1
100
31
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/bd8c0cdc80b0992c4a68b0b000626a7e.jpg
9fefff9d5e66e513e0b563cc63f4ff9a
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People
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Aaron Fisher
Description
An account of the resource
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]
Source
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[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.
Contributor
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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
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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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/424.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1900-1940s
1950s-present
Gibson County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Lyles station
Military
Segregation
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/089e4c7068bcd95d98e082767a856f30.jpg
765338e36c88b46fedd83f8e84fd9f8c
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Title
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Places
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Benjamin Banneker School, Bloomington
Description
An account of the resource
Benjamin Banneker School, an African American elementary school, opened its doors in 1915 in Bloomington, Indiana. Three teachers taught 93 students [1]. The school’s first principal decided to name the institution after Benjamin Banneker, a freed slave originally from Maryland who went on to become a prominent scientist, inventor, and architect. The staff and board of Banneker school constantly sought to provide new opportunities for their students, culminating with the construction of a gymnasium in 1942 for the entire Bloomington community [2], [3]. In 1937, the school opened to the public as a community center offering after school clubs and programs for children of all ages, providing healthy, productive, and consistent after school programs to the entire community [4]. In 1951, Benjamin Banneker School reopened as the integrated Fairview Annex school, three years before the monumental Brown v. Board of Education ruling declared that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional [5]. This school building held integrated sixth grade classes for Fairview and Banneker students prior to the completion of the new integrated Fairview Annex school on 8th Street [6].
In 1954, the building closed as a school as students moved to the new Fairview Annex school, and the former Benjamin Banneker school building reopened in 1955 as Westside Community Center [7]. It provided community recreation programs for decades. In 1994, modern
repairs were made to the building, including the installation of central air conditioning and an elevator. The Westside Community Center was renamed as the Benjamin Banneker Community Center in order to keep the name of the original school alive. The new name honored the building’s rich African American history and continued importance within the community, as well as paid homage to Benjamin Banneker School’s first principal who decided on the original name. Today members of the community center remember the history and legacy of Benjamin Banneker School. In 2015, a ceremonial walk was held celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Benjamin Banneker Community Center and former school [8].
Today, the original site of Benjamin Banneker School sits behind a historical marker dedicated in 2008 by the Indiana Historical Bureau in honor of its historic importance as a once segregated school, as well as to honor the site for its rich and diverse past, and its important place in the community [9].
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] Michael Tanner and Michelle Prichard. “Benjamin Banneker School (1915-1951) – Fairview Annex (1951-1954) – Westside / Benjamin Banneker Community Center,” January 18, 2018. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.theclio.com/entry/6740
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Banneker History Project Involves IU Education Students, City Government, Community Residents,” IU News Room, February 19, 2003. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/789.html
[4] Michael Tanner and Michelle Prichard.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Benjamin Banneker School,” Indiana Historic Bureau, Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/545.ht
[7] Ibid.
[8] Megan Banta. “Banneker Community Center Celebrating 100 Years,” December 2, 2015. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.hoosiertimes.com/herald_times_online/news/local/banneker-community-center-celebrating-100-years/article_f80e2c90-a18a-53ee-8e48-de1117477163.html
[9] “Benjamin Banneker School,” Indiana Historic Bureau, Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/545.htm
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.in.gov%2Fhistory%2Fstate-historical-markers%2Ffind-a-marker%2Fbenjamin-banneker-school%2F&data=04%7C01%7Ctlhayes2%40bsu.edu%7C09d8fccc215d41c36a7108d8cbd4f94b%7C6fff909f07dc40da9e30fd7549c0f494%7C0%7C0%7C637483463321953783%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=lX7OO1bPOKbvFx8s63awcarF9RBVNDEAknHq6RdDYyA%3D&reserved=0">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Seventh Street West 930, Banneker School, Bloomington West Side, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seventh_Street_West_930,_Banneker_School,_Bloomington_West_Side_HD.jpg
1900-40s
1950s-present
Bloomington
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Integration
Monroe County
School
Segregation
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/c1c7ddd35d9e1b9e9cdfe2c0e40a0d8c.png
a89a2e3f9e4ccd6a47f27b22cd4bd8a4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Places
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bethel AME Church, Indianapolis
Description
An account of the resource
In 1787, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was founded in Philadelphia by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, after they left the Methodist Church due to racial prejudice. Allen and Jones retained some of the teachings and beliefs of the Methodist denomination, but the AME leaders were all African Americans. Through the AME Church, African Americans were able to form and lead their own congregations. In 1836, the first AME congregations in Indiana appeared in Richmond and Indianapolis. Revered William Paul Quinn, who settled in Richmond and served as the bishop of its AME church in 1844, established both churches. Richmond provided opportunities and a higher chance of equal treatment for African Americans because of the large Quaker population.[1] <br /><br />Bethel AME Church was founded in Indianapolis in 1836, at a time when nearly five percent of the city was African American. Augustus Turner, a local barber, came up with the idea to form an AME congregation while overhearing the conversations of his customers. The church began meeting in Turner’s log cabin, and after petitioning the Philadelphia AME Conference, the group was recognized as an AME church. Reverend Quinn from Richmond was sent as a circuit rider to what was known at the time as “Indianapolis Station.” A small frame house used as a church building was built five years later on Georgia Street, between the Canal and modern-day Senate Avenue.[2] In 1848, the church grew to 100 members. Indianapolis Station hosted the Annual AME Conference in 1854, and during the nine-day conference, the Constitution of the William Paul Quinn Missionary Society was adopted. Other benevolent societies and self-improvement groups were connected to Bethel AME Church, including several literary and temperance societies.[3] Three years later, the Bethel AME congregation bought the shuttered Christ Church building and physically moved it from the Indianapolis Circle area to Georgia Street as their new place of worship.[4] <br /><br />Beginning in 1858, Bethel AME Church organized the first school for African American children, as African Americans in Indianapolis were not allowed to attend public schools. This AME-sponsored school taught geography, grammar, history, physiology, reading, writing, and arithmetic. The African American community in Indianapolis was able to keep the school operating through donations and tuition.[5] The Bethel congregation was also active in the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves on their journey to Canada. Because of their involvement, some believed that slavery sympathizers started the fire which destroyed the church in the summer of 1862; others suggested that disgruntled African Americans, who had been cast out of the church, had set the fire.[6] The fire and the Civil War led to financial troubles, and unrest within the congregation led to several members leaving Bethel and forming their own church, Allen Chapel. After purchasing land on Vermont Street for $5,000, construction of a new Bethel AME Church building began in 1867. Two years later, the congregation occupied the partially completed building.[7] <br /><br />By the 1880’s, the church’s membership had grown to 600, and Sunday School pupils numbered 300.[8] However, the congregation had to sell the church building because of debt; the purchaser gave them one year to redeem the property or it would be lost to them forever. The African American community of Indianapolis helped Bethel to recover, and an increase in membership led to a remodeling of the building. In 1894, a pipe organ was installed, and electric lights, stained glass windows, and steam heat were added, and the parsonage was converted to a Parish House with a Prayer Chapel.[9] <br /><br />Church leadership changed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and other renovations and additions took place. In the early 1900s, the Indianapolis Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs were organized at the church.[10] The Ethical Culture Society, an organization devoted to the enlightenment of young people, met at the church for over four decades. In 1957, Bethel AME became involved with feeding the hungry and offering counseling services to the community, and in 1973, a Human Resources Development Center was established to aid youth and senior citizens. Bethel AME Church, in partnership with the Riley-Lockerbie Association of Churches, maintains a food and clothing pantry.[11] The church has also had a credit union, a well-baby clinic, an adult daycare program, and other social programs. <br /><br />Bethel AME is known as the “Mother Church” of African Methodism in Indiana, as Allen Chapel, Coppin Chapel, Saint John, and Wallace (Providence) were all AME churches that were off-shoots of Bethel AME.[12] In 1991, the Bethel AME Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[13] Bethel AME Church continues not only to improve the lives of its members, but also to help to those in Indianapolis who are in need from its new location north of the city.[14] The Bethel AME Church building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and is commemorated by an Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker, installed in 2009.
Source
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<p><span>[1]</span> National Register Nominations: Bethel A.M.E. Church, Marion County, 12-19-90, Elisabeta Goodall, Author, 7.<br /><span>[2]</span> B.R. Sulgrove, <em>History of Indianapolis and Marion County</em> (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1884), 404-05.<br /><span>[3]</span> Earline Rae Ferguson, “In Pursuit of the Full Enjoyment of Liberty and Happiness: Blacks in Antebellum Indianapolis, 1820-1860,” <em>Black History News and Notes,</em> no. 32 (May 1988), 7.<br /><span>[4]</span> B.R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1884), 404-05.<br /><span>[5]</span> Ferguson, “In Pursuit of the Full Enjoyment of Liberty and Happiness: Blacks in Antebellum Indianapolis, 1820-1860,” 6.<br /><span>[6]</span> Stanley Warren, “The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,” <em>Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History</em>, 19 no. 3 (2007), 33.<br /><span>[7]</span> Ibid, 34.<br /><span>[8]</span> Sulgrove, <em>History of Indianapolis and Marion County, </em>405.<br /><span>[9]</span> National Register Nominations: Bethel A.M.E. Church, Marion County, 12-19-90, Elisabeta Goodall, Author, 9.<br /><span>[10]</span> Aboard the Underground Railroad. “Bethel AME Church”. National Park Service.<br /><span>[11]</span> National Register Nominations: Bethel A.M.E. Church, 9-10.<br /><span>[12]</span> Warren, “The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,” 35.<br /><span>[13]</span> Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed January 29, 2020. <br />[14] Warren, “The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,” 35.</p>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
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PHOTO & VIDEO:<br />Bethel A.M.E. Church Organizations and Clubs, Indiana Historical Society, M1270.<br /><br />
<table width="529">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="529"><a href="https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll9/id/2456/rec/109">https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll9/id/2456/rec/109</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/Bethel.htm">Indiana Historic Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/00000925.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>
1800s
1836
1900-40s
1950s-present
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
Church
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Marion County
National Register of Historic Places
religion
Underground Railroad
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/35412382db7e790fa70911bb25b45c95.jpg
f3cad7ec33c3e4b9a1517933422c4ff8
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Events
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Better Homes of South Bend
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Better Homes of South Bend was a corporation created in May 1950 in an effort to combat housing discrimination against African Americans. African Americans who worked at the South Bend Studebaker plant started the group. Most members lived in World War II-era prefabricated houses on Prairie Street near the Studebaker factory. They established a corporation to provide a better chance of securing homes outside of the slums near the factories.The members “wanted to find homes away from the factories and slums that surrounded them and give their children a better start in life than they themselves had."[1] Better Homes of South Bend’s attorney, J. Chester Allen, kept the location of potential neighborhoods a secret in an effort to get families moved into anew area with as little resistance as possible. In the 1950s, not everyone was open to the idea of African American families living in their neighborhood.[2] <br /><br />The members of Better Homes of South Bend all had Southern roots. Either they or their parents had moved to the North to escape Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. Although the members had moved to South Bend looking for a better lifeamid relatively good paying manufacturing jobs, they were unable to escape discrimination. Two of the biggest challenges they faced were discrimination in housing and employment. Reverend B.F. Gordon attested to the discrimination of African Americans in South Bend in his 1922 book The Negro in South Bend: A Social Study. “Give him the same recreational opportunities, the same educational opportunities, the same industrial advantages (in particular those advantages that call for better education, and personal conduct,) and the same privileges to buy and sell, land or commodities...”[3]<br /><br />African Americans in South Bend were seeking equal opportunities.On June 25, 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which states,“I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”[4] However, as was evident in South Bend, public opinion was strong enough to disregard the executive order in the workplace. Gabrielle Robinson addresses the employment discrimination of African Americans in the book, The Better Homes of South Bend. “Yet they had not found the equal treatment in the North for which they had hoped. Many factories in South Bend did not hire African Americans.”[5] The Studebaker plant was the biggest employer of African Americans in South Bend. <br /><br />After World War II, housing discrimination intensified. White families moved to the suburbs and the west side of South Bend by the factories became almost exclusively African American. Better Homes of South Bend members lived primarily on Prairie Avenue, defined as “slum” in the Fact Sheet on Housing in 1952.[6] "This white flight took with it private and public investment in housing, schools, roads and infrastructure, leaving a deteriorating center to the poor."[7] This deterioration of infrastructure drove Better Homes for South Bend members to secure land to buildhousing in a less developed part of the city. The corporation settled on the 1700-1800 block on North Elmer Street as their housing destination, where a handful of white families currently resided. The collective power of the corporation enabled the members to secure land, loans, and contractors for 22 houses.[8] After extensive discrimination and hardship, the group was able to secure a contractor, Max Meyer, at a reasonable price. Three years after Better Homes of South Bend was created, the members finally had houses built and ready to occupyon North Elmer Street. The discrimination that Better Homes of South Bend members faced was notisolated to South Bend. Housing discrimination against African Americans occurred in Indianapolis as well. An article in the 1944 Indianapolis Recorder discusses the utter lack of acceptable housing for African American workers in the city.[9] Many of these workers migrated to Indianapolis as part of The Great Migration. From 1916 to 1970, over six million African Americans migrated from the South to cities in the North, including Indianapolis and South Bend. The first wave occurred prior to World War I and the second wave prior to World War II. “African Americans sought an alternative to sharecropping, disenfranchisement, and racial injustice in the South.”[10] <br /><br />Before the Better Homes of South Bend formed in 1950, Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949. “In passing the Housing Act of 1949, Congress defined the policy of the United States to include the requirements of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.”[11] However, this Act did not change the living situation for Better Homes of South Bend members; they fought and improved their situation themselves. For instance, in order to build homes for black members, a competent contractor was needed, one that would use the same quality of material that was used to build white homes. Margaret Cobb stated “the contractors they met with ‘only wanted to give us substandard materials’ to build their homes because members were black.”[12] Fortunately, Better Homes for South Bend were able to hire contractors who were willing to build homes with high-quality materials regardless of the race of the occupants-to-be. Many of those 22 homes still stand today on North Elmer Street, a testament to one group’s efforts to fight racial discrimination.[13]</p>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p><span>[1]</span> Gabrielle Robinson, <em>Better Homes of South Bend</em> (Charleston: The History Press, 2015), 26.<br /><span>[2]</span> Ibid, 14.<br /><span>[3]</span> Reverend B.F. Gordon, <em>The Negro in South Bend</em> (South Bend: 1922), 2.<br /><span>[4]</span> Executive Order 8802 dated June 25, 1941, General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.<br /><span>[5]</span> Gabrielle Robinson, <em>Better Homes of South Bend</em> (Charleston: The History Press, 2015), 14.<br /><span>[6]</span> “Fact sheet on housing, South Bend, circa 1952” (South Bend, 1952), 1.<br /><span>[7]</span> Gabrielle Robinson, <em>Better Homes of South Bend</em> (Charleston: The History Press, 2015), 48.<br /><span>[8]</span> Better Homes for South Bend Historical Marker. Indiana Historical Bureau, 2017. Accessed January 14, 2020. <br /><span>[9]</span> “Local Housing Evils Cited to FHA Officers,” <em>Indianapolis Recorder 48,</em> 20 (1944): 2, accessed April 5, 2019.<br /><span>[10]</span> Joe William Trotter, "The Great Migration," OAH Magazine of History 17, no. 1 (2002): 31.<br /><span>[11]</span> “Discrimination Against Minorities In The Federal Housing Programs,” <em>Indiana Law Journal 31</em>, 4 (1956): 501, accessed April 5, 2019, <br /><span>[12]</span> Annette Scherber, “‘Better Homes Wants to Have a Fair Shake’: Fighting Housing Discrimination in Postwar South Bend” Indiana History Blog. Accessed January 7, 2020.<br />[13] Better Homes for South Bend Historical Marker. Indiana Historical Bureau, 2017. Accessed January 14, 2020. </p>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Authors: Jordan Girard 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
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Houses on North Shore Drive, attributed to Patrick Walter Collection, Public domain, via The Indiana Album, Inc.
