In the very literal sense of the word, 1968 was an extraordinary year. Even situated as it was within a decade characterized by social and political upheaval, 1968 was unique in the sheer number of transformative events: the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Apollo 8 mission, anti-Vietnam War protests, protests against racial discrimination. The list goes on.
While the majority of these events occurred on the East and West Coasts of the United States, it would be a mistake to think that the Midwest was immune to the revolutionary spirit sweeping the nation. In fact, many of the movements seen at a national level played out within the confines of the Indiana University Campus in Bloomington. When recruiters from Dow Chemical Company (the company responsible for producing napalm for use in the Vietnam War) visited campus, hundreds of students marched in protest. Following objections to exclusionary judging standards drawn along color lines, the IU Homecoming Queen pageant was permanently cancelled. African American students demanded more representation in all aspects of campus life and staged a sit-in at the Little 500. That sit-in led directly to the removal of discriminatory covenants from Indiana University’s fraternities.
Clarence “Rollo” Turner at the Little 500 Sit-in, Indiana University, Artubus (Bloomington, Indiana: 1968), accessed Artubus Archives.
While this wave of revolutionary fervor was cresting both nationally and on IU’s campus, another wave was close behind – the “third wave” of the Ku Klux Klan. Rising in response to the Civil Rights Movement, approximately 40,000 Klan members belonged to the Klan nationally in the 1950s and 1960s. In the spring of 1968, Klan members from nearby Morgan County attempted to establish a chapter of the terrorist organization in Monroe County. A membership drive, which was to consist of a gathering on the Bloomington courthouse square followed by a march through the business district, was scheduled for March 30, 1968. But before events could get underway, Monroe County Prosecutor Thomas Berry requested and was granted an order blocking the event, citing the possibility of violence.
This was neither the first nor the last appearance of the Klan in Bloomington. In Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928, Leonard Moore estimates that 23.8% of all native-born white men in Monroe County were members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920. The Indiana Daily Student on November 7, 1922 described the supposed first appearance of the Klan in the city:
Marching with slow and solemn tread, 152 men paraded Bloomington streets, garbed in mysterious robes of white, with tall hoods masking their identity, and carrying aloft the flaming cross of the klan, while hundreds of townspeople and students stood and witnessed [as] the pages of fiction and movie scenarios unfolded before their eyes.
Example of a calling card left by the Ku Klux Klan, accessed Nate-Thayer.com.
Although county officials blocked a similar scene to that described above from playing out in 1968, the Klan still made its presence known in the city. During a Bloomington Human Relations Commission meeting on September 30, 1968, African American commission chairman Ernest Butler showed his fellow commissioners and others present at the meeting a card which had been left on his door. The card read, “The Ku Klux Klan is watching you.” Butler claimed to have received as many as ten such cards, as well as several similarly threatening phone calls. Soon, local Klan affiliates would go further than simply making threats.
In the face of these threats, Black Indiana University students continued to demand more representation and equality, staging protests and demonstrations across the campus. The Afro-Afro-American Student’s Association (AAASA)—an organization formed in the spring of 1967 with the goal of fostering unity among IU’s Black students—frequently encouraged members to participate in this activism. At the forefront of many of these protests was AAASA co-founder and sociology graduate student Clarence “Rollo” Turner.
In the fall of 1968, Turner shifted his attention towards a new project – The Black Market. Financed entirely by Black faculty and staff, The Black Market was a shop specializing in products made by African or African American artists. This included “free-flowing African garb, Black literature and records, African and Afro-American fabrics, dangling earrings, and African artifacts.”
As a leader in the African American community at Indiana University, Turner served as the shop’s manager and its public face. He and his backers had two main objectives when opening the shop. First, it was to act as a cultural center for Black students at the university, who had limited recreational opportunities in the predominantly white city. Second, he aimed to eliminate “misconceptions about black people” by exposing IU students and Bloomington locals alike to Black culture.
After its late-September opening, it seemed as though the shop would be a success. The campus newspaper, Indiana Daily Student, proclaimed, “suits and ties may eventually join the ranks of white socks and baggy slacks if the immediate success of The Black Market is a sign of things to come.” However, at the same time that the shop was proving a popular enterprise with IU students, factions within Bloomington were pushing back against its very existence. This resistance took the form of violence when, on December 26, 1968 a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the front window of the store.
The resulting fire destroyed the entire stock of The Black Market and caused structural damage to adjacent businesses. To those most closely associated with the shop, the motive for the attack seemed obvious, especially considering the heightened presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the city. As student newspaper The Spectator commented:
It was not very difficult, of course, to determine a ‘motive’ for the bombing. Since the construction of the Black Market in September, black students involved have been harassed periodically by abusive white ‘customers,’ . . . Larry Canada, owner of the building, had received telephoned bomb threads because he allowed the ‘n––rs’ to use the space for the store.
Black Market after fire, printed in The Spectator, accessed Indiana University Archives.
Two weeks later, 200 students attended a rally on the sidewalk outside of the burnt remains of The Black Market. Amidst calls for action from university and city officials and appeals to Black students to make a stand in the face of violence, Rollo Turner said, “the only reason this store was bombed was because it was a black store.” Behind the rally, hung across the splintered door of the shop a hand lettered sign that read, “A COWARD DID THIS.”
Eight months would pass before those students knew the identity of the man responsible for the attack, though. In the intervening time, IU students and faculty came together to raise enough money to pay back the financial backers of the shop, as the shop’s inventory was uninsured. Rollo Turner also made the decision not to re-open the store – all of the funds raised had gone to pay back investors, leaving none for re-investment in new stock. Additionally, the extensive damage to the structure necessitated its total demolition, meaning a new space would need to be secured and it may have proven difficult to find a landlord willing to risk their property if a repeat attack was carried out.
“The Black Market,” accessed Indiana University Archives.
Details about the search for the perpetrators are limited. An ad-hoc group formed by representatives from the community, university, and local civil rights organizations offered an award for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the guilty parties. The alternative student newspaper The Spectator alluded to a person of interest in their coverage of the attack, saying:
Acting on reports of witnesses, police are searching for a white male with dark hair, about 5’8”, 160 lbs., wearing a light gray finger-length topcoat at the time of the fire.
Whether or not either of these played any part in the search for the perpetrators, or if they were identified in some other way, on August 6, 1969 the Marion County Circuit Court issued arrest warrants for two men in relation to the crime. One of those men, Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., plead guilty to the second degree arson charges while implicating as an accomplice Jackie Dale Kinser, whom he accused of driving the get-away vehicle. Eventually, the charges against Kinser would be dropped, just before he plead guilty to three unrelated crimes.
Both men had strong ties to the local Ku Klux Klan – Kinser was a member who in subsequent years would be arrested multiple times in Klan-related crimes. Briscoe’s Klan connections are slightly less clear. At first, Monroe County Prosecutor Thomas Berry and Sheriff Clifford Thrasher announced that both men were Klan members. An article in the September 19, 1969 issue of the Indianapolis Star, states that Briscoe himself claimed to be a Klan member. The headline of Briscoe’s obituary in the Vincennes Sun-Commercial proclaims, “Notorious Klansman Dies in Prison: Briscoe Led a Bloomington Crime Wave in 1960s and ‘70s.” As late as 1977, he was arrested while committing crimes alongside Klan members, apparently while carrying out Klan business. However, in 1969, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, William Chaney, denied that Briscoe was a member of the organization. Regardless of Briscoe’s official Klan membership status, Briscoe at the very least maintained close ties with the terrorist organization. He was sentenced to one to ten years and was released on April 7, 1973 after serving approximately three and a half years of his sentence.
The story of The Black Market firebombing could have ended there. The structure had been demolished, the investors had been paid back, and a conviction had been made. However, the revolutionary atmosphere on the Indiana University campus stretched beyond the 1960s, and the space would once again be used to make a statement.
YIP Poster Advertising the 1968 Festival of Life, accessed Wikipedia.
In late February 1970, a group of Yippies, or members of the Youth International Party, were looking for ways to bring the community of Bloomington together. One of the ideas that emerged from these discussions was the creation of a people’s park on the vacant lot where The Black Market had once stood. People’s parks, which were spreading across the nation, could trace their roots back to the People’s Park in Berkeley, California. Typically created by activists without the approval of government or other officials, the parks were meant to promote free speech, activism, and community involvement.
