“Agnes Szabo, Alleged ‘Bootleg Queen,’ and City Judge William M. Dunn, of Gary, Ind.,” Richmond Palladium, January 25, 1923, 8.
Agnes Szabo came of age in South Bend in the early 1920s, when the Volstead Act had driven liquor sales underground and bootlegging routes became as common as postal deliveries. The post-World War I years were marked by economic volatility—wartime industries contracted, inflation soared, and many working-class families, especially immigrants, scrambled for new forms of income. In this climate of uncertainty, illicit trade often provided quicker and more reliable returns than conventional employment. Raised first in a saloon and then a so-called “soft drink parlor” (a Prohibition Era euphemism for a speakeasy), Agnes grew up in a world where the line between legal refreshment and illegal liquor was already pretty fuzzy. By the time she was a teenager, those distinctions had all but disappeared.
With her siblings in tow and cash in hand, Szabo shuttled whiskey between Chicago and South Bend in a Hudson sedan—on roads that were often more battlefield than boulevard. What shielded her was not only the youth and familial innocence she projected, but her deft ability to exploit the gender norms of the day. A teenage girl with “little tots” – her younger siblings – in the backseat rendered her invisible to the bootleg kingpins. And that was precisely her advantage.
Yet Szabo’s role in Indiana’s illicit economy was anything but peripheral. She operated at the wholesale level, paying up to $2,700 in cash for 135 cases of confiscated liquor—liquor that had been seized during raids, only to be resold to her by the very officers and city judges who were supposed to enforce the law. Her purchasing was facilitated by figures like Constable Dan Melloy, who not only sold her seized whiskey but once personally escorted her to Chicago for a resupply.
And it wasn’t only the liquor that moved through this network, but envelopes of cash, favors, and influence. For a while, Szabo operated with impunity. But as in many stories involving underestimated women, her own confidence became her undoing. While most bootleggers were busy bribing cops and praying their flasks wouldn’t clink too loudly, Szabo was flaunting her diamond rings and Alaskan seal coat like the protagonist of a very illegal Gatsby party.
Indianapolis Times, March 16, 1923, 16.
She boasted openly about her success, and soon a rival or jealous acquaintance tipped off the authorities. When federal agents arrested her in 1921, Szabo responded not with silence or shame, but with a detailed account of a system riddled with corruption. She named names. And the names she gave would rattle the very foundations of local government. Over sixty officials were indicted in the aftermath, including Gary’s Mayor Boswell O. Johnson, City Judge William Dunn, the Lake County prosecutor, police officers, detectives, and even former sheriffs. Their charges ranged from liquor violations to conspiracy to obstruction of justice and rigged local elections.
She had, in effect, exposed a system of government in which the law existed as a source of profit, not justice. Federal Judge Albert B. Anderson, who presided over her case, called Szabo “an extraordinary criminal.” But his response revealed he felt conflicted. Anderson sentenced her to six months, then reconsidered. He let her go home before serving her time, his instincts caught between punishment and paternalism. Anderson’s musings on indicting “entire families” and his eventual decision to let Szabo return home before serving time reflected a legal system struggling to reconcile its deeply-gendered expectations of guilt, repentance, and protection.
Szabo defied the conventional wisdom that women turned to crime because of male influence, instead taking ownership of her actions. In court, Szabo made it crystal clear that bootlegging was her choice and hers alone. She declared without a hint of hesitation that even if her mother had forbidden it, she’d have done it anyway. Judge Anderson wasn’t buying the lone-wolf act and suspected she had help, but Agnes stood firm. She even claimed that 75% of South Bend was in on the bootlegging trade. She wasn’t a pawn; she was a player. She was the “Queen of the Booze Runners,” a “flapper bootlegger,” a folk hero and a femme fatale rolled into one.
The Indianapolis Times, March 16, 1923, 16.
Szabo exposed how the law had already been broken by those entrusted to uphold it. In telling her story, we see a young woman who refused to play the roles assigned to her. She was neither criminal accessory nor courtroom victim. She was a central figure in a chapter of American history too often told without women’s names. After the scandal, Agnes tried to step out of the spotlight. In 1923, she stood outside a courthouse and declared, “No more liquor for the Szabo family. It is bad business, and I am through for all time.” Her attempted retreat from public life was framed not as redemption, but as abdication. She had become too powerful a symbol to quietly disappear. But the federal government wasn’t done watching her. When her family relocated to a rural farm and resumed their liquor operation, Judge Anderson filed an injunction to shut it down.
She operated within a male-dominated criminal enterprise, but refused to hide behind it. She used her youth and femininity as camouflage, but never performed helplessness. She was both scapegoat and whistleblower, criminal and reformer. In exposing Prohibition’s failures—she disrupted a patriarchal operation that had grown far too comfortable assuming women would stay silent.
Former President Dwight Eisenhower (left) joins Rep. Charles Halleck (center) to lay the cornerstone brick for the Halleck Student Center at St. Joseph’s College on September 13, 1962, courtesy of St. Joseph’s College, accessed Rensselaer Republican.
On a muggy September afternoon, gregarious Congressman Charles A. Halleck, flanked by wife Blanche and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, blinked back tears. Known for his oratorical prowess, Representative Halleck stood speechless before a large crowd in his hometown of Rensselaer, Indiana. From the lawn of St. Joseph’s College, Hoosiers keenly observed the political titans—both clad in collegiate cap and gown—at a dedication ceremony for the Halleck Student Center.[1] Laying of the cornerstone was just the tip of the “Charlie Halleck Day” iceberg. Accounts of the 1962 festivities provide a window into the friendship of Charlie and Ike and help humanize the nation’s leaders.
Although Halleck proudly donated to St. Joseph’s and served as a lay trustee for the college, he was actually an Indiana University alum. Born in DeMotte in 1900, the Halleck family moved to Rensselaer when Charles was just two years old. In 1922, he earned his A.B. from IU and his LL.B. in 1924, successfully campaigning for Jasper-Newton County Prosecutor in his last year of law school.[2] His seemingly limitless energy on the campaign trail and artful speeches helped secure his election. The young attorney served in this role from 1924 to 1926 and 1928 to 1934.[3] But he had bigger ambitions.
Indianapolis News, January 30, 1935, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
After the sudden death of U.S. Rep. Frederick Landis in 1934, the Second District held a special election. Halleck’s ability to mobilize once again got him into office and, at 35, he became one of twelve Hoosier representatives in Congress. He was the only Republican in this cohort, which, according to the Indianapolis News, reflected his district’s disdain for the New Deal.[4] At a public celebration in Rensselaer a few days later, Halleck introduced his mother to the crowd, telling them she deserved most of the credit for the victory, having “‘given him the spirit and inspiration to go through the successful campaign.'”[5]
Congressman Halleck’s adroit political maneuvering and ability to whip up votes kept him in office until 1969, and earned him appointments as Majority Leader (1947-1949, 1953-1955) and Minority Leader (1959-1965).[6] From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, his tenure spanned some of the most significant events and legislation in American history. After World War II, Rep. Halleck joined a contingent of lawmakers who focused on identifying and ousting Communists in America. As Majority Leader, he shepherded passage of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which limited the power of labor unions, whose members many conflated with Communists. Halleck ascribed to this belief, but also supported the bill because labor strikes had paralyzed parts of the country, as reflected in a letter from a constituent who wrote “Those labor troubles, strikes and slow-downs, deprived farmers of much needed machinery and supplies.”[7] Halleck’s deft politicking was evident after he whipped up enough votes to override President Harry S. Truman’s veto of the bill.
Halleck and Truman unified over the Economic Recovery Plan, better known as the 1948 Marshall Plan. Foreign Affairs Specialist Curt Tarnoff described the legislation in his 2018 “The Marshall Plan: Design, Accomplishments, and Significance” as:
An effort to prevent the economic deterioration of postwar Europe, expansion of communism, and stagnation of world trade, the Plan sought to stimulate European production, promote adoption of policies leading to stable economies, and take measures to increase trade among European countries and between Europe and the rest of the world.[8]
Truman solicited a massive aid package, hoping to help alleviate the suffering of those in war-ravaged countries and to make them less vulnerable to Communist forces. Halleck used his influence as Majority Leader to convince his congressional colleagues to support the program, which Tarnoff noted was “considered by many to have been the most effective ever of U.S. foreign aid programs.”[9]
While Halleck publicly scrutinized Truman, accusing him of aligning with “radicals and Communists” with his labor bill veto, he later told an interviewer “I enjoyed working with him. He’s undoubtedly got a place in history.”[10] But Eisenhower? Halleck stated:
my association with President Eisenhower was one of the happiest, greatest experiences of my life. And understand I had served thirty-four years, had been majority leader twice, minority leader three times, I’ve been through wars, depressions, and whole ball of wax and I know them all.[11]
Halleck (L) with Eisenhower (R) after a lunch meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, October 3, 1954. accessed Getty Images.
The feeling was seemingly mutual. When Eisenhower first entered the Oval Office as President in January 1953, he had never been elected to public office and had virtually no legislative experience. Someone like Congressman Halleck, who spent decades in Capitol Hill and knew its inner-workings intimately, proved invaluable to the 34th President. Halleck biographer Henry Scheele wrote that Halleck “emerged as the president’s chief legislative lieutenant on Capitol Hill.” This was, in large part, because he was an “expert on the subtleties of parliamentary procedure.”[12] A 1959 TIME article detailed why Halleck was such an asset to the Eisenhower administration, noting that Halleck:
goes into great and colloquial detail to explain what decisions were made—and why. The minutes of Policy Committee meetings are mimeographed and placed on each Republican’s desk. Not in many a long year have the Republican members of the House been so fully informed about the party line and positions, and the results can be found in their cohesiveness on vote after vote this year.[13]
Halleck would prove one of Eisenhower’s staunchest advocates, bullish in his pursuit of advancing the President’s initiatives, browbeating lawmakers, if necessary. Through his tenacity, he helped Eisenhower extend reciprocal trade agreements, pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and kill a “heavy protectionist tariff proposal.”[14] Scheele noted that before submitting a bill to the House, Eisenhower always sought out Halleck’s input. In his 1963 Mandate for Change, Eisenhower wrote that Halleck was a “fighting leader and was valuable to me.” Therefore, when Democrats swept the 1954 elections and ousted Halleck as Majority Leader, Eisenhower wrote “I personally insisted that Halleck still attend the Legislative-leaders meetings at the White House.”[15]
The two worked even more closely when Halleck was appointed Minority Leader in 1959. TIME profiled Halleck’s new role, highlighting the fact that he:
helped bring White House and congressional Republicans closer together than at any other time during the Eisenhower Administration. As never before, Congressmen are informed about Administration aims, and the President gets an accurate and detailed picture of congressional sentiment.[16]
Although he could be pugnacious, Halleck understood the value of comradery and often invited his Republican colleagues to “get together for political shoptalk” over drinks. To further boost morale, he routinely furnished the Commander in Chief with the names of Congressmen worthy of a letter of appreciation.