https://indianaalbum.pastperfectonline.com/photo/5FDE7EBF-F9DF-4450-BB21-101123584988
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4365.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1950
1950s-present
Housing
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Organization
Segregation
South Bend
St. Joseph County
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/1ac91cd2011a5a8d869fb015aba29b94.png
9722f6a4062e0b4f977663d9e6494d1b
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Charles Gordone
Description
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<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>
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<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>
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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
Relation
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<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>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Pulitzer Prizes, attributed to Daniel Chester French, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pulitzer_Prizes_(medal).png
1900-1940s
1950s-present
Elkart County
Elkhart
Entrepreneurship
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Theater
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/ce5084554e048c0e83d9c813807a2daf.jpg
b716119f57960b1ead9176485c2394d8
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Corydon Colored School (aka Leora Brown School)
Description
An account of the resource
In 1891, the Corydon Colored School was constructed at a cost of $1100. [1], [2] The school was built to educate the increasing number of African American school-aged children living in Corydon and Harrison County. These children were descendants of about 100 enslaved African Americans who migrated into the Corydon area in the early nineteenth century with a white couple, who eventually gave the group their freedom.[3] Corydon Colored School served both elementary and secondary students and held its first graduation in May 1897.[4] In 1925, the high school closed due to lack of enrollment.[5] The elementary school remained open until 1950,[6] when African American students from Corydon were sent to nearby previously all white schools.[7] The closure of the Corydon Colored School greatly affected the African Americans who taught there, as very few African Americans were hired to teach at segregated schools within the school district.[8]
After sitting unused for decades, the school was purchased in 1987 by Maxine Brown, who created the Leora Brown School, Inc., a non-profit organization named in honor of her aunt. Leora Brown Farrow graduated from Corydon Colored School in 1923, and then spent a year studying education at Madame Blaker’s Teachers College in Indianapolis. She returned to teach at the Corydon Colored School from 1924-1950,[9] becoming the longest serving teacher at the school. Even though she had tenure, Leora Brown was one of the African American teachers who was not retained by the school district when Corydon Color School closed in 1950.[10]
Leora Brown School, Inc. used funding from individuals, foundations, and corporations to rehabilitate and preserve the building. The Leora Brown School opened to the public as a cultural and educational center in 1993, and is used for community functions and to promote tourism in Harrison County.[11] As perhaps the oldest African American educational institution still remaining in Indiana[12] , the Leora Brown School was commemorated with an Indiana Historical Bureau marker in 1995, listed on the Indiana Register of Historic Places,[13] and is part of the Indiana African American Heritage Trail. [14]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] “Leora Brown School Marker Text Review Report.” Indiana Historical Bureau. October 21, 2013. Accessed September 21, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/files/31.1995.1review.pdf
[2] “Leora Brown School.” Journey Indiana. February 28, 2016. Accessed September 21, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eWWoGuL5mk
[3] Brown, Maxine F. “Mitchems of Harrison County.” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Spring 2009. Volume 21, Number 2. Indiana Historical Society. Indianapolis, Indiana. Accessed September 21,2020. https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll39/id/6623/rec/1
[4] “Leora Brown School Historical Marker.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Corydon, Indiana. 1995. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/132.htm.
[5] “Leora Brown School.”
[6] Esarey, Jenna. “Ind. African American Heritage Trail Gets Boost,” February 20, 2015. Accessed, September 21, 2020. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2015/02/19/ind-african-american-heritage-trail-gets-boost/23693067/.
[7] “Leora Brown School Marker Text Review Report.”
[8] Wilson, Carrol. “Leora Brown School.” Indiana Historical Bureau. November 17, 2013. Accessed September 21, 2020.https://www.in.gov/history/4226.htm
[9] “Leora Brown School Fund.” Accessed October 5, 2020. https://hccfindiana.org/esDonations/details/41/Leora-Brown-School-Fund.
[10] “Leora Brown School.”
[11] Esarey, Jenna.
[12] Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, “Leora Brown School,” Discover Indiana, accessed September 21, 2020, https://publichistory.iupui.edu/items/show/338.
[13] “Leora Brown School Fund.”
[14] Esarey, Jenna.
Contributor
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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
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Leora Brown School, attributed to Cool10191, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leora_brown_school1.jpg
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/132.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
Corydon
education
Harrison County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
School
Segregation
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/0b71b8bf54d29b6cba08da7a9192fca2.jpg
a1efcbd591251b7394c7e831915eaf57
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Crispus Attucks High School
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Crispus Attucks High School, located in Indianapolis, Indiana, opened in 1927. Originally, it was to be named after President Thomas Jefferson. However, the idea of a school built explicitly for African American students named for a white slave owner invoked multiple petitions from the African American community. The name changed to Crispus Attucks to honor the runaway slave who is said to have been the first person to die in the American Revolution, during the Boston Massacre.[1]</p>
<p>The 1920s marked a great resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, which pressured for segregated education. There was much pushback from African Americans regarding Crispus Attucks being segregated. The Better Indianapolis League, as well as African American churches such as the Bethel AME Church in Indianapolis, strongly opposed segregating the school.[2] Despite this, the school board voted unanimously on segregation. African American students who had previously attended integrated Indianapolis high schools, such as Arsenal Technical, Washington, and Shortridge, moved to Crispus Attucks upon the school’s opening, and were no longer allowed to attend any other public high school in the city. The Indianapolis Recorder reported on this incident, stating: “About two dozen of boys and girls who appeared at Shortridge, Manual and Technical High Schools...were refused admission...The Negro citizens are now faced with the circumstance, voiced by opponents of a Negro High School in the past. The great establishments as Technical, Manual, and Shortridge, offer subjects or works, and facilities that Negro boys and girls will never have at the Attucks High School, some parents declare.”[3]</p>
<p>Many Crispus Attucks’ teachers held master’s degrees or PhDs, which was unusual for a high school at the time. Richard Pierce in Polite Protest states, “By 1934, seven years after opening its doors, the sixty-two-member faculty held nineteen master’s degrees and two Ph.D.s. The percentage of advanced degrees held by Attucks’s faculty far exceeded that of any other high school in the city.”[4] With the amount of highly educated faculty, Attucks provided quality education despite the lack of quality resources compared to the city’s white high schools. The school also found success in sports. In the 1950s, the Attucks Tigers won two consecutive state basketball championships. The 1955 championship made the Tigers the first segregated black high school team in US history to win a state title.[5] Notable athletes who played on the team included future NBA Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson.[6]</p>
<p>Statewide desegregation was enacted into law by the Indiana General Assembly in 1949, five years before the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. However, Crispus Attucks continued to be a segregated African American high school. In 1965, the president of the NAACP requested an investigation into why Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) were still segregated. In 1968, the Department of Justice “directed IPS to begin taking voluntary steps toward actual integration.” IPS ignored this directive, which was met with protests from the African American community, and from whites who refused to let their children attend Attucks High School. The school would remain segregated until September 7, 1971 “under court-ordered desegregation”.[7]</p>
<p>Recognized for both its architecture and its role in African American education and civil rights, Crispus Attucks High School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. In 1992, the Indiana Historical Bureau erected a historical marker in front of the school, recounting its history and its importance to the Indianapolis African American community.</p>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] <span>“Crispus Attucks High School.” National Park Service National Register of Historic Places. Accessed March 20, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/indianapolis/crispusattucks.htm.<br />[2] Glass, James A. “AME Church has proud history in Indiana.” Indy Star, 2016. Accessed March 20, 2020.<br />[3] “Students Barred From High Schools,” Indianapolis Recorder, September 24, 1927, 2. Accessed March 24, 2020.<br />[4] Pierce, Richard B. Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 32.<br />[5] Crispus Attucks High School IHB Marker Review. Indiana Historical Bureau, 2014, 3. Accessed March 24, 2020, https://www.in.gov/history/files/49.1992.1review.pdf.<br />[6] Robertson, Oscar. How an all-black high school team starring Oscar Robertson changed Hoosier Hysteria. Accessed March 24, 2020, https://theundefeated.com/features/oscar-robertson-crispus-attucks-tigers/<br />[7] Crispus Attucks High School IHB Marker Review.</span>
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An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Authors: Robin Johnson and Emma Brauer
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/211.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003043">National Register of Historic Places</a>
1900-40s
1950s-present
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Marion County
National Register of Historic Places
Segregation
Sports
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/0213a9b0debf429ac5f16e15b17d716d.jpg
69c4a3c2d7549141143e496af982d4cc
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Places
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Division Street School, New Albany
Description
An account of the resource
In 1869, an Indiana law mandated that the public education of African American children be separate but equal.[1] To adhere to this law, in June 1884, the New Albany School Board authorized a new elementary school to serve the growing number of African-American children. Division Street School opened in 1885, a simple one-story wooden building with two classrooms.[2] Enrollment ranged from anywhere between 60 and 70 students in first through sixth grades. Improvements were made to the building over the years, including repairs after two fires in 1913 and 1922.[3] As in many segregated Indiana school districts in the early 20th century, former pupils recount how they had to walk past white schools on their way to their African American-only Division Street School. [4]
In 1944, the Division Street School was expanded to include seventh grade. In May 1946, the New Albany School Board voted to close the school and transferred the students to a different segregated elementary school.[5] Upon closing as a school, the building was used as a Veterans’ Affairs office. After a few years of vacancy, the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation used the building for a storage and maintenance facility for 40 years until 1999.[6]
After the community heard there were plans to tear the school down, they banded together to restore and preserve one of the oldest remaining African American schools in Indiana.[7] , [8] Organizing as the Friends of Division Street School, the restoration became a joint project with the New Albany-Floyd County School Corporation. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and was given a historical marker by the Indiana Historical Bureau in 2005. [9] One of the former classrooms houses an African American heritage museum, hosting educational programs and focusing on the importance of African American education in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The other room is set up as a 1920s classroom. The Division Street School still serves its educational function, as every fourth-grader in the New Albany-Floyd School District spends a day in the 1920s classroom to experience its history and significance on-site.[10] The Division Street School also serves as a community building and is a source of pride for New Albany residents as one of the most visible preservation efforts in New Albany.[11] “We think it is a real crown jewel for race relations and goodwill in this community,” said Victor Megenity, director of Division Street School. [12]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] “Division Street School Historic Marker.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed September 14,2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/479.htm
[2] Alex Covington, Jacob Burress, Trish Nohalty, and Tommy Skaggs, “Division Street School,”Discover Indiana, accessed September 14, 2020, https://publichistory.iupui.edu/items/show/111.
[3] Dreistadt, Laura. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Division Street School. Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. Jeffersonville, Indiana. October 15, 2001. Accessed September 14, 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/a2459f57-29ba-4162-a9b0-56c2c078cb31
[4] Goforth, Melissa. “At New Albany’s Division Street School, unity is found: Ice cream social celebrated historic significance.” News and Tribune. Jeffersonville, Indiana. July 8, 2018. Accessed September 14, 2020. https://www.newsandtribune.com/news/at-new-albanys-division-street-school-unity-is-found/article_fb2d70a2-82e3-11e8-b2ae-4f0c4fbf9b50.html and https://www.newsandtribune.com/multimedia/video-inside-division-street-school/video_a3d7a838-b3c2-5f5d-b567-0675a1d521e4.html
[5] Dreistadt, Laura.
[6] Alex Covington, Jacob Burress, Trish Nohalty, and Tommy Skaggs.
[7] Goforth, Melissa.
[8]“2-Room school being revived.” The Indianapolis Star. January 6, 2001.
[9] “Division Street School Historic Marker.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed September 14,2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/479.htm
[10] Goforth, Melissa.
[11] “Preserve America: New Albany, Indiana.” Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Accessed September 14, 2020. https://www.achp.gov/preserve-america/community/new-albany-indiana
[12] Goforth, Melissa.
Contributor
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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
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Division Street School, attributed to Bedford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Division_Street_School.jpg
Relation
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/479.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/02000193%20">National Register of Historic Places</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
education
Floyd County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
National Register of Historic Places
New Albany
School
Segregation
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f6af3bd85d62755f2b9102b00d1a709a
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People
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Evangeline Harris Merriweather
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4414.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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Information about rights held in and over the resource
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Evangeline Harris Merriwether 1949, public domain, via Indiana Album Inc., http://indianaalbum.pastperfectonline.com/photo/82D69F28-E9A9-40A5-BF87-981528434361
1900-1940s
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Segregation
Terre Haute
Vigo County
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/d8e06e53a39006bfeac01e3189b89cef.jpg
f14b04a0be625cd77bbe728faad2330b
Dublin Core
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Title
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Places
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Title
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Frederick Douglass,
Abolitionist Mob in Pendleton
Description
An account of the resource
Frederick Douglass was born in his grandmother’s cabin in Tuckahoe Creek, Maryland.[1] He grew up as an enslaved child and was separated from his grandmother to work at the Wye House plantation in Talbot County, Maryland at the age of six. He was then given to Hugh Auld who lived in the city of Baltimore where Douglass felt lucky, as slaves in urban places were almost freedmen, compared to those in plantations.[2] At the age of twelve, Auld’s wife Sophia started teaching him the alphabet and treated him like a normal child, but was quickly stopped by her husband.[3] This first access to knowledge and education gave him the desire to learn more, but it also gave him a taste of freedom as he said: “Once you learn to read, you will forever be free.”[4] From then on, Douglass decided to continue to learn how to read and write by himself: for him, “knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.”[5] <br /><br />His original name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, but he changed it to Douglass when he decided to escape as a way to break with his enslaved life and not to be recognized. In September 1838, Douglass successfully escaped from his owner Colonel Lloyd and reached Havre de Grace, Maryland. He became an influential activist for the abolition of slavery. In 1845, he described his experiences as a slave in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It exposed the reality of slavery and his path from bondage to freedom. It became a crucial testimony of the horrors of slavery. <br /><br />Throughout his life, Douglass never stopped writing about slavery and became a prominent activist in the fight for abolition across the United States. In 1843, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society sent speakers to New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana to hold the “One Hundred Conventions” on abolition.[6] The Anti-Slavery Society was founded by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and Arthur Tappan, another abolitionist. Douglass became part of the Anti-Slavery Society, along with William Wells Brown and Micajah C. White, two other freed men. <br /><br />In September 1843, Frederick Douglass and other speakers went to Madison County, Indiana to give a speech at a meeting at the Pendleton Baptist church. The Anti-slavery society focused their action on small towns like Pendleton where the African American population constituted an important proportion of the inhabitants. Situated in the periphery of Indianapolis, people relied on the church to gather and get news on politics. Douglass wanted to prove that the fight for abolition should be everybody’s concern. However, the crowd they encountered was deeply racist: more than thirty white men marched in, armed with stones and brickbats, asking for them to leave.[7] Douglass and others were injured, even though they were defended by the local supporters. In his autobiography My Life and Times (1881), he described the event saying, “They tore down the platform on which we stood, assaulted Mr. White and knocked out several of his teeth (…).” Rioters went unpunished, showing that progress was still to be made in justice and that racial violence was still not publicly condemned, even in the North.<br /><br />In 2013, the Indiana Historical Bureau, Madison County Council, Madison County Council of Governments, Town of Pendleton, Historic Fall Creek Pendleton Settlement, Pendleton Business Association, and Friends installed a historical marker at the site of the 1843 mob.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. Edited by John David Smith. New Ed edition. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. P.44 <br />[2] Gopnik, Adam. “The Prophetic Pragmatism of Frederick Douglass,” October 8, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/the-prophetic-pragmatism-of-frederick-douglass. <br />[3] Douglass, Frederick, "Chapter VII", Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. <br />[4] Ibid. Chapter VI, P.52 <br />[5] Douglass, Frederick, "Chapter VI", Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. <br />[6] "Social Reform and Human Progress," The Liberator, February 17, 1843 <br />[7] "Of the Board of managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, to the Abolitionists of the Western and Middle States," The Liberator, June 16, 1843
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Author: Emma Guichon <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4111.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Frederick Douglass (circa 1879), attributed to George Kendall Warren, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_(circa_1879).jpg
1800s
Abolition
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Madison County
Pendleton
Slavery
Violence
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/922cc810ba616c02ca1d1f0948d78029.jpg
63ac588be2ceab71a71ace43fbd19e2f
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Title
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Places
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Title
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Freeman Field / African American 477th Bombardment Group
Description
An account of the resource
The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941 following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Immediately, the country was thrust into an international war that required the mobilization of American people and resources. Many new military bases and training facilities were founded throughout the country, including Freeman Army Air Field, a pilot training school constructed southwest of Seymour, Indiana. Named after the distinguished Army Air Corps pilot Richard S. Freeman, Freeman Field was activated on December 1, 1942. The impressive facility contained 413 buildings and four 5,500-foot runways.[1]
World War II was not only a time of international conflict; within the United States, domestic tensions grew as the war highlighted the racial inequality African Americans endured. Segregation persisted in the military, forcing African American service men into segregated units, limiting their opportunities for promotions, and barring their entrance to officer’s clubs. [2] Segregation was strictly enforced at Seymour’s Freeman Field under the command of Col. Robert Selway. Freeman Field’s discriminatory treatment of African American airmen gained national attention in 1945, as members of the all-African American 477th Bombardment Group staged a non-violent demonstration to protest the Army Air Corps racist practices. This event, now called The Freedmen Field Mutiny, was instrumental to the fight for the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. [3]
The 477th Bombardment Group was formed by the Army Air Corps in 1945. First assigned to Selfridge Field, near Detroit, the 477th trained at fields in Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana. At every base, the African American unit faced discrimination and racism. Upon their arrival at Freeman Field in March 1945, the 400 African American officers that made up the 477th were listed as “trainees,” while their white counterparts were listed as “instructors” to maintain segregated base protocols. Because they were designated as “trainees,” the African American airmen were forbidden from utilizing comfortable Officer’s Club #2 and forced into Officer’s Club #1, a run-down building lacking amenities. [4]
Frustrated by their unequal facilities, the African American airmen decided to stand up for their rights and try to enter Officer’s Club #2. Led by Lt. Coleman Young, a group of African American officers requested permission to enter the all-white club on April 5, 1945. The group was told to leave, and a second group attempted to enter the building a few minutes later. Again, the airmen were denied entry, but this group refused to turn away. Pushing past the on-duty officer, the leader of the group entered Officer’s Club #2, and the rest of the demonstrators followed. The next evening, more than 60 African American officers were arrested for trying to enter the white club. Col. Selway punished the African American unit by instituting Regulation 85-2, which officially segregated housing, dining facilities, and officer’s clubs by race and gave him the right to confine any violators of the order. Despite the fact that the segregation of public facilities on military bases was forbidden by US Army Regulation 210-10, Selman tried to force the African American officers to sign a statement saying that they had read and agreed with Regulation 85-2. [5]
More than 100 of the officers refused to sign the statement. The arrested officers were sent away to Godman Field, where they were guarded by armed men and dogs. As the incident began gaining national attention, the War Department felt pressured to drop the charges against the officers. On April 23, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall ordered the release of the 101 African American officers. Although free from military prison, each officer involved in the mutiny had letters of reprimand placed in their military files. [6]
In response to the demonstration, Col. Selway was relieved of his duties and replaced at Freeman Field by Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr.[7] By the time the facility was deactivated in 1948, over 4,000 pilots had graduated from training. [8] The U.S. armed forces were officially desegregated by Executive Order 9981, enacted by President Harry S. Truman on July 26, 1948.[9] The reprimands were removed from the military files of the African American officers under President Clinton in 1995. [10] Today, parts of Freeman Army Air Field are preserved as a museum, and Freeman Field Mutiny is marked with a plaque from the Indiana Historical Bureau. [11] The air men’s quest for equal rights was an important turning point in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement that paved the way for non-violent sit-in protests in the following decades and pushed the United States military to desegregate. [12]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1]“Freeman Field,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.in.gov/history/2501.htm.