By May 1970, work had started on the project. Anyone who was interested in the enterprise was encouraged to join in helping to prepare the land for its future intended use. The Bloomington People’s Park was to be a mix of gathering space, community garden, and a place for “everyone to sing, dance, rap, and generally ‘do his own thing,’” and by the next summer, it was being put to good use, as reported by the Indiana Daily Student:
About 250 blue jeaned “freaks,” tapered-legged “straights,” the bell bottomed curious and two guys with rolled-up sleeves, greasy hair and tattoos celebrated the 4th in People’s Park Sunday evening.
Student protest in People’s Park, Artubus, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana: 1981, accessed Artubus Archives.
Over the next five years, various issues threatened to put an end to the whole affair. The city threatened to shut it down over “public health” concerns. The property owner, Larry Canada, had various plans to develop the property. In the end, though, People’s Park became legally sanctioned after Canada deeded the land to the city in 1976.
Throughout the years, the park has carried on the site’s democratic heritage, hosting anti-Vietnam War protests, protests against the US involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s, music festivals, flea markets, and, more recently, Occupy Bloomington protests. Today, the park serves as a reminder of the revolutionary ideals that swept through Indiana University’s campus in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2020, IHB, in partnership with the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, will commemorate those events by installing an Indiana state historical marker.
Beckley: I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Giving Voice, from Talking Hoosier History.
Today on Giving Voice, I talk with Chris Newall, co-founder and Director of Education for the Akomawt Educational Initiative. In our last full episode, we covered roughly the first half of the life of Tenskwatawa, or The Prophet. Throughout the episode, we talked about danger of relying on sources produced in large by white colonizers to tell Native history, and how IHB and other history organizations are learning to broaden our ideas of what a source can be to include more Native voices in Native history.
To give you some more information on this topic and some context about why it’s so important, we knew we wanted to speak with someone who is working to bring these issues to light every day, and Chris Newall and the Akomawt Educational Initiative are doing just that.
And now, Giving Voice.
[Talking Hoosier History Theme Music]
Beckley: We’re here today with Chris Newell from the Akomawt Educational Initiative and I’m gonna let you go ahead and introduce yourself, Chris.
Newell: Hi, Lindsey, hi everybody! My name’s Chris Newell and I’m a cofounder – one of three cofounders – of the Akomawt Educational Initiative. We’re located in the southeast corner of Connecticut, based out of Ledyard, Connecticut but we have roots all over Indian Country. I am originally Passamaquoddy from [place name], which is known as the Indian Township Preservation in Maine and live in Mashantucket and work at the Pequot Museum and do a lot of work – a lot of the focus of what we do is working with the Indigenous histories, helping with places that want to teach them in a culturally competent fashion to do so and hopefully create some resources, change some thinking in the future and make sure that when we talk about Indigenous histories that we include the voice of Indigenous people. So that’s the focus of what we do at Akomawt.
And just a little background – Akomawt is a Passamaquoddy word. It comes from my language. It translates in English to the snowshoe path. It’s the symbol of our mission. Essentially, in the winter time, up in my territory, the snow shoe path was how you got out to where you needed to do work. When you needed to get back home, you found it again and traversed back on it. The more you used it, the easier it becomes to use and every season it renews. So that’s what we think about when we think about the educational initiative that we have brought forth here, is creating new learning paths for people to engage with Native content in a way that will be impactful as well as culturally competent, you know, trying to erase some of the old habits of Indigenous history in colonial spaces that have crept up and are still pervasive to this day.
Beckley: That’s great. And I know that we really admire your work. I know that one of the people here at the Historical Bureau saw you at the National Council on Public History and came back and we had a lot of really good conversations from that so, thank you for the work you’re doing and you continue to do and thank you for being here, of course.
Newell: Oh yea, absolutely love being here.
Beckley: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about those old habits you had mentioned. What are some of the habits that you were seeing and still see that you want to address with your initiative?
Newell: So, when it comes to museums, you know, essentially museums are places that were created by the colonization of America so when it comes to Indigenous histories told in museums, museums are essentially really colonial artifacts. Places of public history are oftentimes colonial artifacts and oftentimes tell the history of Indigenous people through that lens. American anthropology has a long history from the time it was founded of doing things like collecting human body parts, collecting material culture, and portraying a myth of saving the idea of the vanishing Indian, back in the early days of anthropology. Thoughts have changed over time but, you know, that’s kind of the basis of how these spaces were created in the first place and how a lot of these earlier books were created. And, so, there are some things that – some habits that were created back then. A lot of times, the use of generalized terminology – so Native, Native American, American Indian – to kind of put all Native peoples under one umbrella oftentimes appears and it’s not clear enough to a lot of people that there are literally, in existence right now in America, 573 separate, sovereign Native communities recognized by the government and over 1000 Native communities just in general in America – we’re not talking Canada and other places.
So there’s a really complex – there’s a serious complexity when it comes to Indigenous histories and when it comes to Indigenous contemporary issues and things of the sort. And unfortunately, museums generally still give the kind of general impression that we can put everything under the box of American Indian or Native American. If you visit a fine arts museum that has collections of fine art from around the world, literally all the Americans – the art of Americas – are usually places in one small room. So all of these 1000 different communities being represented in one small room. You know, it’s just – it give the general idea that we can put everything in one box and everything fits there when in fact there is no box that can contain the complexity of Native existence as well as our history and our arts and our cultural ways. So those old habits still exit today. We see changes happening when we see places like the MET have gotten rid of their Native American collection and have incorporated their Native American find art into their American wing. That was a big move there from a major museum of kind of rethinking how we present Native art as simply art, rather than cultural artifacts.
Also, the idea at a lot of public historical places, of presenting Native peoples as only existing in the past. That’s another old habit that is kind of pervasive today. I work at a major Native museum, and it’s not uncommon for a 4th grader to come into our museum, have a Native educator in front of them, and the first question they ask is, innocently, “When the Natives were alive …” and that’s how they begin their question. So there is literally a section – a significant portion of the population – that sees us as all dead and gone and vanished. And it’s largely due to the way public history is taught and the way it approaches Native Histories as if we are still having to be saved from being vanished, rather than incorporating the very vibrant ways that we have found ways to exist in the modern times and kept our culture alive and been very dynamic through history. And also, involved with all of American history.
That’s another thing with the story of America is that Native people are often so left out. And yet, the American Revolution was largely aided by Native peoples. All the way from that time – the industrial revolution was largely aided by work efforts in Native communities and things of that sort. And military times – you know, Native people have participated in the military in higher numbers per-capita than any other ethnicity in the United states and as a result, Native cultures were actually used in military structure and strategy to overcome things such as the code talkers from about 33 different tribes during World War II, which was a big part of the success of America in that war. So, in the story of America, Native people are, unfortunately, often let out as if we are a separate part of something else. And those are things that we at Akomawt are looking to address and looking to bring all together, so when we’re talking about the history of this land, we don’t just start at the time of colonization and think of it as only 400 or so years old. But rather, we think about people living on this land back 13,000 years at least, which includes Indigenous history as well and not erase that part of the history of this land here. Because Native people did exist here and thrive and subsist in a sustained fashion well – for millennia prior to any colonization. So, the idea that colonization saved Native people in some form is also something that we look to address as well. You know, so we really want to give Native perspective to a lot of these things. And that includes bringing Native voices and changing the framework by which Native history is taught inside of these colonial artifacts of public history such as museums to present them in a different framework that would expand the thinking outside of that box that we are constantly put inside of.
Beckley: That’s great. I know that we at the Historical Bureau have been thinking a lot about that and trying to come to terms with what we’ve done in the past and how we can improve ourselves going forward. And I think one of the major, I wouldn’t say blocks, but one of our – something that intimidates us about going forward is that, as public historians, we’ve gone through school. We’ve gone through, you know, some of us up to PhD level and all of it is learning how to use primary sources and how to read primary sources. And when we think of primary sources, we primarily think of written materials, weather that be documents or newspapers – things like that. Obviously, a lot of Native history isn’t written down in the same way European history was. And if it is, it was probably written by a European person. What are some of the sources that you turn to, to look at Native history?
Newell: Ok, so, the sources that I look forward to are really those conversations that I have in Native communities talking to people that have history there through multiple multiple multiple generations. And oftentimes, there are a lot of stories – a lot of oral histories that you can delve into that can really teach you a lot, especially when it comes to Native perspectives. So things like the name of the land, prior to colonization. Prior to the renaming of it. How did Native people name different aspect of land or the land that they live on? What was the lens that they viewed land through? So language is an important tool – so important for the view into the Native perspective. Native languages are so different from the English language. And that’s one of the things that I’ve delved into the most. So that requires from people that are language speakers and people that have that frame of mind of thinking through and Indigenous lens though language. And those are oftentimes elders, but not always, so sometimes you’ve got to spend some time and you’ve got to search out who is the respected person and who has these stories. Have conversations and just kind of let things come out as naturally as they would.