TIME reported that because of Halleck’s influence, Republican lawmakers worked much more cohesively and their weekly legislative conferences had “passed from pain to pleasure.” Eisenhower agreed, stating “‘These sessions are getting to be so much fun . . . that they’re running overtime.'” He attributed this to Halleck , writing “‘You are a political genius.'”[17]
Eisenhower (L) and Halleck (R) at the dedication of the Halleck Student Center at St. Joseph’s, courtesy Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
After Eisenhower left office in January 1961, the two stayed in touch. On occasion, Halleck and colleagues like Everett Dirksen went up to Gettysburg to visit with Eisenhower and ask for his advice.[18] Charlie and Ike reunited publicly in Indiana on September 13, 1962, their mutual admiration evident. Despite the oppressive heat, about 20,000 Hoosiers greeted Ike at the Purdue University Airport.[19] Robert Kriebel remembered “A stairway parted from the front of the plane and suddenly there he was—good old Ike—grinning and doffing a gray a gray homburg.” It was evident that many missed his presence in the Oval Office. Charlie recalled there was “Just a sea of people. Just terrific. He was President; he was General; he was everything. And the people just idolized him. They realized, even the wild-eyed right wingers, that he’d been a [sic] terrific.”[20]
After landing in West Lafayette, Charlie and Ike traveled to Rensselaer to attend the dedication ceremony for St. Joseph’s College Halleck Student Center. The Vidette-Messenger of Porter County reported on the event, noting that “A picnic atmosphere prevailed . . . There was some live music, and lots of big circus tents were strung on the campus.”[21] Politicians, students, and dozens of members of the press milled about while local law enforcement directed heavy traffic from the air.[22] A farm truck parked nearby bearing a sign that read “‘Charlie and Ike. No Dove Hunting Please,'” a call-back to Halleck’s arrest a week earlier in North Carolina for shooting doves over a baited field.[23]
Journal and Courier, September 14, 1962, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Guests from twelve counties sat on tent-covered hay bales and ate barbequed chicken. Halleck recalled “Every chicken and broiler producer in Indiana was here,” serving twelve double-lines of people.[24] Charlie tried to curtail the dreaded, universal experience of being watched while eating finger food. Ike was in the mood for some chicken, but didn’t “‘want any of that barbeque stuff on it.'” Charlie noted “So we get out and get up where he could sit down, and I was a little disturbed by some of my people. Hell, they just get, look right over his shoulder, you know, when you’re eating a piece of chicken.”[25]
When the ceremony began, Ike and Charlie joined college president the Very Rev. Raphael Gross on stage. Ike had recently remarked in Europe that he would enjoy being a president of a small college. Very Rev. Gross quipped that the college “‘is all yours,'” eliciting Ike’s signature grin.[26] Ike delighted the crowd when he eschewed protocol and insisted that Charlie join him in cementing the building’s new cornerstone. At the dais, Charlie told the crowd “‘This is a unique honor; it’s significance leaves me without words to adequately express my appreciation.'” He commented on the importance of higher education to both “the individual and to the nation.”[27] Ike added that the federal government “‘has a right and duty’ to provide aid for education.”[28]
Eisenhower listening to elementary school singers at the Jasper County Courthouse, photo by Dick Vellinger, Journal and Courier, September 14, 1962, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Charlie Halleck Day continued into the evening at the local courthouse, where Ike opened his campaign tour for Republican congressional candidates.[29] The Vidette-Messenger described Ike as “looking fit and erect despite his 71 years.” He was delighted by performances by the Purdue University Glee Club and grade schoolers, dubbed the “Wee Singers.”[30] Halleck recalled that Ike watched the “cute little devils . . . and he just beamed. He just loved that.”[31] In his speech, Ike said the crowd probably wondered why Republicans weren’t “‘in overwhelming control of the Congress.'”[32] He mused “‘As long as we have Charlie Halleck and Everett Dirksen as leaders we don’t need overwhelming numbers.'” After all, he considered Charlie “‘a loyal, fighting, and deeply patriotic legislative leader . . . my warm friend; a staunch supporter and a champion of Republican principles and programs.'”[33]
In addition to lauding Charlie, Ike addressed broader issues regarding American government, troubled by the:
constant seeking for more governmental power over all our economic life. . . This is one of the most disturbing trends of our day—the apparent thirst for more and more power centered in the federal government, particularly the executive branch.'”[34]
He assured the crowd “‘as long as human honesty and integrity endure our great country will lead civilization to its proper destiny'”[35]
Exhausted from a demanding day, Ike stayed the night on St. Joseph’s campus. The next morning, he traveled to Kankakee, Illinois for a GOP breakfast, leaving Hoosiers electrified in his wake.[36]
After serving seventeen terms in Congress, Halleck announced he would be retiring and bid farewell to Capitol Hill on January 3, 1969.[37] No easy decision, he stated “‘the House has been my life.'”[38] This monumental life change was punctuated by news that his good friend, Ike, had passed away just two months later. In a news piece about Eisenhower’s death, Halleck declared he was “‘one of the greatest friends of my life, one to whom I was completely devoted.'”[39] While in D.C. for his funeral, Indiana papers announced Halleck’s next chapter, which included practicing law with former Governor Roger D. Branigin.[40]
Surely, nothing would be as fulfilling as the leadership sessions between Eisenhower and Halleck. The two men had shouldered the unique responsibility of navigating the country through the early Atomic Era. They worked amidst the ever-looming threat of global instability and seismic shifts in American identity. For a shared moment, however, they got to experience the small joys of civic life in Rensselaer, Indiana.
* The Indiana Historical Bureau will be installing a historical marker for Halleck in 2025. Stay tuned for details!
Notes
* All newspaper articles accessed via Newspapers.com.
[1] Rollie Bernhart, “Halleck’s Name on New Building,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1, 6.
[2] “New Candidate Phi Beta Kappa at University,” Lafayette Journal and Courier, December 12, 1934, 1.
[3] William White, “Charles Halleck, County Prosecutor in the Shadows of the Depression,” Indiana Magazine of History 114 (December 2018), accessed scholarworks.iu.edu.
[4] “Wins Election,” Indianapolis News, January 30, 1935, 13.
[5] Henry Z. Scheele, Charlie Halleck: A Political Biography (New York: Exposition Press, 1966), p. 57.
[6] Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1971 (United States: Government Printing Office, 1971), accessed HathiTrust.
[7] “GOP Leaders Score Action by President,” Chronicle Tribune (Marion, IN), June 20, 1947; “Marshall Plan Most Important,” Camden News (Arkansas), June 20, 1947, 1-2; “Indiana’s Solons Vote Unanimously to Override Veto,” Princeton Daily Clarion, June 20, 1947, 1; “GOP Leaders Blast Veto; Halleck Spearheads Attack,” Indianapolis Star, June 21, 1947, 2; “Halleck Enumerates Pledges Kept by G.O.P. Congress,” Buffalo News, August 12, 1947, 13; Quotation from Letter, Fred H. Foster to Hon. Charles A. Halleck, April 2, 1948, Box 16, Folder “1948, Apr. 1-10. Halleck mss. Correspondence,” Halleck mss., 1900-1968, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
[8] Curt Tarnoff, Specialist in Foreign Affairs, “The Marshall Plan: Design, Accomplishments, and Significance,” Congressional Research Service, (January 18, 2018), accessed marshallfoundation.org.
[9] “Action on Measure Expected to Be Completed by Nightfall: Time and Amount Are Final Issues,” Central New Jersey Home News, March 31, 1948, 1; Press Conference, Republican National Committee, Joint Senate-House Leadership, Senator Dirksen-Representative Halleck, July 10, 1962, Box 96, Halleck mss., 1900-1968, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Oral history interview with Charles A. Halleck, by Stephen Hess, March 22, 1965, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, accessed jfklibrary.org; Curt Tarnoff, “The Marshall Plan,” summary page.
[10] “GOP Leaders Score Action by President,” Chronicle Tribune (Marion, IN), June 20, 1947, 1; Oral history interview with Charles Halleck, by Thomas Soapes, April 26, 1977 for Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, p. 12, accessed eisenhowerlibrary.gov.
[11] Soapes, p. 12.
[12] Henry Z. Scheele, “President Dwight D. Eisenhower and U.S. House Leader Charles A. Halleck: An Examination of an Executive-Legislative Relationship,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 292, 298, accessed JSTOR.org.
[13] “The Congress: The Gut Fighter,” TIME 73, no. 23, June 8, 1959.
[14] Oral history interview with Charles A. Halleck, by Stephen Hess, March 22, 1965, p. 9-10, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, accessed jfklibrary.org; Scheele, “President Dwight D. Eisenhower and U.S. House Leader Charles A. Halleck,” 291-294.
[15] Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (Garden City, NY: DoubleDay & Company, Inc., 1963), p. 442.
[16] “The Congress: The Gut Fighter,” TIME.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Soapes interview, p. 36.
[19] Robert Kriebel, “Remember When Ike Was Here in ’62? It Was a Thrilling Day for Thousands,” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), March 29, 1969, 4.
[20] Soapes interview, p. 38.
[21] Herb Steinbach, “Charlie Is All Smiles on Big Day,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1.
[22] “Thousands Attend Halleck Day Fete,” Rensselaer Republican, September 14, 1962, 1, submitted by marker applicant.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Soapes, p. 37.
[25] Ibid., p. 37-38.
[26] “St. Joseph’s Names Ike ‘Impromptu President,'” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), September 14, 1962, 8; “‘President’ Ike Again,” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), September 14, 1962, 8.
[27] Rollie Bernhart, “Halleck’s Name on New Building,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1.
[28] “Thousands Attend Halleck Day Fete,” Rensselaer Republican, September 14, 1962, 1, submitted by marker applicant.
[29] Irwin J. Miller, “Spending by Government Hit by Ike,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1.
[30] Ibid.; Soapes interview, p. 37.
[31] Soapes interview, p. 37.
[32] “Praises Halleck in Rensselaer Talk,” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), September 14, 1962, 1, 8.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Irwin J. Miller, “Spending by Government Hit by Ike,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 1.
[35] “Thousands Attend Halleck Day Fete,” Rensselaer Republican, September 14, 1962, 1, submitted by marker applicant.
[36] Irwin J. Miller, “Spending by Government Hit by Ike,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, September 14, 1962, 6.
[37] United Press International, “Charlie Halleck Dies; Longtime Congressman,” Logansport Pharos-Tribune, March 3, 1986, 1.
[38] Bart Barnes, “House Majority Leader Charles Halleck Dies at 85,” New York Times, March 3, 1986.
[39] Terre Haute Tribune, March 29, 1969, 2.
[40] “Halleck Joins Branigin Firm,” South Bend Tribune, April 1, 1969, 5.
Aliff Henley’s gravestone in the Rush Cemetery, courtesy Howard County Historical Society.
A version of this post was published in the Indiana Historical Society’s Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 34, no. 4 (Fall 2022).
On the first Monday in November 1801, a landowner named Edward Fentriss entered the courthouse in Randolph County, North Carolina, with a petition of manumission.[1] Edward represented his brother George, who owned two people—Aliff Henley, originally from Virginia, who had been enslaved by the Fentriss family since at least 1779, and her child, Case.[2] When the petition was approved by the “worshipfull County Court of Randolph,” Henley and her son were free from the shackles of slavery.[3]
Henley’s story as a newly-free person of color, was destined to reach well beyond its Upper South origins. Indeed, her life now touches hearts and minds in an area far removed from North Carolina. Because on another November morning, forty-three years and 500 miles from bondage, Henley was first in line at the state land office in Delphi, Indiana. There, she paid $280 cash money “in full” for 80 acres in Section 12 of Township 24 North, Range 2 East.[4] On November 11, 1844, with someone helping her enter her name in the Miami Reserve tract book for Canal Lands, Aliff Henley, a woman from North Carolina who endured slavery and could not read or write, became the first known Black American to buy land in Howard County, Indiana.[5] Based on enslavement records and census schedules, it is likely she was born around 1760 in Virginia, making her about 80 when she bought her land.
Tracing Henley’s remarkable journey shows she was still in Randolph County, North Carolina in the 1830 census. But this was a period of migration and by mid-decade she had reached Indiana. Her daughter, Lucinda, married David Rush, another North Carolina native, on June 29, 1837, in Rush County.[6] They continued west and by 1840 were living on Indianapolis’s west side.
In the 1830s and ’40s, Indiana was selling land taken from Native American tribes by treaty to help subsidize the Wabash and Erie Canal. Statewide newspapers published details about available land tracts in the Great Miami Reserve as part of these Canal Land sales.[7] Sometime in 1844 the Rush and Henley families gathered their belongings and headed north to the Miami Reserve.
Part of Indiana State Patent for Aliff Henley, dated February 11, 1845.
Their arrival resulted in the first of two Black settlements in northwestern Howard County (originally Richardville County, but renamed Howard in 1846). The Bassett and Rush settlements lasted from approximately 1845 to around 1920.[8] The former, centrally located in Ervin Township, is better known. But the earlier and first settlement developed about four miles to the east of Bassett, right on the boundary line (600 County Road West) between Ervin and Clay Townships. Kokomo, the county seat, lay some six miles to the southeast. A brief published history notes the settlement was named for Reverend Rush, described as a “devout and spiritual man, well-versed in the Bible, though entirely unable to read or write.”[9]
According to archival records, Rush settlement originated by at least 1845.[10] Reverend Rush was farming here by then because his name appeared as a squatter with about fifty acres in the U.S. government’s 1846 public land survey.[11] Furthermore, as the small settlement grew, he was one of three named individuals on an 1851 deed entrusted to ensure three-quarters of an acre of land in Ervin Township would be used to “Erect or cause to be Built thereon a house or place of Worship,” which would be the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Howard County.[12] The grantor of land was his mother-in-law, adding the AME church to Aliff Henley’s legacy.
Compiled by author.
Following her 1861 death, Henley deeded her farm to her son, Case, and daughter, Lucinda, (Reverend Rush’s wife).[13] The farm and the rest of the eighty acres were eventually sold. The frame building, where families worshipped and schoolchildren studied, is long gone. Only headstones, including hers, in the graveyard remain—symbolizing stories long waiting to be told.
Henley was a woman who survived enslavement and traveled hundreds of miles in perilous times for Black individuals, purchasing 80 acres of land, in full, on November 11, 1844. She shared her land to build a community and to start a church. Henley was born before a revolution and died the year the Civil War started. Her life is a tribute to the enduring human spirit and perseverance spanning an epoch of American history. Henley is a matriarch of Indiana and Howard County. What better symbol to her memory than the decoration on her tombstone—a rose in full bloom.
