Shaffer Chapel

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]

[1] Hurley Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie, (Muncie, IN: Ball State University, 1976): 11.
[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.
[3] Goodall and Mitchell, A History of Negroes in Muncie, 11.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Luke Eric Lassiter, Hurley Goodall, Elizabeth Campbell, and Michelle Natasya Johnson, The Other Side of Middletown, (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004): 211.
[6] Hurley Goodall, “Rev. Oliver, Profile of a Determined Man Who Helped Desegregate Muncie,” The Muncie Times (Muncie, IN), Feb. 6, 1997.
[7] James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America, (New York: Palgrave, 2001): 5.
[8] Ibid., 32.
[9] Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lana Ruegamer, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000): 67.
[10] Lassiter, et al., The Other Side of Middletown, 210.
[11] Ibid., 211.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, 17.
[14] “April 2014 Newsletter,” Whitely Community Council, April 2014, https://whitelycc.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/wcc-newsletter-april-2014.pdf.

Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Emma Guichon
Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson
Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey

PHOTO & VIDEO:
Shaffer Chapel AME, attributed to Dale Winling, Public domain, via Flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanoasis/2693346375/