J. Chester Allen J.D. and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen J.D.
J. Chester Allen and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen were African American attorneys in South Bend, Indiana who fought for civil rights in both their personal and professional lives. J. Chester Allen was born in 1900 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. After graduating with a law degree from Boston College, he moved to South Bend in 1929.[1] Elizabeth Fletcher was born in Chicago in 1905, and married J. Chester Allen in 1928.[2] The couple were noteworthy trailblazers in both civil rights and opportunities for women. The two created the Allen & Allen Law firm, and they were one of the first husband and wife law partners in the area. Elizabeth Fletcher Allen was the first female attorney in St. Joseph County and the state of Indiana.[3] J. Chester Allen paved the way for African American representation in South Bend as the first African American to serve on the City Council and the school board. He was elected as president of the St. Joseph County Bar Association and to the Indiana state legislature, the first African American in both of those positions.[4] Elizabeth Fletcher Allen was a member of the many civic and African American community organizations, including the South Bend chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Black Business and Professional Women’s Association.[5] While the two had many significant contributions to the community, they are perhaps best known for their civil rights work in South Bend, specifically fighting to desegregate the Engman Natatorium.
It was common for public parks and playgrounds, and other recreational facilities to be segregated in the mid-twentieth century, and the Allen’s helped fight for desegregation in South Bend. The South Bend Engman Public Natatorium was built in 1922, and for the first 14 years, only the white public could enjoy the pool. In 1931, African American leaders, including the Allen’s, began to take action to gain access to the pool. In 1936, when the South Bend Common Council levied a special tax on the residents of South Bend for pool repairs, African American community leaders demanded access to the pool if they were going to be taxed. A petition presented to the state tax commission pointed out that tax money would be used to repair a facility that was not allowed to be used by some of the community that was paying the tax. The state tax commissioner agreed with them, and after 16 years, the facility was finally open to African Americans. However, African Americans were only allowed to use the pool on Mondays with no whites present.[6] After working for over two decades to end the city pool’s segregationist policies, in February 1950, J. Chester Allen, Elizabeth Fletcher Allen, and Maurice Tulchinsky represented the NAACP before the South Bend Park Board “threatening action, unless the Board ruled to integrate the Engman Natatorium immediately.”[7] This threat would finally be a turning point, and the Parks board would relent and desegregate the Natatorium.
The Engman Natatorium closed its door is 1970, and the building sat empty for years.[8] What was once known as the Engman Public Natatorium, a public recreation facility once caught in a fight for desegregation, is now the Civil Rights Heritage Center in South Bend.[9] In 2018, the Engman Natatorium was designated as a local historic landmark. The landmark status protects the building and ensures that the building remains as close to its original form for generations to come. The Civil Rights Heritage Center is an active learning center in the community and attracts more than 5,000 visitors each year.[10]
[1] “J. Chester Allen and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen Papers.” Indiana University South Bend Libraries. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://library.iusb.edu/search-find/archives/crhc/ChesterElizabethAllen.html
[2] “Eliz Fletcher Allen obituary 28 Dec. 1994, p. 15.” Accessed August 26, 2020 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/28608792/eliz-fletcher-allen-obituary-28-dec/
[3] “Local African American History: African Americans in the Workplace.” The History Museum. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://historymuseumsb.org/local-african-american-history/
[4] “J. Chester Allen.” The South Bend Tribune. Accessed August 26, 2020.
https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/keynews/community/j-chester-allen-sr/article_4855292c-9240-11e3-b4e5-001a4bcf6878.html
[5] “Eliz Fletcher Allen obituary.
[6] Harris, Dina. Divided Water: “Healing a Community’s Past,” 2013. https://clas.iusb.edu/centers/civil-rights/
[7] “Ruth Tulchinsky, Short Statement on Visiting the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center,2010,” St. Joseph County Public Library Michiana Memory, March 22, 2016 Accessed August 26, 2020. http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16827coll4/id/2452/rec/6.
[8] Harris, Dina. Divided Water: “Healing a Community’s Past,” 2013. https://clas.iusb.edu/centers/civil-rights/
[9] “J. Chester Allen.”
