protest march was in support of the supported the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. At home in Gary, James coordinated meetings between Dr. King and local Gary African American leaders. In 1966, Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher met Dr. King for the first time when Rev. James brought King to speak at St. John Baptist Church [16]. Dr. King spoke to 275 clergymen of various faiths at St. John Baptist Church, emphasizing interfaith solidarity [17].
Fair housing practices later became a focus of Reverend James’ activism. Under his leadership, St. John Baptist Church purchased a rundown housing complex at 22nd and Carolina Streets. Using government grants, the church remodeled the housing complex into the St. John Homes, which operated as one of the only viable non-profit housing developments in the U.S. until 1984 [18]. James founded the Fair Share Organization, focused on fair housing and employment practices, [19] with Cherrie White, secretary of the Gary NAACP, and Richard Gordon Hatcher, Gary’s first African America mayor [20].
Rev. James was inducted into the Steel City Hall of Fame in 1987, for making “broad, significant, and multiple contributions to the Gary community or to society at large" [21]. Rev. James died in 1994, after a lifetime dedicated to civil rights in Indiana and the nation [22].
[1] Correspondence from Julius James (Shiloh Baptist Church) to Martin Luther King, Jr, March 14, 1955. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Accessed on February 5, 2021. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/julius-james.
[2] Correspondence from Julius James, March 14, 1955.
[3] Becky Jacobs. “Man killed in Gary was great-grandson of pastor, civil rights activist.” Chicago Tribune, February 22, 2019. Accessed on February 5, 2021. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-julius-james-death-st-0213-story.html.
[4] Correspondence from Julius James, March 14, 1955.
[5] “Our Community.” St. John Baptist Church. Accessed on February 5, 2021. http://stjohnbcgary.com/community/
[6] Correspondence from Julius James, March 14, 1955.
[7] “Our Community.”
[8] “Our Community.”
[9] Correspondence from Julius James, March 14, 1955.
[10] James B. Lane. City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana. Indiana University Press, 1978, pp. 281.
[11] James H. Madison and Lee Ann Sandweiss. Chapter 11: Justice, Equality, and Democracy for All Hoosiers in Justice, Equality, and Democracy for All Hoosiers. http://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Hoosiers-and-the-American-Story-ch-11.pdf
[12] Becky Jacobs. “Man killed in Gary was great-grandson of pastor, civil rights activist.”
[13] “Gary woman heads Ind. Conference of NAACP.” Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 November 1965, pp. 12. Hoosier States Chronicles. Accessed February 5, 2021. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=INR19651106-01.1.12&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
[14] “Gregory Endorses Boycott.” Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 January 1965, pp. 6. Hoosier States Chronicles. Accessed February 5, 2021. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=INR19650123-01.1.6&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
[15] “Gary woman heads Ind. Conference of NAACP.”
[16] Joyce Russell. “Local residents recall the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his death.” NWI.com. Accessed February 5, 2021. https://www.nwitimes.com/news/history/local-residents-recall-the-legacy-of-the-rev-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-50th/article_9eb318e4-92e1-5fcd-b0a1-27058351c345.html
[17] Nancy Coltun Webster. “MILK’s life remembered as Northwest Indiana leaders continue to struggle.” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2018. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-king-anniversary-indiana-st-0404-20180403-story.html
[18] “Our Community.”
[19] Correspondence from Julius James, March 14, 1955.
[20] Carmen M. Woodson-Wray and Gary Crusader. “After 103 years Cherrie White has truly had a productive life.” Crusader. Accessed on February 5, 2021. https://chicagocrusader.com/103-years-cherrie-white-truly-productive-life/ [21] “Steel City hall of Fame.” Gary Public Library. Accessed February 5, 2021. http://www.garypubliclibrary.org/steel-city-hall-of-fame/
[22] “Our Community.”
Student Author: Emma Cieslik
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Sacrifice: Join Rev. Martin Luther King, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/V0002/id/1148/rec/2
Curtis Strong
Born in 1915 to the “son of the slave owner who had owned his mother’s family”,[1] Curtis Strong was no stranger to racism or the effects that segregation had on African American lives. Born in Mississippi, Strong grew up in Dixon, Illinois, before moving to Gary, Indiana, with hopes of joining the Air Force as a pilot. [2] However, because of the same racism and segregation that he would fight his whole life, he was unable to become a pilot and instead began working in a Gary tin mill in 1937.[3] The same year that Strong became a member of Steelworkers Union Local 1014, he witnessed the Memorial Day Massacre; a Chicago incident where police rioted and fired on unarmed, protesting steelworkers, killing 10. [4]
Strong was appointed as the first African American union griever at the Gary Works coke plant, handling union members’ grievances and complaints against their employer. He quickly began working with other African American factory workers to form “independent organization” within the union.[5] Strong also knew that, given the time and power dynamics within the union, if African American workers wanted to see change they would need to align their own goals with those of their white coworkers. Consequently, Strong spent a great deal of time “building Black-White unity”, and worked together with others in the factory so that changes would benefit all workers.[6] Strong pushed for changes in discriminatory practices, including desegregating jobs and locker rooms, and worked with various union members to encourage other changes, like internal hiring preferences, that benefitted all workers regardless of race. [7] His approaches were not without opposition, however, and he narrowly escaped death after two “union goons” once threw him from the third story window of a hotel. Curtis was eventually appointed to the International Union, where he worked to improve work conditions for not only African American steelworkers, but factory workers everywhere. [8]
Curtis and his wife, Jeannette, were both very involved with the NAACP throughout their lives. Jeannette was a steelworker activist like Curtis, but she also worked with her husband and the Gary NAACP to combat segregated medical treatment, housing, and nearly an entirely white Gary police force.[9] With the support of other NAACP members and resources, the Strongs helped desegregate hospitals where, as Curtis recounts, “one woman delivered a baby in the hallway because she was black.”[10] Curtis Strong not only picketed outside predominantly white hospitals, but simultaneously helped plan for 500 Gary citizens to participate in the 1963 March on Washington, partook in the march, and then returned to picketing as soon as he returned to Gary. [11],[12]
Strong worked throughout his life to pave a path to a better future for the African American community. He played a key role in the 1968 campaign that saw Richard Hatcher become the first African American mayor of Gary, where he served for 20 years.[13] Strong died on September 16, 2003 as one of the most influential labor and civil rights leaders in America’s history, and his legacy and voice live on in the policies of labor and union workplaces, as well as in the hearts of all those impacted by the Gary NAACP. [14]
[1] “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: Black Workers Commemorated on Broadway,” The Chicago Crusader, October 8, 2018. https://chicagocrusader.com/black-freedom-fighters-in-steel-black-workers-commemorated-on-broadway/
[2] “Remembering Curtis Strong, 1915-2003,” People’s World, October 3, 2003. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/remembering-curtis-strong-1915-2003/
[3] “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: Black Workers Commemorated on Broadway”
[4] “Remembering Curtis Strong, 1915-2003”
[5] “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: Black Workers Commemorated on Broadway”
[6] “Remembering Curtis Strong, 1915-2003”
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Physicians Recall Integrating Hospitals,” The Post-Tribune, May 2, 1996.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ruth Needleman. “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism,” 2003.
[12] “Physicians Recall Integrating Hospitals”
[13] “Remembering Curtis Strong, 1915-2003”
[14] Ibid.
Student Author: Joel Sharp
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Gary Steel Works, United States Steel Corporation, 1959, attributed to Steven R. Shook, Public domain, via Flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/shookphotos/4219006672/in/photostream/
J. Chester Allen J.D. and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen J.D.
J. Chester Allen and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen were African American attorneys in South Bend, Indiana who fought for civil rights in both their personal and professional lives. J. Chester Allen was born in 1900 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. After graduating with a law degree from Boston College, he moved to South Bend in 1929.[1] Elizabeth Fletcher was born in Chicago in 1905, and married J. Chester Allen in 1928.[2] The couple were noteworthy trailblazers in both civil rights and opportunities for women. The two created the Allen & Allen Law firm, and they were one of the first husband and wife law partners in the area. Elizabeth Fletcher Allen was the first female attorney in St. Joseph County and the state of Indiana.[3] J. Chester Allen paved the way for African American representation in South Bend as the first African American to serve on the City Council and the school board. He was elected as president of the St. Joseph County Bar Association and to the Indiana state legislature, the first African American in both of those positions.[4] Elizabeth Fletcher Allen was a member of the many civic and African American community organizations, including the South Bend chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Black Business and Professional Women’s Association.[5] While the two had many significant contributions to the community, they are perhaps best known for their civil rights work in South Bend, specifically fighting to desegregate the Engman Natatorium.
It was common for public parks and playgrounds, and other recreational facilities to be segregated in the mid-twentieth century, and the Allen’s helped fight for desegregation in South Bend. The South Bend Engman Public Natatorium was built in 1922, and for the first 14 years, only the white public could enjoy the pool. In 1931, African American leaders, including the Allen’s, began to take action to gain access to the pool. In 1936, when the South Bend Common Council levied a special tax on the residents of South Bend for pool repairs, African American community leaders demanded access to the pool if they were going to be taxed. A petition presented to the state tax commission pointed out that tax money would be used to repair a facility that was not allowed to be used by some of the community that was paying the tax. The state tax commissioner agreed with them, and after 16 years, the facility was finally open to African Americans. However, African Americans were only allowed to use the pool on Mondays with no whites present.[6] After working for over two decades to end the city pool’s segregationist policies, in February 1950, J. Chester Allen, Elizabeth Fletcher Allen, and Maurice Tulchinsky represented the NAACP before the South Bend Park Board “threatening action, unless the Board ruled to integrate the Engman Natatorium immediately.”[7] This threat would finally be a turning point, and the Parks board would relent and desegregate the Natatorium.
The Engman Natatorium closed its door is 1970, and the building sat empty for years.[8] What was once known as the Engman Public Natatorium, a public recreation facility once caught in a fight for desegregation, is now the Civil Rights Heritage Center in South Bend.[9] In 2018, the Engman Natatorium was designated as a local historic landmark. The landmark status protects the building and ensures that the building remains as close to its original form for generations to come. The Civil Rights Heritage Center is an active learning center in the community and attracts more than 5,000 visitors each year.[10]
[1] “J. Chester Allen and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen Papers.” Indiana University South Bend Libraries. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://library.iusb.edu/search-find/archives/crhc/ChesterElizabethAllen.html
[2] “Eliz Fletcher Allen obituary 28 Dec. 1994, p. 15.” Accessed August 26, 2020 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/28608792/eliz-fletcher-allen-obituary-28-dec/
[3] “Local African American History: African Americans in the Workplace.” The History Museum. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://historymuseumsb.org/local-african-american-history/
[4] “J. Chester Allen.” The South Bend Tribune. Accessed August 26, 2020.
https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/keynews/community/j-chester-allen-sr/article_4855292c-9240-11e3-b4e5-001a4bcf6878.html
[5] “Eliz Fletcher Allen obituary.
[6] Harris, Dina. Divided Water: “Healing a Community’s Past,” 2013. https://clas.iusb.edu/centers/civil-rights/
[7] “Ruth Tulchinsky, Short Statement on Visiting the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center,2010,” St. Joseph County Public Library Michiana Memory, March 22, 2016 Accessed August 26, 2020. http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16827coll4/id/2452/rec/6.
[8] Harris, Dina. Divided Water: “Healing a Community’s Past,” 2013. https://clas.iusb.edu/centers/civil-rights/
[9] “J. Chester Allen.”
[10] Baierl, Ken. “Engman Natatorium Designated Historic Landmark.” Indiana University of South Bend, October 16, 2018.
Student Author: Molly Hollcraft
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen, South Bend Tribune https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2021/09/18/south-bend-historical-marker-honors-black-husband-wife-lawyers/8400790002/
Clifford E. Minton, Gary
<p>Gary’s Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was located in a massive stone building that faced north on Fifth Avenue. Funded by Elbert Gary and designed by architect Joseph Silsbee in 1909, the impressive structure served as a sporting and recreation center, dining facility, library, and temporary dormitory until its closure in 1976.[1] Although the YMCA was intended to provide entertainment and support for the young men of Gary, a large portion of Gary’s male population was excluded from enjoying the facility. The Gary YMCA, like many YMCAs throughout the United States, enforced strict segregation during the first half of the nineteenth century, barring African American men from membership. It was not until the 1960s that the Gary Urban League won the right to integrate Gary’s branch of the YMCA.[2]</p>
<p>African American communities throughout the country had long embraced the mission of the YMCA. Anthony Bowen, a freedman from Washington D.C., founded the first YMCA for African Americans in 1853. Although the YMCA movement was stalled by the social and financial hardship African Americans faced in many areas of the United States during nineteenth century, many cities had constructed African American YMCA branches by the early 1910s. These facilities served as meeting spots for African Americans to openly discuss politics, safe resting places for African American travelers, and learning centers where young African American men received education in business and management.[3]</p>
<p>In the early 1900s, almost all business and entertainment establishments in Gary were owned by white proprietors. Gary’s large African American community, prohibited from entering these establishments, was deprived of recreation facilities. At the recommendation of clergyman John W. Lee, who conducted a survey of the social and economic conditions of Gary’s African American neighborhoods for the Calumet Church Federation, Gary’s First Baptist Church established an African American YMCA community center at 19th Avenue and Washington Street in 1919.[4] This new symbol of recreation and opportunity only operated for a few short years, however, as the facility was forced to close when the Great Depression hit Gary. After the shuttering of the African American YMCA, pressure to integrate Gary’s main YMCA building mounted.[5]</p>
<p>The YMCA’s national policy of segregation ended in 1946 “when the National Council passed a resolution calling for local associations to ‘work steadfastly toward the goal of eliminating all racial discriminations,’ dissolved its Colored Work Department and abolished racial designations in all its publications.”[6] Local YMCAs responded to these institutional changes with varying degrees of compliance. At Gary’s branch of the YMCA, harsh segregation persisted for decades after the national policy of segregation ended. Clifford E. Minton, an active leader in Gary’s Civil Rights Movement and the long-time executive director of the Gary Urban League, spearheaded a campaign to integrate the facility.[7] Under Mayor George Chacharis, Minton successfully integrated Gary’s YMCA in the early 1960s.[8]</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Clifford Minton’s YMCA victory was short-lived, as the Gary YMCA closed only a few years after its integration. Facing competition from for-profit recreational centers, Gary’s YMCA was unable to stay afloat during the recession of the mid-1970s and shut down operations in 1976.[9] While the old YMCA building was demolished after the closure of the facility, postcards bearing its striking image can be viewed on the Digital Commonwealth website today.[10] The integration of Gary’s YMCA was only one of Clifford Minton’s many accomplishments as a Civil Rights leader and executive director of the Gary Urban League.</p>
[1] <span>“Y.M.C.A. Building for Gary Indiana,” Searching for Silsbee, last modified November 6, 2010, http://jlsilsbee.blogspot.com/2010/11/y-m-c-building-for-gary-indiana.html. Melissa G. Burlock, “The Battle Over a Black YMCA and its Inner-City Community: The Fall Creek Parkway YMCA as a Lens on Indianapolis’ Urban Revitalization and School Desegregation 1959-2003” (M.A. diss., Indiana University, 2014), 72.<br />[2] Calumet Regional Archives, “Clifford E. Minton Papers,” Indiana University Northwest, accessed May 19, 2020, https://cra.sitehost.iu.edu/cra_records/cra160.shtml. Dharathula H. Millender, Gary’s Central Business Community, (Charleston: Acadia Publishing, 2003), 102.<br />[3] “A Brief History of the YMCA and African American Communities,” University of Minnesota Libraries, accessed May 19, 2020, https://www.lib.umn.edu/ymca/guide-afam-history.<br />[4] James B. Lane, City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 70. Neil Betten and Raymond A. Mohl, “The Evolution of Racism in an Industrial City, 1906-1940: A Case Study of Gary, Indiana,” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 59, No. 1 (January 1974): 59, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717140.<br />[5] Indiana History Blog, “City Church: Spirituality and Segregation in Gary,” Indiana Historical Bureau of the Indiana State Library, accessed May 19, 2020, https://blog.history.in.gov/city-church-spirituality-and-segregation-in-gary/<br />[6] “A Brief History.”<br />[7] Calumet Regional Archives, “Clifford E. Minton Papers.”<br />[8] Millender, Gary’s Central Business Community.<br />[9] Burlock, “The Battle Over a Black YMCA.”<br />[10] “YMCA Gary, Indiana, ‘the steel city’” Digital Commonwealth Massachusetts Collection Online, accessed May 19, 2020, https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:6w929s87c.</span>
Student Author: Natalie Bradshaw
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Y.M.C.A., Gary, Indiana, "The Steel City", attributed to Springfield College Archives and Special Collections, Public domain, via Picryl.