[2] Nicole Poletika, “‘Blacks Must Wage Two Wars:’ The Freeman Field Uprising & WWII Desegregation,” Indiana History Blog, July 31, 2017, https://blog.history.in.gov/blacks-must-wage-two-wars-the-freeman-field-uprising-wwii-desegregation/.
[3] “The Freeman Field Mutiny,” National Park Service, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/tuai/learn/historyculture/stories.htm.
[4] “The Freeman Field Mutiny,”
[5] Ibid.
[6] “The Freeman Field Mutiny,”
[7] Ibid.
[8]“Freeman Field.”
[9]Poletika, “Blacks Must Wage Two Wars.”
[10] “The Freeman Field Mutiny.”
[11] “Freeman Field.”
[12]“History,” Freeman Army Airfield Museum, accessed June 23, 2020, http://www.freemanarmyairfieldmuseum.org/about.html.
[13] Poletika, “Blacks Must Wage Two Wars.”
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Authors: Mary Swartz and Natalie Bradshaw
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/366.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Freeman Field Mutiny, attributed to Master Sergeant Harold J. Beaulieu, Sr., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freeman_Field_Mutiny.jpg
1900-40s
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Jackson County
Segregation
Seymour
war
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/bd782ac322021e30251eb539e63917c4.jpg
725dbc9c60634f23188e4207f88f5cf1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Places
Dublin Core
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Froebel School, Gary
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Built in 1912, Froebel High School was one of the first schools in Gary, Indiana to accept African American students, decades before most other schools were desegregated. By 1944, approximately 40% of the school’s students were African American. Despite being an integrated school, African American students were still expected to remain in certain areas of the building, could not participate fully in extracurricular activities, and were often disliked and mistreated by many of their white classmates. Tensions continued to rise, until September 18, 1945 when around 1,400 white students took part in a massive walkout protest against the integration policies of Froebel High School.[1]</p>
<p>In their protest, white students pleaded that Froebel High School become a school designated for white students only, threatening to transfer schools if their demands were not met.[2] As a result of the ongoing protest, Gary African American ministers of all faiths banded together to form the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance (IMA) and defended the principal’s decision to maintain an integrated environment within the school.[3][4] The IMA released an appeal to Gary’s citizens, saying “It is indeed regrettable to note that after the nation has spent approximately 190 billion dollars, the colored citizens of Gary have sent about 4,000 of their sons, brothers, and husbands to battlefields around the world and have supported every war effort that our government has called upon us to support, in a united effort to destroy nazism and to banish from the face of the earth all that Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo stood for; to find in our midst those who are endeavoring to spread disunity, race-hatred, and Hitlerism in our community.”[5]</p>
<p>Despite the support of the IMA in favor of the school’s integration decision, otherschools joined the walkout. The Gary Post-Tribune reported that some members of the Froebel neighborhood supported the strike as they “feel their homes and churches have depreciated in value” with the influx of African American home-owners in the neighborhood.[6] The hate strike lasted well into November, but threats to continue the strike lasted into the following year. On August 27, 1946, the Gary Board of Education issued a policy technically ending segregation. However, in all practicality segregation within Gary schools continued to exist, supported by discriminatory policies. Lower grades at Froebel School more quickly adjusted to integration, while in 1948, African American students in grades 8-12 at Froebel still faced persistent discrimination when it came to the swimming facilities, band, theater, class offices, and other extracurricular activities.[7]</p>
<p>In 1951, Froebel School enrolled 56% African American students. After a transfer policy was enacted that allowed children to transfer to other schools for “better social adjustment”, Froebel School enrollment was 95% African American by 1961, while the district it served was 65% African American. The transfer policy in effect allowed segregation to continue. Other practices, such as offering fewer academic courses, hiring less qualified teachers, and overcrowding at predominately African American schools, coupled with school feeding patterns based on race, perpetuated de facto segregation.[8]</p>
<p>Due to declining enrollment and after several reductions of grade levels served, Froebel School finally closed in 1977 as part of district cost-cutting measures. The location of Froebel School and its role in school desegregation is commemorated with an Indiana Historical Bureau marker.[9]</p>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] D.L. Chandler. Little Known Black History Fact: Froebel High School. Black America Web. Accessed April 30, 2020. https://blackamericaweb.com/2018/09/18/little-known-black-history-fact-froebel-high-school/
[2] Casey Pfeiffer. A Challenge to Integration: The Froebel School Strikes of 1945. Indiana History Blog, 2017. Accessed April 30, 2020. https://blog.history.in.gov/a-challenge-to-integration-the-froebel-school-strikes-of-1945/
[3] Casey Pfeiffer.
[4] D.L. Chandler.
[5] Casey Pfeiffer.
[6] Students’ Walkout Mixed in Race Hate. The Indianapolis Recorder. September 29, 1945.
[7] Ronald Cohen. The Dilemma of School Integration in the North: Gary, Indiana, 1945-1960. June 1986. Indiana Magazine of History 82(2), pp. 161-184.
[8] Max Wolff. Segregation in the Schools of Gary, Indiana. February 1963. Journal of Educational Sociology 36(6), pp. 251-261.
[9] Indiana Historical Bureau. State Historical Marker, Froebel School. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4109.htm
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4109.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Rights
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Froebel High School, Gary, Indiana, attributed to Tichnor Brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Froebel_High_School,_Gary,_Indiana_(75204).jpg
1900-40s
1950s-present
education
Gary
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Integration
Lake County
School
Segregation
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/148a467d1acabbe5c416a34b6835bd62.jpg
81bc18dbd9d7609aaacf1b26646a375e
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/9444f82497f947c3dcd299547aeec3d3.mp3
1b3d14d55914c577f0b165f247d5d2b2
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview 1 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Watson, who has lived in Madison, Indiana his entire life, describes mass migration out of Madison to find better paying jobs, particularly to industrializing cities in the northern United States.
<strong>***Transcript***<br /><br /></strong><em>Allen Watson</em>: They had to. To find good paying jobs, they pretty much had to leave town here and go to the bigger cities, like go North, you know, and that’s where most of them ended up, like Indianapolis and Toledo, Ohio, and some of those areas. They didn’t go too far South. They went mostly North.<strong><br /></strong>
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/7296da74e7aabca2b950f9e79bfb99fc.mp3
53c5f083df404bec6f492f4bd825a261
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Interview 2 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Watson describes discriminatory practices towards African American patrons at his local theater in Madison, where African Americans had to sit in the balcony or in the back rows of the theater as the result of race-based discrimination against Black patrons.
<span><strong>***Transcript***</strong><br /><br /><em>Allen Watson</em>: You know, I was telling about the pool and the restaurants, but also, you know, </span><span>our theater was that was also, you know, our theater was, you know, you could sit in the very </span><span>back, you had to sit in the back three or four rows of the </span><span>theater, and sometimes you had to sit in </span><span>the balcony. If you sat downstairs, you had to sit there, but in the balcony, you could sit </span><span>anywhere in the balcony, and even, you know, the drinking fountains, they had white and black. </span><span>You know, I remember that, a</span><span>nd I wasn’t very old, you know, I was probably ten years old, and I </span><span>remember seeing stuff like that. You know, at ten years old, you can read, you know, white or </span><span>black or whatever. “Colored” is what the word they used back then.</span>
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a>
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/f8bcf19857cdc97fa2222e04b142d8e1.mp3
0f00441c8658d2e36e3bb43db6ab1a2c
Dublin Core
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Interview 3 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Watson details when and how his parents discussed racism in his community with him at the age of 10 to 12. He also discusses discriminatory practices at the swimming pool in Madison, along with the drugstores located downtown.
<strong>***Transcript***</strong><br /><br /><em>Allen Watson</em>: When we was probably around eleven or so, ten or eleven or twelve years old, you know, even when my dad would take us to get ice cream, and we were set out on the curb, we just thought, well, you know, it’s a nice pretty day, you know, we don’t go inside and sit, but later on, we found out why we couldn’t. We weren’t allowed inside the drugstore because of the color of our skin, so we couldn’t go in, so my dad went in and got it for us, and then the pool, it’s the same thing at the swimming pool, you could not swim.
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/43d52b22ab45850502e6d525fce06712.mp3
a60fbf5b3f3ddd7d45f485744077e078
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Interview 4 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Watson, a resident of Madison, Indiana, shares the story of a local hospital's intentional expansion into a Black neighborhood on Poplar Street. Many houses were destroyed along with the Black community in that area for a parking lot.
<strong>***Transcript***</strong><br /><br /><em>Allen Watson</em>: The hospital, and I haven’t told this story much at all, but I think it’s a story that needs to be told. Back in the early [19]70’s, they started their expansion to the hospital. Well, they bought up some property on Poplar Street, and there was probably about nine homes on Poplar Street that they had bought and destroyed.<br /><br /><em>Carrie Vachon</em>: Just tore them down.<br /><br /><em>Allen Watson</em>: Just tore them down. Nice homes. I mean, it’s just like all the other homes in downtown Madison on Second Street, Third Street and whatever, East Street, but they wanted that property, so the Black community was just destroyed, it was torn down. I mean, you didn’t have a say. I mean, they wanted that property. Most of the property that they bought is used for parking, a parking lot, a parking garage and a parking lot.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Places
Dublin Core
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Title
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Georgetown Historic District
Description
An account of the resource
Located in Madison, Indiana, the Georgetown neighborhood, now known as the Georgetown District, became home to free African Americans as early as 1820. [1] Madison is situated directly on the Indiana-Kentucky border at the Ohio River, and Georgetown “became a place in which many freedom seekers found a community of safe houses and conductors willing to give them aid to reach the next station toward freedom.” [2] Eventually, the neighborhood would develop into the central hive of Madison’s bustling Underground Railroad activity, becoming an “important settlement of free Blacks who assisted hundreds of enslaved African Americans to freedom.” [3]
Across several decades, Georgetown’s African American community continued to grow. In the 1820 census, there were 48 free black families listed as living in Madison, and by 1850, the number had increased to 298. [4] Along with the population increase came the additions of several black-run institutions including schools, churches, and businesses. [5] Several free black Georgetown business owners rose to a place of prominence in the community during this time, and used their influence to aid freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad.
One such prominent resident was George DeBaptiste, who settled in Madison in 1837. Immediately upon his arrival, he protested against racist legislation by contesting an 1831 Indiana act which required new black residents entering the state to pay 500 dollars as “a bond for good behavior and self-support.” [6] After successfully suing to reside in Indiana without paying the bond, DeBaptiste conducted a wholesale shipping business between Madison and Cincinnati. Through this venture, he met William Henry Harrison, who hired him to be “steward of the White House” during his presidency. [7] After Harrison’s death, DeBaptiste returned to Madison and operated a barbershop for six years on the corner of Walnut and Second Streets. During this time, the barbershop was the heart of Underground Railroad activities in Madison. [8] Through these brave efforts, “DeBaptiste estimated that he personally assisted 108 fugitives to freedom, and several times that number indirectly.” [9]
Despite the relative size and success of the free black community, life for residents of Georgetown was not easy. Free African Americans were harassed persistently, facing discrimination at every turn. [10] Furthermore, the Georgetown neighborhood’s connection to the Underground Railroad had long been suspected. In 1846, a mob of slave owners crossed the border from Kentucky and, joined by pro-slavery allies from Madison, violently raided the homes of several black families in Georgetown. [11] The mob “took it upon themselves to search the homes of free African Americans for fugitive slaves and weapons,” [12] and any who resisted were “nearly beat to death.” [13] Several prominent community members, including George DeBaptiste, fled northward to continue their work as conductors in the Underground Railroad under safer circumstances. Although the neighborhood faced white vigilante attacks and the loss of some key leaders, “the system that DeBaptiste and his collaborators built continued to flourish” in Georgetown. [14]
Madison’s Georgetown neighborhood is representative of African American-led Underground Railroad networks across the nation. While the overall population of Madison was overwhelmingly white, the residents of Georgetown had carved out a small, thriving community for themselves. This neighborhood, like in many other black-led nodes of Underground Railroad work, allowed those escaping from slavery a method of camouflage “by blending in with the people around them.” [15] Community leaders like George DeBaptiste in cities across the United States were able to use their wealth, connections, and prominence to help propel freedom seekers northward while hiding their enterprise in plain sight.