So oral histories for me are a bit part of what drives me because a lot of what they tell is not written down and what writing it down would do is kind of photograph it and freeze it in time because the stories do change over time, but that’s also part of the history. Viewing how to stories do change over time as well. So there is a way to view oral history that you can gain knowledge from that can be factual. But there is a method for viewing oral history that really takes some experience. You really need to be able to talk to a lot of people that have these histories and kind of get a sense of what a broad swath of how they’re viewing things, rather than just talking to one single person, which is the same as looking at one single primary – a piece of paper – a primary source document. It’s really the perspective of one person. So it’s kind of a failure of a primary document is that it does give an accurate photograph of that person’s view at that time. But it’s only that person and we’re not getting the swath of information across a broad perspective of people. So that’s why for me oral histories are one of the ways that I go and also I pay attention to the particular language. And just to give you a window into how different that is – the English language, when it was introduced to this land when the English arrived – has the blueprint of England. The ideas of land improvement – and I’m gonna put quotes around that word improvement – in 17th century English knowledge meant cutting down trees, planning crops, raising cows, chickens, and pigs – which are very different from the 13,000 years of sustainable farming and hunting practices and fishing practices that Native people had done for millennia. And would actually destroy the environment, upset the natural balance of things. And we’re currently still living under that and so that’s not sustainable here. You know, we’re seeing America return to Indigenous ways of knowing. So the Indigenous language has words that – of viewing land as property, and even viewing people as property. In the Algonquin language, at least in my language, land is not considered something that we can possess as an object. In fact, when we pick up a handful of dirt, the way we translate what would be the English equivalent of dirt really translates to “the molecules of our ancestors,” which shows Indigenous knowledge of the cycle of life and the science of all of that. And under that framework, with that translation, we see land as literally life. So if you pick up a handful of what would be in English dirt and you let that to fall out of your hand, that’s literally in our viewpoint, the molecules of your ancestors falling to the earth or literally life falling out of your hand and back to the earth. Therefore, how can you own life – if your framework, you cannot. And the land sustains everybody, not just people, but all animals, all life, is sustained by the land. Therefore, in our viewpoint, it cannot be owned. A lot of Native languages have similar kinds of concepts in them in that land is oftentimes considered in some shape or form alive. Or a version of substance. So elders, oral history, and language especially. Very very important to pay attention to the language of the people that lived on that land for thousands of years and have an intimate knowledge of it and developed a language around the way the land required them to live – to really have a knowledge of that history there. So please be sure you include knowledge of language and language keepers when talking about Native history there because of the importance of the framework.
Beckley: That is incredibly interesting. I have, of course, heard through my traditional education all about “Native people didn’t believe in land ownership,” but I never heard anybody, I don’t think, explain why they didn’t believe that. It’s always kind of a given of “of course they didn’t believe that. We believed that and they were different so that’s why.” Thank you for explaining that. That’s incredibly interesting to me.
Beckley: I wanted to ask if you think that our current methods of historiography are adequate for doing Native history. They’re just so based in a Eurocentric worldview and they’re roots are in Europe. So I want to know if you think that we just need to rethink the very foundations of how we’re doing history or is there a way to make our methods fit in with doing Native history?
Newell: Yea, so we really do need some radical thinking amongst historiographers and the way that we retell histories. And sometimes, in historical tellings we really try to achieve objectivity, which has its own merit and is valuable in its own right. However, there is something to be said for the subjective history. So to tell a story from a Native perspective completely is going to have a completely different ring to it than the primary source document history that was likely written by early Americans or people of European ancestry. And so, that’s one of the ways that we can rethink the way that we do these things. And technology is really affording us ways to bring back or to rethink how we do things. Some of these old things – one of the things that would often happen is that a lot of these things that were kept in collections were actually kept in the collection and you had to have special access to get to a collection to get that knowledge. And guess what? Some of that knowledge that was recorded by Europeans and early Americans is actually really factually and very valuable to Native communities who, through colonization, have in some way shape or form maybe have been forced to lose that knowledge. And by keeping it from native communities, you’re actually putting a block in front of them from getting a sense of sovereignty for themselves. Which includes not just self-governance, but also sovereignty in the way they tell their history.
For them to be able to look at those documents and then for them to be able to frame that information through their lens now allows historiographers who are largely translating it from one point of view, to see an opposing point of view, and when it comes to objectivity – that’s how we’re going to get to a more objective route there is by hearing both sides, which sometimes are opposed to one another. Which is totally find because not all things in history are very clear cut and we should discuss and debate. But we should also make sure that we are including all perspectives while we’re doing so and be aware when we’re not. So those are all things to consider for going forward there. And also creating long term relationships with tribal communities. For these colonial spaces of public history telling, that is such an important thing as well because when you bring a Native perspective into your museum, you can – there are ways to re frame the work essentially, decolonizing your museum. I know we use that term a lot these days, “decolonizing,” that’s really a way of re framing things back to an Indigenous perspective. My preferred word, when it’s applicable in actually re-indiginizing. So, what we’re doing is we’re taking a colonial space telling a story from a colonial perspective, and we’re going to take that history and then re-indiginize it because prior to colonization, this is the way the history was told was through an Indigenous lens, just not in a museum. So we’re taking that history and we’re re-indiginizing it through that fashion.
Beckley: So, for our last question, I think it might be a little bit redundant, but I keep on – I hear you talk about the importance of community engagement and including Native perspectives. Can you just elaborate on why it is so important to do these things and why it’s important for everybody who’s listening to be thinking about some of these questions?
Newell: Absolutely, So, in native communities, there is a lot of knowledge that gets passed down through the generations, and these types of things – that type of knowledge being passed down – doesn’t get a degree passed with it. There’s not a piece of paper that goes with that knowledge and these people become respected knowledge keepers in their communities. And when we approach these communities and we find these knowledge keepers and we’re going to bring them into these academic or public history spaces – the common thing is, if we were to bring in another academic, we would pay them for their service of research or knowledge in helping that institution to accumulate – we should also think of Native knowledge keepers who don’t have a master’s degree of a PhD to be on the same level of knowledge as somebody with a masters or PhD. It’s just that they have that level of knowledge on their own community and therefore, we should compensate them appropriately when we do involve their knowledge. Too often, one of the old habits of old anthropologists was to go into a Native community, extract knowledge, not give any compensation to the people they extracted the knowledge from, and then leave the community, write books, and develop careers based on what they have extracted from that community. And that really needs to change. There really needs to be some collaboration. Some equity. If we go back to the presentation that we did for NCPH, there really needs to be some equity in the collaboration and these colonial spaces really need to recognize Native knowledge keepers on the same level as the PhD’s that they have in their institutions and make sure that we treat their knowledge equally as well as compensate them properly because in this modern day world, unfortunately we cannot live necessarily off the lands we used to, and therefore, the use of money to get food and things – that’s what we all live under these days. Therefore, we should consider these traditional people with that compensation or, possibly maybe doing something for the community if they would choose not to have money because some of these people don’t want money. So when that happens, there should be some sort of give and take going with the community as well to acknowledge what is that, to make sure we’re lifting it up and putting it on the same level as those that would write about it that come from outside the communities.
Beckley: Thank you. I think, Chris, I think we’re running up against our time limit here but I wanted to give you an opportunity to say anything that you wanted to say that I’ve left out – address any concerns that you have, or just promote yourself or your institute.
Newell: So, yes, once again we are the Akomawt Educational Initiative. You can find our website at www.akomawt.org. That’s the Passamaquoddy spelling. I know that the “k” sounds like a “g,” so that Akomawt, but it is a “k” in there. So, you can find out more information about what we’re doing and what we’re up to. We’re also on social media at Akomawt, on twitter at Akomawt as well as on Facebook, and those are the places that you can really see an up-to-date of what we’re up to in real time. And we have some other things that are coming up in the near future so follow our social media and keep an eye on our efforts – one of the things that we’re looking to do in the very near future is provide a database for Native American mascots for people who want to have conversations about that and to see the data about those schools and which ones have changed and all of the information. And in the future, possibly, a Native sourced website on treaties. So, once again, a very subjective history – we’re going to let tribes tell their own view of how treaties were historically signed with the U.S. government or with British government history. So, get a different side of the story as well. So that’s things you can look forward to from Akomawt. We look forward to this work – this is really something we’re all impassioned about, endawnis, Jason and I feel very strongly about this work and thank you so much for having us here to bring our voice to your podcast.