Further Reading
Anna-Lisa Cox, The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & The Struggle for Equality (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018).
Gilbert Porter, “Howard County’s African American Pioneers,” Kokomo Perspective, February 10, 2021, B3, Kokomo-Howard County Public Library, accessed Howard County Indiana Memory Project.
Stephen Vincent, Southern Seed. Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
Notes:
[1] Record of Slaves and Free Persons, N.C. Archives. File Number: C.R. 081.928. 1 through 6 (#) in The Genealogical Journal 12, no. 38 (The Randolph County Genealogical Society Of The Randolph County Historical Society, Spring 1988): 38.
[2] Edna Hawkins-Hendricks, Black History: Our Heritage Princess Anne County, Virginia Beech, Virginia (self-published, 1998), p. 24, accessed Archive.org.
[4] Aliff Hendley [sic], Certificate #1416, Nov. 11, 1844. Wabash Canal Lands, Register of the Sale of. Oct. 1, 1842 to June 30, 1847. No. 26. Winamac District, Tract Book, Miami Reserve.
[5] Canal Land Patents, Accession #1957006, State Land Office Collection, Indiana State Archives.
[6] Indiana Marriages, 1811-2007, David Rush and Lucinda Henley, 29 Jun 1837; citing Rush, Indiana, United States, Marriage Registration, Indiana Commission on Public Records.
[7] “Sale of Canal Lands,” Logansport Telegraph, September 14, 1844, 2; Indiana State Journal, September 28, 1844, 4.
[8] Early Black Settlements by County, Indiana Historical Society, accessed indianahistory.org.
[9] Rush or Upper Colored Settlement Cemetery Record, Logansport, Indiana. August 18, 1947, L’Anguille Valley Historical & Memorial Association.
[10] “Rush,” Kokomo Gazette Tribune, August 17, 1886, 1.
[11] Field Notes for the Public Land Survey Township Plats, 1789-1946. Record Group 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management, 1685-2006, accessed Howard County Indiana Memory Project.
[12] Hendley [sic] to Rush & other trustees, Jan. 14, 1851. Deed Book C. Howard County, Indiana. May 1846-Jan. 1856. Pages 374-376.
[13] Aliff Henley’s Will, Sept. 2, 1861. Indiana Wills and Probate Records, 1798-1999. Howard – Will Records. Vols. A and 2.1845-1862. Pages 165-168.
[14] Combination Atlas Map of Howard County, Indiana: Compiled, Drawn and Published from Personal Examinations and Surveys, 1877 (Knightstown, IN: Bookmark, 1976), p. 24-25, Historic Indiana Atlases, accessed Indianapolis Public Library.
The Indiana Historical Bureau would not be what it is today without the vision and leadership of Director Pamela J. Bennett. Known to us simply as Pam, she passed away earlier this year, prompting us to remember the profound impact she had on the field of history. Colleagues and friends lauded Pam as a take-charge person, who was a strong collaborator and an excellent writer and editor. During her decades at IHB, she prioritized accessibility and transparency, high quality research, and telling the story of all Hoosiers. She modeled what a public servant truly should be. She also broke the glass ceiling for female leaders in the field and was a devoted mentor to a generation of scholars, ourselves included. In our work at the Bureau, we do our best to carry on Pam’s legacy by meeting Hoosiers where they are and communicating the relevance of history.
Although synonymous with Indiana history, Pam was born in Baltimore on July 3, 1943. She graduated from Gettysburg College in 1965 with an A.B. in Chemistry. After falling in love with British novels, Pam attended Indiana University–Bloomington and completed an A.M. in English Literature. At IU, she served as Assistant Editor of theIndiana Magazine of History and several other history journals and projects.
Pam’s first role at the Indiana Historical Bureau was that of editor when she joined the agency in July 1973. She began her long tenure as director just three years later, when IHB separated from the Indiana Historical Society. As director, she actively worked to safeguard Indiana’s historical records. Her strong belief in the power of knowing history as the basis for thoughtful citizenship led her to provide students and adults with access to Indiana’s history and culture through a variety of educational materials and programs. These included workshops for historical groups and educators on such topics as public relations, the role of the local historical society, and classroom resources.
The Republic (Columbus, IN), December 20, 1978, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
One of Pam’s first major initiatives as IHB director was the restoration and exhibition of the governors’ portrait collection. Many portraits had fallen into disrepair and required significant funding to restore. In typical Pam fashion, she thought outside of the box to get the job done. According to a 1979 Evansville Courier article, Pam believed that “‘historical mementos ought to fund something historic.'”[1] So, she made sets of commemorative medallions that had been collecting dust in the Bureau available for purchase. They had been minted in 1916—in celebration of the state’s centennial—and 1966, the date of the state’s 150th anniversary. This strategy proved successful, and IHB began the process of restoring the paintings with an eye toward extending the collection as a cultural, historical, and educational tool.
Pam, courtesy “Coin Sale May Fund Restoration of Portraits,” Indianapolis Star, May 13, 1979, 51, accessed Newspapers.com.
Before the connectivity of the internet, Pam worked to disseminate history to all corners of the state through various programs. In 1981, she reestablished the Indiana County Historian program, in conjunction with the Indiana Historical Society, to “improve the historical communication network in the state.”[2] Each appointed historian served as a clearinghouse of sorts, becoming experts in their county’s historical resources in order to field residents’ in-depth questions.
Jeannette Rooney, Assistant Director of Local History Services for IHS, recalled that Pam:
played a crucial role in evolving it into the productive and thriving program that today supports local history across the state. When I began working in IHS Local History Services, I had the pleasure of working with Pam through the County Historian Program, and she was a wonderful mentor as I learned all the aspects of coordinating this fantastic group of volunteer historians. Over the seven years we worked together, I knew I could always count on her to know what was going on around Indiana. She was so supportive of local history efforts and the work of county historians – she truly loved the work of history, and she has left quite a legacy! She will be missed.
The program continues to fulfill Pam’s mission to “move local historical information to every Hoosier’s fingertips.”[3]
Pam was a driving force behind another statewide program: National History Day. She coordinated NHD since 1980, when the Indiana program was still in its fledgling state. Under her direction, Indiana became one of the model state programs in the network. National History Day awards outstanding history projects among 6th-12th graders through its annual competition. In describing the value of History Day, Pam wrote in 1989 that it is a “strong reminder to those of us concerned with both the past and the future that we have a responsibility to provide these students with the skills, content and context necessary to make studied and thoughtful decisions in the twenty-first century.”[4] Describing the annual awards ceremony, Pam proclaimed “It is a delightful experience to hear 1200 Hoosiers cheering about something other than basketball.” In addition to overseeing Indiana’s program for over twenty years, she served on the board of U.S. National History Day.
REACH bus site visits, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Box 7, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
In her work to make history accessible to Hoosiers around the state, Pam and the Bureau—in collaboration with the Indiana Arts Commission and Indiana State Museum—spearheaded the innovated REACH bus program. The bus operated as a mobile museum, visiting remote school corporations in the 1980s. Children hopped on the rainbow colored bus, where they learned about natural history by examining stalagmites and viewed original oil paintings by Hoosier artists such as T.C. Steele. REACH encouraged teachers to incorporate the arts and inter-disciplinary learning into curricula.[5]
The popularity of the program is reflected in letters, including that sent by Monrovia PTO President Mary Ann Henderson who stated, “Since we are a small country school our teaching resources are limited, but when we are able to obtain a program such as yours it not only enhances the education of our students it benefits our teachers, parents and community!”[6] Similarly, State Senator Steven R. John wrote, after viewing the bus at the State House and General Assembly, “I saw how it provides the citizens of Indiana, adult and student alike, with an experience in the arts and history that cannot be duplicated.”[7] The program was recognized by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Alliance for Arts in Washington, D.C. Arts Dialogue-Australia also invited organizers to its conference.[8]
Alongside these outreach projects, Pam oversaw internal programming. Among the most important was the State Historical Marker Program. Markers serve as tangible reminders of the state’s rich and diverse history and help return stories to the landscape. While the program has historically been a public-driven initiative, Pam fostered a sense of collaboration and community ownership over markers. Because of the network she helped forge, the Bureau has been able to install over 750 markers across the state, commemorating topics ranging from STEM to sports.
Pam’s expertise was highly sought after and she earned a seat at many important tables. She served on the boards of several organizations, including the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), serving as Vice President from 1988-1989 and President from 1990-1992. Through AASLH, she worked to provide professional development and recognition to state and local historical agencies throughout the country. Pam also advised on state and national historical celebrations, including the U.S. Constitution Bicentennial, Lincoln Bicentennial, Indiana Quarter design, and the American Revolution Bicentennial.
(L to R): Former Indiana Historical Society Director John Herbst, Governor Otis Bowen, Governor Edgar Whitcomb, and Pam at an event celebrating The Governors of Indiana book.
Pam received numerous professional accolades for her prolific work. In 1989, she was the recipient of the Indiana Council for Social Studies’ Citizens Award for outstanding contributions to social studies. In 2010, the Marion County Historical Society presented Pam with the Fadely History Award for “outstanding effort” to promote history in Indianapolis and Marion County. The Indiana Historical Society presented Pam with the 2011 Eli Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award for “extraordinary contributions over an extended period of time to the field of Indiana History.” The Bureau has honored her legacy by naming the Bennett-Tinsley Award for Undergraduate History Research and Writing after her and plans to dedicate our new marker center in her honor.
There are not enough awards to signify Pam’s impact. Perhaps the words of colleagues will help. President of Indiana Landmarks Marsh Davis remembers her as “a stalwart presence who commanded respect as one of the bastions of Indiana history.” Jeannie Regan-Dinius, who worked closely with Pam over the course of 20+ years in her role at the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, told us:
She made me a better historian, challenging me to improve my skills and writing. Her guidance was always fair, honest, and caring. Her work at the statewide level was an inspiration for women working in the history field to see that we could be in charge, provide quality work, and be supportive of other historians.
IHB staff at Pam’s (center) 2015 retirement party.
Colleagues had a chance to tell Pam how much she meant to them in person at her 2015 retirement party. Commemorating Indiana’s bicentennial the following year without her leadership was strange. However, it gave us an opportunity to practice history in a way that reflected her stalwart, collaborative nature.
Pam would probably want to be remembered as a facilitator. Former IHB historian Jill Weiss Simins reflected “I think Pam especially got joy out of connecting people with opportunities. She encouraged us to do more than just what the job required and built a team of young historians dedicated to trying to meet challenges.” In her decades at the Bureau, Pam helped forge a nexus between K-12 schools, citizen historians, universities, humanities organizations, and residents across the state. She cultivated a reputation that has made the Bureau a respected partner, valued resource, and the “go-to” agency for questions about Indiana history from partners, educators, and the public.
From our little corner of the Indiana State Library, we continue to think broadly, ambitiously about how to connect with Hoosiers and to ask big questions, like “how does history inform identity?” While we grieve our fearless leader, we will, as Pam was fond of saying, “Carry on!” as devoted public servants and stewards of Indiana’s stories.
Sources:
[1] “Memento Sale to Buy Back ‘A Bit of this History,'” Evansville Courier, May 14, 1979, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
[3] “History Aides Sought on County Basis,” South Bend Tribune, December 16, 1980, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] Letter, Pamela J. Bennett, Indiana Historical Bureau, to Roy Shoemaker, Indiana Historical Society, December 5, 1989, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[5] Elizabeth Jacobson, “Bus Brings Art, Past to Noblesville School,” Noblesville Ledger, September 30, 1987, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[6] Letter, Mary Ann Henderson, President of Monrovia PTO, to Celia Yohman, Coordinator, Reach Bus Program, June 13, 1987, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[7] Letter, Steven R. Johnson, State Senator, to Mary L. Snyder, Chairperson, Reach Bus Committee, August 1988, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[8] “Long Range Plans: REACH: Resources Educating in the Arts, Culture, and History,” p. 1, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
Her name might not be in Who’s Who Among African Americans, or have household recognition like Madam C.J. Walker, but Ida Hagan broke barriers not only for her race, but her gender. From a young age, Hagan bore the burden of being the only Black person in the room. Perhaps this garnered the tenacity required of her in 1904, when her appointment as deputy postmaster of the post office in Ferdinand, Indiana drew intense local resistance and national attention. This would only be the first stop on her professional journey, and she would go on to become a pharmacist and labor union organizer.