The Georgetown neighborhood continued on as a black community nestled within white Madison well into the twentieth century. Madison was heavily segregated, with its black residents restricted to their own residential section, their own school, and their own churches. [16] Madison’s black citizens were not allowed to eat in restaurants, sit with their white peers in theaters, or even be admitted into the main area of the town’s hospital; instead, there were “two rooms in the basement set aside for black patients; if they were filled, no blacks could be admitted.” [17] Only when residents of the Georgetown neighborhood conducted their own sit-in protests modeled after those conducted in the South by civil rights activists in the 1960s was the town finally desegregated. [18] While many of the historic landmarks like churches and the houses of Underground Railroad conductors still stand as a testament to the Georgetown neighborhood’s black history, the black families who remain in Madison have now expanded their community across the entire city, taking advantage of the equal access they finally achieved.
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/228">Interview 1 with Allen Watson</a><br /><a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/229">Interview 2 with Allen Watson</a><br /><a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/230">Interview 3 with Allen Watson</a><br /><a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/231">Interview 4 with Allen Watson</a>
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[1] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] Ibid. <br />[4] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. <br />[5] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. <br />[6] Earl E. McDonald, “The Negro in Indiana Before 1881,” Indiana Magazine of History 27, no. 4 (1931): 297. <br />[7] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. <br />[8] John T. Windle. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Madison Historic District. Madison, IN. Historic Madison Inc, 1970 <br />[9] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 3. <br />[10] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. <br />[11] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 205. <br />[12] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. <br />[13] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 205. <br />[14] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 206. <br />[15] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. <br />[16] Don Wallis, All We Had Was Each Other: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), xi. <br />[17] Ibid. <br />[18] Don Wallis, “The Struggle Makes You Strong: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 11, no. 3 (1999): 29.
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PHOTO & VIDEO
Sherman Minton Birthplace, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherman_Minton_Birthplace.jpg
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Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Molly Hollcraft <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/1.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Jefferson County
Madison
Oral History
Segregation
Slavery
Underground Railroad
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/57b3792049f0b2bb6460863d4e04ff13.jpg
2db700a077543ff9ed9b21359d1eee54
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/8f7b92b0beaeffc22c6e45593416d62d.jpg
f2280e6d94f3796741daae69169f00ee
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Indiana Avenue Historic District
Description
An account of the resource
The Indiana Avenue Historic District is at the 500 block of Indiana Avenue, a diagonal street located between West Street, North Street, Michigan Street, and the Central Canal. [1] The Avenue was intentionally designed in the 1821 Indianapolis plat by surveyor Alexander Ralston. As one of the four diagonal streets which intersected the city’s regular rectangular grid, it provided a thoroughfare from the four quadrants of the city straight into the heart of Indianapolis. [2] Indiana Avenue was the home of several landmarks significant in Indianapolis’s black history, including the Lockefield Gardens public housing projects, the Ransom Place historic district, Walker Theatre, and the offices of the Indianapolis Recorder, the fourth longest running black newspaper in the United States. [3]
Due to a fear that the swampy White River near Indiana Avenue was the origin point of the mosquitos that had caused a devastating malaria outbreak in 1821, most of the area remained unsettled during the mid-1800s. [4] This cheap, unwanted land was then settled by immigrants and African Americans who could not afford to live in other areas of the city. After Reconstruction, the Avenue’s population rapidly increased as hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to Northern cities during the Great Migration. Indiana’s black population more than doubled as a result of the Great Migration, and the population of Indianapolis saw a fivefold increase. [5] The immigrant and African American populations of Indiana Avenue peacefully integrated, with immigrant and black-owned businesses working alongside one another throughout the second half of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. As the black population continued to increase in the twentieth century, and downtown white-owned businesses refused service to African Americans, the 500 block of Indiana Avenue became the cultural center of Indianapolis’s black community. [6]
Indiana Avenue was its own self-sufficient neighborhood nestled within a segregated Indianapolis. In 1916, “everything that a person might need could be purchased in an eight-block segment along the avenue,” which included “33 restaurants, 33 saloons (including taverns and clubs,) 26 grocery stores (including meat and poultry shops,) 17 barbershops and hair stylists, 16 tailors and clothing retailers, 14 cobblers, 13 dry goods stores, as well as drugstores, pawnbrokers, pool halls, funeral parlors, and offices of lawyers, physicians, dentists, and real estate agents.” [7] The full physical needs of the black community were provided along Indiana Avenue, as well as their spiritual needs. In 1836, Bethel A.M.E. Church was established, and by 1848, the congregation had their own building. [8] In 1862, “supporters of slavery” burned the original building but by 1867, the Bethel A.M.E. congregation had raised enough funds to build a new site, which was the city’s longest-running black church until it was sold in 2016 after falling into disrepair. [9] Additionally, the Avenue was renowned as a “center of entertainment and recreation,” and its numerous clubs, dance halls, and taverns were a point of division among the black community. Many people enjoyed the various types of recreation provided along the Avenue, while others, especially black clergymen, decried the area as “a center of vice.” [10]
During the 1920s, Indiana Avenue became the home of an internationally recognized jazz scene that continued well into the 1940s and 1950s. Nightclubs and theaters such as the Washington, Columbia Theater, and the Walker Theatre exhibited renowned African American musicians and entertainers, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway. [11] Local musicians cut their teeth jamming onstage with jazz legends, and some became legends of their own right, like Wes Montgomery, Slide Hampton, David Baker, and many others. [12] Live performances were announced in the Indianapolis Recorder, with colorful headlines such as this one: “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Nite: Jamtown’s Jumpiest Jivers With That Savage Rhythm, Fiery Beats, Torrid Tempos Will Put You in the Groove and You’re [sic] Feet Just Gotta Move!” [13]
In 1982, Indiana Avenue was cut off from the heart of downtown Indianapolis when the construction of the American United Life Insurance Co. building, now known as One America Tower, required the demolishment of the Avenue’s 200 block. [14] Indiana Avenue had originally extended down to Ohio Street just north of Monument Circle, but now ends at New York Street. Furthermore, many of the historic buildings along Indiana Avenue have been demolished to allow for the expansion of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis campus, which now occupies all but the 300 and 400 blocks of the Avenue. [15] The cultural hub of the Avenue began gradually fading as Indianapolis slowly desegregated and the black community could spend their time and money elsewhere. [16] What was once a bustling cultural center is now largely a string of modern office buildings and parking lots. The Walker Theatre is one of the few buildings in the Indiana Avenue Historic District that still stands after a significant restoration project, and as such is one of the only indications of the Avenue’s heritage. [17]
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[1] F. Eric Utz, Suzanne T. Rollins, and William Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District, (Indianapolis, IN, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana): 2. <br />[2] Ibid., 3. <br />[3] “The Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper Celebrates 120 Years,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jul. 1, 2015. <br />[4] Steve Hall and Wanda Bryant-Wills, “A Stream of Hopes, of Dreams, of Promise,” Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, IN), Jun. 28, 1982. <br />[5] Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993): 211.<br />[6] Utz, Rollins, and Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District: 3,9. <br />[7] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 15. <br />[8] “Bethel A.M.E. Church Collection,” Indiana Historical Society, accessed October 18, 2019, http://images.indianahistory.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16797coll9. <br />[9] “Bethel AME Church,” National Parks Service, accessed October 22, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/in1.htm.; Olivia Lewis, “Indy’s Oldest African-American Church Sold for Hotel Space,” Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, IN), Apr. 8, 2016. <br />[10] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 31. <br />[11] Utz, Rollins, and Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District: 9.; “3 Big Nights of Dancing Next Week – Z. Whyte Coming,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Oct. 26, 1929.; “’Stormy Weather’ At Walker Sunday,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jan. 26, 1946. <br />[12] David Leander Williams, Indianapolis Jazz: The Masters, Legends, and Legacy of Indiana Avenue, (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014): 11, 16. <br />[13] “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Night,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), May 17, 1941. <br />[14] Joan Hostetler, “Indianapolis Then and Now: West Ohio Street at Indiana Avenue/OneAmerica Tower,” HistoricIndianapolis.com, July 26, 2012. https://historicindianapolis.com/indianapolis-then-and-now-west-ohio-street-at-indiana-avenue-oneamerica-tower/. <br />[15] Williams, Indianapolis Jazz, 13. <br />[16] Ibid., 194. <br />[17] “Looking for Things to Do or See in Indianapolis?” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Mar. 28, 1997.
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Indiana Ave Restored, attributed to Kaxsalla, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:518_Indiana_Ave_Restored.jpg
Sunset Terrace on Indiana Avenue, Indiana Historical Society, M0513.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/dc018/id/59/rec/3
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Student Authors: Allison Hunt and JB Bilbrey <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/219.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132003899" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>
1800s
1900s-40s
1950s-present
Entertainment
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Jazz
Marion County
National Register of Historic Places
Segregation
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/0a10c5fb9af90d2e11bf826876f1e25c.jpg
51bf00d8e4e4a981bfe5458c54f604d8
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Places
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Indiana Avenue Jazz Scene
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The jazz scene in Indianapolis was born during a time of segregation and Jim Crow laws, when African Americans could not attend musical concerts and shows, nor perform, in certain clubs and theatres. As a result, African Americans created their own venues and businesses in many cities in the pre-Civil Rights era. Indiana Avenue was the economic and cultural center of the African American community in Indianapolis. Jazz became big during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance in New York, and then spread to the rest of the country. Indiana Avenue, or simply “The Avenue”, became the capital of jazz in Indiana from the 1920s to the 1960s.[1] Night clubs and live music spots lined Indiana Avenue “from one end of it to the other, from Ohio Street to Lockefield.”[2]</p>
<p>Nightclubs and theaters such as the Washington, Sunset Terrace Ballroom, Columbia Theater, and the Walker Theatre hosted renowned African American musicians and entertainers, such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway.[3] Local musicians cut their teeth jamming onstage with jazz legends, and some became legends of their own right, like Wes Montgomery, Slide Hampton, David Baker, and many others.[4] Live performances were announced in the African American Indianapolis Recorder, with colorful headlines such as this one: “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Nite: Jamtown’s Jumpiest Jivers With That Savage Rhythm, Fiery Beats, Torrid Tempos Will Put You in the Groove and You’re [sic] Feet Just Gotta Move!”[5]</p>
<p>Among the musicians who performed on The Avenue were the Montgomery Brothers. Born in Indianapolis, the Montgomery Brothers (Monk, Buddy, and Wes) were each a talented musician in his own right. Monk was the first to record on an electric bass and played in Lionel Hampton’s band. Buddy, a pianist, performed with trombonist Slide Hampton and later with Miles Davis. Wes, who is considered to be one of the most influential jazz guitarists, started out experimenting with different techniques after initially being taught by older brother Monk, but received no formal training.[6]</p>
<p>In many ways, jazz helped set the stage for the Civil Rights movement, as many musicians spoke out against racial inequality. Duke Ellington, for example, had in his contracts that he would not play for segregated audiences. While touring the South in the 1930s, he rented three train cars for his band to avoid Jim Crow laws that limited African American options for overnight lodging. Ellington’s fight for civil rights and African American pride was most evident in his music, which he referred to as “African American classical music.”[7]</p>
<p>Locally, the creation of segregated Crispus Attucks High School in 1927, a public school for Indianapolis’ African American students, coincided with the jazz explosion. Attucks’ highly regarded music department and the openness of Indiana Avenue combined to provide opportunities for young local African Americans musicians at a time when many Indianapolis music venues were not open to them. David Baker, a Crispus Attucks graduate and famed jazz composer, conductor, and musician reflected on the Indianapolis jazz scene and his experience as a young African American musician. "People tend to excel in the areas that are open to them. At that time, a black was expected to play religious music, R & B or jazz. I can remember auditioning for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and being told, in no uncertain terms, that even though my audition was the best, there was no chance that I'd become a member."[8]</p>
<p>In 1994, an Indiana Historical Bureau marker was placed on Indiana Avenue to commemorate the area’s role as an African American social, cultural, and economic center in the first half of the 20th century.[9]</p>
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[1] <span>Johnson, David. Along the Avenue: the Legacy of Indianapolis Jazz. Indiana Public Media, 2007. Accessed March 26, 2020.<br />[2] Fenwick, Tyler. Indiana Avenue: The Grand Ol’ Street. Indianapolis Recorder, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2020.<br />[3] Utz, Rollins, and Gulde, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Indiana Avenue Historic District: 9.; “3 Big Nights of Dancing Next Week – Z. Whyte Coming,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Oct. 26, 1929.; “’Stormy Weather’ At Walker Sunday,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), Jan. 26, 1946.<br />[4] David Leander Williams, Indianapolis Jazz: The Masters, Legends, and Legacy of Indiana Avenue, (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014): 11, 16.<br />[5] “Ella Fitzgerald, Sunset Thurs. Night,” Indianapolis Recorder (Indianapolis, IN), May 17, 1941.<br />[6] Williams, David Leander. Indianapolis Jazz: The Masters, Legends, and Legacy of Indiana Avenue. The History Press, 2014. Pp. 86.<br />[7] Verity, Michael. “Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement: How Jazz Musicians Spoke Out for Racial Equality.” Live About, 2018. Accessed March 31, 2020.<br />[8] Johnson, David. “The Sunset Terrace Ballroom brought jazz legends to Indianpolis.” Night Lights Classic Jazz with David Brent Johns, September 18, 2007. Accessed March 31, 2020, http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/aroundtown/article_f340f4fa-9358-11e9-bb78-9f4f3a75ee01.html<br />[9] Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana Avenue Historical Marker. Accessted March 31, 2020, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/219.htm</span>
Contributor
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Student Authors: Robin Johnson and Sydney Schrock
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/219.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Montgomery Brothers and Willis Kirk Perform on Indiana Avenue, Indiana Historical Society, P0507.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/V0002/id/3896/rec/7
1900-40s
1950s-present
arts
Entertainment
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Jazz
Marion County
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/3546ce99f050f2906fae52790d8c825e.jpg
8cb3dcc57886080c858a9960782ccd22
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Indiana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs/Minor House
Description
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African American women’s clubs in the twentieth century were created following the model of women’s rights and literary societies that were famous in the 1800s. The goal of African American women’s clubs was to unite black women to fight racial oppression and to promote moral and religious values. They believed the status of African American women in America could improve through the education of their youth and providing health and social services. <br /><br />To join forces in the late nineteenth century, the leaders of several African American women’s clubs in Indiana decided to merge into the National Association of Colored Women of Indiana. In 1896, the Young Ladies of Trilby Club of Evansville, the National Federation of Afro-American Women and the Colored Women’s League formed a united Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.[1] Lillian Thomas Fox, the first African American newspaper reporter for the Indianapolis News, was the state organizer for the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in Indiana. She persuaded local clubs to form a state federation.[2] In April 1904, a state convention of African American women’s clubs was held at the Bethel AME Church in Indianapolis in order to form a state federation. A total of 19 key women’s organizations from Indianapolis, South Bend, Anderson, Marion, Muncie, and Terre Haute formed the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (ISFCWC).[3]<br /><br />The federation’s local clubs undertook various projects to improve life for their African American communities. For instance, the Woman’s Club of Indianapolis established an outdoor tuberculosis camp from 1905 to 1916, ran a tuberculosis home for patients until 1935, and then funded financial assistance for African American families affected by the disease.[4] Clubs provided food, clothing and housing for flood victims and to low-income families who lacked those necessities.[5] During World War I, ISFCWC members distributed Bibles to departing African American soldiers at the Thursday Afternoon Coterie Club in Indianapolis.[6] The ISFCWC helped fund the Frederick Douglass Home in Washington, D.C. They also set up scholarship funds for African American students, such as those from Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, to help with college tuition and expenses.[7] In addition, the ISFCWC organized local day schools and kindergartens for African American children.[8]<br /><br />There were 97 clubs and over 1,500 ISFCWC members by 1914, and membership increased to over 1,600 with 89 clubs a decade later. By 1933, the number of ISFCWC chapters declined to 56 clubs from 49 cities throughout Indiana. In 1927, the ISFCWC purchased an existing family home in Indianapolis to serve as its clubhouse and state headquarters. Known as the Minor House, after its original owners who built it in 1897, the headquarters is still in use today. Because of its architectural integrity and its significant role in African American history in Indiana, the Minor House was added to the National Register for Historic Places in 1987.[9] In 1997, the Indiana Historical Bureau and the ISFCWC erected a historical marker in front of the Minor House in recognition of the civil rights contributions the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs made to Indiana.[10]
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<span>[1] </span><span>King, Lou Ella. </span><span>The History of Indiana State Fede</span><span>ration of Colored Women’s Clubs. Gary: Harris Printing Company</span><span>, 1953. </span><span>P.53<br /></span><span>[2] </span><span>NACWC. </span><span>A History of the Club Movement Among the Colored Women of the United States of America. </span><span>Was</span><span>hington, D.C.: </span><span>NACWC, 1902. P.101.<br />[</span><span>3] </span><span>Indiana State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 1987. National </span><span>Park Service. A</span><span>ccessed March 10, 2020.<br />[4] King, Lou Ella. P.57.<br />[5] National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form.<br />[6] Ibid.<br />[7] Hine,Darlene Clark (1981). When the Truth is Told: A History of Black Women's Culture and Community in Indiana, 1875–1950. Indianapolis, Indiana: National Council of Negro Women. p. 36<br />[8] Leslie, LaVonne. The History of the National Association of Colored Women’sS Clubs, Inc.: A Legacy of Service. Xlibris Corporation, 2012. P.22<br />[9] National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form.<br /></span>
Contributor
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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
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PHOTO & VIDEO:<br />Indiana State Federation of Colored Women, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indiana_State_Federation_of_Colored_Women%27s_Clubs.jpg
Relation
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<a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/9ae99284-d9ef-4096-a3e4-8ef5f8dfcd00/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/227.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1904
1950s-present
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Marion County
National Register of Historic Places
Organization
Women
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/2d73f0880756cba25eca5825dc91c323.jpg
7bf6060c3f4494ed7782ea930bfaf7c7
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Indianapolis ABCs and Washington Park
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<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.