Once again, I want to thank Chris for taking the time to talk with us for this segment. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, or Native history in general, we will include a link to a great reading list compiled by Akomawt in our show notes, which you can find by going to blog.history.in.gov and clicking on Talking Hoosier History at the top.
We’ll be back next month with another episode of Talking Hoosier History. In the meantime, follow IHB on Facebook and twitter for daily doses of Indiana History tidbits. Subscribe, rate and review Talking Hoosier History wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening!
Show Notes for Giving Voice: Chris Newell:
Learn more about the Akomawt Educational Initiative at their website: akomawt.org.
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, or Native history in general, Akomawt has put together a phenomenal resource list, including websites, books and more. Find it here.
In the episode, Chris mentioned a database for Native American mascots that Akomawt was working on. In the intervening time since we spoke, that database has gone live and is a greats resource to learn about the history surrounding Native American Mascots, the conversations going on about the topic and ways to approach conversations on the topic. You can see that here.
Beckley: The bright day darkened as the summer sun disappeared from the sky on June 16, 1806 in present day western Ohio. The people looked up – some in fear or astonishment, but others as though they were expecting it – and they were. For what they were witnessing had been prophesied by their leader.
This is the story of the meteoric rise from obscurity of a vibrant political and religious leader, a story often overshadowed by that of his brother, Tecumseh. This is the story of Tenskwatawa, otherwise known as The Prophet.
In this, the first of a 2 part series, we tell how Tenskwatawa rose from anonymity in Western Ohio to become a prophet for many Indigenous peoples and the leading figure in a Native “revitalization” movement. In the next installment, we’ll explore how Tenskwatawa relocated his followers to the banks of the Tippecanoe River and worked to protect his movement by whatever means necessary, whether that meant forging alliances or employing violence.
I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Talking Hoosier History.
Before we get to the main story, there are a few things we need to put out there. This might take a while but it’s all really important for us to say – hang in there, we’ll get to the good stuff soon.
First, let’s talk about nomenclature. The most common ways to refer to the Native People of the United States–American Indian and Native American– are both problematic. Both come from outside the community that they try to describe, and both are trying to describe hundreds of different groups with just one phrase, a generalization that Native People themselves would never make. Ideally, to be accurate and respectful, we would always use the term a group uses to describe themselves, such as Shawnee or Miami, but in this case, multiple groups of people came together and intentionally set aside tribal affiliations.
In this episode, I’ll be using Native People or Indigenous People. As Native education specialist Chris Newall of the Passamaquoddy Tribe explained, neither of these terms link Native people to the nation which perpetrated a genocide against them. And one more note on nomenclature, Tenskwatawa’s name at birth was Lalawethika, meaning the Rattle or Noise-maker. He didn’t take the name Tenskwatawa, meaning “Open Door” or “The Prophet” until later in life, as part of his transformation into a religious and political leader. Today, to avoid confusion, I’ll be sticking to Tenskwatawa and the Prophet throughout.
We have been wanting to tell this story for a long time – the Indiana Historical Bureau has wanted to include more Native history in our work for years but, time and again, we’ve struggled with finding accurate language and utilizing Native sources, as well as forging sustained and mutually beneficial relationships with local native communities. We’ve produced problematic native history in the past – especially the mid-20th century – and we want to try our best to avoid making those same mistakes going forward.
But we do want to tell native history – in fact, we must tell native history, because native history is absolutely essential to understanding Indiana history, and to avoid telling it, no matter why, is a disservice to all Hoosiers. We strive to be ethical, respectful, and just in our representations while also understanding that, as non-natives, ours is inherently the perspective of the colonizers. All of this is to say – we know we won’t get it perfectly right, but we feel it’s imperative to try, and we sincerely hope that you’ll learn from this amazingly complex story nonetheless. Because this is a story that teaches us much about the complications and tensions between religion, politics, democracy, and land ownership – and similar tensions can be found throughout history all around the world. So let’s get to it.
[Flute Music]
Beckley: The story of Tenskwatawa’s rise to power starts before he was born. Just months before his 1775 birth, his father Puckshinwa, a member of the Shawnee tribe, died in the Battle of Point Pleasant. Puckshinwa died fighting for a cause that would eventually become central to his son’s life – the retention of Native land and culture. In 1768, seven years before Tenskwatawa’s birth, the colony of Virginia was looking to expand, and had their eyes on present day Kentucky. The people living on that land – members of the Delaware, Wyandot, Mingo and Shawnee tribes – had no desire to cede their land to the American colonists.
In a continuation of what by this time had become an established pattern, the government of Virginia approached a group willing to make a deal. Thinking of Native Peoples as one cohesive group with shared ambitions is a massive oversimplification. Various tribes had different goals, and even villages and clans within the same tribe could have competing objectives. British, American, and Native factions often used one another against each other. In this case, it was the Iroquois that the colonial government turned to. While the Iroquois did not live on the land, they claimed ancient conquest rights over it, ostensibly providing a loophole that the colonists would exploit. The Virginia government used this loophole to circumvent the land rights of the Native People living there, allowing them to “buy” Kentucky from the Iroquois for a pittance.
The resulting conflict between American Settlers and the Shawnee and Mingo people living on the land lasted for years. Tenskwatawa’s father was one of many killed in the battles, and the Shawnee of Kentucky were displaced to modern-day Ohio, which is where Tenskwatawa would be born and raised.
The disastrous effects of white encroachment on Tenskwatawa’s family continued even after the death of his father. When Tenskwatawa was a child, his mother, Methoataske, migrated west, leaving both Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh, and their siblings behind. While it’s unclear exactly why she left or why she didn’t take her children with her, it’s highly likely that she was fleeing the continued pressure being put on the Native groups in modern day Ohio by white encroachment.
Tenskwatawa would have heard the stories of his father’s sacrifice in his youth, felt the residual effects of his mother’s migration all of which were the result of incursions of Europeans into Native lands. In 1794, he watched his people fight for their land once again, this time against the American Republic rather than the British Colonies.
The conclusion of the American Revolution led directly to further European conflict with native groups when Britain ceded the Northwest Territory to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. That land had been occupied by a variety of Indigenous groups for millennia.
The Native Peoples had no representation at the proceedings, had not signed the treaty, and did not recognize the authority of Britain to sign over large swaths of their land to the Americans. When the US government began dividing and selling the land to white settlers, many of the Native factions in the area, including parts of the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Miami, and Wea tribes, formed a confederacy and fought for their homes in the Northwest Indian War. Ultimately, their confederacy was unsuccessful. Under great economic strain and military threat, they signed the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795, ceding much of present day Ohio to the Americans in exchange for just $20,000 worth of goods, or $400,000 in today’s currency.
This “Western Confederacy” of Natives was an attempt to preserve the land of the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Miami, Wea, and other Native Tribes for the people who already lived there. Following the collapse of the confederacy, a period of accommodationist policy prevailed. Under intense economic pressure, some leaders like Shawnee Chief Black Hoof, agreed to accept US government oversight, adopt European Agricultural methods, and make other concessions. People like Black Hoof saw these policies as an alternative to total cultural genocide. Of course, all of this is a very simplified version of a rich and complicated story. There could be a whole podcast dedicated to the westward expansion of the United States, and the Native resistance of various forms to that expansion, but I just wanted to make sure I laid some general ground work for what comes next.
All of this – Puckshinwa’s death at the Battle of Point Pleasant, Methoataske’s westward migration, the Shawnee involvement in the Western Confederacy, and the accommodationist policies that prevailed afterwards – all of it set the stage for Tenskwatawa’s rise to become one of the most powerful leaders of his time.
In the decades following the end of the Northwest Indian War, there was little to indicate what was to come from Tenskwatawa. By his own account, he drifted, at one point married and had children but couldn’t support them so he drifted some more. He drank too much, was an alcoholic, and became overly cynical. Then, in the fall of 1804, it happened – the prophecy.
The main account of the prophesy comes from an 1808 boon by Richard McNamar called The Kentucky Revival. Academic history’s reliance on written sources means that Native voices are often left out of Native stories. This is problematic.
Yet, in many cases these narratives written by white men are the only print sources we have recounting Native history and so, we can either use what sources we have access to, while acknowledging their limitations, or further the injustice by not telling the story at all. Many times, the sources on Native history that can be found in archives were created by men who actively promoted the destruction of the Native peoples through warfare, or the death of their culture through religious conversion and assimilation. This makes it incredibly important to understand the sources and the biases with which they were written.