Born May 24, 1888, Ida Priscilla Hagan grew up in the Pinkston Settlement, a free Black settlement west of Ferdinand. It was founded in the mid-1800s by her great-grandfather, Emanuel Pinkston Sr. In 1897, the Huntingburgh Argus wrote that “There are 5694 white children in the district schools of Dubois County and our little colored girl whose name is Ida Hagan. Ida is eight years of age and is a pet pupil in District No. 4 in Ferdinand Township.” She graduated with honors from the Gehlhausen School in Ferdinand Township in 1902, with the Huntingburgh Independent claiming that she was “the first colored pupil in Dubois county [sic] to graduate from the district schools in this county.” Hagan was also reportedly the first Black resident in the county to attend a public high school, Huntingburg High School.
Pinkston Settlement Cemetery, tombstone with American flag is Ida Hagan’s grandfather, Ben Hagan, Sr. Photo courtesy of the author.
Her life would change when she met Swiss-born Ferdinand physician, Dr. Alois Wollenmann. After his wife, Fidelia, died during childbirth, he hired Hagan to help care for his two sons and assist in his drug store, the Adler Apothak. The store also served as the town’s post office, of which Dr. Wollenmann was postmaster. Hagan remained with the Wollenmann family during the week, and on the weekend she would return to the Pinkston Settlement. In 1904, at age 16, he appointed Hagan deputy postmaster.
It was unclear to residents and newspaper editors around the state why Dr. Wollenmann appointed a Black girl, despite receiving job applications from white girls. Threats were made to burn the doctor in effigy and boycott his office, but the doctor did not seem alarmed and showed no inclination to yield to the “unwarranted prejudices” of critics. The English News on August 19, 1904 noted of the appointment “The patrons of the office are much incensed at the appointment of a colored person for assistant, and especially since the lady was not even a resident of the town.”
The Logansport Daily Reporter noted of Hagan:
In an interview she said that people were glad to see her working in their houses and she cannot see why they object to her working as a deputy in the post office. She said that if she had known her appointment would have the storm that it has, she would not have accepted, but that now she will hold on to it, and the doctor will keep her, she does not propose to be driven out if she can help it.
Nevertheless, Hagan withstood the pressure and excelled at her job, endearing herself to the community with her efficiency, kindness (especially for the infirm and elderly), and ability to speak the Low German spoken by many of the locals.
Dr. Alois Wollenmann in his office, Ferdinand News, September 26, 1891, accessed Newspapers.com.
While working at the store, and under Dr. Wollenmann’s tutelage, Hagan took a home study course in pharmacy offered by Winona Technical Institute, the precursor to Butler University. She received her Indiana pharmacy license in 1909. She was just 20 years old, an accomplishment for anyone that young, let alone a Black woman. According to John Clark (Assistant Professor at the College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida), Keenan Sala (Indiana State Archivist), and Dr. Gregory Bond (Assistant Director of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy), Hagan became the first known licensed female Black pharmacist in the state and likely the youngest in the nation.
Hagan could certainly be described as a trailblazer in the field of pharmacy, joining Harriet Marble, Julia Pearl Hughes, and Anna Louise James as some of the first Black women in pharmaceuticals. These young women were privileged and attended schools like Howard University, Meharry Pharmaceutical College, Brooklyn College, among other notable universities. Hagan, however, took home study courses while working at the drug store and post office, and caring for Dr. Wollenmann’s children.
On October 17, 1903, tragedy struck when Dr. Wollenmann fell ill with tuberculosis. In an attempt to heal, he temporarily left his sons in Hagan’s care and returned to his native Switzerland to recuperate and visit with his sister. In his absence, he reappointed Hagan deputy postmaster to manage duties. However, just weeks after his return to Ferdinand, he passed away at the age of 48. Upon his untimely death, Hagan became acting postmaster, one of the first Black women in Indiana to hold this position. The Indianapolis Recorder noted on July 27. 1912 “Ida’s honesty and integrity has won the respect and confidence of the community in which she lives and the position tendered her is a tribute paid not only to Miss Hagan, but to the race.”
Hagan held the position until she resigned weeks later, possibly stemming from her impending marriage to Alfred Roberts, a typesetter for the Indianapolis Recorder. Ida joined Alfred in the capital city, where she began her new life as a pharmacist at the Eureka Drug Store on West Street.
In 1915, Ida Hagan Roberts moved to Gary, accepting a position as a pharmacist for Dr. Arthur Adams who had just opened The Adams Pharmacy. The Recorder published an article about the new store, stating:
This is a pleasing, and remarkable Race Enterprise, in which the colored citizens of Gary, should be very proud of indeed, and not only the citizens of Gary, but those citizens of Chicago who visit Gary frequently and who have been segregated by white people in seeking a place for refreshments, and which you and your friends are always welcome. . . . Dr. Arthur is a well-known citizen in not only Gary, but through the state, and is worthy of the support and confidence of every race loving Negro.
Ida Hagan, photo sent to author’s mother, Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher.
In 1925, Ida filed for divorced from Alfred Roberts, and on September 29, 1926, she married Sidney Whitaker, a railroad porter working for the Pullman Company, and moved to Detroit. He is likely the reason she became involved with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), founded in 1925 by the elder statesman of the Civil Rights Movement, A. Philip Randolph. BSCP was the first predominantly-Black labor union, composed of highly-educated porters and maids hired by George Pullman to work on his sleeping cars. Pullman workers were expected to work long shifts for low pay and in poor working conditions, especially compared to white workers. The BSCP challenged these inequities.
Six weeks after the union was founded, wives and relatives of porters formed the BSCP Ladies Auxiliary. These women became labor conscious activists, demanding consumer, and workers’ rights. They were credited with helping to make the BSCP the first successful national Black trade union in the nation. Ida served as president of the Detroit Division of the Ladies Auxiliary of the BSCP, which generated financial support and advocated for public policy measures, such as grade labeling of canned food products. She was involved in the Auxiliary until the 1950s, when the rise in ownership of private automobiles, improved air transportation, and construction of interstates minimized the need for railroads.
Ladies Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters of Detroit 11th anniversary gathering, courtesy of the Detroit Tribune, May 27, 1956.
At the age of 76, Ida continued to lobby for equal rights. John Dotson, Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Detroit Free Press, reported on March 10, 1965, that she joined 10,000 protesters in Detroit, marching in solidarity with those in Selma, Alabama agitating for Black voting rights. She summoned her BSCP Auxiliary friends to join her in the local march, telling the paper “’I just hope and pray that this is an awakening for those who don’t know what we’re up against.’” Ida Whitaker joined college students, who cut class to attend the orderly march. The paper summarized:
Detroit’s [march] wasn’t like the ‘glorious day’ of the March on Washington, but you got the feeling that this one meant more.’ Ida remained active in civil rights, religious and civic causes the remainder of her life. She saw results from her hard work and was quoted as saying, ‘It’s better to wear out than to rust out.’
Ida Hagan (left), courtesy of Ferdinand News; Ben Hagan, Jr. & Larkin Pinkston, courtesy of Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher.
Ida (Hagan) Whitaker died on February 8, 1978, and was buried alongside her husband, Sidney, at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit. The Detroit Public Library was unable to locate obituaries for either of them. After an intense search for an obituary in all available Detroit newspapers, and with the help of many different sources, it is questionable that their obituary was ever published. The Michigan Death Records provide only the date of her death. She was childless, her brother never had children and he preceded her in death, so no one was left to tell her story.
No one, that is, but us.
On Saturday, May 31, 2025, the State of Indiana will honor Ida Hagan Whitaker with a Historical Marker, to be installed in Ferdinand, at the former site of Dr. Wollenmann’s Adler Apothak and the Ferdinand’s Post Office.
Sources Used:
Databases
Ancestry.com
Hoosier State Chronicles
Newspapers.com
Experts/Advisors:
Dr. Gregory Bond, National Institute on History of Pharmacy
Dr. John Clark, University of South Florida, Pharmacy
Rosemary Stewart
Eric Uebelhor
Newspapers Detroit Free Press Detroit News Detroit Tribune English Times Ferdinand News Indianapolis Recorder Jasper Herald Logansport Pharos
Organizations
Christ the King Catholic Church, Detroit
Detroit Catholic Archdiocese
James Cole Funeral Home
Michigan Dept. of Licensing & Regulatory Affairs
St. Benedict Catholic Church, Detroit
St. Frances D’Assisi, Detroit
St. Rita’s Catholic Church. Indianapolis
Repositories
Butler University
Detroit Public Library (Burton Historical Collection)
Dubois County Museum
Indiana Historical Society
Indiana State Archives & Records Administration
Indiana State Library
Indiana University Indianapolis University Library
Jasper–Dubois County Public Library
Lake County Public Library
Michigan State Archives
Michigan State Library
Plainfield-Guilford Township Public Library
Secondary
Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998)
Gary Alan Fine, “The Pinkston Settlement: An Historical and Social Psychological Investigation of the Contact Hypothesis,” Phylon 40, no. 3 (3rd Quarter, 1979): 229-242, accessed JSTOR.org
Misc.
Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher’s Scrapbook
Indiana Bd. of Pharmacy
Michigan Bd. of Pharmacy
Michigan Chronicles
Michigan Death Records
Midwest Druggist
Pamphlet, “Miss Virginia Brooks: 20th Century Joan of Arc,” 1913, Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department, Iowa City, accessed Wikipedia.
“West Hammond has been electrified of late by what a woman—a woman of intelligence, of action and indomitable courage—can accomplish.”
-Munster Times, 1911
The woman described by the Times was one Virginia Brooks, also dubbed “Joan of Arc” of the burgeoning village of West Hammond. She was determined to end the mistreatment of vulnerable residents and expel corrupt politicians from West Hammond (now Calumet City)—an Illinois town that overlapped into Indiana. Brooks did this by delivering speeches in barrooms, confronting law enforcement officials, and founding her own publication. After realizing the limitations of protests and the press, Brooks embraced the Women’s Suffrage Movement as means of change, leading the charge alongside suffragists like Ida B. Wells.
Brooks was in her early 20s and studying music in Chicago when she received a notification that drew her to West Hammond. According to the Indianapolis News, upon her father’s death, she and her mother, Flora, inherited property in the village. Alerted to $20,000 worth of special assessments against it, they made a trip to the area to investigate. Virginia was stunned by the dilapidated condition of the village and prevalence of casinos and barrooms. Thus, began her reform work.
In early 1911, West Hammond was on the precipice of becoming a city, pending a special municipal election. However, Brooks, with the help of her mother, mounted a campaign to maintain its status as a village. Should the area become a city, vice would essentially be institutionalized and corruption amplified. Preventing this would be quite the feat, as the Times wrote, “The political machine was dead against” the women and their allies.
Brooks gathered locals at Mika’s Hall to discuss the upcoming election. She and organizer August Kamradt spoke to the primarily Polish audience about how city leaders used taxpayers’ money for their own gain, leaving sewers and sidewalks crumbling. Brooks’s sentiments were extremely well-received, and she persuaded attendees to sign a petition asking the State Attorney of Cook County to investigate public officials’ use of tax money.
West Hammond’s 4,000 residents, many of whom were European immigrants, seemingly had little choice but to pay constantly-increasing rent and “special assessments,” which impoverished them further. Despite this, the Huntington Herald noted that male villagers were fairly apathetic until “this young girl. . . . Virginia Brooks has set in motion the levers that work mighty changes.” As the election approached, she spoke at barrooms late into the night, promising that if local efforts failed, she would “appeal to the president and the White House. And if that, too, is useless, she will take the law in her own hands.”
Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1911, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
Brooks’s radical strategies elicited death threats. She laughed these off, although she did appreciate the young men who “formed a bodyguard” around her. On election day, she appealed to voters until the moment they stepped into the voting booth, which was monitored by two deputies Brooks had summoned to prevent fraud.
Despite the valiant fight, Brooks’s faction lost the election, and voters opted for city government by a vote of 227-196. In a scene seemingly plucked from a movie, just as victors celebrated into the night with a bonfire and parade, detectives from the State’s Attorney’s office infiltrated West Hammond. Brooks’s petition had born fruit. The Chicago Tribune reported that the detectives served subpoenas to “keepers of alleged disorderly houses and places where slot machines were found.” Opponents retaliated with more death threats and libel suits. Brooks was far from alone in her convictions, however. One “Taxpayer of West Hammond” wrote to the Hammond Times that “If ‘Virginia is crazy,’ the rest of us should ‘get the bug’ and help to clean things up.”
Following the election, Brooks leveraged another tool in her fight—the media. She established a semi-weekly publication called the Searchlight. Brooks told the Chicago Tribune that she would only publish articles that were backed by evidence, with the goal to “fight the grafters primarily and promote the interests of the working people who make up the bulk of the population.”