https://picryl.com/media/ymca-gary-indiana-the-steel-city-9ec6fb
Juanita and Benjamin Grant, M.D.: Mercy Hospital, Gary
<p>Juanita C. Grant and her husband Benjamin F. Grant were community leaders who promoted racial equality in Gary, Indiana during the Civil Rights Movement. The Grants sought to improve conditions for the African American population of Gary by establishing community organizations, helping gain access to essential resources, and organizing a coalition of leaders to serve the city’s African American community. Most notably, Benjamin and Juanita Grant successfully lobbied Gary’s oldest hospital, Mercy Hospital (now St. Mary Medical Center) to allow African American doctors admitting privileges in 1945.[1]</p>
<p>Juanita Grant has been described as a “bold and unique voice” in the early years of the Civil Rights era, who transformed her community in ways that can still be seen in Gary today.[2] Despite losing her mother at a young age and attending school at a time when it was difficult for African American students to find support in Indiana, Juanita Grant was an ambitious learner who earned her bachelor’s degree at Indiana State College in Terre Haute and her master’s degree in Social Work at Ball State University. As a resident of Gary and leader in the African American community, she co-founded and established the Jack and Jill of America Inc. chapter in Gary, organized local Girl Scouts and Brownies groups, and supported Gary’s historic Stewart Settlement House.[3] Benjamin Grant was also a very influential Civil Rights leader among Gary’s African American population. He was a lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as the co-chair of Gary’s branch of the organization during the 1940s. A practicing physician and surgeon, Dr. Grant launched a campaign to advocate for the medical rights of African American medical professionals and patients.[4]</p>
<p>During the early twentieth century, medical facilities were heavily segregated in Indiana. African American doctors, nurses, and patients faced severe discrimination. In Indianapolis, training facilities for nurses were separated by race, and finding employment at a public hospital was virtually impossible for African American doctors. Indianapolis City Hospital, the only hospital in the Indianapolis that admitted African American patients, turned away African American doctors seeking internships and pressured African American nurses to receive training outside Indiana.</p>
<p>The hostility that African American doctors and nurses encountered was also felt by African American patients seeking medical care in Indianapolis. At Indianapolis City Hospital, African American patients were sequestered in a “Jim Crow wing” in the basement of the building, where they were often crowded into small areas and given inadequate care.[5] Segregation in the medical system was worse in other areas of Indiana, however, for outside the state capital, “there were no public hospitals in Indiana that admitted African Americans; blacks were entirely dependent on private medical institutions.”[6]</p>
<p>Like most hospitals outside of Indianapolis, Gary’s Mercy Hospital refused to admit African American patients when it first opened. Established in downtown Gary by the Gary Land Company in 1907, Mercy Hospital was a white-owned, private hospital staffed first by the Sisters of St. Francis and later by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ.[7] It was not until the 1930s that Mercy Hospital began to accept African American patients, and even then, they were placed in segregated wards.[8] African American doctors employed at Mercy were denied admitting privileges.</p>
<p>As a practicing doctor in Gary, Benjamin Grant was aware of how limited medical resources were for the city’s large African American population. In 1945, with the help of his wife, Dr. Grant began lobbying to integrate Mercy Hospital and permit African American doctors admitting privileges. The Grant’s effort to provide better healthcare for Gary’s African American population was successful. In 1945, Mercy Hospital granted African American doctors admitting privileges, a move that provided Gary’s African American community with more access to medical care and better treatment within the hospital.[9]</p>
<p>In the immediate years after the hospital’s integration, Mercy Hospital thrived as Gary’s premier medical institution. The hospital trained nurses and interns, built specialized departments, and gained international recognition as the birthplace of musician Michael Jackson. As U.S. Steel jobs declined in the 1970s, Mercy Hospital began to suffer, as much of Gary’s white community relocated to neighboring cities. In an attempt to revitalize the medical facility, Mercy Hospital underwent a restructuring in the mid-1970s. The West Wing of the hospital was built, and Mercy Hospital was renamed St. Mary Medical Center. These updates, however, were not enough to stave off the decline of the aging building. By the early 1990s, St. Mary’s had lost millions of dollars and was in danger of closing.[10] In 1993, Summit Medical Management purchased St. Mary Medical Center, renaming it Northwest Family Hospital. After two years of economic loss and unsuccessful restructuring attempts, Summit “declared the situation terminal” and decided to close St. Mary Medical Center.[11] Although the Mercy Foundation fought to keep the hospital open, and private interests attempted to purchase the building, no one could afford to maintain costly hospital operations. In November 1995, St. Mary Medical Center was closed. While much of the building stands abandoned today, the newest addition of the hospital, the West Wing built in the mid-1970s, serves as the headquarters of Gary’s police department.[12] The remains of St. Mary Medical Center, or “Mercy” as longtime residents call it, stands as a monument to Gary’s oldest hospital and a legacy of the pioneering work of Juanita and Benjamin Grant.[13]</p>
[1] “Juanita C. Grant Foundation,” Juanita C. Grant Foundation. Accessed May 12, 2020, https://www.jcgfdn.org/history1. Times Staff Report, “St. Mary hospital for sale. Gary medical center lost $3.6,” The Times of Northwest Indiana, March 18, 1993, https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/st-mary-hospital-for-sale-gary-medical-center-lost/article_ddf6c861-694d-57b0-9d6b-ec6159a40a52.html.
[2] “Juanita C. Grant Foundation.”
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 64.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Downtown Gary Scattered Sites (19001-680).
[8] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 64.
[9] “Juanita C. Grant Foundation.”
[10] Ursula Bielski, Haunted Gary (Charleston: The History Press, 2015), 30.
[11] Robin Biesen, “Hospital closes. Gary’s Northwest Family succumbs to its,” The Times of Northwest Indiana, November 22, 1995, https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/hospital-closes-gary-s-northwest-family-succumbs-to-its/article_2908a57a-0d3e-58f9-92c0-e9917e41422a.html
[12] Bielski, Haunted Gary, 31.
[13] Times Staff, “St. Mary.”
Student Author: Natalie Bradshaw
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Hoosier State Medical Association Meeting 1956, Indiana Historical Society, M0510.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/dc018/id/3389/rec/5
Lincoln High School, Evansville
<p>Lincoln High School in Evansville was built as an exclusively African American high school in Evansville, Indiana.[1][2] When classes were first held in 1928, the Lincoln hosted grades K-12, with an enrollment of 300. Students were bussed in from surrounding Vanderburg, Posey, and Warrick counties to attend Lincoln, including the communities of Mt. Vernon, Rockport, Newburgh, and Grandview.[3]</p>
<p>The school included 22 classrooms, a gym, auditorium, sewing room, and other vocational training areas. However, the school did not contain a cafeteria. Compared to white schools at the time, Lincoln received less funding and students had decreased educational opportunities. Despite having a library, the school did not receive enough funding to purchase books. Lincoln’s first librarian, Mrs. Alberta K. McFarland Stevenson stocked the library shelves by collecting used books and monetary donations door-to-door from local residents.[4]</p>
<p>This was not the only inequality experienced by Lincoln students. Discrimination was rampant in Indiana high school sports in the 1930s and early 1940s, directly affecting the successful athletes at Lincoln. African American high school teams in Indiana were not allowed to compete in contact sports with white schools until 1943 when the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) was ordered by the Indiana legislature to open membership to all schools. This order was only six years before state law declared segregation of Indiana schools illegal.</p>
<p>Because Lincoln High School students were excluded from competing with white teams in Indiana, athletes traveled to Gary and Indianapolis to play teams from African American schools (Roosevelt and Crispus Attucks). They also traveled out of state to Dayton, Louisville, Missouri, Nashville, and St. Louis for athletic competitions. George Flowers, who was a member of the school’s track team, recalled “That’s the one time segregation was kind of a fun thing, because it allowed our young men to go to bigger cities.”[5]</p>
<p>Despite the lack of school funding, the teachers were held in high esteem for providing quality education and turning students into respectful young people. Dawn Whitticker, whose mother was a teacher at Lincoln, recounts “The teachers were excellent. They were really strong disciplinarians,” she said. “Even if you were a student who wasn’t as up to speed, they made sure you learned. We were all forced to stay together, even during our entertainment. My teacher would probably see my mother in the grocery store and the beauty shop.” This strong sense of community and the bond between African American residents and teachers created an atmosphere where students wanted to do well and created a Lincoln legacy that continues to this day.[6]</p>
<p>In 1949, Indiana state law opened the doors to all schools for African Americans. However, in many areas of the state there was no mechanism to promote integration while there many policies enacted to continue de facto segregation. Very few Lincoln students integrated to the previously all-white schools.[7] In 1962, the final solely African American class graduated from Lincoln High School, and the school was then converted into a K-8 facility as part of the school corporation’s integration plan.[8] The original Lincoln School building still stands and as of 2020, serves K-8 students.[9] The Lincoln Clark Douglass Alumni Association keeps the legacy of Lincoln High School alive, and as part of their mission they resolve to “encourage high culture, intellectual and moral standards among its members” and “to inspire such traits of character among the African American community members…. and throughout the community at large.”[10]</p>
[1] Nathan Blackford. Gone But Not Forgotten. Evansville Living, 2014. Accessed May 4, 2020. http://www.evansvilleliving.com/articles/gone-but-not-forgotten
[2] Charles E. Loflin & Virginia P. Vornehm-Loflin. Center on the History of the Indianapolis Public Schools. Gary Roosevelt, Indianapolis Attucks, and Evansville Lincoln, 2018. Accessed May 8, 2020.http://vorcreatex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1927-1928-Indianas-1920s-Jim-Crow-high-schools-Gary-Roosevelt-Indianapolis-Attucks-and-Evansville-Lincoln-What-do-they-have-in-common.pdf
[3] Lincoln School. About Us: History. Lincoln Lions, n.d. Accessed May 8, 2020. https://lincoln.evscschools.com/about_us/history
[4] Charles E. Loflin & Virginia P. Vornehm-Loflin.
[5] Chad Lindskog. 57 years after closure, Evansville's Lincoln High School's rich sports history remains. Courier & Press, 2019. Accessed May 8, 2020. https://www.courierpress.com/story/sports/high-school/2019/02/21/evansvilles-lincoln-high-schools-rich-sports-history-remains/2803388002/
[6] Chad Lindskog.
[7] Chad Lindskog.
[8] Evansville Museum. AN OVERVIEW OF THE 1960S IN EVANSVILLE. Evansville Museum, n.d.. https://emuseum.org/blog/an-overview-of-the-1960s-in-evansville
[9] Lincoln School. About Us: History.