In this case, we’re using McNamar’s Kentucky Revival for a few reasons. Written from the first-hand experience of a man of the Shaker faith, this book seems to lack many of the paternalistic, derisive overtones evident in many contemporary documents. This is because the author, as an envoy of the Shakers, was not in the Prophet’s settlement as a missionary bent on conversion, but rather as a delegate who suspected that the Spirit of God was at work there. In other words, he was there to learn about the religious awakening surrounding Tenskwatawa, rather than to try to teach the Native inhabitants about his own religion. For these reasons, we’re drawing on McNamar’s description of Tenskwatawa’s vision. It says that Tenskwatawa…
Voice actor reading from McNamar: “fell into a vision, in which he appeared to be travelling along a road, and came to where it forked – the right hand way he was informed led to happiness and the left to misery. This fork in the road, he was told, represented that stage of life in which people were convinced of sin; and those who took the right hand way quit everything that was wicked and became good. But the left hand road was for such as would go on and be bad, after they were shown the right way…On the left hand way he saw three houses – from the first and second were pathways that led across into the right hand road, but no way leading from the third: this, said he, is eternity. He saw vast crowds going swift along the left hand road, and great multitudes in each of the houses, under different degrees of judgment and misery…He was afterwards…taken along the right hand way, which was all interspersed with flowers of delicious smell and showed a house at the end of it where was everything beautiful, sweet, and pleasant, and still went on learning more and more; but in his first vision he saw nothing but the state of the wicked; from which, the Great Spirit told him to go and warn his people of their danger, and call upon them to put away their sins, and be good. “
Beckley: And with that mandate from the Great Spirit, Tenskwatawa awoke and began immediately preaching and spreading the message that he had received. He turned from all of the sins of his past and became a new man, more than a man – a prophet. And if this drunk, meandering man could reform his ways, he believed, surely all others could follow. And many did. Yet, there were those who balked at the prophecy, and Tenskwatawa at times dealt harshly with dissenters, even going so far as to execute them. The Great Spirit sent yet another vision, again recorded in McNamar’s Kentucky Revival:
Voice actor reading from McNamar: ”Whereupon the Great Spirit told him to separate from these wicked chiefs and their people, and showed him particularly where to come, towards the big fort where the peace was concluded with the Americans: and there make provision to receive and instruct all from the different tribes that were willing to be good.”
Beckley: “The big fort where the peace was concluded with the Americans” could only refer to one place. And so the Prophet and his followers removed themselves from the potentially corrupting influence of dissenting voices to the Fort Greenville area, constructed a town, and began calling other Native Peoples to Greenville to hear the Prophet’s message. But what was that message?
Our best source on what exactly Tenskwatawa was preaching while in Greenville is the transcript of a speech given in 1807 by Le Maigouis, a messenger of the prophet. In the speech, Le Maigouis speaks with the words of Tenskwatawa. After warning his people to limit their contact with Americans Tenskwatawa said:
Voice actor reading from Le Maigouis: “They are not your Fathers…but your Brethren… My Children, The Whites I placed on the other side of the Great Lake, that they might be a separate people – To them I…have given Cattle, Sheep, Swine and poultry for themselves only. You are not to keep any of these Animals, nor to eat their meat – To you I have given the Dear, the Bear, and all wild animals…and the Corn that grows in the fields, for your own use – and you are not to give your Meat or your Corn to the Whites to eat.
My Children, You must not get drunk. It is a great sin…you must not drink one drop of Whiskey. It is the drink of the evil spirit…
My Children, You must kill no more Animals than are necessary to feed and clothe you…”
Beckley: That’s a sampling of the various instructions meant to keep his followers free from the influence of white culture, and today when we learn about the Prophet’s teachings in school, this portion of his message is always present. Historian James Madison’s textbook Hoosiers and the American Story says, “[Tenskwatawa] convinced many Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware to turn from the bad habits of the white man and return to Indian tradition.” And that’s absolutely true. But The Prophet also advocated a departure from some Native traditions as well.
One example of this is his denouncement of the mishaami, or medicine bags:
Voice actor reading from Le Maigouis: “Your wise men have had medicine in their bags – they must throw away their medicine bags and when the medicine is in blossom collect it fresh and pure.”
Beckley: These medicine bags were bundles of herbs that played a part in the religion of the Shawnee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and other tribes. It was believed that they were able to heal the wounded, and they had been a traditional remedy for generations. Yet, Tenskwatawa deemed them of the evil spirit and required his followers to burn them. He also banned specific traditional dances, saying:
Voice actor reading from Le Maigouis: “You are no more to dance the Wabano, nor the Piogan or pipe dance – I did not put you on the earth to dance those dances, but you are to dance naked with your bodies painted and with the Poigamangum in your hands.”
Beckley: What became the main objectives of Tenskwatawa’s movement was also laid out in the message:
Voice actor reading from Le Maigouis: “You are however never to go to War against each other, But to cultivate peace between your different Tribes that they may become one great people.”
Beckley: “That they may become one great people…” What Tenskwatawa was advocating for here was more than a confederacy such as had been seen in the past. He was calling for the total abandonment of tribal affiliations – no longer would there be Shawnee, Potawatomi, Miami, Kickapoo, or Iroquois. Rather, all Native People would become one Pan-Indian nation with Tenskwatawa as their sole leader – both spiritually and politically. Le Maigouis, who carried Tenskwatawa’s message of unity, also carried a warning for those who refused to comply:
Voice actor reading from Le Maigouis: “Those Villages which do not listen to this talk . . . will be cut off from the face of the Earth.”
Beckley: To Tenskwatawa, his political goal of preventing further land loss was inextricably tied to his spiritual goal of uniting all Native People as one. One could not be done without the other. And for his spiritual goal to be achieved, his followers had to have faith in him as their prophet. As the movement spread and Tenskwatawa gained political strength, U.S. territorial leadership began questioning his spiritual powers in an attempt to weaken his influence. In a letter to the followers of Tenskwatawa, Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison wrote,
Voice actor reading from Harrison: “Who is this pretended prophet who dares to speak in the name of the Great Creator. Demand of him some proofs at least of his being the messenger of the Deity. If God has really employed him he has doubtless authorized him to perform some miracles, that he may be known and received as a prophet. Ask of him to cause the sun to stand still – the moon to alter its course – the rivers to cease to flow – or the dead to rise from their graves. If he does these things, you may then believe that he has been sent from God.”
Beckley: Almost as if in direct response to this taunt, Tenskwatawa sent envoys to many surrounding Native villages carrying his message, calling followers and skeptics alike to join him at Greenville for a demonstration of the power possessed by the Prophet – For on June 16, 1806, Tenskwatawa would put out the sun.
And this is where we’ll end part 1 of the story of Tenskwatawa. In part 2, we’ll see the teachings of The Prophet begin to spread and demand the attention of U.S. government officials in the area soon after he and his followers relocate to the banks of the Tippecanoe River in present day Indiana. We’ll also examine his relationship with Indiana Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison, including the battle of Tippecanoe, and the War of 1812 in order to better understand how Tenskwatawa’s uniquely successful movement began to come apart.
Join us in two weeks for a very special segment of Giving Voice. I’ll be talking with Chris Newall, the Director of Education at the Akomawt Education Initiative. Akomawt is an initiative dedicated to changing the ways in which we teach and learn about Native History, and we were so happy to have the chance to chat.
Once again, I’m Lindsey Beckley and this has been Talking Hoosier History. Talking Hoosier History is a product of the Indiana Historical Bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library. Talking Hoosier History is written by me, Lindsey Beckley. Production and sound engineering by Jill Weiss Simins. Thanks to Justin Clark for lending his voice to the show, and to Dr. Michella Marino for all of her wonderful help with the script.
The music for today’s episode was written and performed by award-winning flute player Darren Thompson from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Indian Reservation in Northern Wisconsin. You can learn more about Darren’s work to promote American Indian cultural awareness as well as listen and buy his music on his website darrenthompson.net. We’ll put that link in the show notes.
The book The Gods of Prophetstown by Adam Jortner was my main secondary source for this episode. If you would like to see all of my sources, visit blog.history.in.gov and click “Talking Hoosier History” at the top to see a full transcript and show notes. If you enjoy Talking Hoosier History and would like to help spread the word, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening!