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[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.
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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
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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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4126.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1897-1940
1900-1940s
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Ku Klux Klan
Marion County
Negro League
Segregation
Sports
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/c6c670f2fcc22001b66284cc3d885cec.jpg
2b1c889ac24057e6c006b3019330e243
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Places
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John H. and Sarah Tibbets Home
Description
An account of the resource
John Henry Tibbets was born in Clermont County, Ohio, to Dr. Samuel and Susanna Combs Tibbets circa 1820. [1] He was the last son born in the staunchly abolitionist family. The Tibbets were motivated “to help fugitive slaves by personal religious conviction,” as part of their Baptist faith. [2] In the fall of 1838, John aided his “first fugitive from slavery,” riskily escorting the man on horseback at nighttime to a safe location about 15 miles away, with the help of his cousin Thomas Coombs. [3]
In 1843, John H. Tibbets moved to Jefferson County, Indiana, which already boasted a strong community of abolitionists. In 1839, 73 men and women, led by abolitionist Methodist minister Louis Hicklin, established the Neil’s Creek Anti-Slavery Society just north of Madison, Indiana. [4] One of the founding members of this society was Sarah Ann Nelson, who was just 19 at the time the group was formed. [5] In the fall of 1844, John H. Tibbets married Sarah Ann Nelson, and the couple moved to Neil’s Creek to reside with Sarah’s parents, who were also “strong Anti-slavery people” and fellow founders of the Neil’s Creek Anti-Slavery Society. [6] The couple worked together as conductors on the Underground Railroad from their advantageous location just north of the Ohio River. Other prominent conductors operating out of the free black Georgetown neighborhood in nearby Madison, such as George DeBaptiste, Elijah Anderson, and John Carter, were their colleagues in helping fugitive slaves escape northward toward freedom.
In 1853, John and Sarah Tibbets, along with their three young sons, James, Samuel, and Charles Francis, moved just miles northwest of Madison to Lancaster, Indiana where a “whole abolitionist community” of families was gathering. [7] The Tibbets, along with several other families involved in the Neil’s Creek Anti-Slavery Society, which later became Neil’s Creek Abolitionist Baptist Church, founded the Eleutherian College in Lancaster. [8] This institution provided higher education to students regardless of race or gender, and was one of just two schools “west of the Allegheny Mountains to offer its students college-level experience in an integrated atmosphere prior to the Civil War.” [9] Segregation in public schools was not legally prohibited in Indiana for nearly a century, until the Indiana General Assembly enacted a law doing so in 1949. [10] Though the enrollment at Eleutherian College was quite small, the school attracted black students from across the country, including some who had been born into slavery. [11]
In 1870, John, then 52, and his wife Sarah, then 50, moved their family to Labette County, Kansas. Here, he built a small Baptist Church, and set aside land for a cemetery. John and Sarah are buried in that cemetery on their homestead which was located four miles south of Mound Valley, Kansas. [12] The church and graves still stand today.
John H. Tibbets is remarkable in that he recorded significant evidence of his work as a conductor in the Underground Railroad in his 18 page memoir, Reminiscence of Slavery Times. Although the memoir was written in Kansas three decades after his work on the Underground Railroad, Tibbets recalls details of incidents spanning more than 20 years, from 1837 to 1858. [13] The “account overflows with names and places,” and specifications of “dozens of locations that can be traced today on the landscape of southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana,” along with details of each journey undertaken to help at least 37 people towards freedom. [14] Unlike other memoirs of Hoosier Underground Railroad conductors, such as Levi Coffin, Tibbets’ Reminiscence of Slavery Times recounts more than just his own efforts. He documents the network of people working together in Jefferson County to aid freedom seekers, and names 34 of his compatriots. [15] Tibbets’ memoir recalls harrowing situations on his journeys, vividly illustrating “the unexpected difficulties that members of the Underground Railroad faced and solved.” [16]
The Tibbets home still stands in Madison, Indiana today. In 2006, the Indiana Historical Bureau dedicated a Historical Marker in front of the house, honoring the family’s place in Hoosier history. [17] John H. and Sarah Tibbets dedicated their lives to the pursuit of not only the abolition of slavery, but also to providing equal treatment and opportunity to black people in Indiana.
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[1] “John H. and Sarah Tibbets,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed October 15, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/521.htm. <br />[2] Cox, Stephen F. “Twenty Years on the Underground Railroad: John H. Tibbets's ‘Reminiscence of Slavery Times’” The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections 46, no. 4 (2006): 164. <br />[3] “Reminiscences of Slavery Times,” Tibbets Family Antislavery History, accessed October 15, 2019, https://fordwebtech.com/tibbets-history/JohnTibbetsLetter.php. <br />[4] Cox, “Twenty Years on the Underground Railroad,” 164. <br />[5] Ibid. <br />[6] “Reminiscences of Slavery Times,” Tibbets Family Antislavery History, accessed October 15, 2019, https://fordwebtech.com/tibbets-history/JohnTibbetsLetter.php.; Cox, “Twenty Years on the Underground Railroad,” 164. <br />[7] Ibid., 166. <br />[8] Jeffrey D. Bennett, National Historic Landmark Nomination Eleutherian College Classroom and Chapel Building, Lancaster, IN, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, 1996. <br />[9] Ibid. <br />[10] Dwight W. Culver, “Racial Desegregation in Education in Indiana,” The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 3 (1954): 296. <br />[11] Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993): 179. <br />[12] Cox, “Twenty Years on the Underground Railroad,” 168. <br />[13] Ibid., 166. <br />[14] Ibid. <br />[15] Ibid. <br />[16] Ibid., 165. <br />[17] “John H. and Sarah Tibbets,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed October 15, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/521.htm.
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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
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/5.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/521.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker for John H. and Sarah Tibbets</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/5.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker for Eleutherian College</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/521.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Eleutherian College, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eleutherian_College.jpg
1800s
1900-40s
Abolition
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Jefferson County
Madison
Underground Railroad
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c31a63342bbeaceebfc1da3ce3368c51
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Kappa Alpha Psi
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<p>Greek life and its associated activities is a dominant thread in many college students’ lives. Kappa Alpha Psi was one of the first African American social fraternities in the United States.<span>[1]</span> The fraternity was founded in 1911 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, a predominantly white institution at a time when racism and prejudice were high. Kappa Alpha Psi has since dedicated their efforts to an equal brotherhood, bound only by a willingness to succeed and not by skin color, race, or background.</p>
<p>Its founders, ten African American students at Indiana University, first organized the fraternity (originally named Kappa Alpha Nu until 1915) in January 1911<span>[2]</span>. The men often gathered at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bloomington before they had their own fraternity house. The original motto, “Achievement in every field of Human Endeavor” formalized their goal of helping members to attain high “intellectual, moral and social worth”.[3] Kappa Alpha Psi gave African American men at Indiana University a way to participate in campus social events. In Indiana University in the 1910s, African Americans were not allowed to reside in campus housing, were denied use of university facilities, and could not participate in contact sports, leaving only track and field as athletic options.<span>[4]</span></p>
<p>Kappa Alpha Psi, like many other Greek organizations across colleges and universities in the United States, has evolved over time. Over the years, Kappa Alpha Psi has sponsored national programs under its name feeding the homeless, funding youth and after-school programs, providing scholarships, and sponsoring other philanthropic efforts.<span>[5]</span> It now has over 700 chapters and 125,000 collegiate members worldwide.<span>[6]</span> <span> </span>Kappa Alpha Psi takes pride in the fact that their Constitution has never included any language that “either excluded or suggested the exclusion of a man from membership merely because of his color, creed, or national origin”.<span>[7]</span> Notable Kappa Alpha Psi members include Hollywood director John Singleton (University of Southern California), former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (University of Nevada), author and television personality Marc Lamont Hill (University of Pennsylvania), political author on race relations Charles Blow (Grambling State University)<span> [8]</span>, and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Dennis Hayes (Indiana University).<span>[9]</span></p>
<p>The alpha Kappa Alpha Psi chapter at Indiana University dedicated its fraternity house as the Elder Watson Diggs Memorial in 1961, honoring founder and first Grand Polemarch Elder W. Diggs. In 2008, the Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana University installed a historical marker on the site of the Elder Watson Diggs Memorial chapter house. The marker commemorates the formation of Kappa Alpha Psi and the role it played in race relations and civil rights in Indiana.<span>[10]</span></p>
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<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><span></span></a></p>
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<p><span>[1]</span> Kappa Alpha Psi. “A Brief History.” Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. <span>https://kappaalphapsi1911.com/page/History</span>. Accessed February 7, 2020.<br /><span>[2]</span> "Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity." Original People. January 24, 2014. Accessed April 12, 2019.<br /><span>[3]</span> Ibid.<br /><span>[4]</span> Kappa Alpha Psi. “A Brief History.” Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. Accessed February 7, 2020.<br /><span>[5]</span> Kappa Alpha Psi. “A Brief History.” Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. Accessed February 7, 2020.<br /><span>[</span><span>6</span><span>]</span> "Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity." Original People. January 24, 2014. Accessed April 12, 2019.<br /><span>[7]</span> Kappa Alpha Psi. “A Brief History.” Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. Accessed February 7, 2020.<br /><span>[8]</span> Ibid.<br /><span>[9]</span> <em>Kappa Alpha Psi to make a historic 'pilgrimage' to IU Bloomington to mark its centennial. </em>Indiana University, IU News Room. Accessed February 10, 2020.<br /><span>[10]</span> Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana Historical Markers. Accessed February 10, 2020.</p>
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Student Authors: Emma Brauer 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
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Kappa1, attributed to Wilberforce University, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kappa1.jpg
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/555.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1900-40s
1911
1950s-present
Bloomington
education
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indiana University
Integration
Monroe County
Organization
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/031a8d6dff60600fc1673c5fc413e730.jpg
9965b2d5b7384d166f009c3fd855f38c
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Lasselle v. State,
Harrison County
Description
An account of the resource
The 1820 Indiana Supreme Court Case State v. Lasselle centered upon Polly Strong, a black woman enslaved in Vincennes, Indiana, who asserted her freedom from her master, Hyacinthe Lasselle. Before reaching the Indiana Supreme Court, the case was first tried in Knox County as Polly v. Lasselle. The suit began after Polly’s lawyer, Amory Kinney, petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, which the court granted on July 15, 1818, “directing Lasselle to bring Jim and Polly to the court to explain why he held them against their will.” [1] Jim was another enslaved person whom Lasselle had inherited from his father. [2] However, his case did not make it to the Indiana Supreme Court.<br /><br />Lasselle contended that he held Polly as an indentured servant, not as a slave. However, the indenture contract Polly had signed was a direct response to the writ of habeas corpus, dated two days after the court’s order. The date, along with the fact that Polly continued to pursue legal action after the contract was signed, showed that the document was a fraudulent attempt by Lasselle to avoid further legal action. [3] Furthermore, Polly’s lawyer argued that she had most likely signed the indenture under duress. As Kinney stated during the court proceedings, Polly “was imprisoned by the said Hyacinthe Lasselle and others in collusion with him […] until by the force and duress of imprisonment,” she signed the indenture. [4] <br /><br />Prior to statehood in 1816, Indiana Territory operated under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established rules of governance for all territory northwest of the Ohio River. Article Six of the Northwest Ordinance stated that “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” [5] However, the Knox County Circuit Court ultimately ruled in favor of Lasselle, claiming that because Polly’s mother had been enslaved before the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, Polly had been born a slave and as such, her status was grandfathered in. [6] With this ruling, the court refused to acknowledge the authority of the Northwest Ordinance and the Indiana Constitution of 1816 to emancipate anyone already enslaved before the adoption of either document. <br /><br />In 1820, the case was appealed and argued before the Indiana Supreme Court as State v. Lasselle, although Polly and Kinney were still the plaintiffs. The Indiana Supreme Court had only been established three years earlier, and State v. Lasselle was the Court’s first time hearing a case on the issue of slavery. [7] During this trial, Lasselle abandoned the argument that Polly was his indentured servant and instead claimed that he had the right to keep any enslaved people purchased before the Treaty of Greenville of 1795. [8] Lasselle’s attorney argued that before the passage of the treaty, the territory was still occupied by Native Americans, and thus not subject to any federal legislation such as the Northwest Ordinance. [9] Therefore, Lasselle claimed that because Polly had been born into slavery before the Treaty of Greenville, her enslaved status had been grandfathered in and could not be altered by the passage of any later legal code. <br /><br />The Indiana Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Lasselle’s argument of his “preexisting right” to own Polly, reversing the ruling of the Knox County Circuit Court and declaring Polly free. [10] She was also “awarded $26.12 in costs for her trouble.” [11] The Court found that the 1816 Indiana Constitution’s prohibition of slavery applied to Polly’s case, immediately emancipating her as well as all other enslaved people in Indiana. Justice James Scott’s opinion states that “it is evident that by these provisions, the framers of our Constitution intended a total and entire prohibition of slavery in this State; and we can conceive of no form of words in which that intention could have been more clearly expressed.” [12] <br /><br />While State v. Lasselle was being argued before the Indiana Supreme Court, the nation was also facing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the issue of the expansion of slavery into new states. In order to maintain a balanced Congress, the Missouri Compromise admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. It also banned the creation of any new slave states north of the latitude 36°30′. While this measure solved the immediate problem, it marked the beginning of the road towards the Civil War and the struggle between the North and the South over the expansion of slavery. This temporary solution “all but determined that the United States would never peaceably solve the problem of slavery’s expansion.” [13] The issue of slavery was not solved at a national level until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but the decision in State v. Lasselle ensured that slavery would be abolished in Indiana more than 40 years before Lincoln’s definitive executive order. <br /><br />State v. Lasselle was one of the final blows against slavery in Indiana. The decision set an important precedent for later cases regarding slavery and indentured servitude in the state, establishing the Indiana Supreme Court’s “remarkably strong and usually steady affirmation of human rights” throughout the nineteenth century. [14] The case is also an early example of the importance of the legal system in the fight for civil rights. Courts have been some of the most decisive battlegrounds in the civil rights movement, with individuals like Polly able to sue for equal treatment under the law. In Indiana and across the nation, the courts became integral during the modern civil rights movement, forcing the issue on desegregation and equal opportunity in such famous cases as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Loving v. Virginia.<br /><br />This court case is commemorated with an Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker, installed in 2016, on the site of the first Indiana State Capital building in Harrison County.