[10] Lincoln Clark Douglass Alumni Association, Mission Statement, n.d. https://www.lincolnclarkdouglassaa.org/mission-statement
Student Author: Mary Swartz
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Lincoln High School, attributed to Harley Sheets Collection, Public domain, via Indiana Album
https://indianaalbum.pastperfectonline.com/photo/F194F4A9-4DED-4651-A624-768304442100
Evangeline Harris Merriweather
<p>Evangeline E. Harris was born in 1893 and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, Columbia University, and was an accomplished opera singer at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, before earning her master’s degree in education from Indiana State Normal School, now Indiana State University, in Terre Haute. Harris was a school teacher and music supervisor at various elementary schools in the Terre Haute area.[1] In 1936, she married Charles Merriweather and they remained in Terre Haute. Harris Merriweather continued to teach elementary school and perform as an opera singer both locally and across the nation.[2]</p>
<p>As part of her master’s thesis in the late 1930s, Harris sent out 500 questionnaires to African American elementary school officials throughout the Unites States, asking whether they had access to materials that highlighted the importance of African American culture, African American people of high achievement, or showed African American families. Only a handful of schools had materials that presented African Americans accurately and fairly. In response, she began writing the first of many editions of “Stories for Little Tots”, published in 1940, which was a collection of biographies of important African American individuals, specifically targeted for school-aged children. During this time, she was befriended by Dr. George Washington Carver who helped her promote “Stories for Little Tots”, which featured a biography of Carver.[3]</p>
<p>Harris Merriweather also wrote “A History of Eminent Negroes”, highlighting accomplished African American individuals. Each of her books, including her three-part “The Family” elementary reader series and “Stories for Little Tots”, went on to become highly useful educational tools for African American schools across the nation. Her books were an unprecedented form of literature designed for African American young people. According to Terre Haute resident James Flinn, “All the reading material at that time was written by whites for whites about whites.”[4] In fact, most of the authors writing about African American culture at the time were white as well, creating a skewed perspective and fostering African American stereotypes amongst their readers.</p>
<p>The small number of African American children literature authors in the 1940s had a limited reach and a very small audience, contributing to the prejudice and the self-fulfilling prophecies of the African American children who read of themselves mostly in a negative stereotypical light and portrayed by white authors.[5] One of Merriweather’s former students, Carolyn Roberts, who became a elementary teacher herself, remarked on the importance of Merriweather’s readers. “The first time to open up a book and see an African-American, and see what they had done, was so important.”[6] It was writers such as Harris Merriweather that greatly contributed to the shift in African American children’s literature and education, from harmful prejudiced views to those that inspired hope and motivation amongst young African American readers.</p>
<p>Evangeline suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 57, while still in the prime of her writing, educational, and singing career. Her contributions to African American children’s literature and culture are memorialized by an Indiana Historical Bureau marker on the campus of Indiana State University (formerly Indiana State Normal School).[7]</p>
[1] Mike McCormick. Evangeline Harris Merriweather. Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 2001. Accessed May 4, 2020. https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/WV3_vchs-562 <br />[2] Vigo County Public Library. Evangeline Harris Merriweather Collection, N.D. Accessed May 4, 2020. https://www.vigo.lib.in.us/archives/inventories/aa/merriweather1.php <br />[3] Vigo County Public Library.<br />[4] Mike McCormick. Evangeline Harris Merriweather. <br />[5] Horn Book. The Changing Image of the Black in Children's Literature. The Horn Book, 1975. Accessed May 4, 2020. https://www.hbook.com/?detailStory=the-changing-image-of-the-black-in-childrens-literature <br />[6] Mike McCormick. Evangeline Harris Merriweather. <br />[7] Indiana Historical Bureau. Evangeline E. Harris. IN.gov, 2018. Accessed May 4, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4414.htm
Student Author: Mary Swartz
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Evangeline Harris Merriwether 1949, public domain, via Indiana Album Inc., http://indianaalbum.pastperfectonline.com/photo/82D69F28-E9A9-40A5-BF87-981528434361
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4414.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Aaron Fisher
Aaron Richard Fisher was born on May 14, 1895 in Lyles Station, one of Indiana’s earliest African American settlements. His father, Benjamin, served in the 6th Colored Calvary Regiment in the Union Army during the Civil War.[1] Fisher attended public school in Lyles Station before attending segregated African American Lincoln High School in nearby Princeton. After graduating, Fisher enlisted in the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri in 1911.[2] After training in Texas and Ohio, he was promoted to Corporal. Fisher transferred to New Mexico in 1916, where he and his unit were stationed until the United States entered World War I in 1917. <br /><br />During WWI, the US military maintained segregated white and African American units, both serving under white officers.[3] African American soldiers were usually sent overseas for non-combat roles such as building roads and railroads, repairing ships, and grave digging. The Indianapolis Freeman stated that “The cry has gone forth that the Negroes will do the laboring part, while white men carry the guns.”[4] World War I starkly illustrated the need for equal rights, as African Americans were fighting for a nation that treated them as second-class citizens. Freedoms they were fighting for as soldiers were not available to them at home, and instead, African Americans in Indiana and across the country experienced segregation, discrimination, and racial violence. In response to President Wilson’s war declaration address in 1917 that “The world must be made safe for democracy”, the editor of the African American newspaper The Messenger remarked that “We would rather make Georgia safe for the Negro.”[5] <br /><br />The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) Commander General John Pershing approved the African American 92nd and 93rd divisions for combat duty in France. The 92nd would fight under American officers while the 93rd would fight under French command.[6] Fisher, who had been promoted to 1st Sergeant, and then 2nd Lieutenant, was part of the 92nd division in the African American 366th Infantry Regiment. In 1918, Fisher and his unit were sent overseas to St. Nazaire, France. On September 3, Fisher commanded his unit during a German trench raid near Lesseux, France, where he led a counterattack despite being severely wounded.[7][8] After being sent to the hospital for recovery, he would stay in Europe until the end of the war and returned to the US in February 1919.[9] <br /><br />For his bravery and leadership in battle, Fisher was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre with gold star, as an “officer of admirable courage”.[10] He was “among the most decorated American soldiers in WWI” and the most highly decorated WWI African American soldier from Indiana.[11] On March 17, 1919, Fisher was honorably discharged from service with the rank of Captain in the Army Reserve. He reenlisted several months later and was subsequently stationed in the southwest, Hawaii, and the Phillippines.[12] After returning to the US, Fisher was transferred to Wilberforce University in Ohio, the nation’s oldest historically black University owned by African Americans. At Wilberforce, he was an instructor in their ROTC military tactics unit and trained African American officers who would serve in World War II. He lived in Wilberforce until his retirement from the Armed Forces on December 31, 1947.[13] Fisher moved to Xenia, Ohio, and worked at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base until his retirement in 1965. Fisher passed away on November 22, 1985, at the age of 90.[14]
[1] McBride, Connor. “Aaron R. Fisher.” United States World War I Centennial Commission. Accessed April 10, 2020. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] “Hometown Boys from Indiana: Information and Statistics About WWI Service Members.” American Battle Monuments Commission, 2018. Accessed April 14, 2020. <br />[4] Thornborough, Emma Lou. Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis. Pp. 45. <br />[5] Williams, Chad. African-American Veterans Hoped Their Service in World War I Would Secure Their Rights at Home. It Didn’t. https://time.com/5450336/african-american-veterans-wwi/. Accessed April 16, 2020. <br />[6] McBride, Connor.<br />[7] Ibid. <br />[8] Thornborough, Emma Lou. Pp. 45. <br />[9] McBride, Connor.<br />[10] Ibid. <br />[11] "Hometown Boys from Indiana: Information and Statistics About WWI Service Members.”<br />[12] McBride, Connor. <br />[13] Ibid. <br />[14] Reike, Greg. “Aaron Richard ‘Cap’ Fisher.” Find A Grave. Accessed April 16 2020.
Student Author: Robin Johnson
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Aaron R. Fisher, attributed to U.S. Army, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aaron_R._Fisher.jpg
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/424.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Willard B. Ransom
Willard B. (Mike) Ransom was born in Indianapolis in 1916. He attended Crispus Attucks High School, newly opened as an African American high school in 1927. As an athlete at Attucks, he and his teammates were barred from competition against white schools by the Indiana High School Athletic Association.[1] Ransom graduated from Talladega College in Alabama in 1932 with summa cum laude honors and earned his Juris Doctorate from Harvard in 1939, as the only African American in his law school graduating class.[2]<br /><br />Just a few years after earning his law degree, Willard Ransom was appointed Indiana’s assistant attorney general. Only two months into his four-year term, he was drafted into the US Army in 1941. Ransom was eventually deployed to Belgium and France, and worked in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Office. During his service, Ransom, along with other African American service men, experienced “blatantly discriminatory and humiliating treatment.” He recalls, “We were fighting discrimination. Black officers couldn’t go into officers’ clubs, enlisted men couldn’t go into the noncommissioned officers’ clubs.”[3] <br /><br />After the war, he returned to Indianapolis where he experienced prejudice and discrimination, as nearly all downtown restaurants, hotels, theaters, and other public places were segregated and closed to African Americans, which he considered an “overt slap in the face.”[4] During a 1991 interview, he said, “the contrast between having served in the Army and running into this discrimination and barriers at home was a discouraging thing.”[5] In order to fight the racial discrimination he and others experienced in Indiana in the 1940s, Ransom reorganized the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served five terms as its chairman. He served as an Indiana delegate at the 1948 Progressive Party national convention, befitting his aggressive and relatively radical approach to leadership in the 1940s Civil Rights movement. Ransom organized local protests against businesses, before many of the marches and sit-ins that took place in the South.[6] He organized small sit-ins at a White Castle hamburger stand, drugstores, department stores, and restaurants.[7] He led over 50 protesters at a sit-in at the segregated bus station restaurant at the former Traction Terminal Building in downtown Indianapolis. Ransom recalls, “There was a big restaurant there, and there were so many blacks traveling on buses. We were insulted in that place because no one would serve us.”[8] His efforts to end segregation through protests and sit-ins lead to several arrests for Ransom.[9] <br /><br />Ransom worked closely with NAACP’s chief lawyer (and future Supreme Court Justice) Thurgood Marshall in the late 1940s regarding school desegregation in Indiana. He wrote Marshall in 1948 “we are going to approach the various school boards again with petitions asking abolition of segregated schools….” He was part of a group of lawyers who drafted the “Fair Schools” bill which was passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 1949, legally ended segregated schools in Indiana.[10] The African American Indianapolis Recorder proclaimed “we assert this is the greatest forward stride in democracy made by the Hoosier State since the Civil War.”[11] <br /><br />Willard served as the assistant manager of Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the highly successful and well-known African American-owned cosmetics company, from 1947 to 1954, and then became the general manager until 1971, as well as Trustee of the Walker Estate. After the sale of the Walker Manufacturing Company in 1986, he served as a board member of the Madame C.J. Walker Urban Life Center, a non-profit organization which operated the Walker Building for educational, charitable, and cultural functions benefiting the African American community in Indianapolis.[12] <br />In 1970, Ransom co-founded the Indiana Black Expo and served as chair of the Finance Committee. He served on the board of directors of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, now known as the National Conference for Community and Justice. Ransom helped create the Concerned Ministers of Indianapolis, a group who focused on the integration of African Americans into the business world; in 1993, he received the organization’s Thurgood Marshall Award in 1993 for his dedication to civil rights.[13] Ransom became the first African American director of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and board member of the Merchants National Bank and Trust Company.[14] Ransom was a partner in the Indianapolis law firm Bamberger & Feibleman from 1971 until his death at the age of 79 in November 1995.[15] <br /><br />Willard “Mike” Ransom was recognized on numerous occasions for his influence on Civil Rights in Indiana, and the Hoosier state would have looked very different for African Americans if not for his and his father’s (Freeman Ransom) ceaseless activism and pursuit of equal rights. The family lived in segregated downtown Indianapolis in what is now known as the Ransom Place Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, honoring the family for their contributions to Civil Rights in Indiana.[16]
[1] Madison, James. “’Gone to Another Meeting’:Willard B. Ransom and Early Civil Rights Leadership”. Indiana Magazine of History, 114 (September 2018).<br />[2] Jones, Jae. Willard Ransom: Pioneer in Civil Rights Movement in Indianapolis.December 9, 2017. Accessed February 12, 2019.<br />[3] St. Clair, James E. and Linda C. Gugin. Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State.Indiana Historical Society Press. 2015. Accessed March 9, 2020. <br />[4] Madison, James.<br />[5] Henry Hedgepath, “Who’s Who,” The Indianapolis Recorder(1982), 3.<br />[6] Ransom family papers show attorneys' work to end discrimination.March 9, 2016. Accessed February 12,2019. <br />[7] Madison, James.<br />[8] Hedgepath, “Who’s Who,” 3.<br />[9] Madison, James.<br />[10] Madison, James.<br />[11] Indianapolis Recorder,March 12, 1949.<br />[12] Madison, James<br />[13] Pattillo, Rebecca. Ransom Family Papers, 1912-2011, 4. Indiana Historical Society. December 2015. Accessed March 9, 2020. <br />[14] Pattillo, Rebecca. Ransom Family Papers, 1912-2011, 4. Indiana Historical Society. December 2015. Accessed March 9, 2020. <br />[15] Pattillo, Rebecca. Ransom Family Papers, 1912-2011, 4.Indiana Historical Society. December 2015. Accessed March 9, 2020. <br />[16] Ransom Place Historic District, National Park Service. Accessed March 13, 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/92001650.
Student Authors: Melody Seberger and Robin Johnson
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Willard Ransom, Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p0303/id/180/rec/2
<a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/92001650" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/216.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Madam C.J. Walker
<p><span data-contrast="auto">Madam C.J. Walker, originally named Sarah Breedlove, was born </span><span data-contrast="auto">in</span><span data-contrast="auto"> 1867 in Louisiana to former slaves.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> At the age of </span><span data-contrast="auto">seven</span><span data-contrast="auto">, she became an orphan and lived with her older sister Louvenia</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">1]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Breedlove married Moses McWilliams at the age of 14 and </span><span data-contrast="auto">in 1885, </span><span data-contrast="auto">they had a daughter Lelia</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Widowed </span><span data-contrast="auto">two years later, </span><span data-contrast="auto">Sarah </span><span data-contrast="auto">Breedlove McWilliams and her daughter moved to St. Louis, where she worked as a laundress and studied at night school.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">2]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">Breedlove McWilliams</span><span data-contrast="auto"> suffered from hair loss, which inspired</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">experiment</span><span data-contrast="auto">ation</span><span data-contrast="auto"> with homemade hair care remedies, resulting in products that promoted </span><span data-contrast="auto">healthy </span><span data-contrast="auto">hair growth.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">3]<br /></span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">In 1906, while living in Denver, Colorado, Breedlove McWilliams married </span><span data-contrast="auto">Charles Joseph</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Walker</span><span data-contrast="auto">, who worked in advertising</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">She became known as Madam C.J. Walker and</span><span data-contrast="auto"> decided to sell her</span><span data-contrast="auto"> own hair care</span><span data-contrast="auto"> products under </span><span data-contrast="auto">her new moniker</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">4]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">The </span><span data-contrast="auto">new name</span><span data-contrast="auto"> evoked a French flair </span><span data-contrast="auto">to make her products more impressive to potential buyers</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">as opposed to a</span><span data-contrast="auto"> “condescending name like ‘Aunt Sarah</span><span data-contrast="auto">.</span><span data-contrast="auto">’”[</span><span data-contrast="auto">5]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">In 1908, </span><span data-contrast="auto">while living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, </span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker founded Lelia College, named for her daughter, which offered a course in her</span><span data-contrast="auto"> hair care and beauty</span><span data-contrast="auto"> methods</span><span data-contrast="auto"> to aspiring “hair culturists”</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">6]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">In 1910, </span><span data-contrast="auto">the Walkers </span><span data-contrast="auto">moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she opened a laboratory and a beauty school. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker and her husband </span><span data-contrast="auto">divorced</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in 1912.