Show Notes for Tenskwatawa: The Making of a Prophet
Music
All music in this episode was produced by award-winning flute player Darren Thompson from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Indian Reservation in Northern Wisconsin. You can learn more about Darren’s work to promote American Indian cultural awareness as well as listen and buy his music on his website darrenthompson.net.
The tracks heard in this episode are:
“The Creation Song”
“Eagle Whistle Song”
“Night Traveler”
Books
Calloway, Colin, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
Calloway, Collin, The Shawnees and the War for America, New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
Cayton, Andrew, Frontier Indiana, Bloomington: IU Press, 1998.
Dubar-Ortiz, Roxanne, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.
Edmunds, David, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership, New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.
Edmunds, David, The Shawnee Prophet, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Gugin, Linda and St. Clair. James, Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, pgs 346-348.
Harrison, William Henry, Messages and Letter of William Henry Harrison, 1773-1841, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1922.
Jortner, Adam, The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Kinietz, Vernon, and Voegelin, Ermine, Shawnese Traditions C.C. Trowbridge’s Account, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1939.
Madison, James, and Sandweiss, Lee Ann, Hoosiers and the American Sotry, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2014
McNemar, Richard, The Kentucky revival, or, A short history of the late extraordinary outpouring of the spirit of God in the western states of America: agreeably to Scripture promises and prophecies concerning the latter day: with a brief account of the entrance and progress of what the world call Shakerism among the subjects of the late revival in Ohio and Kentucky : presented to the true Zion-traveler as a memorial of the wilderness journey, New York: Reprinted by Edward O. Jenkins, 1846.
Michigan Historical Commission, Michigan Historical Collections, Vol 40, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2006, pages 127-133.
Sugden, John, Tecumseh: A Life, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.
Warren, Stephen, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870, Illinois: University of Illinois, 2005.
Describing the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt for the 2014 Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts, conservative political writer George E. Will stated:
The presidency is like a soft leather glove, and it takes the shape of the hand that’s put into it. And when a very big hand is put into it and stretches the glove — stretches the office — the glove never quite shrinks back to what it was. So we are all living today with an office enlarged permanently by Franklin Roosevelt. [1]
Seventy-five years after President Roosevelt’s death, the debate continues over how much power the president should have, especially in regards to taking military action against a foreign power. On January 9, 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to restrict that power, requiring congressional authorization for further action against Iran. The issue now moves to the Senate.
But the arguments over this balance of war powers are not new. In fact, in 1935, Indiana congressmen Louis Ludlow forwarded a different solution altogether – an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow a declaration of war only after a national referendum, that is, a direct vote of the American people. Had the Ludlow Amendment passed, the U.S. would only engage militarily with a foreign power if the majority of citizens agreed that the cause was just. Ludlow’s ideas remain interesting today as newspaper articles and op-eds tell us the opinions of our Republican and Democratic representatives regarding the power of the legislative branch versus the executive branch in declaring war or military action. But what do the American people think, especially those who would have to fight? According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, “The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 80 countries,” and the New York Timesreported last year that we now have troops in “nearly every country.” [2] But what does it mean to say “we” have troops in these countries? And does that mean that we are at war? Do the American people support the deployment of troops to Yemen? Somalia? Syria? Niger? Does the average American even know about these conflicts?
Stephanie Savell and 5W Infographics, “This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is Combatting Terrorism,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2019.
Expanding Executive War Power
Many don’t know, partly because the nature of war has changed since WWII. We have a paid professional military as opposed to drafted private citizens, which removes the realities of war from the daily lives of most Americans. Drone strikes make war seem even more obscure compared to boots on the ground, while cyber warfare abstracts the picture further. [3] But Americans also remain unaware of our military actions because “U.S. leaders have studiously avoided being seen engaging in ‘war,’” according to international news magazine the Diplomat. [4] In fact, Congress has not officially declared war since World War II. [5] Instead, today, Congress approves “an authorization of the use of force,” which can be “fuzzy” and “open-ended.” [6] Despite the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973, which was intended to balance war powers between the president and Congress, presidents have consistently found ways to deploy troops without congressional authorization. [7] And today, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution, passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, justified an even greater extension of executive power in deploying armed forces.[8]
“To Give to the People the Right to Decide . . .”
Indiana congressman Louis L. Ludlow (Democrat – U.S. House of Representatives, 1929-1949), believed the American people should have the sole power to declare war through a national referendum. [9] After all, the American people, not Congress and not the President, are tasked with fighting these wars. Starting in the 1930s, Representative Ludlow worked to amend the Constitution in order to put such direct democracy into action. He nearly succeeded. And as the debate continues today over who has the power to send American troops into combat and what the United States’ role should be in the world, his arguments concerning checks and balances on war powers remain relevant.
“Portrait of Indiana Politician Louis Ludlow, Indiana,” photograph, 1929, accessed Indiana Album.
Ludlow maintained two defining viewpoints that could be easily misinterpreted, and thus are worth examining up front. First, Ludlow was an isolationist, but not for the same reasons as many of his peers, whose viewpoints were driven by the prevalent xenophobia, racism, and nativism rooted in the 1920s. In fact, Ludlow was a proponent of equal rights for women and African Americans throughout his career. [10] Ludlow’s isolationism was instead influenced by the results of a post-WWI congressional investigation showing the influence of foreign propaganda and munitions and banking interests in profiting off the conflict. [11]
Second, Ludlow was not a pacifist. He believed in just wars waged in the name of freedom, citing the American Revolution and the Union cause during the American Civil War. [12] He supported the draft during WWI and backed the war effort through newspaper articles. [13] Indeed, he even voted with his party, albeit reluctantly, to enter WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. [14] He believed a direct attack justified a declaration of war and included this caveat in his original resolution. What he did not believe in was entering war under the influence of corporations or propaganda. He wanted informed citizens, free of administrative or corporate pressure, to decide for themselves if a cause was worth their lives. He wrote, “I am willing to die for my beloved country but I am not willing to die for greedy selfish interests that want to use me as their pawn.” [15]
So, who was Louis Ludlow and how did he come to advocate for this bold amendment?
“I Must and Would Prove My Hoosier Blood”
Ludlow described himself as a “Hoosier born and bred” in his 1924 memoir of his early career as a newspaper writer. [16] He was born June 24, 1873 in a log cabin near Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana. His parents encouraged his interests in politics and writing, and after he graduated high school in 1892, he went to Indianapolis “with food prepared by his mother and a strong desire to become a newspaperman.” [17]
He landed his first job with the Indianapolis Sun upon arrival in the Hoosier capital but quickly realized he needed more formal education. He briefly attended Indiana University before becoming seriously ill and returning to his parents’ home. After he recovered, he spent some time in New York City, but returned to Indianapolis in 1895. He worked for two newspapers, one Democratic (Sentinel) and one Republican (Journal) and the Indianapolis Press from 1899-1901. While he mainly covered political conventions and campaign speeches, he interviewed prominent suffrage worker May Wright Sewall and former President Benjamin Harrison, among other notables. He also became a correspondent for the (New York) World. [18]
In 1901, the Sentinel sent Ludlow to Washington as a correspondent, beginning a twenty-seven-year career of covering the capital. During this time, he worked long hours, expanded his political contacts, and distributed his stories to more and more newspapers. He covered debates in Congress during World War I and was influenced by arguments that membership in the League of Nations would draw the U.S. further into conflict.[19] By 1927 he was elected president of the National Press Club. He was at the height of his journalistic career and had a good rapport and reputation within the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Ludlows Vote Early,” Indianapolis Star, November 7, 1928, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
With the backing of Democratic political boss Thomas Taggart, Ludlow began his first congressional campaign at the end of 1927 and announced his candidacy officially on February 23, 1928. [20] The Greencastle Daily Herald quoted part of Ludlow’s announcement speech, noting that the candidate stated, “some homespun honesty in politics is a pressing necessity in Indiana.” [21] He won the Democratic primary in May 1928 and then campaigned against Republican Ralph E. Updike, offering Hoosiers “redemption” from the influence of the KKK. [22] Ludlow “swept to an impressive victory” over Updike in November 1928, as the only Democrat elected from 269 Marion County precincts. [23] He took his seat as the Seventh District U.S. Representative from Indiana on March 4, 1929. [24]
The Indianapolis Star noted that while Ludlow was only a freshman congressman, his many years in Washington as a correspondent had made him “familiar with the workings of the congressional machinery” and “well known to all [House] members,” earning him the “confidence and respect of Republicans and Democrats alike.” [25] The Star claimed: “Perhaps no man ever entering Congress has had the good will of so many members on both sides of the aisle.” [26] This claim was supported by Ludlow’s colleagues on the other side of that aisle. Republican senator James E. Watson of Indiana stated in 1929, “Everybody has a fondness for Louis Ludlow, and as a congressional colleague, he shall have the co-operation of my office in the advancement of whatever he considers in the interest of his constituency.” [27] Republican representative John Cable of Ohio agreed stating:
Louis Ludlow has character and ability. He is the sort of a man who commands the respect and confidence of men and women without regard to party lines. He will have the co-operation of his colleagues of Congress, Republican as well as Democrats, and no doubt will render a high class service for his district.[28]
Cable went so far as to recommend Ludlow for the vice-presidential candidate for the 1932 election.