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[1] Paul Finkelman, "Almost a Free State: The Indiana Constitution of 1816 and the Problem of Slavery," Indiana Magazine of History 111, no. 1 (2015): 79. <br />[2] Ibid. <br />[3] Ibid., 82. <br />[4] Polly v. Lasselle, 90 116 4F, 2104 (Knox Co. 1818). <br />[5] “Northwest Ordinance”, July 13, 1787; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M332, roll 9); Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360; National Archives. <br />[6] Paul Finkelman, "Almost a Free State: The Indiana Constitution of 1816 and the Problem of Slavery," Indiana Magazine of History 111, no. 1 (2015): 83. <br />[7] Sandra Boyd Williams, “The Indiana Supreme Court and the Struggle Against Slavery,” Indiana Law Review 30, (1997): 305. <br />[8] Paul Finkelman, "Almost a Free State: The Indiana Constitution of 1816 and the Problem of Slavery," Indiana Magazine of History 111, no. 1 (2015): 84. <br />[9] Ibid. <br />[10] Ibid. <br />[11] Randall T. Shepard, “For Human Rights: Slave Cases and the Indiana Supreme Court,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 15, no. 3 (2003): 36. [12] State v. Lasselle, (Indiana Supreme Court, 1820). <br />[13] John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007). 8.
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Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Jordan Girard <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4267.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO AND VIDEO:
U.S. Supreme Court assignment of errors in Polly v. Lasselle, 1820 July 27, Digital Collections, Indiana State Library.
https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16066coll38/id/26
1800s
Court Case
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Knox County
law
Slavery
Vincennes
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/69651217b50eb5da5d7e93502e80851f.jpg
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Levi Coffin House
Description
An account of the resource
The Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site is located in Fountain City (formerly Newport), Indiana. It is a brick Federal-style eight-room house that was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. The Levi Coffin house is one of Indiana’s most prominent Underground Railroad locations, around 2,000 total runaway enslaved persons found sanctuary and nourishment at this site alone [1]. <br /><br />The Coffin house was built in 1839 and was home to the Coffin family until they moved to Cincinnati in 1847 [2]. During those eight years the Coffin house provided refuge and sanctuary for many different lives. One significant guest to find shelter in the Coffin house was Eliza Harris, of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame. She had taken her baby and fled her captors by perilously crossing the frozen Ohio River. Making it safely, she was moved from station to station along the Underground Railroad, eventually arriving at the Coffin house. There she was sheltered and fed for several days before being sent on to the next station with several others, eventually making it to Canada [3]. <br /><br />It was not always as simple as moving a fugitive from one station to the next. The Coffin household often had to be prepared to hide and take action against slave hunters, especially since the house was known to be a depot on the Underground Railroad. In one such instance, two girls had fled Tennessee and were living with their free grandparents in Randolph County, Indiana. When their former enslaver came looking for them they were forced to flee further along the Underground Railroad, making it to the Coffin house. With the slave hunters following behind, Mrs. Coffin hid the girls in between the straw and hay linings of the beds. Additionally, the Coffins had a plan to ring a dinner bell if the slave hunters illegally entered their house, at which time neighbors would rush in and force the slave hunters out of the house and have them arrested for unlawful entry. Thankfully in this case that was unnecessary, for the reputation of the Coffin house and the unity of the community caused the slave hunters to leave [4]. <br /><br />Many individuals who came to the Coffin house by way of the Underground Railroad were employed by the Coffin family. Since the community was supportive of the Coffin house’s role as a station, the Coffins did not have to fear and allowed the former enslaved persons to work and be seen in public. One such individual was Rachel, referred to as Aunt Rachel in Levi Coffin’s Reminiscences [5]. Aunt Rachel fled Mississippi in chains and managed to make it north along the Underground Railroad. When she reached the Coffin house she was employed by the family as a housekeeper for roughly six months. When slave hunters came to Richmond, Indiana, Rachel became nervous, and the Coffins arranged for her safe passage to Canada [6]. <br /><br />The Coffin house is one of only a few places in Indiana that is a proven stop on the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century and is registered as a historic landmark [7]. It still stands today as a beacon of hope and freedom, and a symbol for the power that a united community can have over the intolerant cruelty of wicked men.<br /><br />The Levi and Catharine Coffin House is now a State Historic Site, and the building has been converted into a museum. Guided tours are available Tuesday - Sunday from 10 AM - 5 PM. For more information, visit the <a href="http://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/72" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official website</a>.
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A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] "Aboard the Underground Railroad- Levi Coffin House." National Parks Service. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/in2.htm.<br />[2] Ibid.<br />[3] Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin: The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad: Being a Brief History of the Labors of a Lifetime in Behalf of the Slave: With the Stories of Numerous Fugitives, Who Gained Their Freedom through His Instrumentality. Cincinnati: Clarke, 1976.<br />[4] Ibid.<br />[5] Ibid.<br />[6] Ibid.<br />[7] "Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad." Indiana Landmarks. August 11, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2019. https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2016/06/levi-coffin-and-the-underground-railroad/.<br />[8] “Levi and Catherine Coffin.” Indiana State Museum. Accessed March 29, 2019. https://www.indianamuseum.org/levi-and-catharine-coffin-state-historic-site.
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PHOTO & VIDEO:<br />Levi Coffin House, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Levi_Coffin_House,_front_and_southern_side.jpg
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/437.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a><br /><a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132002431" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Register of Historic Places</a>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Author: Emma Brauer <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
1800s
Abolition
Fountain City
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
National Register of Historic Places
Underground Railroad
Wayne County
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/5325e8997ce8c7ae3a388e8137ad3d9b.jpg
596194c253bbe1e9127f06932e446c11
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Places
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lyles Consolidated School
Description
An account of the resource
Lyles Station, an African American town in Gibson County, was founded by Joshua and Sanford Lyles in 1849. The two were freed men, formerly enslaved in Tennessee. At the turn of the twentieth century, Lyles Station was at its peak, with a population of 600, and boasted a railroad station, a post office, a lumber mill, two general stores, two churches, and elementary school. Much of the town was destroyed by a flood that occurred in 1912. [1] Even after the floods, Lyles Station still remained one of the most intact African American settlements in the state,[2] as one of the few communities in Indiana where freed African Americans bought land and settled before the Civil War. [3]
In 1865, the first schools were created in Lyles Station. There were a total of three subscription schools, where each student’s family paid a monthly “subscription” or tuition directly to the teacher. This monthly fee could range from $1 to $1.50.[4] Lyles Consolidated School was built in 1919 merging the three subscription schools. Lyles Consolidated School produced high-achieving graduates until it closed in 1958, including Alonzo Fields, chief butler for Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower[5] , and Matthias Nolcox, the first principal of Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks High School.[6]
Lyles Consolidated School enrolled white students in 1922. That same year, a white student was punished by an African American teacher, setting off disagreements about the severity of the punishment. Soon after, all white students were transferred to school in nearby Princeton. Due to desegregation issues such as this, Lyles Consolidated School remained a segregated African American school until 1958.[7]
A very dark chapter of Lyles Consolidated School’s history occurred in 1928. Ten African American students were chosen by county health officials to be part of what was touted as a treatment study for ringworm of the scalp. Unbeknownst to their parents, the students were not given ringworm treatment, but instead were experimentally exposed to high levels of radiation. The extreme radiation caused disfiguring scars, head malformations, physical complications, and emotional trauma that many of the victims dealt with the rest of their lives.[8] Like the 40-year Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male study[9] , the radiation treatment of these 10 students is an example of how minority and underrepresented populations were part of unethical and illegal experimentation in the early twentieth century. [10] Many years later one of the Lyles Consolidated School radiation victims, Vertus Hardiman, spoke out about his ongoing physical and mental trauma from the radiation. His story was featured in the 2011 documentary Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed. [11]
After closing in 1958, the school became a collapsing ruin over the next decades. Community members formed the Lyles Station Historic Preservation Corporation in 1998 to rescue the building, which was listed as one of Indiana’s Ten Most Endangered Places by the Historic Landmarks Foundation. The schoolhouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1999, and building restoration began in 2001.[12] The schoolhouse now operates as the Lyles State Historic School & Museum. It tells the story of rural African American life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and functions as a living-history classroom, [13] The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture recognized the community of Lyles Station in 2016, and features artifacts from the community. [14]
In addition to being on the NRHP, Lyles Station and Lyles Consolidated School were commemorated with an Indiana Historical Bureau marker in 2002. As then Senator Evan Bayh said in 2001, when announcing a major federal grant for the restoration of Lyles Consolidated School, “At its peak, Lyles Station was renowned as a place for African American freedom and equal opportunity in education and commerce. As one of Indiana’s most valuable treasures, it is vitally important that we preserve Lyles Station and help maintain it as a living symbol of African American pride, determination, and accomplishment.” [15]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] “Telling the Story of Lyles Station, a Rural African American Community” Indiana Landmarks. March 7, 2017. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2016/06/telling-the-story-of-lyles-station/
[2] “Lyles Station Historic Marker.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/424.htm.
[3] Montgomery, David. “A Pre-Civil War Haven for Free Blacks Is Now Honored in the African American Museum.” The Washington Post. WP Company, September 25, 2016. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-the-people-of-lyles-station-ind-a-trip-to-the-african-american-museum-lets-them-witness-their-legacy/2016/09/25/1e84db02-8279-11e6-b002-307601806392_story.html .
[4] “Once Thriving Predominately Black Town, Lyles Station, Ind., Revisited.” Indianapolis Recorder, January 18, 1984. (pg. 21). Accessed September 7, 2020. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19840218-01.1.21&srpos=2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22Lyles+Consolidated+School%22------
[5] “Telling the Story of Lyles Station, a Rural African American Community”
[6] “Once Thriving Predominately Black Town, Lyles Station, Ind., Revisited.”
[7] Zent, Julie. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Lyles Consolidated School. Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana. November 15,1998. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/67f3c96f-a888-4036-8a10-1341ed50b682
[8] “VUJC to Show Documentary on Horrific Radiation Experiments That Occurred in Southern Indiana.” Dubois County Free Press, October 29, 2012. Accessed September 9, 2020. https://www.duboiscountyfreepress.com/vujc-to-show-documentary-on-horrific-radiation-experiments-that-occurred-in-s-indiana/
[9] The Tuskegee Timeline. U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Accessed October 4, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm
[10] “VUJC to Show Documentary on Horrific Radiation Experiments That Occurred in Southern Indiana.”
[11] Lim, Vincent. “A Documentary with the Power to Save Lives.” USC News. University of Southern California, March 5, 2013. Accessed September 9, 2020. https://news.usc.edu/47522/a-documentary-that-has-the-power-to-save-lives/
[12] “Lyles Station Historic Marker.”
[13] “Telling the Story of Lyles Station, a Rural African American Community”
[14] “National Museum of African American History and Culture to Visit Historic Black Indiana Family Community for Collection Event”, April 27, 2016. Accessed October 4, 2020. https://nmaahc.si.edu/about/news/national-museum-african-american-history-and-culture-visit-historic-black-indiana-farming
[15] “Bayh, Lugar and Carson secure funds for historic Lyles Station School.” The Muncie Times. November 1, 2001. Accessed October 4, 2020, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=BALLMT20011101-01.1.28&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/424.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker </a><br /><a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/99001111">National Register of Historic Places</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Lyles Station School, Indiana Historical Society, P0500.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p16797coll72/id/746/rec/100
Lyles Station, attributed to Kmweber, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Lyles_Station.jpg
1800s
1900-40s
education
Gibson County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Integration
Lyles station
National Register of Historic Places
Segregation
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/72897f1d2513a1a85e827d345f242e12.jpg
bf60d10fb1f25dbd22fbf6f1a489dfb4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Places
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church
Description
An account of the resource
The Hammond Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church was established around 1919. The church began with a small, humble congregation that grew considerably under Reverend William Davis [1]. For thirty years after its creation, Mt. Zion’s church leaders and congregates met in temporary spaces. In 1949, Mt. Zion established its permanent home in a one-story brick building designed by a local architectural firm [2]. Not only did Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church play a role in the religious, political, social, and civic life of Hammond’s African American community, but their long time preacher Reverend Albert R. Burns was a significant figure in Hammond [3].
Reverend Albert R. Burns was the great-grandson of slaves and grew up in Enterprise, Mississippi, where segregation limited his freedom and access to quality education. Despite these restrictions, Burns loved reading works by Booker T. Washington, who inspired him to turn his ill feelings toward his hometown into compassion. This compassion, in addition to a promise to God during a terrible illness, pushed Burns to “spread [God’s] word" [4]. Beginning in 1935, Burns preached in Mississippi until the early 1940s. Burns moved to Hammond and continued his education, and in the winter of 1944 when the pastor of Mt. Zion became ill, Burns was ordained and filled in for the pastor. Burns’ position became permanent after the pastor passed away [5].
From 1945 to 1998, Reverend Burns served as the Mt. Zion’s pastor. Together, Burns and Mt. Zion worked continuously to challenge racial injustice, often with the help of the local Chapter of the NAACP and the Hammond Human Relations Commission [6]. Burns’ passion for racial justice and his leadership inspired Mt. Zion congregants to fight for civil rights, quality housing, and job opportunities for Hammond’s African American community [7].
In 1958, in a court case against local school officials, Burns fought for the right for African-Americans to teach in Hammond schools. The next year, his daughter, Annie Burns-Hicks, a graduate of Ball State Teachers College, filled the very position for which her father had fought. Burns-Hicks was Hammond’s first African American teacher [8].
Reverend Burns aspired to provide quality housing for the elderly in Hammond [9]. The opening of Mt. Zion Pleasant View Plaza in 1983 attests to Burns’ ability to manifest his hopes into concrete benefits to his community [10]. Mt. Zion Pleasant View Plaza continues to provide affordable senior housing with 127 one-bedroom rental units.
In 1996, at the age of 85, Burns criticized Hammond Mayor Duane W. Dedelow Jr. for breaking his campaign promise to hire more African American police officers [11]. This is just one example of the civil rights work that Reverend Burns was doing in Hammond late into the 1990s, before retiring in 1998 after 53 years at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church [12].
In 2019, the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church was honored with an Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker. The marker “celebrated Mt. Zion’s place in the community as both a religious and civic leader and comes as the church celebrates its centennial anniversary" [13].