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">7]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">The Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company included a factory, and along with the laboratory and beauty school, </span><span data-contrast="auto">manufactured </span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker’s beauty products and train</span><span data-contrast="auto">ed</span><span data-contrast="auto"> her nationwide sales force of “beauty</span><span data-contrast="auto"> culturi</span><span data-contrast="auto">sts” using the “The Walker System”. </span><span data-contrast="auto">With </span><span data-contrast="auto">the factory employees</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and</span><span data-contrast="auto"> thousands of </span><span data-contrast="auto">African American women sales </span><span data-contrast="auto">agents across the country, Walker ran a successful </span><span data-contrast="auto">line of </span><span data-contrast="auto">cosmetic and </span><span data-contrast="auto">hair care products that not only promoted hair growth, but hair </span><span data-contrast="auto">and skin </span><span data-contrast="auto">beautification as well</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Her agents made sales and educated customers on the importance of hygiene and presenting oneself in a </span><span data-contrast="auto">clean </span><span data-contrast="auto">and </span><span data-contrast="auto">proper </span><span data-contrast="auto">manner.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">8]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> In 1916, her agents organized into the National Beauty Culturist and Benevolent Association of Madame C.J. Walker Agents</span><span data-contrast="auto">, </span><span data-contrast="auto">later </span><span data-contrast="auto">known as</span><span data-contrast="auto"> the Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America</span><span data-contrast="auto">, holding annual conventions</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">9]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker encouraged her sales agents to give back to improve society, </span><span data-contrast="auto">giving</span><span data-contrast="auto"> rewards to the sales agents </span><span data-contrast="auto">who made the largest philanthropic contributions in their African American communities. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker</span><span data-contrast="auto"> was </span><span data-contrast="auto">an active philanthropist and social activist in </span><span data-contrast="auto">Indianapolis. </span><span data-contrast="auto">In all areas of her life, she strove for and demanded</span><span data-contrast="auto"> equal rights,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> including</span><span data-contrast="auto"> filing suit against</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Isis Theater </span><span data-contrast="auto">for charging a higher admission rate (25 cents vs. 15 cents) </span><span data-contrast="auto">for African American patrons</span><span data-contrast="auto">. She</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">protested </span><span data-contrast="auto">segregation within the military during World War I</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and advocated for an African American army officer training camp</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">10]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Madam Walker </span><span data-contrast="auto">donated </span><span data-contrast="auto">to multiple </span><span data-contrast="auto">African American </span><span data-contrast="auto">charities</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and community organizations</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in Indianapolis </span><span data-contrast="auto">such as the Senate Avenue YMCA,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> the Bethel AME Church, Flanner House, and Alpha Home. </span><span data-contrast="auto">On a nationwide level, she contributed to campaigns to stop </span><span data-contrast="auto">lynching</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and supported the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was newly- formed in 1909.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">11]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":720,"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">Throughout her life, Madam C.J. Walker worked tirelessly to create a better life for herself</span><span data-contrast="auto">,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> her family</span><span data-contrast="auto">, an</span><span data-contrast="auto">d her African American community in a segregated Indianapolis</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">The</span><span data-contrast="auto"> hard work</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and hardship</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">took its toll</span><span data-contrast="auto">, and she</span><span data-contrast="auto"> developed </span><span data-contrast="auto">health issues</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in her </span><span data-contrast="auto">late </span><span data-contrast="auto">forties</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">12]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">In</span><span data-contrast="auto"> April 1919, </span><span data-contrast="auto">she </span><span data-contrast="auto">passed away on May 25, 1919 at the age of 51.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">13]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">At the time of her death, she was worth an estimated $600,000 (over $6 million in 2020 dollars), and was considered the wealthiest African American woman in America.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">14]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">She is often lauded as the “America’s first self-made female millionaire."[15]<br /></span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">The legacy of Madam C.J. Walker </span><span data-contrast="auto">is exemplified</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">in the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> personal</span><span data-contrast="auto"> pride</span><span data-contrast="auto">, entrepreneurship, and </span><span data-contrast="auto">sense of </span><span data-contrast="auto">civic </span><span data-contrast="auto">responsibility</span><span data-contrast="auto"> that her products, business, and personal life instilled in</span><span data-contrast="auto"> African American</span><span data-contrast="auto">s, especially</span><span data-contrast="auto"> African American</span><span data-contrast="auto"> women</span><span data-contrast="auto">,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> throughout the country</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">After Walker’s death, her daughter took over the </span><span data-contrast="auto">Walker Manufacturing Company</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and in 1927, moved the factory and headquarters to the newly built Walker Building</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in Indianapolis. The building included</span><span data-contrast="auto"> a ballroom, theater, hair salon, </span><span data-contrast="auto">other</span><span data-contrast="auto"> public</span><span data-contrast="auto"> spaces</span><span data-contrast="auto">,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">and became an African American community cultural center.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">16]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> The Walker Building</span><span data-contrast="auto">, </span><span data-contrast="auto">and the surroundi</span><span data-contrast="auto">ng Indiana Avenue </span><span data-contrast="auto">neighborhood,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> became a hub for the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> African American arts, culture, and jazz scene in </span><span data-contrast="auto">segregated Indianapolis through the 1960s.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">A tangible reminder of her legacy,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">The</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Madame C.J.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Walker Building </span><span data-contrast="auto">was listed in</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">the </span><span data-contrast="auto">National Register for Historic Places in 198</span><span data-contrast="auto">0 and was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1991</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">17]</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> </span></p>
<span>[1] </span><span>Moore, Wilma, Alan Rowe, Lyndsey Blair, Rebecca Pattillo, and Maire Gurevitz. </span><span>“</span><span>Madam C.J. Walker Papers Addition, 1911</span><span>-</span><span>2005 (Bulk1950s</span><span>-</span><span>80s).</span><span>”</span><span>Indiana Historical Society. December 2017. Accessed March 12, 2020.<br /></span><span>[2] </span><span>Ibid.<br /></span><span>[3] </span><span>Latham Jr., Charles. “Madam C.J. Walker & Company.” </span><span>Traces</span><span>1989, Vol. 1, No.3, pp. 29.<br />[</span><span>4] </span><span>Michals, Debra. Madam C.J. Walker. National Women’s History Museum, 2015. Accessed March 12, 2020. <br /></span><span>[5] </span><span>Moore, Wilma, Alan Rowe, Lyndsey Blair, Rebecca Pattillo, and Maire Gurevitz. <br /></span><span>[6] </span><span>Mo</span><span>ore, Wilma, Alan Rowe, Lyndsey Blair, Rebecca Pattillo, and Maire Gurevitz. <br /></span><span>[7] </span><span>Ibid.<br />[8] Latham Jr., Charles. pp. 29.<br />[9] Ibid, 30-31.<br />[10] Ibid, 31.<br />[11] Latson, Jennifer “How America’s First Self-Made Female Millionaire Built Her Fortune”, accessed March 15, 2020.<br />[12] Latham Jr., Charles.pp. 32. <br />[13] Ibid.<br />[14] “Madam C.J. Walker”. The Philanthropy Hall of Fame. Philanthropy Roundtable, accessed March 13, 2020.<br />[15] Latson, Jennifer.<br />[16] Latham Jr., Charles. pp. 32.<br />[17] National Register of Historic Places, Madame C.J. Walker Building, accessed March 13, 2020.<br /><br /></span>
Studen Authors: Robin Johnson and Sydney Schlock
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Madam C.J. Walker, attributed to Scurlock Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madam_CJ_Walker_face_circa_1914.jpg
<a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/62762a1d-b804-482f-84c0-e4d5929dad2c?branding=NRHP" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>
Charles Gordone
<p><span data-contrast="auto">Charles Gordone was born on October 12, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Born Charles Edward Fleming, he took the </span><span data-contrast="auto">sur</span><span data-contrast="auto">name </span><span data-contrast="auto">Gordon</span><span data-contrast="auto"> when his mother remarried. </span><span data-contrast="auto">When he was two years old,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> he and his family moved to his mother’s hometown of Elkhart, Indiana.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> As an African American growing up in Indiana in the 1930s, Gordon experienced discrimination both because of his race (white children would not associate with him) and</span><span data-contrast="auto"> due to</span><span data-contrast="auto"> cultural norms (</span><span data-contrast="auto">other </span><span data-contrast="auto">African Americans shunned the family because they lived on the “white” side of Elkhart).[</span><span data-contrast="auto">1]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> He</span><span data-contrast="auto"> graduate</span><span data-contrast="auto">d</span><span data-contrast="auto"> from Elkhart High School in 1941</span><span data-contrast="auto">.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">I</span><span data-contrast="auto">n 1942, Gordon joined the U.S. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Air Force</span><span data-contrast="auto"> after spending a semester at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[</span><span data-contrast="auto">2]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> After two years of service, Gordon returned to</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Los Angeles</span><span data-contrast="auto"> to study music and drama.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> It was there that he first experienced racial discrimination in the performing arts as “I </span><span data-contrast="auto">was </span><span data-contrast="auto">always cast in subservient or stereotypical roles.”[</span><span data-contrast="auto">3]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">These experiences with</span><span data-contrast="auto"> racial</span><span data-contrast="auto"> discrimination in Elk</span><span data-contrast="auto">h</span><span data-contrast="auto">art and Los Angeles would influence the rest of his career as he worked for civil rights in the performing arts</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and theatre industries</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-contrast="auto">After graduating from California State University, he relocated to New York City to pursue an acting career. </span><span data-contrast="auto">It was then that he added an “e” to his surname</span><span data-contrast="auto">, to become Gordone,</span><span data-contrast="auto"> to avoid confusion with another </span><span data-contrast="auto">actor </span><span data-contrast="auto">with the same name.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">4]</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":720,"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">In the 1950s and 1960s, Gordone became a director in addition to acting. He directed productions such <em>Rebels and Bugs (1958), Peer Gynt (1959), Faust (1959), Tobacco Road (1960), </em>and <em>Detective Story (1960)</em>.[5] From 1961 to 1966, he performed in the play <em>The Blacks: A Clown Show</em>, directed by Jean Genet, with </span><span data-contrast="auto">other </span><span data-contrast="auto">talented</span><span data-contrast="auto"> African American</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">actors such as </span><span data-contrast="auto">James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou, and Cecily Tyson.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">6]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> It was this play, according to Gordon</span><span data-contrast="auto">e</span><span data-contrast="auto">, that changed his life</span><span data-contrast="auto">. The</span><span data-contrast="auto"> play’s theme of African Americans waging war against the white power structure and becoming the oppressor instead of the oppressed enabled Gordone, in his own words, to acknowledge the “hatred and fear I had inside me about being black”</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">7]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">He</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">founded a theatre in Queens, New York and in 1962, he founded the Committee for the Employment of Negroes. This organization helped increase </span><span data-contrast="auto">career opportunities in theatre for</span><span data-contrast="auto"> African Americans. </span><span data-contrast="auto">He </span><span data-contrast="auto">organized </span><span data-contrast="auto">protest</span><span data-contrast="auto">s against</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Broadway theaters</span><span data-contrast="auto"> to provide</span><span data-contrast="auto"> better opportunities for young African American actors.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">8]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">He </span><span data-contrast="auto">was </span><span data-contrast="auto">also involved in a committee for the Congress on Racial Equality. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Gordone to the Commission on Civil Disorders. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">Inspired by his personal experiences, he wrote what would become his </span><span data-contrast="auto">most famous play, </span><i><span data-contrast="auto">No Place to be Somebody</span></i><span data-contrast="auto">.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> It opened in May of 1969 at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">9]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">Set in the Civil Rights-era, t</span><span data-contrast="auto">he play highlights racial and cultural pressures in context of the characters</span><span data-contrast="auto">’</span><span data-contrast="auto"> ambitions and limitations because of their race.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">10] </span><span data-contrast="auto">The play would go </span><span data-contrast="auto">on to win a Pulitzer Prize for D</span><span data-contrast="auto">rama, </span><span data-contrast="auto">making</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">the play the first off-Broadway production to win</span><span data-contrast="auto"> a Pultizer</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and making </span><span data-contrast="auto">Gordone the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> first African American to win </span><span data-contrast="auto">a Pulitzer for drama</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">11]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":720,"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">Gordone continue</span><span data-contrast="auto">d</span><span data-contrast="auto"> his </span><span data-contrast="auto">civil rights activism</span><span data-contrast="auto"> throughout the </span><span data-contrast="auto">rest of his career.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> In 1981, he helped form The American Stage, </span><span data-contrast="auto">a theatre production company </span><span data-contrast="auto">with the purpose of casting minorities into non-traditional rules, such as</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">starring</span><span data-contrast="auto"> two Mexican-American actors as George and Lenny</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in </span><i><span data-contrast="auto">Of Mice and Men</span></i><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">12]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto"> In 198</span><span data-contrast="auto">7</span><span data-contrast="auto">, he </span><span data-contrast="auto">began teaching theatre and theatre history </span><span data-contrast="auto">at Texas A&M University</span><span data-contrast="auto">, advancing racial diversity through theatre at the predominantly white campus</span><span data-contrast="auto">. He passed away </span><span data-contrast="auto">in</span><span data-contrast="auto">1995 at the age of 70 in College Station, Texas. <br /></span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">In 2009, t</span><span data-contrast="auto">he Indiana </span><span data-contrast="auto">Historical Bureau erected a marker in front of </span><span data-contrast="auto">Gordeon’s</span><span data-contrast="auto"> hometown </span><span data-contrast="auto">Elkhart Public Library to highlight</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and honor</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">his </span><span data-contrast="auto">achievements and contributions to civil rights and theatre.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">13]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":720,"335559740":480}"> </span></p>
<span>[1] </span><span>Taylor, John. "Charles Gordone: Finding His Place To Be Somebody." The Indiana History Blog. October 20, </span><span>2017. Accessed April 12, 2019. <br /></span><span>[2] </span><span>Tolly, Victor. "Charles Gordone (1925</span><span>-</span><span>1995) • BlackPast." BlackPast. December 07, </span><span>2007. Accessed April 12, </span><span>2019. <br /></span><span>[3] </span><span>Taylor, John. <br /></span><span>[4] </span><span>"Charles Gordone, Actor, Playwright, Pursued Multi</span><span>-</span><span>racial Theater and Racial</span><span>Unity." African American Registry. </span><span>Accessed April 12, 2019. <br />[5] "Gordone, Charles." Notable Black American Men, Book II. Encyclopedia.com.(April 12, 2019). <br />[6] African American Registry. <br />[7] Taylor, John.<br />[8] Ibid.<br />[9] Tolly, Victor. <br />[10] Taylor, John.<br />[11] Tolly, Victor.<br />[12] Taylor, John.<br />[13] "Charles Gordone." Indiana Historical Bureau: Charles Gordone. Accessed April 12, 2019. <br /></span>
Student Authors: Robin Johnson and Sarah Smith
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Pulitzer Prizes, attributed to Daniel Chester French, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pulitzer_Prizes_(medal).png
<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4332.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a></div>
Samuel Plato