[10] Baierl, Ken. “Engman Natatorium Designated Historic Landmark.” Indiana University of South Bend, October 16, 2018.
Student Author: Molly Hollcraft
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen, South Bend Tribune https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2021/09/18/south-bend-historical-marker-honors-black-husband-wife-lawyers/8400790002/
South Bend Washington High School Walkout
<p>On September 20, 1968, 200 African American students staged a walkout at Washington High School in South Bend, Indiana. The walkout was a protest of the lack of representation of African Americans students in the school’s sports teams and extracurricular activities. The center of the conflict revolved around the fact that there was not a single African American cheerleader on Washington High School’s “all white” cheerleading squad. The walkout was organized and carried out by the Student Organization for Unity and Leadership (S.O.U.L.), a student-run organization that advocated for the representation of African American students in all areas of student life at Washington High School. Prior to the walkout, S.O.U.L. held two meetings to plan the demonstration at the LaSalle Park Center on Western Avenue. The pep assembly walkout involved many students and gained the attention of the South Bend African American newspaper The Reformer, where it made the front page of the September 29, 1968 edition.[1]</p>
<p>As one of the last Northern states to officially desegregate public schools, Indiana has a long history of racial inequality in its educational systems. The move to integrate public schools came in 1949, only five years preceding the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Indiana General Assembly passed the Indiana School Desegregation Act in 1949.[2] Although the law required schools to start integrating, segregation persisted throughout the state due to residential zoning. South Bend’s public school system had never officially been segregated; however, the city enforced extremely discriminatory housing practices that made it very difficult for African Americans to become property owners, forced African American families into segregated neighborhoods, and perpetuated unofficial segregation in public schools.[3]</p>
<p>Even in school buildings that were officially integrated, African American students were often denied access to recreational facilities and discouraged from participating in school teams and clubs in South Bend.[4] These discriminatory practices caused African American students to feel unrepresented in their schools and culminated in a large public protest at Washington High School. In its coverage of the 1968 Washington High School walkout, The Reformer reported that one student demonstrator said, “We’ve been given frustration in place of equal representation.”[5] Despite the large African American population at Washington High School, African American students felt unable to participate fully in their school community. Marching out of the all-school pep assembly, over 200 students mobilized in order to upend the school’s prejudiced operations.</p>
<p>The year 1968 saw many school walkouts staged by students seeking to promote civil rights. The largest and most influential demonstration was the East Los Angeles School walkouts of March 1968.[6] It is likely that the 200 students who walked out of Washington High School on September 20, 1968 were inspired by this and similar walkouts earlier in the year.</p>
[1] Val Maxwell, “Washington Students Stage Walkout,” The Reformer, September 29, 1968, 1.
[2] “A Look Back: Hoosier inequality,” South Bend Tribune, January 18, 2016, https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/history/a-look-back-hoosier-inequality/article_14aff11b-7be0-5594-a12d-499a0c02e67d.html
[3] Annette Scherber, “’Better Homes wants to have a fair shake:’ Fighting Housing Discrimination in Postwar South Bend,” Indiana History Blog, last modified May 18, 2017, https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/housing/
[4] “Segregation in South Bend,” St. Joseph County Public Library, accessed June 1, 2020, https://sjcpl.org/node/7579.
[5] Maxwell, “Washington Students Stage Walkout,” 1.
[6] “The Walkout — How a Student Movement in 1968 Changed Schools Forever (Part 1 Of 3),” United Way Greater Los Angeles, last modified February 26, 2018, https://www.unitedwayla.org/en/news-resources/blog/1968Walkouts/.