The Inter Ocean (Chicago), April 6, 1911, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
In addition to leveraging the press, Brooks engaged in physical confrontation as a means to effect change. In March of 1911, she and her “broom brigade,” composed of about twenty women, halted a paving project at One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Street. With municipal contract in hand, Brooks and her squadron—equipped with mops, rolling pins, and brooms—sat on piles of bricks, refusing to move for hours. They sat in protest of the city’s decision to hire laborers to install “graft bought” bricks of poor quality five inches too low. Not only that, but the city charged tax payers an exorbitant amount to do so. When workers’ attempts to appeal to the women failed, they summoned the police. Local newspapers reported, perhaps somewhat sensationally, that a fight for the ages ensued. The Indianapolis News relayed:
When the women refused to leave, the police tried to drive them off with clubs, and a hand-to-hand conflict followed. Several of the women were put out of the battle with slight injuries and their male supporters, who came to their aid when the police attacked, were badly beaten.
After combat and bloodshed, the police left and returned with arrest warrants. Virginia Brooks gladly went to jail, hoping her arrest would engender more support for the cause. She was correct, as the Hammond Times reported that the following day, “broad shouldered, firm mouthed women” returned to the work site and resumed the stand-in.
The intensity of the fight carried over to Brooks’s April 3rd trial, for which she was charged with disturbing the peace. According to the Times, the courtroom floors and walls were lined with observers, many of whom were women who “shoved and crowded among the men” to take in every word. Officer John Okraj testified that Brooks had struck him in the face after being placed under arrest. The Times reported that Brooks, “an excellent witness in her own behalf,” testified that Officer Okraj likely didn’t know his own strength, and that he hurt her when he forcefully grabbed her neck. Her response was “but a primitive action, an instinctive motion, which anyone would make when attacked from the rear.”
Ultimately, the jury found Brooks guilty, but she was fined only $1. Just as jurors convicted her, she received word that State Attorney Wayman pledged to investigate graft charges in the village. This investigation likely spurred the indictment of City Clerk Martin Finneran in May. He was charged with collecting and depositing taxes from the Michigan Central Railroad into his personal account one week after he was dismissed from the office of West Hammond village collector. And, just a few months after Brooks’s trial, her battle against exploitation and “exorbitant special assessments” paid off. The Hammond Times reported that a county circuit court judge ruled in her favor regarding the work at One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth, resulting in a 30% reduction “of the original cost and an extra assessment of about $5,000.”
Pamphlet, “Miss Virginia Brooks: 20th Century Joan of Arc,” 1913, Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department, Iowa City, accessed Wikipedia.
Overjoyed taxpayers organized a band concert in celebration. Her widely-publicized achievements attracted love interests and generated about fifty marriage proposals, according to the Chicago Tribune. She responded “‘I wouldn’t marry the best man alive'” because “politics comes before love with me.”
Instead, Brooks focused on ousting the old village leadership to ensure that the newly-dubbed city would be managed by reputable councilors. According to the Evansville Press, in August 1911, she threatened the village council president that if he refused to convene a municipal election she would “expose the whole outfit.” The paper reported tellingly that immediately after her threat, the “president announced that he was sick and would have to go to the hospital for a couple of months.”
While awaiting word of a municipal election, Brooks led the charge in another election. She convened a mass meeting at Mika’s to persuade residents to vote against a new proposal by the village board. It would tax residents to build a private power line, which would solely benefit the Interstate Electrical Company. Despite being issued “mutilated ballots,” indignant voters managed to defeat the board’s proposal. The Indianapolis News noted that Brooks hired carriages to take voters to the polls, resulting in the “biggest vote ever known in the city’s history.” In fact, local papers suggested that such a resounding defeat could result in her nomination for mayor of West Hammond.
The Times (Munster, IN), April 2, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
Realizing that this could never be achieved without the female vote, Brooks embraced the women’s suffrage movement, which she had previously dismissed as unnecessary. Mass meetings and protests could only go so far without women’s voting rights. In the spring of 1912, she infiltrated Chicago restaurants to lay out the urgent need for enfranchisement. The Munster Times noted “instead of waiting until her audience came to her she took her speech to the places where sufficient numbers of persons were gathered to make audiences for her.” Her speeches were met with resounding applause from diners.
Immediately after this brief crusade, organizers asked Brooks to speak at the Indiana’s Women’s Franchise League annual convention in Indianapolis. Of the prominent Hoosier suffrage leaders, like Dr. Amelia Keller and Grace Julian Clarke, the Indianapolis News reported that Brooks “easily attracted the most attention at the convention.” She described for her fellow suffragists how she had mobilized for reform, gripping them with the story of hand-to-hand combat in West Hammond. However, she had recently embraced a strategy more familiar to audience members—many of whom were upper-middleclass women— lobbying state senators. Brooks told convention-goers, “The women need the ballot, and the country needs women voters . . . We don’t want to mix in the dirty politics of the men, but we do want to work with them to make things better.”
Dr. Hannah Graham, president of Indiana’s other major suffrage organization, the Equal Suffrage Association (ESA), invited Brooks to speak at an ESA meeting, along with union leader Frank Hayes, Indianapolis Mayor Lew Shank, and prominent Black attorney F.B. Ransom. Perhaps this meeting of the minds and exchange of ideas inspired Brooks to pursue law. According to the Indianapolis Star, Brooks told Dr. Graham, “I have property, and in my fights against corrupt politicians a knowledge of law certainly would help me.” Dr. Graham revealed that she was currently studying at the Indiana Law School and suggested the two drive there that very day. Brooks took her up on the suggestion and met with faculty, telling them she wanted to study law to aid the “poor Polish people in West Hammond.” She became the third woman to enroll in the junior class.
Brooks’s experience mobilizing at the local and state level served her well at the famed National American Woman Suffrage Association parade in Washington, D.C. She joined thousands of women from across the country on March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Hoping to draw widespread attention to the need for enfranchisement, the women paraded throughout the nation’s capital, some in costume and others hoisting banners.
Virginia Brooks and Ida B. Wells at the 1913 National American Woman Suffrage Association parade, courtesy of Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1913, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
Brooks and Belle Squires led the Illinois delegation. According to Ron Grossman’s 2020 Chicago Tribune article, organizers ordered Brooks’s friend and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells to march at the back of the parade with the other Black suffragists. Rather than concede, Wells opted to sit out altogether, despite Brooks’s insistence that they march together. At the last minute, Wells ran towards Squires and Brooks, and the three women flanked the head of the delegation. Despite violence perpetrated against some of the marchers, the 1913 parade catalyzed public support for women’s suffrage and reinvigorated the movement.
The parade may have been the zenith of Brooks’s activism. Just one month later—despite her earlier pronouncements about marriage—she wed Chicago Tribune photographer Charles Washburne and the couple relocated to Chicago. Brooks said of West Hammond, “‘The fight is over there, and I guess we have won. We are going to settle down.'” She went on to write for the Tribune, volunteer at the Hull House, and lecture at chautauquas. She drew upon her experiences to author books about social issues like My Battle With Vice and The Little Lost Sister. Around 1918, Virginia relocated to Portland, Oregon with her mother and son, Brooks. After months of illness, she passed away at the age of 42, just a few months before the stock market crash. She likely would have agitated relentlessly for relief like Hoosier reformer Theodore Luesse did during the Great Depression. Despite a life cut short, Brooks demanded accountability and fearlessly effected change in The Region.
Sources:
“The Right Sort of Courage,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 5, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Villagers Swarm to Gathering,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 26, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks, West Hammond’s Joan of Arc,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 28, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Death Threats Against Girl,” Fort Wayne News, January 31, 1911, 10, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl is Defeated in Reform Fight,” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1911, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Village is to Become City in May,” The Times (Hammond, IN), February 1, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Sued by City Officials,” News-Democrat (Paducah, KY), February 4, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Editorial by “A Taxpayer of West Hammond,” “Ought to Clean Up,” The Times (Hammond, IN), February 6, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks Starts as Editor to Rid Her Town of Election Frauds,” Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, February 13, 1911, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“One Girl’s Sunday Fight to Clean Up ‘The Rottenest Town in the Country,'” Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 5, 1911, 47, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl Routs Paving Gang,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1911, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Riot in Village; Girl is Jailed,” The Times (Hammond, IN), March 25, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl Leader of Mob Thrown in Jail After Day of Bloodshed,” Inter Ocean (Chicago), March 26, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Comedy Injected in Trial,” The Times (Hammond, IN), April 4, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks is Fined by Jury,” Chicago Tribune, April 6, 1911, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
United Press, “Village Joan of Arc After the Grafters,” Evansville Press, August 16, 1911, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks Still Active,” South Bend Tribune, May 25, 1911, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks Wins Another Battle,” The Times (Hammond, IN), July 11, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks vs. Woman Suffrage,” The Times (Hammond, IN), August 14, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“New War Stirs West Hammond,” Chicago Tribune, August 14, 1911, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Mass Meeting Across the Line,” The Times (Hammond, IN), November 1, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Bond Issue in Fought,” The Times (Hammond, IN), November 7, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Books Wins Fight Against Bonds,” Indianapolis News, November 8, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks of Hammond,” Indianapolis Star, November 15, 1911, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Settlement was Nicely Remembered,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 5, 1912, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks Campaigning,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 10, 1912, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Suffrage ‘Joan of Arc’ Speaking to Restaurant Guests,” The Times (Munster, IN), April 2, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“New Constitution Desired by Women,” Indianapolis News, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Betty Blythe, “Miss Brooks, Suffrage ‘Joan of Arc,’ Tells How She Rules West Hammond,” Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1912, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Graft is Scored by Miss Brooks in Ballot Plea,” Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Women Ignored by ‘Constitution,'” South Bend Tribune, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Man Thrown into Ditch,” Indianapolis News, April 23, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Warm Supporter Cause of Suffrage,” Indianapolis News, April 24, 1912, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks Plans to Study Law Here,” Indianapolis Star, April 25, 1912, 10, accessed Newspapers.com.
Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1913, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
Virginia Brooks, My Battles with Vice (Macaulay Co., 1915), accessed Archive.org.
“Mrs. Virginia Washburne, Writer, Lecturer, is Dead,” Oregon Daily Journal, July 15, 1929, 7, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Prominent Woman Dies,” The Oregonian, July 18, 1929, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
Ron Grossman, “Flashback: Fighting for the Vote and Against Vice: Virginia Brooks was the Chicago Area’s Own ‘Joan of Arc,'” Chicago Tribune, August 21, 2020, accessed chicagotribune.com.
Dr. Robert L. Anthony teaching Lincoln students, accessed https://lsfcccrawfordsvilleindiana.com/.
In addition to the struggles of daily life, Black Americans had to wage an often losing battle to secure suitable education for their children. They had historically been deprived of that which affords an understanding of one’s rights and enables one to secure a livelihood. Crawfordsville’s Lincoln School embodied this decades-long fight. However, like other segregated schools, students went on to achieve success and make a name for themselves, despite inequities.
After the Civil War, education for Black pupils was conducted in piecemeal fashion. In an article for the Indiana Magazine of History, Professor Abraham C. Shortridge noted that around 1862 the Indiana State Teachers’ Association began to lobby for “colored schools,” but lawmakers failed to take action. Shortridge lamented that it looked as if in the ensuing years:
the black children were doomed to run the streets for another term of two years while their fathers and mothers continued to pay their taxes, by the aid of which the children of the more favored race were kept in school ten months of the year.
However, in 1869, after much deliberation at a special session called by Governor Conrad Baker, the Indiana General Assembly approved an act that admitted Black children to public schools.
The new law stated that township trustees “shall organize the colored children into separate schools, having all the rights and privileges of other schools of the township.” Should there not be a large enough population to warrant a separate school, the law stated that “Trustees shall prove such other means of education.” According to historian David P. Sye, “other means” often included sending children to “private school or in some cases giving them books, giving money back to the parents, or just nothing. The courts did not help in this situation.” This was the case in Crawfordsville, as Black children were educated privately, at institutions like Bethel AME for years after the act was ratified.
The Crawfordsville Weekly Journal reported in the 1870s that Black children studied under Harmon Hiatt in the church’s basement. Little is known about what pupils studied, but it is clear that school conditions were poor, as the Weekly Journal reported in 1873 “complaints are made that the old church in which the school is held is not properly heated during the cold weather.” The school board trustees did nothing to remedy this. In fact, eight years later, 126 students attended the house, which was designed to accommodate only 48.
In the summer of 1881, the city council voted to build a school for Black children at Spring and Walnut Streets. Students attended first through seventh grade (although at times eighth grade was offered) at Lincoln School before attending integrated Crawfordsville High School. Lincoln pupils studied traditional grade school subjects like arithmetic, reading, and writing. However, much like at the AME church, school conditions were poor and the teacher-to-student ratio abysmal.