<p><span data-contrast="auto">Samuel Plato was an African American architect that lived</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and worked</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in Marion, Indiana between 190</span><span data-contrast="auto">2</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and 1921. He was born in Alabama in 1882 when Jim Crow laws legalized segregation and</span><span data-contrast="auto"> often</span><span data-contrast="auto"> incited</span><span data-contrast="auto"> racial violence. </span><span data-contrast="auto">He</span><span data-contrast="auto"> broke </span><span data-contrast="auto">racial barriers by</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">graduating from</span><span data-contrast="auto"> State University Normal School in Louisville</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">in 1902.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">1]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma, an African American fraternity. He then completed a program in architecture with International Correspondence Schools.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">2]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559740":480}"> <br /> <br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">Plato moved to Marion</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in 1902 to work as an architect, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan recorded around half a million of members in Indiana</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">3]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> He quickly found support from</span><span data-contrast="auto"> wealthy Marion</span><span data-contrast="auto"> business owners John Schaumleffel and </span><span data-contrast="auto">J. </span><span data-contrast="auto">Wood</span><span data-contrast="auto">row</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Wilson.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">4] </span>Plato<span data-contrast="auto"> worked</span><span data-contrast="auto"> to open up building trade unions</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Marion to </span><span data-contrast="auto">African American </span><span data-contrast="auto">workers, </span><span data-contrast="auto">who were previously excluded from the unions</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">5]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">Plato</span><span data-contrast="auto"> was the first African American</span><span data-contrast="auto"> architect</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">to acquire a </span><span data-contrast="auto">government </span><span data-contrast="auto">contract to build a post office</span><span data-contrast="auto">, and during </span><span data-contrast="auto">his career, he would build </span><span data-contrast="auto">38 post offices across the country</span><span data-contrast="auto">.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">6]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> He promoted social progress in a white-dominated field by hiring both black and white workers on his projects</span><span data-contrast="auto">, creating training and jobs for African Americans.</span><span data-contrast="auto">[</span><span data-contrast="auto">7]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">His most notable work</span><span data-contrast="auto">s in Indiana</span><span data-contrast="auto"> included the J. Woodrow Wilson House, </span><span data-contrast="auto">completed </span><span data-contrast="auto">in 1922. This 15-room mansion, located in Marion, was built for business owner J. Woodrow Wilson. It </span><span data-contrast="auto">has also been</span><span data-contrast="auto"> known as the Hostess House and the Wilson-Vaughan House.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">8]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">Plato designed the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Second Baptist Church in Bloomington</span><span data-contrast="auto"> which</span><span data-contrast="auto"> opened in 1913 and was “the first church built of stone by African Americans in Indiana.”[</span><span data-contrast="auto">9]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">He also designed the</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Swallow-Robin dormitory at Taylor University in Upland. This building was </span><span data-contrast="auto">slated for demolition</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in 1986 until it was found that Plato was the architect.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">10]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">His</span><span data-contrast="auto"> success </span><span data-contrast="auto">as </span><span data-contrast="auto">an architect and </span><span data-contrast="auto">his </span><span data-contrast="auto">f</span><span data-contrast="auto">ight for equality in the business sector brought him fame</span><span data-contrast="auto"> throughout Indiana.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> I</span><span data-contrast="auto">n August 1913, the </span><span data-contrast="auto">Indianapolis </span><span data-contrast="auto">African American newspaper </span><span data-contrast="auto">from Indianapolis</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><i><span data-contrast="auto">The Freeman </span></i><span data-contrast="auto">described Plato as a “colored man engaged in business (…), a contractor, who has built some of the finest houses in Marion.”[</span><span data-contrast="auto">11]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":708,"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">In the early 1920s, Plato returned to Louisville, Kentucky to continue his architectural career. While there, Plato built the Temple AME Zion Church[</span><span data-contrast="auto">12]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and the Virginia Avenue Colored School[</span><span data-contrast="auto">13]</span><span data-contrast="auto">, both on the National Register for Historic Places.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">During World War</span><span data-contrast="auto"> II</span><span data-contrast="auto">, Plato moved back to Alabama.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">14]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> During this time, he was one of the few black contractors to build federal housing projects.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">15]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> His work was acknowledged and rewarded by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943 while she was on an inspection tour of </span><span data-contrast="auto">federal dormitories for war </span><span data-contrast="auto">workers in Washington, D.C.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">16]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Plato revolutionized the architecture field </span><span data-contrast="auto">by helping to </span><span data-contrast="auto">end racial discrimination</span><span data-contrast="auto"> in architecture and the building trades</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":708,"335559740":480}"> <br /><br /></span><span data-contrast="auto">His projects changed the face of Marion</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and Indiana</span><span data-contrast="auto">. </span><i><span data-contrast="auto">The Freeman, </span></i><span data-contrast="auto">declared</span><span data-contrast="auto">, “There is no more successful contractor in Grant County, yes, I dare say Indiana, than Mr. Plato.”[</span><span data-contrast="auto">17]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> Two of his Indiana buildings, the Wilson-Vaughan home in Marion[</span><span data-contrast="auto">18]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> and Second Baptist Church in Bloomington[</span><span data-contrast="auto">19]</span><span data-contrast="auto"> are on the National Register of Historic Places.</span><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><span data-contrast="auto">He is honored with an Indiana Historical Bureau marker in Marion that emphasizes his work sec</span><span data-contrast="auto">uring equal rights for African American workers in the building t</span><span data-contrast="auto">rades.[</span><span data-contrast="auto">20]</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559731":708,"335559740":480}"> </span></p>
<span>[1] </span><span>“Plato, Samuel M.,” in</span><span>Encyclopedia of Louisville</span><span>, edited by John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of </span><span>Kentucky, 2001), </span><span>P.</span><span>708<br /></span><span>[2] </span><span>Bogert, Pen. “Samuel M. Plato: Building a Dream.” The Filson Historical Society. Accessed February 26, 2020.</span><span><br /></span><span>[3] </span><span>Jon Charles Smith,</span><span>The Architecture of Samuel M. Plato: The Marion Years, Grant County Projects, 1902</span><span>-</span><span>1921. </span><span>P.13<br /></span><span>[4] </span><span>Kielisch, Erik (March 4, 2005), "Plato's Influence Remains on </span><span>Campus: Works of Swallow Robin's Architect </span><span>Comes to the Archives",</span><span>The Echo: The Taylor University's School Newspaper</span><span>, Upland, IN, p.1 <br />[</span><span>5] </span><span>Bogert, Pen. <br /></span><span>[6] </span><span>Ibid. <br />[</span><span>7] </span><span>”Samuel Plato.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed February 27, 2020.<br />[8] Hostess House. “Our Story.” Accessed February 26, 2020. <br />[9] "Our History." Second Baptist Church. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br />[10] Duke, Serena, Rachel Elwood, and David Kaspar. ”Finding Plato.” Taylor: A Magazine for Taylor University Alumni and Friends (Summer 2004). Taylor University. P.24.<br />[11] “Samuel M. Plato,”The Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), 9 August 1913<br />[12] Broadway Temple AME Zion Church. National Register for Historic Places. National Park Service. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br />[13] Virginia Avenue Colored School. National Register for Historic Places. National Park Service. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br />[14] Bogert, Pen. “Samuel M. Plato: Building a Dream.” The Filson Historical Society. Accessed February 26, 2020. <br />[15] “Plato, Samuel M.,” inEncyclopedia of Louisville, edited by John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001)<br />[16] ”First Lady inspects war worker’s homes.” Library of Congress. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br />[17] “Samuel M. Plato,”The Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), August 9, 1913<br />[18] J. Woodrow Wilson House. National Register for Historic Places, National Park Service. Accessed February 26, 2020. <br />[19] Second Baptist Church. National Register for Historic Places, National Park Service. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br />[20] ”Samuel Plato.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed February 27, 2020. <br /></span>
Student Authors: Emma Guichon and Robin Johnson
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
J. Woodrow Wilson House, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J._Woodrow_Wilson_House.jpg
<a href="https://www.hostesshouse.org/our-story" target="_blank" rel="noopener">J. Woodrow Wilson House</a><br /><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/95001108" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/95001108">National Register of Historic Places: Second Baptist Church</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4184.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href=" https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/80001596 " target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places: Temple Zion AME Church</a>
Reverend Lester K. Jackson, St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church
<p>Reverend Lester K. Jackson, who served at the St. Paul Baptist church in Gary, Indiana, was a twentieth century Civil Rights leader known for his outspoken nature in all matters related to racial equality. Jackson, like many Civil Rights leaders, focused his efforts on areas of discrimination both locally and throughout the country. His drive and ambition helped bring about multiple Civil Rights advancements in the post-World War II era.</p>
<p>In 1946, Jackson worked tirelessly on a court case alongside the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to overturn law that prohibited African Americans from swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. This case was tried all the way to the Supreme Court and was a major victory for Jackson and the early Civil Rights movement.<span>[1]</span></p>
<p>In Gary, Jackson fought for the integration of Marquette Park.<span>[2]</span> In 1949, he endorsed an organization called “Beachhead for Democracy”, organizing a march from Gary City Hall to Marquette Park to commemorate the anniversary of black troops landing at Salerno Beach, Italy during WWII.<span>[3]</span> Gary mayor, Eugene Swartz, although agreeing with the notion that African Americans had the “right to use all city facilities,” refused to let police protect the demonstration.<span>[4]</span> Reverend Jackson called out businesses and other organizations within the city for their racist and discriminatory policies.<span>[5]</span> Jackson forced the Gary Transit Company to hire black conductors and motormen.<span>[6]</span> He would help to integrate the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), public beaches, and all public transportation. Jackson and the St. Paul Missionary Church fought for equality and justice in Gary, and “it was [their] integral efforts to improve employment opportunities and living conditions for African Americans and the Civil Rights struggles in the City of Gary that many whites in the community literally had problems with.”<span>[7]</span></p>
<p>Jackson’s efforts in Gary put him in a national spotlight, especially with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with whom Jackson had met with other African American ministers of the period to discuss their movement toward equality. He corresponded with other leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy, and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Jackson would congratulate or criticize these leaders for their success or failure on Civil Rights matters. In his letter to President Johnson, dated March 12, 1965, he criticized the President for his actions toward Vietnam and his lack of attention for his own citizens being beaten and segregated in the South. Jackson urges the President to take action for the people and not to turn a blind eye to domestic affairs.<span>[8]</span></p>
<p>Jackson communicated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in January 1966, inviting Dr. King to speak at a service for St. Paul Missionary Church’s new building. Jackson exemplifies his nature in these letters, very outspoken regarding all matters of civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. supported this testament at a banquet honoring Jackson in 1973, referring to him as “the Daddy of the militant civil rights movement”<span>[9]</span> Many would consider Jackson just that, an outspoken leader, militant when he deemed necessary, calculated in his efforts, and relentless in his never-ending battle for civil liberties and equal rights.</p>
Jackson passed away on March 2, 1977. He lived a life dedicated to his church, his people, and defending civil rights for all. Jackson was relentless in his Civil Rights efforts and his actions impacted generations of African Americans.
<p></p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><span></span></a></p>
[1] “Obituary” March 1977. Accessed April 8, 2019. <br />[2] Indiana Landmarks. “The Many Surprises of Gary’s Marquette Park. Accessed February 14, 2020. <br />[3] Lane, James B. ""The Old Prophet" Reverend L.K. Jackson of Gary, Indiana." Traces, Fall 2017, 29-35. Accessed April 7, 2019. <br />[4] Ibid. <br />[5] Davich, Jerry. “Gary church turns 100, faces new challenge.” Chicago Tribune. March 4, 2016. Accessed February 14, 2020. <br />[6] Lane, James B. ""The Old Prophet" Reverend L.K. Jackson of Gary, Indiana." Traces, Fall 2017, Page 35. Accessed April 7, 2019. <br />[7] Woodson-Wray, Carmen M. “St. Paul Missionary Baptis continues 100th Anniversary events in August”. Accessed February 19, 2020. <br />[8] Jackson, Lester K. Letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson. March 12, 1965. Accessed April 8, 2019 <br />[9] Lane, James B. ""The Old Prophet" Reverend L.K. Jackson of Gary, Indiana." Traces, Fall 2017, Page 35. Accessed April 7, 2019.
Student Authors: Jake Bailey and Robin Johnson
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Marquette Park Pavilion (Gary, Indiana), attributed to chicagogeek, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marquette_Park_Pavilion_(Gary,_Indiana).jpg
H. Theo. Tatum, Principal Gary Roosevelt High School
Harbart Theodore Tatum, known as H. Theo. Tatum, was born January 18, 1894 in Columbus, Texas. At the age of 15, he graduated as valedictorian of his class at Charlton-Pollard High School in Beaumont, Texas.[1] He continued his education at Wiley College, then Columbia University where he graduated with a Master of Arts in Educational Administration, with post-graduate study at the University of Chicago.[2] Tatum was first a teacher and later vice-principal of McDonough High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. <br /><br />In 1925, he moved to Gary, Indiana and served as principal of Virginia Street School and East Pulaski High School. In his book,<em> Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary Indiana, 1906-1960</em>, Ronald D. Cohen says that, “Virginia school principal H. Theo Tatum epitomized the mixture of racial pride and integrationist principles.”[3] In 1931, the East Pulaski school had an enrollment of 998 pupils and 27 teachers, and “H. Theodore Tatum, the principal has been here nearly ten years…[4] It is generally conceded by both races that Mr. Tatum has very few equals and no superiors among the administrators of the Gary school system.”[5] Tatum was an administrator in the Gary Public School System for 36 years.[6] Tatum was said to have “represented pride within the black community.”[7]<br /><br />In 1933, H. Theo. Tatum became principal of Roosevelt High School, an all-black school, and he world serve that role for over 20 years. Tatum was “a firm advocate of integration as promoted by the NAACP.”[8] Theodore Roosevelt High School (also popularly known as Gary Roosevelt) was the first and only exclusively African American high school in Gary. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, both for its architecture and design, and for the role it played with the development of the city’s African American community.[9]<br /><br />In 1961, Tatum retired as principal of Gary Roosevelt High School. He served as the local chairman of the National Negro College Fund,”[10] and he had a life membership in the NAACP. He was also the President of United Council of Negro Organizations in Gary.[12]<br /><br />Tatum died at the age of 89 on June 16, 1983. After his death, his son-in-law, Randall Morgan Sr. and former teachers under Tatum, remembered him and his contributions to his community. Morgan stated, “Many local people did not know it, but Mr. Tatum had quite a national reputation. For about 12 years, he taught a graduate course at Hampton Institute during the summer. Black schoolteachers and administrators from all over the country came there to hear him. His classes were filled to capacity, giving lessons on administration. He was one of only a few blacks with that kind of expertise in education.”[13]<br /><br />Mrs. Ida B. King, a teacher under Tatum, said, “he wanted to expose the community to artists of color, to give incentive to graduating seniors and those growing up- since Roosevelt was kindergarten through 12th grade at the time.”[14] She goes on to say that, “young blacks were inspired during those years - in the 1940s and 1950s- to see their own people progress in spite of obstacles that racism tossed in their path.”
[1] “The Service of Worship In Memory of H. Theo. Tatum. June 1983. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] Cohen, Ronald D. <em>Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1960,</em> 98. <br />[4] Bethea, Dennis A."The Colored Group in the Gary School System." <br />[5] Ibid. <br />[6] Woodson-Wray, Carmen M. "Retired Educator H. Theo Tatum to Be Honored." <br />[7] Cohen, Ronald D. <em>Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1960.</em> <br />[8] Abell, Gregg. <em>National Register of Historic Places Nomination Roosevelt High School.</em> <br />[9] Ibid. <br />[10] “H. Theo Tatum Biographical Sketch.” <br />[11] “The Service of Worship In Memory of H. Theo. Tatum. June 1983. <br />[12] “H. Theo. Tatum Personal Information.” <br />[13] Williams, Vernon A. “Tatum a Roosevelt Tradition.” [14] Ibid.
