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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/568a062081196b852ecf1382aa8b6c88.jpg
25e397a9105c9ab1312e5485a55ea2df
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
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Title
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Allen Chapel AME Church, Terre Haute
Description
An account of the resource
The Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was founded in 1837 as the first African American church in Terre Haute and in western Indiana. It is named after Richard Allen, a former enslaved person who founded the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1787.[1] During slavery, Allen Chapel AME was part of the Underground Railroad, as its location near the Wabash River provided fugitive slaves food and shelter before moving further north.[2] ,[3] In 1845, before African American children were permitted to attend public schools, Allen Chapel was one of the oldest buildings used to educate African American children in Indiana. [4] Allen Chapel played an integral part in early civil rights and equal representation of African Americans. The minister who started the Allen Chapel school, Hiram Rhoads Revels, later served as the first U.S. African American senator, representing Mississippi. James Hinton, the first African American in the Indiana legislature, attended Allen Chapel school.[5] In 1886, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass visited Terre Haute on two occasions to help raise funds for Allen Chapel. [6]
In 1913, lightning struck the church, causing a fire. Church members were able to rescue some pews and altar pieces, as well as save the entire lower level. Church services were conducted in a tent while the church underwent reconstruction. Allen Chapel was considered the leading African American church in Terre Haute through the 1960s. Many from the surrounding neighborhood attended the church, with a congregation reaching over 200. The church building provided the surrounding community a place to gather and meet. [7] Allen Chapel hosted baseball star Jackie Robinson, who spoke to the congregation about his experience as the first African American player in Major League Baseball. [8]
In recognition of its historical and cultural significance, Allen Chapel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.[9] During the last half of the twentieth century, the number of congregants sharply declined, due mostly to the urban redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhood that began in the1960s. [10] The dwindling congregation could not keep up with the needed building repairs, and demolition of the historic building became likely. Various community members came together to save Allen Chapel, which was an irreplaceable symbol of the African American heritage of the community. In 1997, the Friends of Historic Allen Chapel AME formed to raise the necessary funds in order to preserve the building. [11] The Friends group was awarded a Historic Preservation Fund grant in 2017 from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation & Archaeology to help preserve the building. In 2019, the Friends received the Outstanding Grant-Assisted Rehabilitation award for their restoration work.[12] To this day, Allen Chapel remains an active place of worship and open to the public.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
[1] Yaël Ksander, “Neighborhood Church, Living Monument,” Moment of Indiana History – Indiana Public Media, October 11, 2010, https://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/neighborhood-church-living-monument/.
[2] Sue Loughlin, “Allen Chapel AME Celebrates Milestone of 175 Years,” Tribune-Star, Updated January 11, 2015, https://www.tribstar.com/news/local_news/allen-chapel-ame-church-celebrates-milestone-of-175-years/article_2c83c8f7-bc7c-5299-8dbe-28ca7130868a.html.
[3] Yaël Ksander
[4] Sue Loughlin
[5] Yaël Ksander
[6] Sue Loughlin
[7] Sue Loughlin
[8] Yaël Ksander
[9] National Register of Historic Places, Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana, National Register #75000030. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/75000030
[10] Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Wabash Valley Profiles, July 28, 2005. Indiana Memory Hosted Digital Collections. https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/vchs/id/392
[11] Sue Loughlin
[12] Lisa Trigg, “Friends of Allen Chapel AME to Be Honored,” Tribune-Star, April 3, 2019, www.tribstar.com/news/local_news/friends-of-allen-chapel-ame-to-be-honored/article_3204c66d-8ad1-52a4-9b2f-60eb32112e75.html.
Contributor
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Student Author: Phillip Brooks
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:
Allen Chapel AME in Terre Haute, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allen_Chapel_AME_in_Terre_Haute.jpg
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132005029">National Register of Historic Places</a>
1800s
1900-40s
1950s-present
African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
Church
National Register of Historic Places
religion
Terre Haute
Underground Railroad
Vigo County
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https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/b8943a604790c9d4ea3b0a8f33b77df7.jpg
f6af3bd85d62755f2b9102b00d1a709a
Dublin Core
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Title
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People
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Title
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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>
Rights
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