Ludlow achieved some modest early economic successes for his constituents, including bringing a veterans hospital and an air mail route to Indianapolis. By 1930, however, he set his sights on limiting government bureaucracy and became interested in disarmament as a method to reduce government spending. Concurrently, he threw his support behind the London Naval Treaty which limited the arms race, and he became a member of the Indiana World Peace Committee. During the 1930 election, he stressed his accomplishments and appealed to women, African American, Jews, veterans, businessmen, and labor unions. He was easily reelected by over 30,000 votes. [29]
Back at work in the House, he sponsored an amendment to the Constitution in 1932 to give women “equal rights throughout the United States” which would have addressed legal and financial barriers to equality. He was unsuccessful but undaunted. He introduced an equal rights amendment in 1933, 1936, 1939, 1943, and 1945. [30] [A separate post would be needed to do justice to his work on behalf of women’s rights.] He also worked to make the federal government responsible for investigating lynching, as opposed to the local communities where the injustice occurred. He introduced several bills in 1938 that would have required FBI agents to investigate lynchings as a deterrent to this hate crime, but they were blocked by Southern Democrats. His main focus between 1935 and 1945 was advocating for the passage of legislation to restrict the government’s war powers and end corporate war profiteering.
“To Remove The Profit Incentive to War”
[McAllen, Texas] Monitor, January 11, 1938, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.In 1934 the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, known as the Nye Committee after its chairman Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND), began to investigate the undue influence of munitions interests on U.S. entry into WWI. Like many Americans, Ludlow was profoundly disturbed by the committee’s conclusions. As Germany rearmed and Hitler’s power grew during the 1930s, Ludlow worried that the threat of a second world war loomed and the U.S. government, especially the executive branch was vulnerable to the influence of profiteers, as highlighted by the Nye Committee reports. He stated:
I am convinced from my familiarity with the testimony of the Nye committee and my study of this question that a mere dozen – half a dozen international financiers and half a dozen munitions kings, with a complaisant President in the White House at Washington – could maneuver this country into war at any time, so great are their resources and so far reaching is their power. I pray to God we may never have a President who will lend himself to such activities, but, after all, Presidents are human, and many Presidents have been devoted to the material aggrandizement of our country to the exclusion of spiritual values . . . [31]
Although he admired President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s diplomatic abilities Ludlow thought, as historian Walter R. Griffin asserted, that “it was entirely possible that a future President might very well possess more sordid motives and plan to maneuver the country into war against the wishes of the majority of citizens.” [32] As a protection against the susceptibility of the legislative and especially the executive branches to financial pressures of the munitions industry, Ludlow introduced a simple two-part resolution [HR-167] before the House of Representatives in January 1935. It would amend the Constitution to require a vote of the people before any declaration of war. He summed up the two sections of his bill in a speech before the House in February 1935: “First. To give the people who have to pay the awful costs of war the right to decide whether there shall be war. Second. To remove the profit incentive to war.” [33] He believed that the resolution gave to American citizens “the right to a referendum on war, so that when war is declared it will be the solemn, consecrated act of the people themselves, and not the act of conscienceless, selfish interests using the innocent young manhood of the Nation as its pawns.”[34]
More specifically, Section One stated that unless the U.S. was attacked, Congress could not declare war without a majority vote in a national referendum. And Section Two provided that once war was declared, all properties, factories, supplies, workers, etc. necessary to wage war would be taken over by the government. Those companies would then be reimbursed at a rate not exceeding 4% higher than their previous year’s tax values. [35] This would remove the profit incentive and thus any immoral reasons for a declaration of war.
In an NBC Radio address in March 19235, Ludlow told the public:
The Nye committee has brought out clearly, plainly and so unmistakably that it must hit every thinking persons in the face, the fact that unless we write into the constitution of the United States a provision reserving to the people the right to declare war and taking the profits out of war we shall wake up to find ourselves again plunged into the hell of war . . . [36]
He added that “a declaration of war is the highest act of sovereignty. It is a responsibility of such magnitude that it should rest on the people themselves . . .” [37]
Ludlow’s resolution, soon known as the Ludlow Amendment, was immediately referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. During committee hearings in June 1935, no one spoke in opposition to the bill and yet the committee did not report on the resolution to the House before the end of the first session in August, nor when they reconvened in 1936. Ludlow attempted to force its consideration with a discharge petition but couldn’t round up enough congressional signatures. Congress was busy creating a second round of New Deal legislation intended to combat the Great Depression and was less concerned with the war clouds gathering over Europe. Despite Ludow’s passionate advocacy both in the House and to the public, his bill languished in committee. In February 1937, he made a fresh attempt, dividing Sections One and Two into separate bills. The same obstacles persisted, and despite gathering more congressional support for his discharge petition, these resolutions too remained in committee. [38]
Harris & Ewing, “Louis Ludlow,” photograph, Harris & Ewing photograph collection, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Library of Congress caption: Denouncing the present war-declaring mechanism as ‘autocratic,’ Rep. Louis Ludlow appealed for approval of a constitutional amendment requiring a Nat’l referendum on participation in a foreign war.
“What Might Have Been”
During a special session called by Roosevelt in November 1937 (to introduce what has become known as the “court-packing plan”), Ludlow was able to obtain the necessary signatures to release his resolution from committee. While congressional support for the Ludlow Amendment had increased, mainly due to the advocacy of its namesake, opposition had unified as well. Opponents argued that it would reduce the power of the president to the degree that the president would lose the respect of foreign powers and ultimately make the U.S. less safe. Others argued that it completely undermined representative government by circumventing Congress and thus erode U.S. republican democracy. Veterans’ organizations like the American Legion were among its opponents, and National Commander Daniel J. Doherty combined these arguments into a public statement before the January 1939 House vote. He stated that the bill “would seriously impair the functions and utility of our Department of State, the first line of our national defense.” He continued: “The proposed amendment implies lack of confidence on the part of our people in the congressional representatives. This is not in accord with the facts. Other nations would readily interpret it as a sign of weakness.” [39] The Indianapolis Star compared the debates over the resolution to “dynamite” in the House of Representatives. And while Ludlow had the backing of “1,000 nationally known persons,” who issued statements of support, his opponents had the backing of President Roosevelt who continued to expand the powers of the executive branch. In a final vote the Ludlow Amendment was defeated 209-188. [40]
Ludlow continued to be a supporter of Roosevelt and when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Indiana congressman voted to declare war, albeit reluctantly. He stated:
Japan has determined my vote in the present situation. If the United States had not been attacked I would not vote for a war declaration but we have been attacked . . . American blood has been spilled and American lives have been lost . . . We should do everything that is necessary to defend ourselves and to see that American lives and property are made secure. That is the first duty and obligation of sovereignty. [41]
[Indianapolis] Jewish Post, November 3, 1944, 4, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.After the close of World War II, Louis Ludlow continued his work for peace at an international level, calling on the United Nations to ban the atomic bomb. But he no longer advocated for his bill, stating that with the introduction of the bomb and other advanced war technology it was “now too late for war referendums.” [42] He told Congress in 1948:
Looking backward, I cannot escape the belief that the death of the resolution was one of the tragedies of all time. The leadership of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth might have deflected the thinking of the world into peaceful channels. Instead, we went ahead with tremendous pace in the invention of destruction . . . I cannot help thinking what might have been. [43]
Ludlow continued his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives until January 1949 after choosing not to seek reelection. Instead of retiring, he returned to the Capitol press gallery where his career had begun some fifty years earlier. And before his death in 1950, he wrote a weekly Washington column for his hometown newspaper, the Indianapolis Star.
“The People . . . Need to Have a Major Voice in the Use of Force . . .”