Student Authors: Molly Hollcroft and Robin Johnson
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Theodore Roosevelt High School, Gary Indiana, attributed to T. Tolbert, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Theodore_Roosevelt_High_School,_Gary_Indiana.jpg
<a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/12001059">National Register of Historic Places</a>
Indianapolis ABCs and Washington Park
<p>Baseball has been considered America’s past time for over a century. It has been played by people of all ages and all races since its creation. As more African Americans began to move to Indianapolis around the turn of the twentieth century, many African American athletic teams were created.<span>[1]</span> The Indianapolis ABCs, a professional baseball team established in 1902, was sponsored by the American Brewing Company in its early years.<span>[2]</span> As the team traveled around the country to play exhibition games, the American Brewing Company would supply kegs of beer for fans’ refreshment as a marketing tool.<span>[3]</span> Early on, the ABCs played their home games at Indianapolis’ Northwestern Park which was located at 18th Street and Brighton Boulevard at a field surrounded by wooden grandstands.<span>[4]</span> Most opponents were local, but they did play regional teams on major holidays in the summer.<span>[5]</span> Not only did the ABCs gain the attention of the local African American community, they were also recognized nationally through the coverage of journalist David Wyatt in the <em>Indianapolis Freeman</em>.<span>[6]</span> </p>
<p>In 1914, one of the best African American baseball managers at the time, Charles “C.I.” Taylor, moved to Indianapolis and bought a half-interest in the team.<span>[7]</span> Taylor began to search across the country for some of the best African American baseball players to join the ABCs.<span>[8]</span> As the team improved and traveled, it gained many African American followers and even some white fans.<span>[9]</span> One of the most famous ABCs fans was Indianapolis African American businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker. She attended many games at Northwestern Park and later Washington Park, after the team signed a lease to use the stadium.<span>[10]</span> Washington Park was the site of the first game in the National Negro League in 1920 between the Indianapolis ABCs and the Chicago Giants. The lease with Washington Park allowed the ABCs to play more home games than other teams in their league, which allowed fans around the city more opportunities to see the ABCs in action.<span>[11]</span> </p>
<p>As Ku Klux Klan activity increased in the 1920s, the KKK attempted to suppress opportunities of African American sports teams by making it harder for those teams to receive a stadium lease for ballparks owned by whites.<span>[12]</span> Even though the ABCs were able to secure a stadium lease, there were other instances of discrimination. In 1914, the Hoosier Federals of the whites only Federal League was one of the best teams in the state, and many people wanted to the ABCs and Federals to play in an exhibition game. However, Federals owner W.H. Watkins denied the decision, afraid if his team lost to an African American team it may ruin their reputation as a strong opponent.<span>[13]</span> This decision by white teams not to play the ABCs frustrated many of the ABCs players. In response, Wallace Gordon, the second baseman for the ABCs, wrote a poem to the <em>Indianapolis Ledger</em> where he stresses that he just wanted these teams to give them a chance and meet them “face to face.”<span>[14]<br /><br /></span>In 1920, the Negro National League was formed, with the ABCs one of the original teams.<span>[15]</span> By joining the Negro National League, the team was able play league opponents such as the Kansas City Monarchs, gaining a much larger regional following.<span>[16]</span> The ABCs continued to face discrimination as they traveled across the country. Often times, the ABCs would not be able to find hotel or restaurant accommodations in the cities they visited.<span>[17]</span> The third baseman of the ABCs mentioned how “you could find places, but they wouldn’t serve you and that was rough…. I’d just go somewhere and get me a loaf of bread and a can of sardines…. I don’t know sometimes I wonder myself what kept us going?”<span>[18]</span> </p>
<p>After being one of the top teams in the Negro National League between 1920 and 1923, the ABCs had difficulties in the late 1920s and 1930s.<span>[19]</span> Many of the better ABC players moved to the Eastern Colored League, due to better financial opportunities in larger markets.<span>[20]</span> The Great Depression hit the nation in 1929; the ABCs were also affected by the economic collapse. In order to save money on bus fare, the team began to take road trips in cars loaded with passengers and gear. Sadly, this led to a tragedy in 1935 when six ABCs were in a car that flipped, killing first baseman Carl Lewis.<span>[21]</span> The team continued playing through the Depression, operating at a semi-professional level starting in 1935 because of financial struggles.<span>[22]</span> The Indianapolis ABCs would play their last game in 1940 at Perry Stadium in Indianapolis, later known as Bush Stadium.<span>[23]</span> </p>
Despite the collapse of the ABCs, the team was an influential part of the African American community in Indianapolis. They gave African Americans a home team to cheer for and take pride in for over 30 years. The significance of Washington Park, the home field of the Indianapolis ABCs and the location of the first game of the Negro National League, is commemorated with a historical marker erected by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Society for American Baseball Research, Negro Leagues Research Committee in 2011.<span>[</span><span>24]</span> The ABCs would pave the way for another African American baseball team in the city: the Indianapolis Clowns. The Clowns would play during a time of great change in the world of baseball, namely racial desegregation within Major League Baseball.
<p></p>
<p></p>
[1] Paul Debono, The Indianapolis ABCs (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 1997), 82. <br />[2] Paul Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” Traces 11, no. 4 (Fall 1999):6 <br />[3] Ibid. <br />[4] Geri Strecker and Christopher Baas, “Batter UP! Professional Black Baseball at Indianapolis Ballparks,” Traces 23, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 27.<br />[5] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 6. <br />[6] Debono, Indianapolis ABCs, 44. <br />[7] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 7 <br />[8] Debono, Indianapolis ABCs, 51.<br />[9] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 6. 6.<br />[10] Strecker and Baas, “Batter Up!,” 27-30 <br />[11] Ibid, 20.<br />[12] Ibid, 31.<br />[13] Debono, Indianapolis ABCs, 56 <br />[14] Ibid, 57. <br />[15] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 10 [16] Debono, Indianapolis ABCs, 86 <br />[17] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 11 [18] Ibid. <br />[19] Ibid, 10 <br />[20] Ibid, 11 <br />[21] Ibid. <br />[22] Debono, Indianapolis ABCs, 101.<br />[23] Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” 11. [24] Indiana Historical Bureau, Washington Park Baseball.
Student Authors: Ben Wilson and Robin Johnson<br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:<br />1904 Indianapolis, Indiana photographs, attributed toIndiana State Library and Historical Bureau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1904_Indianapolis,_Indiana_photographs_-_DPLA_-_b744c3ac0fe67b5e9bb59e06dd412500_(page_55)_(cropped)_2.jpg
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4126.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Indianapolis Clowns and Bush Stadium
In the 1920s, America’s past time of baseball was racially segregated across the country. In response to this divide in society, African Americans created the Negro National League in 1920.[1] The league provided a competitive atmosphere and entertaining games for both African American players and fans. The Indianapolis ABCs were one of the original teams of the Negro National League and played their home games in Perry Stadium, later known as Bush Stadium.[2] In the 1930s, the ABCs faced financial issues and played its last game in 1940.[3] <br /><br />As the Indianapolis ABCs declined, a new team began to make a presence in Indianapolis. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Ethiopian Clowns, an independent African American barnstorming team, was known for both show business and baseball. They relocated to Cincinnati in 1943, becoming part of the Negro American League and played games in both Cincinnati and Indianapolis. The team relocated a final time, becoming the Indianapolis Clowns in 1946.[4] What made the Clowns iconic was their comedy routine before and during games.[5] Often times this routine would include using oversized bats and gloves, wearing costumes, and playing “shadow ball” where members of the Clowns would go through the motions of throwing the ball across the field without using the ball.[6] Players such as Reese “Goose” Tatum would make scenes throughout the game, such as praying on their knees near the batter’s box immediately before they were up to bat.[7] <br /><br />The Clowns considered their home field to be Indianapolis’ Perry Stadium, which was renamed Bush Stadium. The stadium was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. During the 1930s and 1940s, Bush Stadium was home to many Negro National and American League teams in addition to the Clowns, including the ABCs, American Giants, Athletics, and Crawfords. <br /><br />The Clowns were also a barnstorming team that traveled across the country to play exhibition games.[8] Despite being known for their jokes and pranks during games, they were also very competitive in the Negro American League.[9] While in the league, the clowns continued to travel around the country and played against African American baseball legends such as Satchel Paige.[10]<br /><br />Similar to other African American teams around the country the Clowns faced many cases of discrimination. While they were traveling they would often not be allowed to enter certain establishments, and had to leave many “sundown towns” before they were forced out by the local authorities.[11] Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier of Major League Baseball in 1947 by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.[12] This milestone was a pivotal moment for African Americans in history, but it led to the start of the decline of the Negro American League and Negro National League. Major League Baseball drafted the best African American players, causing the quality of play to suffer in the two African American baseball leagues. The Negro National League disbanded in 1948.[13]<br /><br />The Indianapolis Clowns and the Negro American League had many more years of quality baseball. For the Clowns, the 1950s were actually their best years as a franchise, winning the Negro American League pennant in 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954.[14] In 1952, one of the best players in the history of baseball played for the Clowns. After not earning a spot with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 18-year old Hank Aaron from Mobile, Alabama, was signed by the Indianapolis Clowns.[15] The future home run record holder only played for a short time before the Major Leagues’ Boston Braves signed him to a contract. He was with the Clowns for such a brief period that Indianapolis fans never got the chance to see him play.[16] Not only did the Clowns sign future Major League Baseball all-stars, they also signed African American women. At different times in their history, they signed Mamie “Peanut” Johnson and Connie Morgan to the team, and both of them proved that they could compete at the same level as men.[17] <br /><br />Even after the Negro American League came to an end in the early 1960s, the Indianapolis Clowns continued their barnstorming and reverted to even more of a comedic routine.[18] The Clowns had some players to solely entertain the audience, and other players who earned a stipend and were looking for the opportunity to be seen by major league scouts.[19] The team became known more as a comedy routine than a baseball team in the 1970s and 1980s. The owner of the Clowns during this period, Dave Clark, called the team a “professional comedy baseball club, that also trained and developed players who had been overlooked by organized baseball.”[20] As the team began to decline in popularity, the Indianapolis Clowns played their final season in 1989, the last professional team of any of the Negro Leagues.[21]
[1] Paul Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” Traces 11, no. 4 (Fall 1999):10. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] Ibid, 11. <br />[4] Paul Debono, The Indianapolis ABCs (Jefferson: McFarland & Company), 123. <br />[5] Bill Traughber, “Looking Back: Indianapolis Clowns Visit The Dell,” MiLB.com, May 14, 2012. <br />[6] Debono, The Indianapolis ABCs, 120. <br />[7] “NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL 1946: Reece ‘Goose’ Taylor Tatum,” Indianapolis Clowns, Kansas City Moncarchs,” Youtube, 3:40.<br />[8] Paul Debono, “The Pride of the Negro League,” Traces 11, no. 4 (Fall 1999):32. <br />[9] “The Indianapolis Clowns,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum eMuseum.<br />[10] Ibid.<br />[11] “The Incredible legacy of the Indianapolis Clowns,” WISHTV, February 15, 2019. <br />[12] Ibid, 121. <br />[13] Ibid. <br />[14] Heaphy, Negro League, 241. <br />[15] Debono, The Indianapolis ABCs, 121. <br />[16] Ibid. <br />[17] Heaphy, Negro League, 218.<br />[18] Debono, The Indianapolis ABCs, 123.<br />[19] Ibid. <br />[20] Ibid, 124. <br />[21] Williams, “The Incredible legacy of the Indianapolis Clowns.”
Student Authors: Ben Wilson and Robin Johnson <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Bush Stadium Indianapolis, attributed to Xti90, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_Stadium_Indianapolis.JPG
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132003791" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>
Senate Avenue YMCA
<p>At the turn of the twentieth century, discrimination around the country was still a dominant factor in American society. This included Indiana, which had segregated schools, neighborhoods, and gathering places. To continue with the idea of “separate but equal,” many white officials in Indianapolis attempted to create a separate YMCA for African Americans in 1900.<span>[1]</span> In response to this, two African American physicians, Henry Hummons and Dan Brown, organized a group of black citizens to discuss the need for “wholesome” recreational facilities.<span>[2]</span> They wanted to create a “permanent quarters with which there will be connected a reading-room, educational classrooms, a gymnasium and bathrooms” for the African American men living in Indianapolis.<span>[3]</span> After discussing this need, the men created the Young Men’s Prayer Band as a stepping stone toward an African American YMCA in the state capitol.<span>[4]</span> Two years later, the Young Men’s Prayer Band was recognized by the YMCA after John Evans arrived to oversee the organization and help it move towards this status.<span>[5]</span> <br /><br />In the early years of the organization, Indianapolis African Americans would meet in private homes, churches, and a deserted neighborhood house called the Flanner Guild because they did not have a designated location in the city.[6]<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><span></span></a> Despite this setback, the community began to become more involved with the Young Men’s Prayer Band, and in 1910, it became an official YMCA for African Americans in the city.<span>[7]</span> Even after this milestone, the branch did not have its own facility until three years later in 1913 when a new building at the corner of Senate Avenue and Michigan Street opened its doors to the African American community with a dedication speech given by civil rights activist Booker T. Washington.<span>[8]</span> This was a major accomplishment for African Americans living in Indianapolis. By having a place where black men could learn and interact with each other, the Senate Avenue YMCA was improving the lives of African Americans in Indianapolis.<br /><br />As the building opened, Faburn DeFrantz arrived in Indianapolis from Washington D.C. to serve as the physical director of the Senate Avenue YMCA, and three years later as the executive secretary of the branch.<span>[9]</span> As the leader of the Senate Avenue YMCA, DeFrantz developed classes in athletics, Bible study, school subjects, automotive repairs, and many more to help African American men prepare for jobs and improve their lives.<span>[10]</span> In addition, DeFrantz continued one of the most influential programs at the Indianapolis branch since 1904: the “Monster Meetings.”<span>[11]</span> These meetings discussed a variety of topics including education, religion, science, and politics to help the African American community have a better understanding of news from around the country.<span>[12]</span> Some of these meetings were led by famous speakers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Madam C.J. Walker, and Eleanor Roosevelt.<span>[13]</span> Under DeFrantz, the Senate Avenue Branch was also politically active by attempting to end school segregation and promoting job opportunities for African Americans in the city.<span>[14]</span> Along with pushing for civil rights, the branch also assisted African American families during the Great Depression by providing housing and food for men and boys. At the start of the Depression, from January to October of 1931, the Senate Avenue YMCA provided 4,827 nights of free lodging and 3,200 free meals for the African American community to help them get through the hard times.<span>[15]</span> </p>
<p>In 1946, the national YMCA leadership decided to desegregate facilities across the country.<span>[16]</span> Despite this change in policy, the Senate Avenue YMCA membership remained predominantly African American.<span>[17]</span> Under DeFrantz, the Senate Avenue YMCA grew from 350 members in 1913 to 5000 members when he retired in 1951.<span>[18]</span> During this time, he helped develop the largest African American YMCA in the country and a better sense of community among blacks living in Indianapolis.<span>[19]</span> The Senate Avenue branch would continue succeed following DeFrantz’s retirement until activities would later be moved to a new facility at Fall Creek Parkway and 10<sup>th</sup> Street on September 13, 1959.<span>[20]</span><br />Over its 46-year history, the Senate Avenue YMCA gave opportunities to African Americans living in Indianapolis that they may have not received anywhere else in the city. They provided classes and the tools needed for African Americans to be professionally prepared and socially aware of the changes occurring in American society. By having a designated facility to meet, a stronger sense of community developed among African Americans living in the state capitol. The Senate Avenue YMCA branch closed in 1959, but its legacy continued through the twentieth century with the construction of the Fall Creek YMCA, which remained open until the fall of 2003.<span>[21]</span> In 2016, the Indiana Historical Bureau and the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis installed a historical marker at the site.<span>[</span><span>2</span><span>2]</span></p>
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<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><span></span></a><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4325.htm"></a></p>