Student Author: Natalie Bradshaw
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Washington High School South Bend 2015, attributed to IH Havens, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_High_School_South_Bend_2015.jpg
Better Homes of South Bend
<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>
<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>
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
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
<a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4365.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a>
Engman Natatorium
In 1922, the city of South Bend celebrated its first swimming pool opened to the public. The Engman Public Natatorium drew nearly ten thousand admissions in its first 60 days, even accounting for a 12 day period in which “a ‘clogging’ of the sterilization machinery forced the closing” of the pool. [1] Despite the pool’s location in an integrated neighborhood and the prominent placement of the word “public” in the name of the facility, the Engman Natatorium served a very specific public: the white citizens of South Bend. [2]
As early as 1931, black community leaders in South Bend began organizing efforts to end this segregation. [3] Black youths in the city had very limited options when it came to recreational activities; some restaurants, stores, and privately owned parks refused to cater to South Bend’s black community, or severely restricted the hours or activities they were allowed to partake in. [4] The levying of a tax in 1936 by the South Bend Common Council “in order to repair cracks in the building” of the Natatorium inspired legal pushback from the black community. [5] Although they were not allowed to enjoy the accommodations at Engman, black citizens of South Bend had to pay the tax. [6] Black lawyer J. Chester Allen “led the charge to file a successful petition to desegregate the facility,” protesting to the state that since the pool was taxpayer-funded, it should not be segregated. [7] The result of this legal battle was the opening of Engman Natatorium to black swimmers on Mondays only, beginning in October 1936. [8]
For 14 years, Engman Public Natatorium was still a largely segregated space where black swimmers could be denied entrance when it was “not their day.” [9] In 1950, lawyers J. Chester Allen, Elizabeth Fletcher Allen, and Maurice Tulchinsky represented the local NAACP branch at a meeting of the South Bend Parks Board. [10] There, they threatened legal action unless the facilities were integrated immediately, and the Parks Board relented. [11] Beginning in 1950, Engman Public Natatorium became a truly public institution, serving all citizens of South Bend. After years of use, the pool fell into disrepair and required costly maintenance, and was closed by the South Bend Parks Board in 1978. [12]
Since 2010, the former Engman Public Natatorium building has housed the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center (CRHC). [13] The CRHC functions as a community space, and also serves as “a living museum that simultaneously preserves and honors past struggles for civil rights and social justice in the northern Indiana region while initiating and supporting contemporary efforts to advance the unfinished fight for justice.” [14] The CRHC houses a permanent exhibition which discusses the struggle to integrate Engman Public Natatorium. In a collaboration with the Franklin D. Schurz Library at Indiana University South Bend, the CRHC has worked to gather and preserve oral histories, historical documents and artifacts, and other primary source materials that trace the social, cultural, and political contributions of underrepresented communities in South Bend and northern Indiana. [15] Where the divisive pool once stood in the Engman Public Natatorium building, the Civil Rights Heritage Center has planted a peace garden, creating a unifying space for all residents of South Bend from a place of historic segregation. [16]
[1] “City’s Youth Finds Pleasure Daily at the Natatorium,” The South Bend News-Times (South Bend, IN), Sept. 10, 1922. <br />[2] “A Look Back: Civil Rights for All,” South Bend Tribune (South Bend, IN), Jan. 16, 2017. <br />[3] Ibid. <br />[4] “Civil Rights Pioneer Barbara (Vance) Brandy 1,” St. Joseph Public Library Michiana Memory, January 18, 2017, http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16827coll13/id/132/rec/15. <br />[5] “A Look Back: Civil Rights for All,” South Bend Tribune. <br />[6] Ibid. <br />[7] Ibid.; “Civil Rights Heritage Center,” Indiana University South Bend, accessed October 1, 2019, https://clas.iusb.edu/centers/civil-rights/index.html. [8] “A Look Back: Civil Rights for All,” South Bend Tribune. <br />[9] “Ruth Tulchinsky, Voice of the People, February 13, 2009,” St. Joseph County Public Library Michiana Memory, February 23, 2016, http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16827coll4/id/2451/rec/10. <br />[10] “Ruth Tulchinsky, Short Statement on Visiting the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, 2010,” St. Joseph County Public Library Michiana Memory, March 22, 2016, http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p16827coll4/id/2452/rec/6. <br />[11] Ibid. <br />[12] “Civil Rights Heritage Center,” Indiana University South Bend. <br />[13] Ibid. <br />[14] Ibid. <br />[15] Ibid. <br />[16] “Ruth Tulchinsky, Short Statement on Visiting the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, 2010,” St. Joseph County Public Library Michiana Memory.
Student Author: Allison Hunt <br />Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson<br />Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey
PHOTO & VIDEO:
Courtesy South Bend Tribune, https://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/digital/collection/p16827coll15/id/3871/rec/28