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] “Historic Marker: Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Indianapolis, Indiana. 2019. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4477.htm
[2] “Mt. Zion Church Marks History as a Hammond Mainstay.” Indiana Landmarks. Indianapolis, Indiana. February 26, 2020. Accessed October 7,2020. https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2020/02/mt-zion-church-marks-history-as-a-hammond-mainstay/
[3] “Mt. Zion Church Marks History as a Hammond Mainstay.” Indiana Landmarks. Indianapolis, Indiana. February 26, 2020. Accessed October 7,2020. https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2020/02/mt-zion-church-marks-history-as-a-hammond-mainstay/
[4] Franklin, Lu Ann. “A Fisher of Men.” The Times. March 8, 1998. Accessed October 7, 2020 .https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/a-fisher-of-men/article_8889ea0c-3a45-5cd0-97a5-b4e7210fc498.html
[5] Franklin, Lu Ann. “A Fisher of Men.” The Times. March 8, 1998. Accessed October 7, 2020 .https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/a-fisher-of-men/article_8889ea0c-3a45-5cd0-97a5-b4e7210fc498.html
[6] “Historic Marker: Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Indianapolis, Indiana. 2019. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4477.htm
[7] “Mt. Zion Church Marks History as a Hammond Mainstay.” Indiana Landmarks. Indianapolis, Indiana. February 26, 2020. Accessed October 7,2020. https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2020/02/mt-zion-church-marks-history-as-a-hammond-mainstay/
[8] Yovich, Daniel J. “East Hammond pastors deal with city’s divisions.” The Times. October 2,1996. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/east-hammond-pastors-deal-with-city-s-divisions/article_b3aa6155-dfcd-5003-b4b2-4325887408fd.html
[9] Steele, Andrew. “State Marker Honors Black Church’s Commitment to Service.” The Times. July 20, 2019. Accesses October 7, 2020. https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/lake-newsletter/state-marker-honors-black-church-s-commitment-to-service/article_cb31e201-55fe-5484-baf5-85d6d6c868cf.html
[10] “Historic Marker: Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church.” Indiana Historical Bureau. Indianapolis, Indiana. 2019. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4477.htm
[11] Yovich, Daniel J. “East Hammond pastors deal with city’s divisions.” The Times. October 2,1996. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/east-hammond-pastors-deal-with-city-s-divisions/article_b3aa6155-dfcd-5003-b4b2-4325887408fd.html
[12] Franklin, Lu Ann. “A Fisher of Men.” The Times. March 8, 1998. Accessed October 7, 2020 .https://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/a-fisher-of-men/article_8889ea0c-3a45-5cd0-97a5-b4e7210fc498.html [13] “Indiana State Marker Honors Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church for its Longtime Commitment to Service in the African-American Community.” Black Christian News Network One. July 21, 2019. Accessed October 7, 2020. https://blackchristiannews.com/2019/07/indiana-state-marker-honors-mt-zion-missionary-baptist-church-for-its-longtime-commitment-to-service-in-the-african-american-community/
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Student Authors: Gwyneth Harris and Molly Hollcraft
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.in.gov%2Fhistory%2Fstate-historical-markers%2Ffind-a-marker%2Ffind-historical-markers-by-county%2Findiana-historical-markers-by-county%2Fmt-zion-mb-church%2F&data=04%7C01%7Ctlhayes2%40bsu.edu%7C5ed160245b3244a2680208d8c6c04bf9%7C6fff909f07dc40da9e30fd7549c0f494%7C0%7C0%7C637477876498563775%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=vwuNi1hBtbWgz49GDxxP8ZlQpV64avn5xDIpPfB5yC0%3D&reserved=0">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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Information about rights held in and over the resource
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Courtesy Indiana Landmarks https://www.indianalandmarks.org/2020/02/mt-zion-church-marks-history-as-a-hammond-mainstay/
1900-40s
1950s-present
Church
education
Equality
Hammond
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Lake County
religion
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/f4a0da160fc1d5b8e4aab68bc3378741.jpg
c4d9c2863de561c34db4149cd050b8be
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Places
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ransom Place Neighborhood, Indianapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ransom Place Neighborhood is a historic district located northwest of Monument Circle in the center of downtown Indianapolis. Bounded by 10th, St. Clair, West, and Camp Streets, this area includes subdivisions platted 1865 and 1871, and features historic homes built in the eclectic Queen Anne architectural style that was popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Ransom Place Neighborhood is considered the most intact neighborhood associated with the African American population of Indianapolis.[1] Named after prominent resident Freeman Briley Ransom, the district was listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[2]</p>
<p>As early as the 1830s, the area that is now Ransom Place Neighborhood was identified as an African American settlement.[3] The land was originally developed by free African Americans and former slaves who moved north to find prosperity during the nineteenth century. This western section of Indianapolis, close to Fall Creek and the White River, was notoriously marshy and prone to flooding. The undesirable land was the only land that early African American settlers were permitted to purchase. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a thriving African American community formed in Ransom Place Neighborhood, and the area was converted into a residential area and profitable business district for African American families. Ransom Place Neighborhood was also the site of the first public housing project in Indianapolis, Lockefield Gardens.[4]</p>
<p>Many prominent professionals lived in Ransom Place Neighborhood, including African American community leaders, doctors, and attorneys. Churches, schools, and businesses provided for the needs of the residents.[5] Freeman Briley Ransom (1882-1947), the namesake of the neighborhood, lived with his family at 828 N. California St.[6] F. B. Ransom was a successful lawyer, business man, and civic leader who moved to Indianapolis in 1910. Most notably, Ransom served as the corporate attorney and manager of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, a pioneering African American cosmetics company. In addition to his legal work for Madam C. J. Walker, Ransom was an accomplished community leader who served as legal counsel for the Senate Avenue YMCA, Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, Indianapolis branch of the NAACP, and the Frederick Douglass Life Insurance Company, helped found the National Negro Business League and the Marion County Bar Association, and served on the Indianapolis City Council from 1939-1942.[7] F. B. Ransom’s son, Willard Ransom, was also a noted attorney and resident of Ransom Place Neighborhood.[8]</p>
<p>Ransom Place Neighborhood was expanded in 1945 when the Indianapolis Redevelopment Commission selected the area as its first redevelopment project. Helping repair houses in older parts of the neighborhood and constructing new homes in surrounding areas, the assistance of the Indianapolis Redevelopment Commission revitalized Ransom Place Neighborhood.[9] During the early 1960s, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) began buying property in order to develop a downtown Indianapolis campus. Between 1960 and 1980, IUPUI had obtained nearly 1,000 properties and had effectively surrounded Ransom Place Neighborhood.[10] The university’s pressures to redevelop the area for their own purposes, combined with the flight of many prominent African Americans to more prosperous Indianapolis neighborhoods in the early 1970s, led to a period of denigration for the historic neighborhood. In 1976, Lockefield Gardens, a major source of pride for Ransom Place’s community, was closed and converted into private apartments for IUPUI students.[11] Construction of the United Life Building in the 1980s removed a portion of Indiana Avenue, effectively blocking access from Ransom Place to downtown Indianapolis furthering marginalizing the African American community.[12]</p>
<p>Following a period of decline in the 1970s and early 1980s, Ransom Place Neighborhood was revitalized in the late 1980s when Jean Spears, an African American community leader who worked with the Indiana Avenue Association helped to renovate African American homes and businesses in Indianapolis, moved into 849 Camp Street in Ransom Place Neighborhood.[13] Spears started a campaign to promote the African American history of the neighborhood and, with a team of other community leaders, officially named the district Ransom Place Neighborhood in memory of the successful attorney Freedman Briley Ransom.[14] Following the naming, the Ransom Place Historic District was accredited by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and the Ransom Place Neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.</p>
<p>While Ransom Place Neighborhood is protected as a historic landmark, many locals fear that the neighborhood- a symbol of African American persistence and ingenuity- could be erased by gentrification. With much of the land surrounding Ransom Place being developed for private businesses and apartments, it is becoming increasingly expensive for long-time residents to remain in the area. Unless the gentrification includes local African American families, many fear that the African American community that built and sustained the neighborhood for generations will disappear.[15]</p>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] <span>“Ransom Place Historic District,” National Park Service, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/indianapolis/ransomplace.htm.<br />[2] “Ransom Place Historic District,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed May 25, 2020 https://www.in.gov/history/markers/216.htm.<br />[3] “Ransom Place Historic District,” National Park Service.<br />[4] Richard Essex, “A changing neighborhood: Ransom Place,” Indianapolis WISH-TV, February 15, 2019, https://www.wishtv.com/news/a-changing-neighborhood-ransom-place/.<br />[5] “Ransom Place Historic District,” National Park Service.<br />[6] “Ransom Family Papers, 1912-2011,” Indiana Historical Society, accessed May 26, 2020, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/ransom-family-papers.pdf.<br />[7] Ibid.<br />[8] “Ransom Place Historic District,” National Park Service.<br />[9] Ibid.<br />[10] Essex, “A changing neighborhood.”<br />[11] Ibid.<br />[12] National Park Service."Go Diagonal." Indianapolis: Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary. Accessed May 31, 2020. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/indianapolis/textonly.html#diagonalessay.<br />[13] “Spears Family Papers, 1930-1986,” Indiana Historical Society, accessed May 26, 2020, https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/spears-family-papers-1930-1986.pdf. “Historical Ransom Place,” City of Indianapolis, accessed May 26, 2020, https://sites.google.com/view/city-of-indianapolis/home/ransom-place.<br />[14] Ibid.<br />[15] Essex, “A changing neighborhood.”</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
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Information about rights held in and over the resource
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Camp Street in Ransom Place, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_Street_in_Ransom_Place.jpg
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/216.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
Entrepreneurship
Housing
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Marion County
NAACP
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/79f703f82ce61af55699a50ac2e40f68.jpg
c99c2e432621680e93c6a9ba68d7299e
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Title
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Events
Text
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Title
A name given to the resource
Rhodes Family Incident,
Hamilton County
Description
An account of the resource
<span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">I</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">n</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>183</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">6</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">,<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">Missouri</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">an</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>Singleton Vaugh</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">a</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">n, a<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">white<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">plantation owner</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">,</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>held an African American family —Sam Burk, his wife Maria</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">h</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">, and their baby daughter Lydia--in chattel slavery</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">.[1]</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>Prior to<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">coming to be owned by<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">Vaugh</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">a</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">n</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">,</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">the Burk<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">family had<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">been illegally</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>retained in slaver</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">y</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>in<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">the free<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">state of<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">Illinois</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">.<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">According to the letter of the law, Burk and his family should not have been allowed to be held in bondage</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">. Prior to</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">the Dred Scott decision in the Supreme Court</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">, slaves living in a free territory<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">for a period of six months or longer </span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">were entitled to declare their freedom</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">.</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0"><span> </span>However,<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">the reality of the situation was much different.<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">When the Burks’ owner left the state of Illinois for Missouri, he took the Burk family along with him – denying their right to manumission. He then approached </span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">Singleton Vaugh</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">a</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">n</span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">, who </span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">purchased the family<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">as<span> </span></span></span><span data-contrast="auto" class="TextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0" xml:lang="EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW262956486 BCX0">laborers for his Missouri plantation. </span></span>In 1837, with the fear of separation urging them on, Burk and his family ran away from Missouri, attempting to escape to freedom in Illinois. After reaching Illinois, the Burk family was captured as a result of Vaughan’s fugitive slave notices. The Burk family was broken out of jail by members of the Underground Railroad, and they headed into Indiana, with the ultimate goal of reaching Canada. However, when they reached Hamilton County, Indiana, they were too exhausted to continue.[2] The Burk family decided to stay in Hamilton County, which was a stronghold for abolitionism.[3] They settled in, changing their names to John and Louann Rhodes. <br /><br />In 1844 the United States was in the middle of a controversial presidential election. The presidential election of 1844 centered on the annexation of Texas, which added to concerns about the expansion of the institution of slavery.[4] Singleton Vaughan had not forgotten about the Rhodes (Burk) family, and seven years after their escape in the midst of the national debate about the reach of chattel slavery in the United States, he discovered where they were. He arrived in Hamilton County with two men and obtained a warrant from a local judge. Court records state that John and his family avoided recapture by claiming that a neighbor owed them a 50-dollar debt. Legally, payment for the debt would belong to Vaughan when he regained ownership of the Rhodes, so he allowed John and his family to go to the neighbor’s house to retrieve payment at once. In reality, no debt existed; the neighbor was a member of the Underground Railroad.[5] The Underground Railroad, which assisted the Rhodes family, was quite active in Hamilton County. Addison Coffin, a transporter on the line, stated that in 1844, “the Wabash line was in good running order and passengers very frequent."[6]<br />When other neighbors arrived on scene, the Rhodes’ Underground Railroad neighbors were able to convince all involved that the best course of action was to verify the legitimacy of Vaughan’s claim with a judge. The Rhodes family, Vaughan’s party, and some of their neighbors headed south towards Westfield to resolve the matter in court. However, knowing Westfield to be a location with heavy abolitionist sympathy, Vaughan insisted on a hearing in Noblesville instead. <br /><br />During the commotion, a man by the name of Daniel Jones, jumped onto the wagon and he and the Rhodes family sped away while Vaughan and his men were immobilized by the crowd. In the end, Vaughan attempted to sue members of the community for loss of property, since they had helped the Rhodes family escape. The local Quakers created a defense fund to pay for the trial. During trial the fact that the Rhodes family had lived in a free state prior to Vaughan’s unlawful purchase led the judge to rule in favor of the Rhodes family. Vaughan returned to Missouri empty handed.[7] <br /><br />The Vaughan v. Williams decision occurred prior to the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott decision. According to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, fugitive slaves in any territory or state, could be reclaimed by their master, even from free territories. Finally, the Dred Scott decision in 1857 cemented the rights of slave owners to recapture their unfree laborer, stating “that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom.”[8] According to this court ruling, since slaves were considered property regardless of their removal to a free state, the Missouri Compromise of 1850 was ruled unconstitutional. Had the Rhodes Family escaped after 1850, defending their right to freedom would have been impossible.<br /><br />This event is documented in a Indiana Historical Bureau historical marker, installed in 2008, in Asa Bales Park in Westfield, Hamilton County. The park is named after Asa Bales, whose home was part of the Underground Railroad and provided a safe haven for runaway slaves escaping to Canda.
Source
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[1] Vaughan v. Williams, 16,903 (D. Indiana Cir. 1845)<br />[2] Heighway, David. “The Law in Black and White,” accessed February 6, 2019. www.westfield.in.gov/egov/documents/1376663863_54293.pdf, 1. <br />[3]Ibid <br />[4] Pecquet, Gary M., and Clifford F. Thies. 2006. “Texas Treasury Notes and the Election of 1844.” Independent Review 11 (2): 237–60. http://proxy.bsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=510657895&site=ehost-live&scope=site. <br />[5] Thornbrough, Emma Lou. The Negro in Indiana before 1900: A Study of a Minority. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. <br />[6]“The Underground Railroad,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed February 7, 2019, https://www.in.gov/history/3119.htm. <br />[7]Vaughan v. Williams, 16,903 (D. Indiana Cir. 1845). <br />[8] United States Supreme Court, Roger Brooke Taney, John H Van Evrie, and Samuel A Cartwright. The Dred Scott decision: opinion of Chief Justice Taney. New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1860, 1860. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/17001543/.
Contributor
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Student Author: Jordan Girard <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
Relation
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/554.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Rights
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Fugitive Slaves Escaping to Union Lines, attributed to NonCommercial 4.0 International, Public domain, via Slavery Images
http://104.200.20.178/s/slaveryimages/item/794
1800s
1837-1844
Hamilton County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
law
quakers
Slavery
Underground Railroad
Westfield
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/c7162f9b59bcdd0e9644d54f0299116f.jpg
964ffa17b54853015196977e27c94f7a
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/a55221be0c3eb6b7c3a4f0684e4fea49.mp3
4981d7c407874765c84d8bf16e72880b
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview 5 with Allen Watson (Roger's Corner)
Subject
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<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/119">Roger's Corner</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Watson, a lifelong resident of Madison, Indiana, describes discrimination present at drugstores located in downtown Madison, where he and his family could not eat inside of the store and had to pick up their ice cream at the side entrance as opposed to the front.
<strong>***Transcript***</strong><br /><br /><em>Allen Watson</em>: My dad, he would have to go in to get the ice cream for us. He’d bring it out. We weren’t allowed to go to the front door at the drugstore. We had to go to the side door to get, my dad to get the ice cream and bring it out to us, and yeah, the other drug store on Main Street, we weren’t allowed to—we had to go through the front door because I think that was probably the only door that they had. The other side door I believe was used for deliveries, and we could go in there, but as far as sitting down to eat at the dining room tables, you could not do that as an African American, but you know, later on things started to change at the drug store. You know, there were people that had gone in, and they would sit there, but they would not be served,but then, you know, they just kept going back and finally they did serve them, and this was back in the [19]60’s it was, but at the other drugstore, later on, at the other drugstore where my dad would take us to get out ice cream, we were able to later, like the other drugstore, we were able to go in and sit in the booth, but at first, we were not allowed to do that.