<p><span>[1]</span> David J.Bodenhamer and Robert G. Barrows, and David Gordon Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em> (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 1249.<br /><span>[2]</span> Ibid.<br /><span>[3]</span> “Colored Y.M.C.A.,” <em>Indianapolis News</em>, March 31, 1902, 2, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INN19020331-01.1.2&srpos=2&e=31-03-1902-----en-20-INN-1-byDA-txt-txIN-Colored------.<br /><span>[4]</span> Bodenhamer and Barrows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1249.<br /><span>[5]</span> Nina Mjagkij, <em>Light in the Darkness : African Americans and the YMCA, 1852-1946</em>(Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 58.<br /><span>[6]</span> Bodenhamer and Barows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1249.<br /><span>[7]</span> Bodenhamer and Barows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1249.<br /><span>[8]</span> Stanley Warren, "The Monster Meetings at the Negro YMCA in Indianapolis." <em>Indiana Magazine of History</em> 91, no. 1 (1995).<br /><span>[9]</span> Joseph Skvarenina, “Farburn E. DeFrantz and the Senate Avenue YMCA,” <em>Traces</em> 20 no. 1 (2008): 37<br /><span>[10]</span> Ibid, 38<br /><span>[11]</span> Bodenhamer and Barows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1250<br /><span>[12]</span> Skvarenina, “Faburn E. DeFrantz,” 37.<br /><span>[13]</span> Ibid.<br /><span>[14]</span> Skvarenina, “Faburn E. DeFrantz,” 38.<br /><span>[15]</span> Mjagkij, <em>Light in the Darkness</em>, 117.<br /><span>[16]</span> “YMCA Adopts Recommendation to Drop Racial Segregation,” <em>Indianapolis Recorder</em>, March 23, 1946, 1.<br /><span>[17]</span> Bodenhamer and Barows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1250.<br /><span>[18]</span> Skvarenina, “Faburn E. DeFrantz,” 39.<br /><span>[19]</span> Bodenhamer and Barows and Vanderstel, <em>The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis</em>, 1250.<br /><span>[20]</span> “Sunday Set For Official ‘Y’ Dedication,” <em>Indianapolis Recorder</em>, September 12, 1959, 1.<br /><span>[21]</span> Sara Galer, “Fall Creek YMCA to be demolished,” WTHR, May 6, 2010, last updated April 15, 2016. <br /><span>[22]</span> Indiana Historical Bureau, Senate Avenue YMCA. </p>
Student Authors: Ben Wilson and Robin Johnson <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Senate Avenue YMCA, Madam C.J. Walker Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/id/212/rec/2
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4325.htm " target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Lawyer Robert Lee Brokenburr,
Senate Avenue YMCA
Robert Lee Brokenburr was born in Phoebus, Virginia, on November 16, 1886, to Elizabeth Bakker Brokenburr and Benjamin Brokenburr, who was formerly enslaved. [1] Brokenburr attended the alma mater of Booker T. Washington, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia, and graduated from the private black college in 1906. [2] He then studied law at Howard University where he earned his degree in 1909. [3] Following his graduation from Howard, Brokenburr moved to Indianapolis upon the advice of George L. Knox, owner of the illustrated black newspaper the Indianapolis Freeman. [4] He quickly established himself as a practicing attorney after being admitted to the Indiana Bar in 1910. [5] <br /><br />Soon after he arrived in Indianapolis, Brokenburr was introduced to successful black cosmetics business owner Madam C.J. Walker by George L. Knox, and he later became her general counsel. [6] While working with Walker, Brokenburr became a more visible figure in the city and the African American community. His association with Walker, who was quickly becoming a celebrity across black America, helped Brokenburr make a name for himself early in his law career. He was also a very active presence in the black institutions of Indianapolis. Brokenburr frequently supported African American organizations such as black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, the Senate Avenue YMCA, and the Flanner House, and served as the second president of the Indianapolis chapter of the NAACP. [7] <br /><br />During his first decade in Indianapolis, Brokenburr’s various activities around the city helped him to rise to a place of prominence within the black community of Indianapolis. One of his biggest contributions came in 1922, when he helped to organize the Better Indianapolis Civic League, which protested the construction of a segregated high school in Indianapolis. [8] In a petition brought before the Indianapolis School Board of Commissioners by Brokenburr on behalf of the League, he stated that the segregation of schools was “unjust, un-American, and against the spirit of democratic ideals.” [9] Despite the Better Indianapolis Civic League’s efforts, the school board voted to build Crispus Attucks High School, which served as a segregated black school for decades after its construction in 1927. [10] Although the fight was unsuccessful, Brokenburr garnered the attention of both black and white citizens of Indianapolis. <br /><br />After gaining this recognition, Brokenburr began to take on the legal struggles for civil rights in Indiana. As support for white supremacy rose in the 1920s with the rise of the KKK in Indiana, he took on many cases to protect African Americans. One such case was Gaillard v. Grant, in which he argued against a zoning ordinance that enforced segregation in Indianapolis neighborhoods. [11] In 1926, this ordinance was found to be unconstitutional, as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. [12] Brokenburr also represented the plaintiffs in Bailey v. Washington Theatre Company, a case where a black couple—civil rights activists Katherine “Flossie” and Dr. Walter T. Bailey—was denied entry into a Marion movie theater. [13] Unfortunately, the couple’s case ended with a 1941 Indiana Supreme Court decision which upheld the right of a private business to arbitrarily exclude patrons. [14] <br /><br />Perhaps Brokenburr’s most important legal contribution to civil rights in Indiana was his decision to represent Herbert James Cameron quid pro quo in July 1931. Sixteen year old Cameron had been arrested with two other black teenagers the previous summer on charges of murder and rape in Marion, Indiana. [15] The other two teens, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, had been murdered in a brutal lynching on August 7, 1930, and while Cameron escaped the wrath of the abating lynch mob that night, he still faced charges for the alleged crimes. [16] As Cameron stood trial under the shadow of the electric chair, Brokenburr and fellow black Indianapolis attorney R.L. Bailey successfully delayed the trial and changed its venue in order to grant Cameron a more objective jury. [17] After more than a week of passionate arguments, the jury found Cameron guilty of being an accessory to voluntary manslaughter, a verdict which carried a maximum sentence of two to ten years in the Indiana State Reformatory. [18] Thanks to the efforts of attorneys Robert L. Brokenburr and R.L. Bailey, the teenaged lynching survivor had been “snatched from the jaws of death” a second time. [19] <br /><br />Brokenburr not only served Indianapolis as a lawyer, but also as a legislator. In 1912, 1932, and 1934, he ran for a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives, but lost each election. [20] However, in 1940 he won his race for State Senate, making him the first African American to be elected to that chamber. [21] During his terms in the senate from 1941 to 1947 and from 1953 to 1963, Brokenburr fought for progress towards civil rights in Indiana. [22] While in office, he authored more than 50 bills focusing on issues such as equality in housing opportunities and proportional representation of black officers in police forces across the state. [23] He also authored a bill that desegregated the Indiana National Guard in 1941. [24] Because of his success as a statesman in the Indiana Senate, Brokenburr was appointed by President Eisenhower and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as an alternate delegate for the United States at the United Nations General Assembly in 1955. [25] <br /><br />During his career, Robert Lee Brokenburr’s accomplishments advanced the livelihoods of not just the African American community, but of all Hoosiers. After serving the Indianapolis community for over half a century, Brokenburr retired in 1971. [26] In 1974, he passed away at the age of 87. [27] Brokenburr truly lived by the motto “live to serve,” as he dedicated his entire life to the fight for equality in Indiana. [28] Brokenburr, like countless other black lawyers across the country, devoted his career to helping “America move toward realization of its professed commitment to legal equality.” [29] Through his considerable efforts, Robert Lee Brokenburr improved the lives of all Hoosiers. [30]
[1] Stephen F. Thompson and Curtis R. Barsic, “Robert Lee Brokenburr Papers and Photographs, ca. 1937-1973,” last modified August 2010, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-lee-brokenburr-papers-and-photographs.pdf.
[2] Ibid.; “History,” Hampton University, accessed November 1, 2019, http://www.hamptonu.edu/about/history.cfm.
[3] Stephen F. Thompson and Curtis R. Barsic, “Robert Lee Brokenburr Papers and Photographs, ca. 1937-1973,” last modified August 2010, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-lee-brokenburr-papers-and-photographs.pdf.
[4] Stanley Warren, “Senator Robert L. Brokenburr: He Lived to Serve,” Black History News and Notes no. 83 (2001): 4.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid, 5
[8] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000): 57.
[9] Connie A. McBirney and Robert M. Taylor, Peopling Indiana: the Ethnic Experience (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana Historical Society, 1996): 22.
[10] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 57-58.
[11] Ibid., 53.
[12] Ibid.
[13] James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America (New York, NY, Palgrave, 2001): 97.
[14] Bailey v. Washington Theatre Co., 218 Ind. 513 (Ind. 1941).
[15] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 67.
[16] Ibid., 67-69.
[17] Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland, 106
[18] Ibid., 106-107.
[19] Ibid., 108.
[20] Warren, “Senator Robert L. Brokenburr,” 4
[21] Stephen F. Thompson and Curtis R. Barsic, “Robert Lee Brokenburr Papers and Photographs, ca. 1937-1973,” last modified August 2010, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-lee-brokenburr-papers-and-photographs.pdf.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Warren, “Senator Robert Lee Brokenburr,” 6.
[24] “Brokenburr Guard Bill Becomes Law,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Mar. 15, 1941.
[25] Warren, “Senator Robert Lee Brokenburr,” 7.; United States Department of State, U.S. Participation in the UN: Report by the President to the Congress for the Year 1955, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956): 271.
[26] Stephen F. Thompson and Curtis R. Barsic, “Robert Lee Brokenburr Papers and Photographs, ca. 1937-1973,” last modified August 2010, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/robert-lee-brokenburr-papers-and-photographs.pdf.
[27] “Illustrious, History-Making Career Ends With Death of Atty. Robert L. Brokenburr,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Mar. 30, 1974.
[28] Warren, “Senator Robert Lee Brokenburr,” 7.
Student Author: Allison Hunt <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Willard Ransom and Robert Lee Brokenburr, Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p0303/id/85/
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4325.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker for Senate Avenue YMCA</a><br /><a href="http://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/45" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hoosier Civil Rights Museum - Senate Avenue YMCA</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/211.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker for Crispus Attucks High School</a>
Historian Emma Lou Thornbrough
Born in Indianapolis in 1913, Dr. Emma Lou Thornbrough became one of the leading historians in African American history. After graduating from Shortridge High School, she attended Butler University where she obtained her bachelor’s in 1934, then her master’s degree in 1936. [1] She later received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 1946. [2] After completing her education, Thornbrough began her career as a professor of American history, black history, and ancient Mediterranean history at Butler University in 1946. [3] She remained there until her retirement in 1983. During her tenure at Butler, she was appointed the McGregor Chair in History in 1981, and awarded an honorary doctorate in 1988. [4] She also received prestigious awards including the 1965 Outstanding Professor Award, given to “faculty members who excelled in all areas of their professional responsibilities,” and the Butler Medal, which recognizes Butler University Alumni who have provided “a lifetime of distinguished service to either Butler or their local community while at the same time achieving a distinguished career in their chosen profession and attaining a regional or national reputation.” [5] She also held visiting professor appointments at Indiana University and Case-Western Reserve University during her career. [6] <br /><br />Thornbrough’s interest in black history began during her doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. [7] Her dissertation, <em>Negro Slavery in the North: Its Constitutional and Legal Aspects</em>, became the basis for her first book, the seminal <em>The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority</em>. [8] Thornbrough was a pioneer in her profession, both as an established female academic in history during the mid-twentieth century, and as one of “few people of either sex … working in what was then called Negro history.” [9] She was remarkable in that she studied “the story of the Negro minority in a Northern state, Indiana,” while most black history at the time was focused on Southern states or major Northern cities, which had much larger African American populations. [10] Throughout her career, Thornbrough focused much of her research on black Hoosier history, publishing accounts of individual events, treatises covering centuries of the state’s history at a time, and biographical sketches of black community leaders. [11] However, she also published biographies of nationally renowned figures in black history, including educator and author Booker T. Washington and journalist T. Thomas Fortune. [12] <br /><br />Thornbrough’s work, though still objective, clearly demonstrates her views about the plight black Americans have faced. She describes “the discrimination and indignities” African Americans fight, along with “the gradual and uneven progress of the Negro minority toward equality” in the preface to <em>The Negro in Indiana Before 1900</em>, showing “that she perceives racial discrimination as a violation of morality and common sense.” [13] Furthermore, Thornbrough’s research on her still unpublished manuscript held at the Indiana Historical Society, <em>The Indianapolis Story: School Segregation and Desegregation in a Northern City</em>, was used by lawyers and Federal Judge Samuel Hugh Dillin in a Justice Department lawsuit which found Indianapolis Public Schools guilty of overt segregation. [14] <br /><br />Emma Lou Thornbrough not only wrote about the struggle for civil rights, but actively participated in the movement as well. She used her privileged position as a white, upper-middle-class “elegant lady scholar” to work against racism in Indianapolis. [15] After an unsuccessful run for the Indiana General Assembly in 1952, Thornbrough fought for civil rights through working with local organizations, serving on the executive boards of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union and the Indianapolis NAACP branch. [16] She also helped to organize the Indianapolis Human Relations Council, a diverse group which aimed to “foster and promote amicable relationships, mutual understanding, and mutual respect among ethnic, racial, national, religious, and other forms of groups” across the city. [17] <br /><br />Dr. Thornbrough worked to preserve and protect black Hoosier history up to her death on December 19, 1994. [18] Her final book, <em>Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century</em>, was published posthumously in 2000 after historian Lana Ruegamer Eisenberg edited the existing text and finished the final chapter. [19] As Eisenberg noted, “in both her scholarly work and her life as a reformer, Thornbrough worked to shape Indiana history.” [20] Emma Lou Thornbrough did the important, yet painstaking, work of piecing together a history of black Indiana from few and disparate primary sources. In the 1957 preface to The Negro in Indiana Before 1900, Thornbrough humbly acknowledges the limitations of her research, while displaying hope for the future of black Hoosier history: <br /><br />"The account which I have written of the gradual and uneven progress of the Negro minority toward equality is admittedly spotty and incomplete in some respects because materials necessary for a more complete treatment are not available. Sources showing what the white population thought about the Negro and his position are abundant, but those which reveal the thoughts and activities of Negroes themselves are meager. … In view of the limited educational opportunities and the low economic status of most members of the race during the period covered by the book it is not surprising that manuscript materials such as letters and diaries are almost nonexistent, at least in public collections. Undoubtedly some papers have been destroyed because they were regarded as worthless, while others still in private hands are unknown to me. I hope that the publication of my research may have the effect of bringing to light hitherto unused materials and inspiring more intensive research in aspects of Negro life and thought with which I was unable to deal adequately." [21]
[1] Lana Ruegamer Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Gayle,” in Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State, ed. Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair, (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2015): 702.; Lana Ruegamer Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Emma Lou,” in Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State, ed. Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair, (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2015): 699. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] Robert G. Barrows, Paul R. Hanson, and Peter J. Sehlinger, “Memorial Tribute to Emma Lou Thornbrough,” Indiana Magazine of History 91, no. 1 (1995): 2. <br />[4] Ibid. <br />[5] Ibid.; Marc Alan, “Outstanding Butler Faculty Honored,” last modified August 16, 2018, https://stories.butler.edu/content/outstanding-butler-faculty-honored.; “Butler Medal,” Butler University, accessed November 8, 2019, https://www.butler.edu/pastalumniawards. <br />[6] Barrows, Hanson, and Sehlinger, “Memorial Tribute to Emma Lou Thornbrough,” 2. <br />[7] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000): i. <br />[8] Ibid. <br />[9] Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Emma Lou,” 701. <br />[10] Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993): xi. <br />[11] Leigh Darbee and Wilma L. Gibbs, “Books and Articles by Emma Lou Thornbrough,” Indiana Magazine of History 91, no. 1 (1995): 16-17. <br />[12] Ibid. <br />[13] Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900, xiv; Wilson J. Moses, “Emma Lou Thornbrough’s Place in American Historiography,” Indiana Magazine of History 91, no. 1 (1995): 5. <br />[14] Emma Lou Thornbrough, “The Indianapolis Story: School Segregation and Desegregation in a Northern City” (unpublished manuscript, Indiana Historical Society, 1993), i.; Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Emma Lou,” 698. <br />[15] Ibid., 699. <br />[16] Ibid., 698. <br />[17] Ibid.; “City’s Human Relations Council Program Aimed at Reactivation,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jan. 17, 1959. <br />[18] Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Emma Lou,” 697. <br />[19] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ix. <br />[20] Eisenberg, “Thornbrough, Emma Lou,” 701. <br />[21] Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900, xiv-xv.