Black residents refused to accept this institutionalized inequality. According to the Crawfordsville Review, in April 1892 parents submitted a complaint to the school board, stating that they would withdraw their children should there be no remedy to Lincoln’s “proximity to two or three houses of ill fame in the neighborhood, and the inmates of which have no regard for the ordinary decencies of life and set dangerous examples for children.” Trustees responded that they could secure “no better” accommodations.
The following year, the CrawfordsvilleDaily Journal reported that conditions had not improved, alleging that the principal was abusive and that it was difficult to find qualified teachers, resulting in many students being unable or unwilling to come to school. The paper noted that, “in view of the fact that all the neighboring cities have race co-education,” the school board was considering transferring Black children to the white elementary schools. Just weeks later, the Journal reported the board decided to maintain segregation and remedy the issue by appointing a “brawny white teacher.”
The Black community challenged this “solution” in 1894, gathering at Second Baptist to discuss Lincoln School, which was “quite inferior in many respects to the other schools of the city,” according to the CrawfordsvilleDaily Journal. They felt that it was a “farce” to tax the community, only to provide such abysmal education. Meeting attendees formed a committee to “to wait on the Board of Trustees, laying before the body our grievance.”
The trustees remained unmoved by their formal petition, spurring another strategizing meeting. Attendees advocated for either appointing Black educators and administrators—as had been the case in previous years—or sending children to white schools. Neighboring towns, like Lebanon, Greencastle, and Frankfort, had successfully integrated schools. However, meeting attendees preferred the appointment of Black teachers, stating:
It needs no argument to prove that for colored children, colored teachers are manifestly superior to white teachers since the latter have no sympathy in common with colored children, do not associate at home, at church or on the street with colored patrons and are diametrically opposed in conduct and natural feeling. (Crawfordsville Weekly Journal)
They won a small victory when the board appointed Black educator Mr. Teister to “take charge” of Lincoln.
Despite parents’ persistence, the school experienced a shortage of teachers and its facilities remained inadequate until its closure. In oral histories with students who attended in the 1930s and 1940s, many recalled there was only one educator to teach seven grades. Not only were there not enough teachers, but far from enough space. Madonna Robinson recalled:
It was cramped up, because they would have like two rows of maybe the third and fourth grade here, and then in the other room was the fifth and sixth grade, you know, there were two classes in one room, very cramped, no windows in the front, just had windows in the back of the school, no windows in the front. It wasn’t much fun to me.
Some students felt unprepared for high school due to the disparities at Lincoln, and struggled to catch up to other students.
Portrait of Wilbur De Paris and Sidney De Paris, Onyx, New York, N.Y., ca. July 1947, courtesy of Library of Congress.
Alumnus Elsie Bard told interviewer Eugene Anderson “The teachers had quite a few children to really be teaching, and couldn’t devote their full time to them right, but that’s what they had to work with, so they did the best they could.” The lack of supervision meant that children often played the piano, rehearsed plays, and acted. Madonna Robinson recalled “It just wasn’t school to me. . . . It just seemed like a place to go practice plays.” Similarly, Leona Mitchell remembered that teachers liked to have “little plays and dramas and things and we learned to sing,” adding “we were always doing oh some kind of little skit.” Perhaps this creative, formative environment helped foster the musical prowess of jazz greats Bill Coleman and Wilbur de Paris, who achieved national success and performed with legendary recording artists.
De Paris learned to play trombone as a child and performed in the Crawfordsville High School band. He later relocated to New York City. According to the Syncopated Times, by the 1930s de Paris recorded with jazz greats Benny Carter and Louis Armstrong. In the 1950s, his New New Orleans Jazz Band had become “one of the most exciting groups of the era.” His brother, Sidney—likely also a Lincoln School alum—played in his band and was a successful musician in his own right, recording with artists like Jelly Roll Morton. Arguably, Wilbur achieved greater success than his brother and a 1958 Indianapolis Star article described him as “possibly the world’s greatest jazz trombonist,” having “performed with almost every legendary jazz figure of the century, and played in almost every spot in America where jazz was allowed to seep in or burst out.”
Bill Coleman at Cafe Society, mid-1940s, William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress, accessed Wikipedia.
Bill Coleman also achieved acclaim as a jazz trumpeter. He and the de Paris brothers met as students at Lincoln. Coleman gained success playing in Europe and, according to his Washington Post obituary, spent most of his life in France as “’one of the numerous black musicians here as refugees from segregation.’” He played with famous performers like Fats Waller and Billie Holiday.
Alum Blanche Patterson achieved local success in music and was an officer of the Indiana State Association of Negro Musicians. Her obituary stated she “developed a state-wide reputation as a musician” and “organized a program which brought numerous Negro instrumental and vocal music groups to Crawfordsville.” Patterson was likely better known for her business prowess, owning and operating the Petite Beauty Shop in Crawfordsville’s Ben-Hur building, described by the Indianapolis Recorder as “one of the finest beauty parlors in the State.” Additionally, she was a member of the National Beauty Culture League of Indiana and later became a chiropodist.
In addition to the arts, Lincoln students excelled at athletics under the guidance of principal George W. Thompson, a former Indiana University athlete. According to the Indianapolis Recorder, in 1913 the school’s baseball team won all of its games and its track team earned the highest number of points among all Crawfordsville grade schools. The paper reported that white schools had “refused to meet them on the field, but patience and diplomacy by Prof. Thompson won over prejudice and when our boys won in the recent meet . . . Wilson school boys (white) placed a card in the local papers praising them for their fairness and superiority.”
Tuttle vs. Lincoln soccer game, 1907, accessed https://lsfcccrawfordsvilleindiana.com/.
According to local historian Charles L. Arvin, Black residents began moving to the eastern part of Crawfordsville. In 1922, Lincoln School relocated to South Pine and East Wabash Avenue to accommodate them. Alumnus Patty Field stated that many moved to that side of town for job opportunities at factories.
The school closed in 1947 and the building was later converted into a recreation center for the Black community, and it served as a meeting space for the Baptist Church and Mason’s Lodge. By the 1970s, Parks and Recreation Department monthly reports showed that nearly 1,000 people used the center’s playground in just one month, and that thousands attended its summer program. In addition to two basketball courts and workout equipment, the center had pool tables, swings, slides, and a softball diamond. Field recalled “even when we got older and had kids, Lincoln [recreation center] was our safe place.” However, the Parks Department decided to close it down in 1981. Lincoln alum Madonna Robinson described the decision’s impact on the Black community, saying “it was really a sad thing that they took it away from them, because they don’t have any where to go now.”
However, Lincoln’s legacy as a site of refuge, community, and self-advocacy will not be forgotten. In 2025, with the help of local partners like Shannon Hudson, IHB will install a state historical marker commemorating the school. Check back for dedication details.
For sources used for this post, see our historical marker notes.
V. de Metz, Handbook of Modern Palmistry (New York: Brentano Publishing, 1883), accessed Hathi Trust Digital Library.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the man who called himself Herman Billik (also Billick) was “plying his trade as a charmer, palm reader and hypnotist in Whiting,” according to the Hammond Times. He was well-known among Whiting residents for his involvement in strange incidents involving the occult. By 1906 he was well-known to the entire country as the poisoner of six people in Chicago.
The establishment of the Standard Oil Refinery in Whiting in 1889 brought many recent immigrants to the area in search of employment. According to Archibald McKinley, historian of the Calumet Region, these new arrivals found a “barren, lonely place, devoid of trees, grass, sidewalks, telephone, theaters, streetlights, parks and other amenities of civilization.” While many immigrants found community in their religious organizations, others formed clubs and founded theaters, such as Goebel’s Opera House. Others looked for more sinister entertainment.
One of these new immigrants to Whiting set up shop in an office building on John Street near this new opera house. His name was Herman Vajicek in his country of origin which was referred to in contemporary newspapers as “Bohemia” (likely the Czech Republic). Now going by Herman Billik or “the Great Billik,” he was “doing a rushing business” before the turn of the century. His business was in palm reading, hypnotism, charms . . . and curses.
Billik soon befriended a Standard Oil employee named Joseph Vacha, also described by the Hammond Times as a “bohemian.” Vacha described the story of a curse Billik used when hired to break the engagement of “a young Whiting man and a widow.” According to the Hammond Times:
The mother of the young man objected to the engagement and all of her efforts to break it up being in vain she went to Billik, clairvoyant. He promised to do the deed for the sum of three dollars. To make his charm effective, however, he said that it was necessary for him to have one of the young man’s socks and his handkerchief, and that furthermore permission be given him to enter the home of the young man while everybody in the family was asleep. Anything to break up the engagement was consented to by the mother, although without her son’s knowledge, The sock, handkerchief and permission were readily given and whatever Billik may or may not have done, it is known that the young man and the widow broke up their engagement shortly after Billik’s midnight visit.
Before Whiting residents greeted the new century, Billik “pulled stakes one night and was never seen again.”
He didn’t go far.
According to the Chicago Tribune, around 1900, he had set up his shop in the East Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. The neighborhood was settled by Czech immigrants who worked in the mills, sweatshops, and railroad yards. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, these Czech immigrants established their residences along 18th street. According to the Chicago Tribune, on this same street Billik opened his shop and “made a practice of duping women with money.” The article continued:
Billick’s Chicago record is dotted with ‘aliases, victims of his love potions and stories of how he spent his easily gained wealth in automobiles, theaters, wine suppers, and rioutous living . . . Billick had headquarters in a richly furnished flat at 645 West Eighteenth street and was known as ‘Prof. Herman.’ To this flat many women went daily. Billick boasted that he made as much as $100 a day.
Image: Pilsen Neighborhood, postcard, circa 1870s, in Frank S. Magallon, “A Historical Look at Czech Chicagoland,” accessed Czech-American Community Center.
According to this same article, Billik left Chicago for Cleveland sometime in 1901 after one of these women threatened to expose him as a fraud. It is not clear when he returned to Chicago and again began selling potions and telling fortunes.
In 1904, Mary Vrzal, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a Chicago businessman, found herself in need of a love potion. She visited “the Great Billik” at his Chicago location and sometime during the exchange must have mentioned her father’s thriving milk business. Billik soon visited Martin Vrzal at work where he spoke in tongues and convinced the businessman that he had a vision of an enemy working actively working to destroy him. Martin trusted the “fortune-teller” perhaps because he was also a Czech immigrant or perhaps because he was indeed engaged in intense battle with a rival businessman. Either way, Martin Vrzal invited Herman Billik home to meet his family and cast a spell on his enemy. What followed over the next year was clouded in disparate retelling and testimony. The details were murky, but what was completely clear was that the Vrzal family members began turning up dead.
The family patriarch went first. Martin Vrzal died March 27, 1905, leaving a $2000 life insurance policy to his children. Martin was followed in death by his daughter Mary a few months later and her sister Tilly that December. Their insurance policies totaled $1400. Another two daughters were killed in the first few months of 1906, leaving just a few hundred dollars in life insurance behind. Finally, the police became involved. The only Vrzal family member left were the late Martin’s wife Rosa, their eldest daughter, Emma, and their only son, Jerry.
Grave of Martin Vrzal, Bohemian National Cemetery, Chicago, accessed Find-A-Grave.
The police suspected that Herman and Rosa had been having an affair. They accused Herman of promising Rosa marriage and a life off of the insurance money if they poisoned both his wife and child and Rosa’s husband and children. However, Herman neither poisoned nor left his family. He did somehow end up with the insurance money.
The police then suspected Rosa of poisoning her own family under Herman’s influence. They issued a warrant for the arrest of both suspects. As the law closed in, Rosa committed suicide — by poisoning. Jerry Vrzal accused Herman of her death, claiming that he hypnotized her into taking her own life.
In December 1906, the police took Emma Vrzal to the residence to view her mother’s body, only they did not tell Emma that she was dead. According to Steve Shukis’s well-researched book Poisoned, the detective would sometimes use shock tactics to surprise suspects into confessing. He took emma into the bedroom and an officer yanked the cover off the body. She puportedly fainted and when she regained consciousness stated: “Now you must get that man . . . Billik . . . I want him hung.” She then wrote on a piece of paper, “Billik gave father medicine — and gave some to Mary.” She went on to tell the police that Billik had “special power” over the family.
The police brought Billik into the station and searched his apartment. They found letters from the late matriarch, one signed “with ten thousand kisses — Rosa.”
The Chicago police questioned Billik for five hours, according to the Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Daily News took a bizarre series of photographs of Billick and his family from several of his visits to the Hyde Park Police Department and throughout his trials which available digitally through the Chicago History Museum.
Herman Billick, Sr., at the Hyde Park police station in Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Daily News Photograph, circa 1906, accessed Chicago History Museum.