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Title
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Places
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Title
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Rogers Corner
Description
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W.H. Rogers opened his drugstore in Madison, Indiana in 1847. Located on the corner of West and Main Streets, Rogers Drug Store quickly became a prominent business in downtown Madison. While the business changed ownership multiple times over the years, it primarily stayed in the Rogers family. By 1964, the drugstore had transformed to Rogers Corner. The updated store featured a soda fountain and served ice cream, while maintaining its original drugstore. It was a well-known, popular place for the people of Madison to visit before and after basketball games and movies [1]. Many people fondly remember the days when they could stop in to laugh with friends over a soda or milkshake [2]. For the first century after its creation, however, Rogers Corner did not welcome all Madison citizens. Many African Americans remember Rogers Corner differently than the white residents of Madison.
The African American community was well established in Madison. Before and during the Civil War, Madison was a “hotbed of antislavery activity,” playing an important role in the Underground Railroad. After the war, African Americans continued to build the Black community in the city, primarily settling in the Georgetown Neighborhood [3]. In recent years, African Americans have recalled the blatant racism and segregation they faced as children in mid-twentieth century Madison.
African Americans had designated, segregated seats in the local theater, and were forced to go in the side door at restaurants and stores. Rogers Corner is remembered as being particularly strict with the side-door policy. African Americans were not allowed to sit and enjoy their ice cream inside Rogers, but instead had to leave the store immediately after purchasing their treats [4]. Allen Watson, born in Madison in 1952, explained that “the people that ran the drugstore didn’t want Black people there…it’s like we were good enough to buy something and pay for it, but we weren’t good enough to sit at the counter or sit in a booth, like everybody else did" [5]. Denise Carter, born in Madison in 1959, admitted there was a “zone of infamy” around Rogers. “Black people didn’t like to go there,” she said, “I remember going in there once and being watched real close, like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be” [6]. On one occasion, another Black Madison native was simply turned away from buying ice cream at Rogers Corner as a child [7]. Eventually, African Americans were allowed to sit in the store, although they could not be served. They continued frequenting Rogers, until finally, in the 1960s, African Americans were allowed to sit in a booth and be served like white customers [8].
Today, the storefront on the corner of West and Main still proudly displays the label “Rogers Corner.” The location housed Rogers Corner Diner from 2000 to 2010, then was bought by a sports bar that still serves out of the old Rogers Corner [9]. The building is located in the expansive 130-block Madison Historic District, noted in both the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark for its fine examples of nineteenth century architecture and historical significance [10].
<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/275">Interview 5 with Allen Watson</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] “Shooter’s,” Madison’s Treasures Tours, Pocket Sights, accessed March 22, 2021, https://pocketsights.com/tours/place/Shooter%27s-16411.
[2] Don Ward, “Ratcliffs Buy Rogers Corner, Plan to Rebuild Soda Fountain,” RoundAbout, April 2000, http://www.roundaboutmadison.com/InsidePages/ArchivedArticles/2000/0400RogersCorner.html.
[3] “Madison Historic District,” National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior, accessed March 22, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/madison/Madison_Historic_District.html.
[4] Don Wallis, All We Had Was Each Other (Indiana University Press, 1998), 116.
[5] Don Wallis, 125.
[6] Don Wallis, 132.
[7] Don Wallis, xiii.
[8] Allen Watson, interview by Carrie Vachon, April 12, 2019, Ball State University.
[9] “Shooter’s,” Madison’s Treasures Tours.
[10] “Madison Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form,” United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, May 25, 1973, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132003437.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/73000020">National Register of Historic Places</a><br /><a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/madison/Madison_Historic_District.html">Madison Historic District National Historic Landmark</a><br /><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/madison-historic-district/"> Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Rights
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Mich Rd Start 19-10-16, attributed to Chris Light, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mich_Rd_Start_19-10-16_221.jpg
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
Architecture
Entertainment
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Jefferson County
Madison
National Register of Historic Places
Oral History
Segregation
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/2614eca6adfee88e232ee460c9ef3aea.jpg
25b976936844d10cedac36701fe25ead
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Title
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People
Person
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Samuel Plato
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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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
Relation
A related resource
<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>
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<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>
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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
1900-1940s
Architecture
Bloomington
Entrepreneurship
Grant County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Marion (City)
National Register of Historic Places
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/178c5152e46bf6ee8e704c03f762bc05.jpg
4b36b17a35099ec538bf7e1f7cde5e4b
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Senate Avenue YMCA
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
<p></p>
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><span></span></a><a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4325.htm"></a></p>
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<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>
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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
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4325.htm " target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Senate Avenue YMCA, Madam C.J. Walker Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/m0399/id/212/rec/2
1900-1940s
1900-1959
1950s-present
athletics
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Integration
Marion County
Organization
religion
Segregation
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/21abac5c442aab46fb66904198603639.jpg
912fe46585849ca20b0702ed60b552de
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Shaffer Chapel
Description
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Shaffer Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was established in Muncie in 1919 by 48 founding members. Reverend J. P. Q. Wallace, a church elder from Richmond, presided over this initial meeting. [1] By 1929, the congregation had outgrown its first property and moved to its current location, a former elementary school on Highland Avenue. [2] Though Bethel AME Church had been established in downtown Muncie nearly 50 years earlier, the founders of Shaffer Chapel sought to serve African Methodist Episcopal congregants living in the primarily African American Whitely neighborhood. [3]
Throughout its history, ministers at Shaffer Chapel played a major role in the greater black community of Muncie. During the 1920s, Reverend John E. Johnson helped to defeat an attempt to “develop an all-colored elementary school” in the Whitely neighborhood, fighting instead to maintain the integration of Muncie schools. [4] Reverend Anthony J. Oliver crusaded against discriminatory hiring practices at Muncie businesses during the 1960s. [5] With the help of his congregants and other members of the black community, Reverend Oliver successfully integrated Muncie banks and industrial employers, including “Warner Gear Transmission Plant, […] Indiana Michigan Electric, Indiana Central Gas Co., Muncie Water Co., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co., and many more.” [6]
One incident is remembered with particular prominence in the church’s history. In July 1930, three black teenagers, Abram Smith, Thomas Shipp, and Herbert James Cameron, were arrested in Marion after being accused of the rape of Mary Ball and the murder of Claude Deeter. [7] The white citizens of Marion were outraged and gathered in a mob outside the jail where the young men were being held, eventually forcing their way in. Cameron was spared as the mob eventually died down, but Shipp and Smith were brutally murdered that night, with their bodies left hanging for all to see beneath the statue of Lady Justice atop the Grant County courthouse. [8] The lynch mob and the significant crowd of sightseers included men, women, and children; “perhaps the majority of the inhabitants of Grant County” were represented that night on the courthouse lawn. [9] Because there was no black mortician in Marion, Shaffer Chapel’s Reverend John E. Johnson, who also operated as a mortician in Muncie, drove to Marion and brought the bodies of the young men to Muncie to be embalmed. [10] According to local oral histories, rumors spread throughout Muncie that a white mob was planning to storm the mortuary and further desecrate the lynching victims’ bodies. In response, members of Muncie’s black community gathered using Shaffer Chapel as the “headquarters of the hastily formed militia.” [11] Though the mob never formed, Muncie’s black community “made a show of strength and solidarity in the face of hostile racism” at Shaffer Chapel, and ensured the safety of Shipp and Smith’s embalmment and return to Marion for burial. [12]
Like most black churches during the twentieth century, Shaffer Chapel was not used solely for spiritual purposes. Not only in Muncie, but across the nation, “the church was the center of social and cultural life and of benevolent and welfare activities in black communities.” [13] The church was a safe haven from ever-present racism and prejudice, and the site of community organizing in much of black American history. At Shaffer Chapel, black Muncie residents could fill leadership roles with dignity and without the supervision and judgment of whites. Furthermore, they could gather to talk about political issues such as segregation without arousing suspicion.
Shaffer Chapel AME was and still is a crucial place for the African American community of Muncie. Its ministers and congregants have worked throughout its history to make Muncie a safer and more progressive city. In doing so, they have created a space that takes care of the needs of the community, spiritually, politically, and economically. The Whitely Community Council raised funds to restore the church in 2011, ensuring that this historic site will continue to serve the neighborhood and the wider Muncie black community for years to come. [14]
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[1] Hurley Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie, (Muncie, IN: Ball State University, 1976): 11. <br />[2] “18.1996.1 Shaffer Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church Delaware County Marker Text Review Report,” Indiana Historical Bureau, 2014; Goodall and Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie, 11. <br />[3] Goodall and Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie, 11. <br />[4] Ibid. <br />[5] Luke Eric Lassiter, Hurley Goodall, Elizabeth Campbell, and Michelle Natasya Johnson, The Other Side of Middletown, (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004): 211. <br />[6] Hurley Goodall, “Rev. Oliver, Profile of a Determined Man Who Helped Desegregate Muncie,” The Muncie Times (Muncie, IN), Feb. 6, 1997. <br />[7] James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America, (New York: Palgrave, 2001): 5. <br />[8] Ibid., 32. <br />[9] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000): 67. <br />[10] Lassiter, et al., The Other Side of Middletown, 210. <br />[11] Ibid., 211. <br />[12] Ibid. <br />[13] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 17. <br />[14] “April 2014 Newsletter,” Whitely Community Council, April 2014, https://whitelycc.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/wcc-newsletter-april-2014.pdf.
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Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Emma Guichon <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/79.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Markers</a>
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Shaffer Chapel AME, attributed to Dale Winling, Public domain, via Flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanoasis/2693346375/
1950s-present
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
Church
Delaware County
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Lynching
Muncie
religion
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/33cd83a64f128152dbd836a952d34e47.jpg
f9a771aafd0a9d5e189e8c8f7b405563
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Sheriff’s Residence and Jail, Evansville
Description
An account of the resource
Tensions between African Americans and white individuals were already high in Evansville in 1903, when they boiled over on July 3. An African-American man known as Robert Lee or Lee Brown, reportedly left a bar with an unpaid tab, intending to kill another man with whom he had quarreled with earlier in the day [1]. The bartender, who had followed Lee out of the bar, flagged down police patrolman Louis N. Massey and informed him about what he had witnessed. Massey followed Lee for a distance before attempting to arrest him, and when he grabbed Lee by the shoulder, Lee turned and fired at Officer Massey. Massey was able to fire back at and hit Lee, who was wounded and arrested [2]. Officer Massey died later that evening. When the Evansville community found out that one of its police officers was killed by an African American man, leaving behind his wife and children, riots ensued [3].
Early in the morning following Officer Massey’s death, 100 to 150 white Evansville residents surrounded the police station, demanding for the sheriff to hand over Lee to be hanged [4]. The sheriff refused, and secretly escorted Lee through the underground tunnel that ran between the police station and courthouse to send Lee on a train to the nearby Vincennes jail to be protected. Lee died several days later in custody as a result of the gunshot wound inflicted by Massey [5]. The white Evansville crowd, growing into the thousands, grew restless while waiting for Lee and became more violent as people swarmed the police station [6]. Mobs broke into hardware stores and stole guns and ammunition, along with tools to break open the windows and doors to the jail. On their way back to the jail, word spread that several African American men had gathered at two saloons nearby and were firing down on people as they passed on the street. The mob attacked both saloons and fired at the African American men, but nobody was injured in the attacks [7].
Fearing for the safety of the citizens in Evansville, the sheriff pleaded with the Indiana governor to send help. At the same time as more and more people gathered and became increasingly violent, the Wallace Circus was also coming to town, increasing the confusion [8]. By the time the mob returned to the jail, the Indiana governor had declared martial law and sent 300 members of the National Guard to wrest control from the mob and restore peace to Evansville. Following the mob’s slow advance towards the jail, the tension was finally broken by gunfire. Although there is debate about which side fired first, in the end, both the mob and the National Guard were using their weapons [9]. After the smoke had cleared and the shots ceased firing, “thirty-one wounded and dead laid on the pavement,” two of whom were 15-year old children, one a girl and the other a boy.10 The mob quickly dispersed, and finally, after several days of heated conflicts, the violence subsided as families grieved their losses and tended to those who were wounded.
Today, the jail and sheriff’s residence are still connected by a tunnel to the Evansville courthouse, which was built in 1890 [11]. The jail is made of Indiana limestone with 18th-century inspired architecture. In 1970, the old sheriff’s residence and jail were listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2007, a historical marker commemorating the jail’s construction and its connection to the courthouse was installed by the Indiana Historical Bureau [12].
Source
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[1] “The City’s Crown of Shame: Evansville Awakens to the Awful Consequences of Her Seedtime of Folly,” Indianapolis Journal, July 8, 1903. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015679/1903-07-08/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1903&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=EVANSVILLE+Journal&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=14&state=Indiana&date2=1903&proxtext=evansville+journal&y=6&x=10&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kelley Coures. “Race Riot of 1903: Violence on Fourth Street Claimed 12 Lives,” Evansville Living, accessed July 8, 2020. http://www.evansvilleliving.com/articles/race-riot-of-1903
[4] “Race War Raging in Evansville: Indiana City is in the Hands of Mobs,” San Francisco Call, Vol 94(36). July 6, 1903. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19030706.2.4&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1
[5] Kelley Coures.
[6] “Seven Killed in Evansville Riot: Mob, Bent upon Lynching of a Negro Murderer, is Met with Storm of Bullets and Retires,” Minneapolis Journal, July 7, 1903. July 8, 2020. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045366/1903-07-07/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=07%2F06%2F1903&index=8&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=EVANSVILLE+RIOT&proxdistance=5&date2=07%2F31%2F1903&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=Evansville+Riot&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1
[7] “The City’s Crown of Shame: Evansville Awakens to the Awful Consequences of Her Seedtime of Folly.”
[8] “Seven Killed in Evansville Riot: Mob, Bent upon Lynching of a Negro Murderer, is Met with Storm of Bullets and Retires.
[9] “They City’s Crown of Shame: Evansville Awakens to the Awful Consequences of Her Seedtime of Folly.”
[10] “Seven Killed in Evansville Riot: Mob, Bent upon Lynching of a Negro Murderer, is Met with Storm of Bullets and Retires.”
[11] “Sheriff’s Residence and Jail,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/sheriffs-residence-and-jail/
[12] “National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form: Former Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Residence,” United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, July 1969. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/c8581b91-c054-410a-816c-dea440b35a23/
Contributor
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Student Authors: Mary Swartz, Joel Sharp, and Emma Cieslik
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
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<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpgallery.nps.gov%2FAssetDetail%2FNRIS%2F70000009&data=04%7C01%7Ctlhayes2%40bsu.edu%7Cf50cb3f79e4f468ffca508d8c874d982%7C6fff909f07dc40da9e30fd7549c0f494%7C0%7C0%7C637479751594079524%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=3H%2BK6TmUy0QQ4T6Gtqd%2BjVm%2FsEI8MF9pH%2F5rhu1LZ60%3D&reserved=0">National Register of Historic Places</a><br /><a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.in.gov%2Fhistory%2Fstate-historical-markers%2Ffind-a-marker%2Fsheriffs-residence-and-jail%2F&data=04%7C01%7Ctlhayes2%40bsu.edu%7Cf50cb3f79e4f468ffca508d8c874d982%7C6fff909f07dc40da9e30fd7549c0f494%7C0%7C0%7C637479751594089515%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=iULSiUDdd162xPZ4iVeg7EQANsb37%2FDUtH4SbB0RnpI%3D&reserved=0">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Former Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Residence, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Vanderburgh_County_Sheriff%27s_Residence.jpg
1900-40s
Evansville
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
National Register of Historic Places
Vanderburgh County
Violence
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/e6860a1d2543c585fae054d388a15a7e.jpg
3faad94137dde6e2f56afafd7cab0865
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Willard B. Ransom
Description
An account of the resource
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]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[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.
Contributor
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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
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<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>
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PHOTO & VIDEO:
Willard Ransom, Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/p0303/id/180/rec/2
1900-1940s
1950s-present
athletics
Entrepreneurship
Indiana Historical Bureau Marker
Indianapolis
Integration
Jefferson County
law
Marion County
NAACP
National Register of Historic Places
Segregation