Student Author: Allison Hunt <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
The Indianapolis Story School Segregation and Desegregation in a Northern City, Indiana Historical Society, BV2631.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll72/id/76/rec/167
"Mr. Basketball" Bill Garrett, coach at Crispus Attucks High School
One of the most pivotal moments in sports history was when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. [1] The same year, a similar barrier was being broken in one of the Hoosiers state’s most beloved sports. In the fall of 1947, Bill Garrett became the first African American to join the Indiana University basketball team, which also marked him as the first to integrate the Big Ten Conference. [2] <br /><br />Bill Garrett was born in 1929 in Shelbyville, Indiana, and grew up playing basketball in his hometown. [3] In high school, Garrett played for the Golden Bears of Shelbyville High School. During his senior season, the team had three African American starters. Garrett’s senior season in 1946 and 1947 was a breakout year for the Golden Bears, who defeated Garfield High School of Terre Haute for the state championship. Garrett scored 21 points overall, pushing Shelbyville to victory with a final score of 68 to 58. [4] For his efforts as a senior, Garrett was awarded the title of “Indiana Mr. Basketball” for being the best player in the state during the 1946-1947 season. [5] <br /><br />Despite his success in high school, Garrett was not offered a scholarship from the basketball powerhouse schools in Indiana. The Big Ten Conference had barred integration based upon an “unwritten ‘gentlemen’s agreement’” to keep black players out of sports. [6] Garrett was not the first talented player to face this problem. The 1946 Indiana Mr. Basketball, Johnny Wilson, also an African American, never received an offer from Purdue University or Indiana University. However, he did not let this discrimination keep him from playing the sport entirely, and joined the team at Anderson University, a much smaller school. [7] <br /><br />To prevent Garrett from the same fate, Faburn DeFrantz, the director of the Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis, met with President Herman Wells of Indiana University to convince him to allow Garrett to play for the Hoosiers. [8] After many conversations between DeFrantz, Wells, and head basketball coach Branch McCracken, Garrett was admitted to Indiana University in the fall of 1947. [9] Once Garrett arrived on campus, things did not get any easier for him. Indiana University’s campus was segregated in the 1940s. Black students were barred from on-campus housing, prohibited from swimming in the university pools, and could not join fraternities and sororities. [10] The surrounding city of Bloomington was segregated as well, and black IU students even had difficulty finding an accepting barber. [11] <br /><br />As a player for the Hoosiers, Garrett, like all freshmen, was not allowed to play on the varsity team but as soon as he got his chance in 1948 as a sophomore, he made an impact. Garrett officially became the first African American to play for a Big Ten varsity basketball team in the first game of the season, against DePauw University on December 11, 1948. [12] Garrett had an incredibly successful college career as a center for the IU Hoosiers. He graduated in 1951 as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 792 points. [13] During his entire college career, Garrett was the only black basketball player in the Big Ten Conference, but the year after his graduation, “there were six African-Americans playing in the league.” [14] <br /><br />After his collegiate career came to an end, Bill Garrett set his sights on playing professionally, and was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the second round of the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft. He made history again as only “the third-ever African American to drafted” into the NBA. [15] Despite earning this opportunity, Garrett never had the chance to play an NBA game, because he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 to fight in the Korean War. [16] After returning home two years later, Garrett was notified that he no longer had a position on the Celtics team. There was an unspoken quota across NBA teams for African Americans, and the Celtics had drafted two other black players, which fulfilled the quota. [17] Even though Garrett never had the opportunity to play in the NBA, he still played professionally with the Harlem Globetrotters entertainment team for two years. [18] <br /><br />After travelling with the Globetrotters, Garrett decided to return to the Indianapolis area where he became the head basketball coach for Crispus Attucks High School. [19] Garrett led the Attucks team to the 1959 Indiana High School State Championship, where Garrett became the first Indiana Mr. Basketball to win a state championship as both a player and a coach. [20] Crispus Attucks High School was built in 1927 as a black high school, and was integrated in 1970 under court order. Crispus Attucks is commemorated with an Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker and listed on the National Register of Historical Places.<br /><br />Following his 10 years as the coach at Crispus Attucks, Garrett worked as the Athletic Director and Assistant Dean of Student Activities at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. [21] Shortly after taking the job, Garrett passed away at the age of 45 from a heart attack on August 7, 1974. <br /><br />Throughout his career, Bill Garrett continuously broke down barriers in Indiana basketball. As the first African American to play for a Big Ten Conference basketball team, Garrett paved the way for others to follow in his footsteps. As a coach, Garrett influenced the lives of the next generation of basketball players. Garrett’s place of prominence in Indiana basketball was recognized in 1974 when he was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. [22] However, Garrett’s impact on basketball was not just felt in Indiana. His integration of the Big Ten Conference affected black athletes across the Midwest, and opened the door for African Americans to compete at the highest levels in basketball for over 70 years.
[1] Rachel Graham Cody, “Fair Play That Changed the Face of the NCAA,” Indianapolis Monthly, November 12, 2012. https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-and-culture/sports/fair-play-that-changed-the-face-of-the-ncaa. <br />[2] Kyle Neddenriep, “Bill Garrett to be honored for integrating Bit Ten basketball 70 years ago,” IndyStar, last updated April 7, 2017, https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/2017/04/07/bill-garrett-honored-integrating-big-ten-basketball-70-years-ago/100100312/. <br />[3] Janet Williams, “Garrett, Shelbyville basketball great, deserves more acclaim,” TheStaehouseFile.com, December 27, 2018, http://thestatehousefile.com/garrett-shelbyville-basketball-great-deserves-acclaim/37398/. <br />[4] “IHSAA Boys Basketball State Champions,” IHSAA, accessed Monday April 1, 2019, http://www.ihsaa.org/Sports/Boys/Basketball/StateChampions/tabid/124/Default.aspx. <br />[5] Neddenriep, “Bill Garret to be honored.” <br />[6] Ibid. <br />[7] Cody, “Fair Play.” <br />[8] Ibid. <br />[9] Charles S. Preston, “Mr. Basketball of 46-47 Bill Garret, Enters I.U.” Indianapolis Recorder October 4, 1947, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19471004-01.1.11&srpos=1&e=04-10-1947-25-08-1951--en-20-INR-1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22bill+garrett%22------. <br />[10] Williams, "Garrett, Shelbyville.” <br />[11] Ibid. <br />[12] “I.U. Squat Beats DePauw Quintet In Opener, 61-48,” Indianapolis Recorder, December 11, 1948, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19481211-01.1.11&srpos=1&e=11-12-1948-25-08-1951--en-20-INR-1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22bill+garrett%22------. <br />[13] Neddenriep, “Bill Garrett to be honored.” <br />[14] Williams, “Garrett, Shelbyville.” <br />[15] Ibid. <br />[16] “’Yanks’ Get Bill Garrett,” Indianapolis Recorder August 25, 1951, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19510825-01.1.1&srpos=1&e=04-10-1947-25-08-1951--en-20-INR-1-byDA.rev-txt-txIN-%22bill+garrett%22------. <br />[17] Williams, “Garrett, Shelbyville.” <br />[18] Ibid. <br />[19] Neddenriep, “Bill Garrett to be honored.” <br />[20] Williams, “Garrett, Shelbyville.” <br />[21] Neddenriep, “Bill Garrett to be honored.” <br />[22] “Bill Garrett,” Hall of Fame Inductees, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, https://www.hoopshall.com/hall-of-fame/bill-garrett/?back=HallofFame.
Student Authors: Ben Wilson and Allison Hunt <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Crispus Attucks High School, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crispus_Attucks_High_School.jpg
Bill Garrett Coaches Crispus Attucks High School Basketball Team to 1959 State Championship, Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p0303/id/458/rec/7
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/211.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132003769" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a><br /><a href="https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.in.gov%2Fhistory%2Fmarkers%2F4338.htm&data=02%7C01%7Crnjohnson3%40bsu.edu%7C1b7af88d47674e0dcbbf08d7cb9c91df%7C6fff909f07dc40da9e30fd7549c0f494%7C0%7C0%7C637201745628410218&sdata=f8%2BFNOlkgnI4FFzWhBkLF%2F5EM9vM96C5%2BpD6KRlUUGA%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Marshall "Major" Taylor and Capital City Track
Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball or Jessie Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics, there was another African American who was fighting for an equal chance in sports around the turn of the twentieth century. Marshall “Major” Taylor was born on August 26, 1878 in Indianapolis, Indiana [1]. As a child, Taylor went to work with his father in the coach house of a wealthy Indianapolis family [2]. After a while, Taylor became very close with one of the boys in the family, Daniel. Because of this, he would later become Daniel’s “playmate,” which would allow him to receive many items that he could use to play with him, the most important being a bicycle [3]. A few years later, Daniel’s family moved away, and Taylor needed to find a new job. One day, Taylor was spotted by a bicycle shop owner doing stunts outside his store. Because of his skills on a bicycle, the owner hired him to perform stunts outside their store to attract customers. [4] Taylor wore a military-style costume when he performed his tricks, leading to him earning the nickname “Major”. [5] Later in 1891 his boss from the bike shop encouraged him to participate at a local race, which he surprisingly won. [6] This sparked his interest in cycling which would later lead to him becoming a professional. <br /><br />Taylor set multiple world records and won multiple national championships during his sixteen-year professional career. In 1896, he set the one-mile record at Capital City Track in Indianapolis. He even won a world championship in 1899, making him only the second African American to win a world championship. [7] Taylor’s skills and accomplishments did not shield him from the realities of his time. Often Taylor would not be able to find hotel accommodations for competitions, be verbally and physically threated by other cyclists. He was even barred from many tracks around the country, including those in his hometown of Indianapolis, because of the color of his skin. [8] Sometimes race officials would even skew the results of a race to prevent Taylor from winning. [9] Even though Major Taylor faced many mental and physical struggles because of the racial tensions in the United States, he still believed that his success on the track would benefit society. He believed that his accomplishments at home and on the world stage proved that African Americans could compete at the same level as whites in the United States. Furthermore, he hoped that his story would inspire young athletes, especially young African American boys, to persevere and strive for greatness. [10] Taylor would also used his public platform to advocate for civil rights. In his 1928 autobiography he states that he hopes his accomplishments and stories help “solicit simple justice, equal rights, and a square deal for the posterity of [his] down-trodden but brave people, not only in athletic games and sports, but in every honorable game of human endeavor.” [11] <br /><br />Sadly, after he retired in 1910, Taylor faced many new challenges. [12] A few years after his career had ended, Taylor had significant financial issues. With the money he had won from cycling, Taylor began to invest in different business ventures which ended up failing causing him to lose much of his earnings. [13] In addition to this, Taylor had a hard time finding a job because there were very few opportunities available for black athletes after their careers had ended. Black athletes were not offered the endorsements or speaking opportunities their white peers may have received. [14] Because of this and his deteriorating health, Taylor would end up falling into poverty during the waning years of his life. [15] After years of facing these struggles, Marshall “Major” Taylor passed away in 1932 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Chicago. In the 1940s, many former cyclists heard about this, and used money donated by the bicycle company owner Frank Schwinn to relocate his body in order to properly remember him and his accomplishments. [16] Seventy years after his final race, his hometown of Indianapolis remembered the cycling champion by creating the Major Taylor Velodrome in the 1980s. [17] Later that same decade, Taylor’s accomplishments in the cycling world were finally recognized nationally when he was inducted into the Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1989. [18] In 2009, a historical marker was installed at at the site of the Capital City Track by the Indiana Historical Bureau, Central Indiana Bicycling Association Foundation, and Indiana State Fair Commission. [19] Through these honors and many others, Taylor’s achievements on and off the track are a great example of the role sports played in the fight toward civil rights.
After Major Taylor was inducted into the Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1989, he finally began to receive recognition for his role as a pioneer in cycling and African American civil rights. Since then he has been the subject of a number of short films including the following peice released by ESPN, which shows amazing footage of Major Taylor actually riding in a six day long endurance event.
<iframe width="700" height="500" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HdBUSkYmeP8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
In addition to the numerous videos that have been created, the University of Pittsburgh University Library System (ULS) currently holds a collection of scrapbooks that through newspaper clippings from American and foreign presses, document the climate of racial opinion in America and abroad as well as Taylor's reactions along with providing more factual information about professional cycling as a national and international sport. These scrapbooks have been entirely digitized and are available online via the ULS Digital Collections page <a href="https://digital.library.pitt.edu/collection/marshall-w-major-taylor-scrapbooks">here</a>.
Marshall "Major" Taylor also wrote an autobiography, <em>The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World</em>, allowing us some insight into his thoughts and feelings. In the final chapter of his book, Taylor gives advice and encouragement to young black athletes who followed him: <br /><br /><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: medium;">"In closing I wish to say that while I was sorely beset by a number of white riders in my racing days, I have also enjoyed the friendship of countless thousands of white men whom I class as among my closest friends. I made them in this country and all the foreign countries in which I competed. My personal observation and experiences indicate to me that while the majority of white people are considerate of my people, the minority are so bitter in their race prejudice that they actually overshadow the goodwill entertained for us by the majority.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: medium;">Now a few words of advice to boys, and especially to those of my own race, my heart goes out to them as they face life's struggles. I can hardly express in words my deep feeling and sympathy for them, knowing as I do, the many serious handicaps and obstacles that will confront them in almost every walk of life. However, I pray they will carry on in spite of that dreadful monster prejudice, and with patience, courage, fortitude and perseverance achieve success for themselves." [19]</span></em>
<p>[1] Major Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World; the Autobiography of Major Taylor.Abridged ed. Brattleboro, Vt: S. Greene Press, 1972, 1. <br />[2] National Museum of American History, “Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor: The incredible story of the first African-American world champion,” March 19, 2014, http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2014/03/marshall-major-taylor-the-incredible-story-of-the-first-african-american-world-champion.html<br />[3] Major Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World; the Autobiography of Major Taylor.Abridged ed. Brattleboro, Vt: S. Greene Press, 1972, 1.<br />[4] National Museum of American History, “Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor: The incredible story of the first African-American world champion,” March 19, 2014, http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2014/03/marshall-major-taylor-the-incredible-story-of-the-first-african-american-world-champion.html<br />[5] Lynne Tolman, “Major Taylor Statue Dedication,” Traces 20, no. (Fall 2008): 37.<br />[6] Major Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World; the Autobiography of Major Taylor.Abridged ed. Brattleboro, Vt: S. Greene Press, 1972, 4.<br />[7] Randal C. Archibold, “Major Taylor: A world champion bicycle racer whose fame was undermined by prejudice,” New York Times, accessed February 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/major-taylor-overlooked.html.<br />[8] Major Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World; the Autobiography of Major Taylor.Abridged ed. Brattleboro, Vt: S. Greene Press, 1972, 7-49.<br />[9] Ibid, 111.<br />[10] Ibid, x.<br />[11] Ibid.<br />[12] Ibid, 206.<br />[13] “Major Taylor,” Biography, Last modified February 4, 2016, accessed March 11, 2019, https://www.biography.com/people/marshall-walter-major-taylor.<br />[14] National Museum of American History, “Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor.”<br />[15] Ibid.<br />[16] Ibid.<br />[17] Ibid.[18] “Inductees,” U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, accessed March 11, 2019, https://usbhof.org/inductees/<br />[18] Major Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World; the Autobiography of Major Taylor.Abridged ed. Brattleboro, Vt: S. Greene Press, 1972.<br />[19] Indiana Historical Bureau, Marshall "Major" Taylor, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/MajorTaylor.htm.</p>
Student Author: Ben Wilson <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
<p>PHOTO & VIDEO:<br />Major Taylor, 1906-1907, attributed to Jules Beau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Major_Taylor,_1906-1907.jpg</p>
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/MajorTaylor.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Markers</a>