Mary Billick, wife of Herman Billick, and their daughter Edna Billick, Chicago Daily News Photograph, circa 1907, accessed Chicago History Museum.The coroner opened an inquest and demanded the bodies of the Vrzal family be exhumed and tested for poison. The inquest continued into 1907 with witnesses bringing forward more an more incriminating stories about Billik. By February the coroner was through with testing the bodies. He found arsenic in Martin, Rosa, and Tillie, but also concluded that it had been administered slowly over a period of weeks of months. This evidence was added to the testimony and the jury indicted Herman Billik on six counts of murder.
The case went to trial in May 1907. The judge sided with the prosecution’s argument that all six charges of murder should have separate hearings. Billik would have to be found not guilty by six different juries. The trial for the murder of Mary Vrzal began July 3, 1907. The jury heard dozens of testimonies but none more damning than that of Jerry Vzral who described Billik’s witching and eventual poisoning his family. The defense, on the other hand, made a strong case that no one profited more from these deaths than Emma, who inherited the house and business. (Shukis details each day of trial in his book, Poisoned). Hermann admitted to swindling the Vrzal family but not to an affair with Rosa and maintained he was innocent of any of the murders.
On July 18, 1907, Billik was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
There were still many questions about the case and much evidence that pointed to Emma as the murderer. His defense attorney began working to appeal. Several people believed him innocent, including a Catholic nun helping Billik’s family. She brought his case to the attention of an energetic Catholic priest named Father P.J. O’Callaghan.
Digging for information that would help the appeal, O’Callaghan found more evidence pointing to Emma and a former boyfriend of hers. The priest gathered more information from the immigrant community along with donations that would help Billik. He visited Jerry where he was in school at Valparaiso University and encouraged him to change his testimony if he had lied. Meanwhile, Emma began a smear campaign against the priest.
Suddenly, in a twist that some though should have cleared Billik entirely, Emma’s husband William Niemann sickened and died in a matter of days (though Emma claimed he had been sick for some time). Though it didn’t clear him, Billik got his appeal hearing. More importantly, Jerry returned to Chicago to correct his testimony. He stated that Billik never gave the family potions or plotted against them. The appeal was read by the Illinois Supreme Court in January 1908. They decided there was no error in the record to reverse the decision. Billik would hang April 24, 1908.
The defense attorney, the priest, and Jerry continued to work for a new hearing… and continued noticing other patterns in the testimony and evidence that pointed to Emma. On April 18, 1908, just days before the scheduled execution, the Illinois Governor and a pardon board granted a hearing. After long hours of arguments, the governor granted a reprieve for the board to further review the evidence.
O’Callaghan managed to persuade more than 20,000 people from Chicago’s immigrant community to sign a petition on behalf of Billik’s claim of innocence. O’Callaqghan’s efforts combined with a demonstration of prayer by 400 of Ballik’s fellow prisoners at the Cork County Jail, drew thousands of people to the jail on execution day.
The presiding judge granted an appeal based on a flaw in the prosecuter’s case. He was reprieved until January 29, 1909 when as one newspaper put it, “Herman Billik Must Die.”
Alburquerque (NM) Citizen, January 21, 1909, 1, accessed Chronicling America.
However, he was again spared the gallows. Just before his execution date, the Governor of Illinois commuted his sentence to life in prison.
Suspicion remained on the newly widowed Emma Vzral Niemann. Newspapers reported that Billik’s conviction for the murder of William Niemann was based on circumstantial evidence. Father O’Callaghan and others were convinced of Emma’s guilt. However, at her inquest the “many details of circumstantial evidence which had been collected against her were successfully explained by her testimony.” The witness that proved Emma’s innocence was somehow Emma herself.
Topeka Daily State Journal, August 27, 1908, 5, accessed Chronicling America.
Conclusive evidence seemed to be presented showing that Billik had no access to arsenic, the poison found in all of the bodies except William Niemann’s. However, the assistant coroner may have been pressured into reporting the lack of arsenic in William’s body. In his book Poisoned, author Steve Shukis writes that political corruption distorted the facts. He writes, “Clues were brought forward, but only some were investigated.” It seems clear that there were people in positions of power that did not want arsenic to be found in the body of Emma’s husband. “It would have cast an enormous cloud over Billik’s conviction” and suggest that leading Chicago figures from the Police Chief to the State Attorney to the judge “condemned an innocent man,” according to Shukis.
Billik spent the next several years in prison, maintaining his innocence and continuing to lobby for a pardon. Finally, at the end of 1916, he received a hearing. The evidence was examined by new eyes and Jerry returned to remake testimony. Herman Billik was pardoned in January 1917 and died soon after.
After his pardon, Emma, now remarried, told the Chicago Tribune:
If ever a man deserved hanging, Herman Billik did. I am the one who first suspected that he killed my father and my sisters. I exposed him. I had him arrested. I never ceased in my efforts at vengeance until I saw him sent to the penitentiary. I have nothing in my heart but bitterness for Billik now. I could cheerfully stone him to death. It would be a joy to me to pull on the rope that choked his life out.
Though we focused on Herman here because of his Indiana connection, several key players at the time were convinced of Emma’s guilt and Herman’s innocence. For more information see Steve Shukis’s book Poisoned: Chicago 1907, A Corrupt System, an Accused Killer, and the Crusade to Save Him. Shukis’s book gives a much more thorough treatment of what we have only scratched the surface of here. He also presents a myriad of primary sources from the period we had no room to cover here. The more you dig, the stranger it gets; it’s a perfect read for the season. Happy Halloween!
Though you won’t become a millionaire panning for gold in Indiana, today’s recreational gold hunters have a lot of fun sloshing around Hoosier creeks in search of the shiny metal that led many a conquistador to his doom. Around 1900, however, Indiana farmers and geologists explored the possibility that the hills of Brown, Monroe, and Morgan counties might become something of a Klondike.
Mining for gold in the Eastern United States might sound far-fetched, but it goes back over two centuries. While Spanish explorers who crisscrossed parts of the South and Southwest were fooled by El Dorado myths, the soils of the Southeastern U.S. do hold significant quantities of the mineral. In fact, until the discovery of California’s huge deposits in the 1840s, most domestic gold came from North Carolina, home of America’s “first gold rush.”
The South’s gold industry began in 1799, when a 17-pound nugget turned up on the farm of John Reed, a former Hessian soldier. An undocumented immigrant, Johannes Ried had deserted from the British Army and settled near Charlotte after the war, anglicizing his name. Reed had apparently never seen gold and didn’t know what the shiny yellow rock his son had found was. For three years, he used it as a door post. Finally asking a jeweler to appraise it, Reed got swindled: he sold the big nugget, actually worth thousands of dollars, for just $3.50.
Image from Samuel Griswold Goodrich’s The First Book of History for Children and Youth (Boston Carter, Hendee, and Co., 1833, p. 75), accessed UNC Libraries.
Fortunately, Reed and other North Carolina farmers soon caught on. By the 1830s, placer mines on farms around Charlotte gave way to heavy-duty mining operations. At their peak, these mines employed about 25,000 people. With deep-vein mines wreaking havoc on the land and destroying good agricultural sites, Southern gold mining may have played a role in the exodus of Southerners to fertile land in the Midwest. Yet the mines were a big boon for the U.S. government, which authorized a new branch of the U.S. Mint in Charlotte in 1837. Although it was still the poorest state in the South, North Carolina produced the first gold coins ever minted in the U.S. These replaced English and Spanish coins legally used by Americans as currency.
Begun by Germans, the Southern gold industry also attracted thousands of immigrants, mostly from places with a long history of mining, like Cornwall, Wales, and Germany. Many joined the rush to California in 1849, around the time the Carolina gold rush peaked. Others came to the Midwest, settling in places like Wisconsin, originally a federal lead mining district.
Gold mining never really took off in Brown County, Indiana. But when Southerners flocked into the uplands in the 1830s, they began finding gold there, too.
The irony is that one of the historically poorest Hoosier counties got an unexpected windfall from the glaciers that stopped on its doorstep and spared most of it from being flattened. That gift was Canadian gold, originally delivered to Earth — so the theory runs — by asteroid collisions four billion years ago.
While artist colonies found a different sort of gold in Brown County’s rustic hills, farmers — most of them with Southern Appalachian roots — found the allure of gold hidden in creek beds worth pursuing. By the 1920s, traditional upland farming practices, heavy logging, and hogs wandering loose through the woods had seriously degraded Brown County’s soil. The situation was so bad that by the time of the Great Depression, much of the county was nearly abandoned. Conservationists were able to snatch up plenty of cheap land for the new park, created in 1929, plus other degraded land later added to the Hoosier National Forest and Yellowwood State Forest. Though considered the crown jewel of the state park system today, Brown County was no wilderness a century ago. And the presence of gold there must have appealed to cash-strapped farmers eking out a basic livelihood.
Locals had been panning gold in streams like Bean Blossom Creek, Lick Creek, and Bear Creek since at least the 1840s, often turning up enough of the mineral to supplement their small income from crops and livestock. In 1897, one prospector told of making as much as $27 a day — over $700 in today’s money — but nobody here was getting filthy rich. Yet in 1903, Indiana State Geologist Willis S. Blatchley came down from Indianapolis to weigh in on an old debate about whether Brown County could sustain a serious gold mining operation.
Blatchley wrote several reports, intended for a popular audience. He described how the glaciers that once covered Indiana in ice five-hundred feet thick lugged gold-bearing rocks down from Hudson Bay, depositing them in “terminal moraines,” piles of rubble left where the ice sheets stopped. Water erosion then washed the gold out of the moraines into streams, dispersing it over several counties south of Indianapolis, where it turned up as tiny flakes in creek beds. Primitive panning and placer mines would help sift the gold out from mud and gravel, but more intensive mining to get all the gold wasn’t traditionally considered worth the effort.
Blatchley was one of Indiana’s great naturalists and took a strong interest in mining. Born in Connecticut, he grew up on farms in Putnam County, whose unusual geology and rich wildlife got him interested in nature, especially rocks, bugs, and butterflies. At Indiana University in the 1880’s, Blatchley studied with the great ichthyologist David Starr Jordan and geologist John Casper Branner. Pioneer Hoosier scientists, Jordan and Branner, later became the first and second presidents of Stanford University in California.
Ironically, Branner, who served as Arkansas State Geologist while still a faculty member at IU, was famously burned in effigy in 1888 after he exposed bogus gold and silver mines in the Ozarks, dashing the hopes of optimistic capitalists and investors there. One of Branner’s assistants on the Arkansas surveys turned out to be future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, who majored in geology at Stanford after Branner left his job in Bloomington to head the new department. (Hoover went on to get his first job after college as a gold-mining engineer in Western Australia and later worked for the Chinese Bureau of Mines and in Russia. Before he went into politics, Hoover was an internationally-recognized mining expert and even published a standard textbook on the subject. In 1912, he and his wife also made the definitive translation from Latin of a 16th-century German mining classic, De re metallica.)
On the heels of a new hunt for Hoosier gold, Branner’s former student W.S. Blatchley’s trip to southern Indiana in early 1902 was covered by the Indianapolis News. The News was excited to announce “great gold discoveries,” and the Chicago Tribune reprinted the story almost verbatim the following winter. The exciting gold finds of 1902, however, were on Highland Creek, between Martinsville and Brooklyn in Morgan County.
Leading the hunt for Highland Creek’s gold was a former California miner, F.F. Taylor, and R.L. Royse, an “Indianapolis gold and diamond prospector.” Taylor ran a hydraulic operation on the creek, called “The Black Eye Flumes,” a name inspired by all the ridicule heaped on Indiana gold mining. Though most experts remained skeptical, the flamboyant Royse announced his confidence that Indiana was soon destined to become the “richest placer gold state” in the Union.
Taylor and Royse tried to disprove what a previous State Geologist, John Collett, had said about Indiana gold. Collett, who died in 1899, quipped that he thought there was enough gold in Brown County to pay off the national debt, but that it would “take the dollar of gold mined and an extra dollar to mine every dollar of it.” The brash prospector R.L. Royse, however, insisted that not only was he going to make a fortune in Morgan County: soon enough, he said, he would come to downtown Indianapolis and “pan some gold out of Washington Street.” (He had already claimed to have found gold in a North Indianapolis street sewer.)
William E. Stafford, known as “Wild Bill,” was one of the colorful prospectors scouring the creeks of Morgan and Brown counties. The reporter for the News gave Stafford a long write-up in 1902. This “Hercules of the gold diggings” would reappear in the Chicago Tribune a year later.
Another man who panned gold on Hoosier streams was “Uncle” John Merriman. Merriman, who lived until 1906, was the son of Hoosier pioneer William Merriman. (William was born in Virginia in 1786, just three years after the end of the Revolutionary War.) Originally from Morgan County, John had lived around Ellettsville and Bloomington, then moved over to Fruitdale in Brown County in the 1870s, where he ran an orchard. Panning gold helped supplement his small income. In spite of a bad kidney ailment, Merriman took enough interest in gold to venture out to the California gold fields in the 1880s.
