1
100
5
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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
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Interview 5 with Allen Watson (Roger's Corner)
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<a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/119">Roger's Corner</a>
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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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Places
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Rogers Corner
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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>
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[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.
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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>
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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
-
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
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[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
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
Relation
A related resource
<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
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/c6c670f2fcc22001b66284cc3d885cec.jpg
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John H. and Sarah Tibbets Home
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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.
Source
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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.
Contributor
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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
-
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/148a467d1acabbe5c416a34b6835bd62.jpg
81bc18dbd9d7609aaacf1b26646a375e
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/9444f82497f947c3dcd299547aeec3d3.mp3
1b3d14d55914c577f0b165f247d5d2b2
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Interview 1 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
Subject
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<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
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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>
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<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
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Interview 3 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District)
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<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
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<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.
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Places
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Georgetown Historic District
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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
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/bcefd587b60b4f5edc93d980b595a318.jpg
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Reverend Moses Broyles,
Eleutherian College
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Moses Broyles was born in 1826 in Maryland [1]. At the age of four, he was separated from his parents and purchased by a Kentucky planter named John Broyles. John Broyles often entrusted Moses with the care of the Broyles children and eventually, he was entrusted with management of farm affairs. Moses learned to read and discovered a love of history through the books he read, including the Old and New Testament, books about United States History, the lives of George Washington and Francis Marion, and history of the Baptists, among others. While still enslaved, he traveled to Paducah, Kentucky, where he preached and helped establish the first colored Baptist meetinghouse [2].
When he was fourteen (1840), John Broyles told Moses that he would be freed in 1854. However, Moses could not wait, and in 1851 he began working to purchase himself. He had bought a horse and dray to earn money more rapidly and was eventually able to purchase his freedom. After extricating himself from slavery, Moses moved to Lancaster, Indiana, and attended Eleutherian College. Allegedly prone to coughing and choking spells during debates and public speeches, he was very bashful when he first attended the college. In spite of Broyles reserved personality, Dr. William T. Stott, the former president of Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, said “Eleutherian Institute would have amply justified its existence and cost, if it had educated no other pupil than Moses Broyles" [3]. A second individual made a similar remark, stating “that school, even if it had done nothing more, justified its claim to recognition by the successful education of Rev. Moses Broyles, the leader of the colored Baptists of Indiana" [4]. Clearly, Moses Broyles was an exceptionally intelligent and high achieving student who was able to succeed in the face of challenging circumstances.
Broyles moved to Indianapolis in the spring of 1857 where he entered the ministry. He became a member of the Second Baptist Church, and hoped to become its pastor. By November of 1857, he was ordained as the pastor of the Second Baptist. Because the church could only pay for three years of lodging, Broyles worked as a schoolteacher for twelve years at one of the first African Americans schools in the city [5].
By the time Moses Broyles became a pastor, the Underground Railroad had been in use for nearly two decades, reaching its peak in the 1850s. The anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was published in 1852 and sold half a million copies within its first six months. The Civil War shook the young nation, and in the war’s last year, President Lincoln was assassinated, the Ku Klux Klan formed, and the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments soon followed, which changed the lives of African Americans in many ways but did not lead to complete equality. In 1871, Congress gave President Grant authority to use military force against the KKK and similar groups, but African Americans would continue to live in fear for decades.
Under Broyles’ leadership, the church’s membership grew, and by 1877 it had sent twenty-one men into the ministry. In 1864, the church outgrew its space as its membership doubled in size, and in 1867 it grew again, resulting in the purchase of a larger building for $25,000. Broyles was a major factor in the organization of a State Association of Colored Baptists in Indiana, as well as the establishment of six colored churches in the state since 1866 [6]. In 1876, Broyles wrote The History of Second Baptist Church. He was a known Republican and encouraged other African Americans to join the party of Lincoln and Grant. Broyles and his wife Francis had seven children by 1880. He remained the pastor of Second Baptist until his death on August 31, 1882 [7]. Rev. Broyles created many opportunities for African Americans in Indiana, especially in education and religion. It would be nearly another century before African Americans would be able to attend schools with whites, but like other civil rights leaders, Rev. Broyles was a single spark that fueled an inferno of social change which is still burning.
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[1] Cathcart, William, "The Baptist encyclopedia: a dictionary of the doctrines, ordinances...of the general history of the Baptist denomination in all lands, with numerous biographical sketches...& a supplement" Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1883.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Carrol, J. C. "The Beginnings of Public Education for Negroes in Indiana." The Journal of Negro Education 8 no. 4 (October, 1939).
[4] Ibid.
[5] “History of Greater Indianapolis”, New York Public Library.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Brown, Ignatius, “Indianapolis Directory…History of Indianapolis”, Logan & Co., 1868.
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Student Author: Melody Seberger <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">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker for Eleutherian College</a>
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Eleutherian College from northwest in evening, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eleutherian_College_from_northwest_in_evening.jpg
1800s
community
education
Indianapolis
Jefferson County
Marion County
religion
Slavery