Like many men who went west, the Hoosier prospector never struck it rich. But in 1903, the 69-year-old helped show State Geologist Blatchley around Brown County’s own “gold fields.”
“Uncle” John Merriman panning gold around 1900. Merriman had been in the papers before. The Fort Wayne Sentinel reported in 1899 that he lived on “1,000 acres of barren land” and subsisted on brown sugar alone while out searching “for the yellow metal,” courtesy of Frank Merriman, accessed Find-A-Grave.W.J. Richards panning gold. Indianapolis News, May 31, 1902. Hoosier State Chronicles.
Blatchley wrote of men like John Merriman that some “do little else than pan gold along the streams.” The geologist did some panning himself on Bean Blossom Creek, where children went out looking for gold after floods and snow melts. Merriman came with him. Blatchley wrote that Merriman averaged about $1.25 a day — approximately $30 in today’s money. Both men thought that modern machinery could increase the yield.
Some panners, like W.W. Young — alias “Old Man” Young — sent their gold off to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. “Old Man” Young found fourteen ounces of gold in nine months of panning and got a receipt from the mint for $250.07, equivalent to about $7,000 today. Young was considered “quaint . . . the most peculiar character in any of the Indiana diggings. He will not permit anyone to be near him, and will not pan as long as there is anyone in sight.”
Blatchley’s report states that local Indiana “drift gold” averaged 22 carats, compared to 16-18 for California gold and 14-16 for Alaskan Klondike gold. In other words, Hoosier gold was actually superior to the stuff out West.
Yet he also recognized that shortage of local water sources during the summertime, when many streams ran almost dry, would seriously hamper mining of the mineral. “By constructing permanent dams in several of the valleys enough water could probably be conserved to tide over the dry season.” Taylor proposed sluicing water out of the White River, but the plan never really took on.
For a while, rumor even had it that birds had gotten interested in mining. Gold in duck craws? The tales you’re about to hear sound like an old St. Nicholas story. But for now, we’ll assume these aren’t just tall tales.
Ultimately, however, predictions about great yields of gold in southern Indiana weren’t justified. The slough of excited stories in the Indianapolis press about gold mining going on just “twenty-three miles from the golden dome of the Indiana State House” died out after 1903. But that didn’t stop two men from Ohio from coming to Brown County, panning the stuff, and buying a farm with their profits in 1908.
Today, gold prospecting is said to be the fastest-growing form of outdoor recreation of Indiana and many other states. (In 2010, when the price of gold hit almost $1,500 an ounce, the Wall Street Journalhosted a video about the revival of recreational gold-seeking in Vermont, where it’s a great way to get outdoors, but “more about the experience than the riches.”) Brown, Morgan, and Monroe counties are still the most popular places for gold prospecting in the Hoosier State, but Blatchley reported many other counties where the mineral turned up, including a few in northern Indiana like Cass and Warren.
But watch out, Indiana! Don’t hunt on private property unless you have permission first . . . even if you think you’re as clever as this guy:
“Former ‘Bad’ Town Now an Ideal Spot,” Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.
During the Progressive Era, Black women were often excluded from both white reform initiatives and male-dominated Black organizations. In response, Black women across the nation formed local clubs that allowed them to exercise agency and agitate for reform. The club movement was especially popular in Indianapolis. Editor Nina Mjagkij found that, “Between 1880 and 1920, Indianapolis’s black club women created more than five hundred clubs that addressed a wide range of social issues and laid the foundation for political activism.”[1] These clubs comprised educated upper-middle class women who sought to address problems such as urbanization, racial and gender barriers, education, and public health.[2]
Educator and reformer Ada B. Harris led the Black women’s club movement in Norwood, a historic neighborhood located in Southeast Indianapolis. The previous Untold Indiana Blog commemorated Harris’ decades-long career as an educator at Harriett Beecher Stowe School No. 64, one of the only public schools for Black children in Indianapolis. It also discussed her tireless work to fundraise and build communal spaces in the segregated city. This second blog will examine her leadership in the Black women’s club movement and how it related to the national Black Progressive movement.
Black Civic Involvement & Women’s Suffrage
Harris dedicated much of her time advocating for Black women’s suffrage and participating in civic projects. In 1894, Harris helped establish the Corinthian Baptist Church’s Women’s Club, which later became the Woman’s Civic Club. With over 300 members, the club encouraged Black women’s participation in politics by offering education about voting, hosting political discourse, and inviting prominent speakers to Norwood.[3] In 1904, they hosted prominent reformer May Wright Sewall at the A.M.E. Chapel for a fundraising event.[4] Harris herself often spoke to club members, discussing the ideology of major civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Dubois. The Woman’s Civic Club often collaborated with other clubs and organizations in Indianapolis, including the church’s Men’s Civic Club, the Good Citizens League, and the Flanner Guild.
In 1917, Harris volunteered to help register women for the Indianapolis Woman’s Franchise Leagues’ upcoming constitutional convention.[5] The League was one of the leading suffragist groups in the city and instrumental in organizing public rallies such as a statewide automobile tour in 1912 and marching to the statehouse in 1913.
Women won the right to vote in 1920 and Harris soon mobilized to educate Black women on political matters and encourage them to vote. In 1925, Harris held a “nonpartisan citizenship school,” at the YWCA on North West and Twelfth Street to “inform the women on the principles of the leading political parties and the issues of the campaign.” The Indianapolis News reported that over 100 Black women attended.[6] She also served on a women’s political committee which helped involve women in local politics. Throughout her career, she also spoke at various associations and organizations on how to register and vote, even becoming a public notary and holding “voting parties” in Norwood.[7]
Harris’s ideas of civic duty and virtue did not end at the ballot box. During World War I, Harris founded the Franchise Economy Club, which coincided with the national rationing movement. Members learned homespun canning techniques for a myriad of vegetables, including “green grapes, rhubarb, beans, peas and greens.”[8] Harris was so dedicated to the conservation of foodstuffs on the homefront that she traveled to West Lafayette to attend Purdue University’s conservation school in 1918. Notably, she was the only Black student to enroll in this course.[9] Learning cutting edge-methods for canning and food preservation, Harris would return to Norwood and disseminate this information to the public through local classes. She even converted an old building into a modern kitchen to aid her teaching.[10] These many activities demonstrate Harris’s deep commitment to both obtaining the vote and Black political participation.
“Norwood Cooking Class,” Indianapolis Star, August 4, 1918, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
Women’s Improvement Club & Health Initiatives
While Harris was involved in numerous clubs and organizations, perhaps her most important work stemmed from her leadership of the Women’s Improvement Club (WIC). Founded by Lillian Thomas Fox in 1904 as an exclusive literary club for upper-middle-class Black women, the members soon decided to pursue philanthropic ventures. At the time the local hospital refused to open a tuberculosis ward for Black patients, leaving a devastating gap in Black healthcare.[11] Additionally, Norwood struggled with underdeveloped infrastructure and poor sanitation, increasing the risk of disease for its residents.[12] WIC decided to open a fresh-air camp where Black tuberculosis patients could rest and receive care.
Already familiar with grassroots organizing and fundraising, Harris was instrumental in establishing the Oak Hill Camp. Meeting minutes show that she co-led the club committee responsible for establishing Oak Hill, and scoped out possible locations for the camp herself. In addition, she headed fundraising and organizational efforts to buy supplies for the camp and solicit Black physicians and nurses to care for patients.[13]
Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
The Oak Hill Tuberculosis Camp opened in spring of 1905 and treated six patients. According to club member Lee Johnson, “the setting was very beautiful for the patients, located on a high hill with grand oak trees spreading their shady boughs over a tiny stream that trickled at the base.”[14] The Indianapolis News noted that Oak Hill was one of the only healthcare resources for Black Tuberculosis patients in Indianapolis. The camp soon had a waiting list of patients.[15] Until its closure in 1916, Oak Hill was annually organized, sponsored, and funded by the philanthropy of WIC. Running on a shoestring budget of charity funds, WIC solicited volunteers to help operate the camp and many Black physicians and nurses donated their personal time.
Club women also went beyond the camp, launching city-wide educational campaigns and facilitating trainings for Black nurses otherwise barred from white training programs to treat tuberculosis patients. They also attempted to lobby the City Hospital to build a cottage for Black patients, but these efforts proved unsuccessful.[16]
In 1916, the camp was closed but WIC continued its work aiding tuberculosis patients. They loaned tents to the homes of patients, assisted them in finding other healthcare services, and provided transportation for many. They also continued facilitating nurse training programs and bought an official club cottage at 535 Agnes Street in 1922. The club would continue its various tuberculosis initiatives until the 1960s, when medical advances reduced the threat of tuberculosis.[17] As a founding member of the club and a major force for the camps’ organization and fundraising, Harris helped address a major and tragic gap in Black healthcare.
Oak Hill Tuberculosis Camp, 1905, photograph, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.
Conclusion
Harris exemplifies the Black Progressive club woman movement in her devotion to the period’s philosophy of Black self-help and improvement through local, grassroots organization. Originally excluded from Progressive reform, Black club women across the nation such as Harris were able to claim the Progressive philosophy for their own communities and causes, namely that of suffrage and racial inequality. In doing so, Harris and other women emboldened their local communities to be active agents for change.
By advocating for public education, encouraging Black women’s political participation, and helping to provide health care to TB patients, Harris enhanced the living standards of Norwood. Her work also empowered Black citizens to agitate for their own welfare, paving the way for the future Civil Rights Movement. In short, Black reform went beyond simply improving local communities and, by upholding standards of excellence, these reformers made a compelling argument that they too deserved a proverbial seat at America’s dinner table. They sought an equal chance. When asked about her work in Norwood, Harris stated,
“My field has been small in Norwood, but it has been plenty large enough for my abilities. At least I shall have spent my life for my race.” – Ada B. Harris[18]
When historians and current residents recount Norwood’s storied history, they ought to recognize one of their best reformers and advocates in Ada B. Harris.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Kisha Tandy, curator at the Indiana State Museum, for spearheading the marker application for Ada B. Harris and conducting the initial research into Harris’s life and legacy.
For Further Reading
Ferguson Rae, Earline. “The Woman’s Improvement Club of Indianapolis: Black Women Pioneers in Tuberculosis Work, 1903-1938.” Indiana Magazine of History 84, no. 3 (September 1998): 273-261.
[3] Description of mock political debate given by women, Indianapolis News, October 27, 1892, 2, accessed newspapers.com; Announcement of Harris giving a speech at Corinthian Baptist Church, Indianapolis News, October 8, 1900, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; “Woman’s Club Notes,” Indianapolis Recorder, August 10, 1907, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] “In Colored Circles,” Indianapolis News, April 25, 1904, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
[5] “Registration Week for Women of the City,” Indianapolis News, June 23, 1917, 18, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[6] “Organizing Voting School,” Indianapolis News, September 18, 1920, 19, accessed Newspapers.com; “Citizenship School Held,” Indianapolis News, October 2, 1920, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] “Registration Week for Women of the City,” Indianapolis News, June 23, 1917, 18, accessed Newspapers.com; Kisha B. Tandy, “Ada Harris: Civic Leader, Educator, and Entrepreneur,” accessed Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, May 2023, https://indyencyclopedia.org/ada-harris/.
[8] “Norwood Has an Economy Club,” Indianapolis Star, July 29, 1917, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[9] Article on Harris attending Purdue University for women’s conservation school, Indianapolis News, July 6, 1918, p. 9, accessed via Newspapers.com
[10] Article on Franchise Economy Club, Indianapolis News, January 19, 1918, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; article on Harris attending Purdue University for women’s conservation school, Indianapolis News, July 6, 1918, 9, accessed Newspapers.com; “Norwood Cooking Class,” Indianapolis Star, August 4, 1918, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
[11] Earline Rae Ferguson, “The Woman’s Improvement Club of Indianapolis: Black Women Pioneers in Tuberculosis Work, 1903-1938,” Indiana Magazine of History 84, no. 3 (September 1988): 237-261.
[12] “Bad Condition at Norwood,” Indianapolis Journal, September 30, 1903, 10, accessed Newspapers.com; “Measles at Norwood,” Indianapolis News, December 17, 1903, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
[13] Women’s Improvement Club Minute Books, 1919-1911, Women’s Improvement Club Collection, 1909-1965, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana; Women’s Improvement Club Minute Books, 1916-1918, Women’s Improvement Club Collection, 1909-1965, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana.
[14] Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[15] “For Tuberculosis Sufferers,” Indianapolis News, August 4, 1911, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
[16] Ferguson, “The Women’s Improvement Club,” 254.
[17] Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[18] “Former ‘Bad’ Town Now an Ideal Spot,” Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.