Ludlow’s eighty-five-year-old argument for giving Americans a greater voice in declaring war gives us food for thought in the current debate over war powers. Today, the conversation has veered away from Ludlow’s call for a direct referendum, but the right of the people’s voices to be heard via their elected representatives is being argued over heatedly in Congress. Many writers for conservative-leaning journals such as the National Review agree with their liberal counterparts at magazines like the New Yorker, that Congress needs to reassert their constitutional right under Article II to declare war and reign in the powers of the executive branch. This, they argue, is especially important in an era where the “enemy” is not as clearly defined as it had been during the World Wars. Writing for the National Review in 2017, Andrew McCarthy argued:
The further removed the use of force is from an identifiable threat to vital American interests, the more imperative it is that Congress weighs in, endorses or withholds authorization for combat operations . . . to ensure that military force is employed only for political ends that are worth fighting for, and that the public will perceive as worth fighting for. [44]
Writing for the New Yorker in 2017, Jeffery Frank agreed, stating:
The constitution is a remarkable document, and few question a President’s power to respond if the nation is attacked. But the founders could not have imagined a world in which one person, whatever his rank or title, would have the authority to order the preemptive use of nuclear weapons – an action that . . . now seems within the realm of possibility. [45]
And in describing the nonpartisan legal group Protect Democracy’s work to create a “roadmap” for balancing congressional and executive powers, conservative writer David French wrote for the National Review that “requiring congressional military authorizations in all but the most emergency of circumstances will grant the public a greater voice in the most consequential decisions any government can make.” [46]
So, if many liberals and conservatives agree that Congress should hold the balance of war powers, who is resisting a return to congressional authorization for military conflicts? According to the Law Library of Congress, the answer would be all modern U.S. Presidents. The library’s website explains that “U.S. Presidents have consistently taken the position that War Powers Resolution is an unconstitutional infringement upon the power of the executive branch” and found ways to circumvent its constraints. [47]
This bloating of executive war power is exactly what Ludlow feared. When his proposed amendment was crushed by the force of the Roosevelt administration, Ludlow held no personal resentment against FDR. He believed that this particular president would always carefully weigh the significance of a cause before risking American lives. Instead, Ludlow’s feared how expanded executive war powers might be used by some future president. In a January 5, 1936 letter, Ludlow wrote:
No stauncher friend of peace ever occupied the executive office than President Roosevelt, but after all, the period of one President’s service is but a second in the life of a nation, and I shudder to think what might happen to our beloved country sometime in the future if a tyrant of Napoleonic stripe should appear in the White House, grab the war power, and run amuck. [48]
A bridge between Ludlow’s argument and contemporary calls for Congress to reassert its authority can be found in the words of more recent Hoosier public servants. Former Democratic U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton and Republican Senator Richard Lugar testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 28, 2009 on “War Powers in the 21st Century.” Senator Lugar stated:
Under our Constitution, decisions about the use of force involve the shared responsibilities of the President and the Congress, and our system works best when the two branches work cooperatively in reaching such decisions. While this is an ideal toward which the President and Congress may strive, it has sometimes proved to be very hard to achieve in practice . . . The War Powers Resolution has not proven to be a panacea, and Presidents have not always consulted formally with the Congress before reaching decisions to introduce U.S. force into hostilities . . . [49]
In 2017, in words that echo Rep. Ludlow’s arguments, Rep. Hamilton reiterated that “the people who have to do the fighting and bear the costs need to have a major voice in the use of force, and the best way to ensure that is with the involvement of Congress.”[50] While the “enemy” may change and while technology further abstracts war, the questions about war powers remain remarkably consistent: Who declares war and does this reflect the will of the people who will fight in those conflicts? By setting aside current political biases and looking to the past, we can sometimes see more clearly into the crux of the issues. Ludlow would likely be surprised that the arguments have changed so little and that we’re still sorting it out.
Richard F. Grimmet, “War Powers Resolution: Presidential Compliance,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, September 25, 2012, accessed Federation of American Scientists.
Walter R. Griffin, “Louis Ludlow and the War Referendum Crusade, 1935-1941” Indiana Magazine of History 64:4 (December 1968), 270-272, accessed Indiana University Scholarworks.
___________________________________________
Footnotes:
[1]The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, A Film by Ken Burns, Premiered September 14, 2014, accessed Public Broadcasting Service.
Kreps writes that this “light footprint warfare,” made possible by technological advancement, creates a “gray zone” in which it’s unclear which actors are responsible for what results, thus fragmenting opposition.
[6] Garance Franke-Tura, “All the Previous Declarations of War,” The Atlantic, August 31, 2013; Robert P. George and Michael Stokes Paulsen, “Authorize Force Now,” National Review, February 26, 2014.
Franke-Tura wrote about congressional use of force in Syria in 2013: “If history is any guide, that’s going to be a rather open-ended commitment, as fuzzy on the back-end as on the front.” Writing for the National Review in 2014, Robert P. George and Michael Stokes Paulsen agreed that in all cases of engaging in armed conflict not in response to direct attack, the president’s power to engage U.S. in military conflict (without an attack on the U.S.) is “sufficiently doubtful” and “dubious.”
While the purpose of the War Powers Resolution, or War Powers Act, was to ensure balance between the executive and legislative branches in sending U.S. armed forces into hostile situations, “U.S. Presidents have consistently taken the position that War Powers Resolution is an unconstitutional infringement upon the power of the executive branch” and found ways to circumvent its constraints, according to the Law Library of Congress. Examples include President Reagan’s deployment of Marines to Lebanon starting in 1982, President George H. W. Bush’s building of forces for Operation Desert Shield starting in 1990, and President Clinton’s use of airstrikes and peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
Writer and National Review editor Jim Geraghty wrote in 2013: “There are those who believe the War Powers Act is unconstitutional – such as all recent presidents . . .” Journals as politically diverse as the National Review and its liberal counterpart the New Yorker, are rife with articles and opinion pieces debating the legality and constitutionality of the Act. Despite their leanings, they are widely consistent in calling on Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war and reign in the war powers of the executive branch.
According to the Law Library of Congress, in 2001, Congress transferred more war power to President George W. Bush through Public Law 107-40, authorizing him to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against nations, groups, or even individuals who aided the September 11 attacks.
[9] Louis Ludlow, Hell or Heaven (Boston: The Stratford Company, 1937).
[10] Walter R. Griffin, “Louis Ludlow and the War Referendum Crusade, 1935-1941,” Indiana Magazine of History 64, no. 4 (December 1968), 270-272, accessed Indiana University Scholarworks. Griffin downplays Ludlow’s early congressional career, however, he pushed for many Progressive Era reforms. Ludlow worked for an equal rights amendment for women, an anti-lynching bill, and the repeal of Prohibition.
[11]Ibid.; United States Congress,“Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry (The Nye Report),” Senate, 74th Congress, Second Session, February 24, 1936, 3-13, accessed Mount Holyoke College.
[12] “Speech of Hon. Louis Ludlow of Indiana, in the U.S. House of Representatives,” February 19, 1935, Congressional Record, 74th Congress, First Session, Pamphlets Collection, Indiana State Library.
[13] Ernest C. Bolt, Jr., “Reluctant Belligerent: The Career of Louis Ludlow” in Their Infinite Variety: Essays on Indiana Politicians, eds. Robert Barrows and Shirley S. McCord, (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1981): 363-364.
[15] Louis Ludlow, Public Letter, March 8, 1935, Ludlow War Referendum Scrapbooks, Lilly Library, Indiana University, cited in Griffin, 273.
[16] Louis Ludlow, From Cornfield to Press Gallery: Adventures and Reminiscences of a Veteran Washington Correspondent (Washington D.C., 1924), 1. The section title also comes from this source and page. Ludlow was referring to the Hoosier tendency to write books exhibited during the Golden Age of Indiana Literature.
[20] “Evans Wollen Is Best of the Democrats,” Greencastle Herald, November 7, 1927, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; Charles J. Arnold, “Say!,” Greencastle Herald, February 24, 1928, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[23] “G.O.P. Wins in Marion County,” Greencastle Herald, November 7, 1927, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Ludlow Wins Congress Seat,” Indianapolis Star, November 27, 1928, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[24] Everett C. Watkins, “Ludlow Will Leap from Press Gallery to Floor of Congress,” Indianapolis Star, March 3, 1929, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
[30] “Discuss Women’s Rights,” Nebraska State Journal, March 24, 1932, 3, accessed Newspapers.com; “Women Argue in Favor of Changes in Nation’s Laws,” Jacksonville (Illinois) Daily Journal, March 24, 1932, 5, accessed Newspapers.com; “Woman’s Party Condemns Trial of Virginia Patricide,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1925, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Equal Rights Demanded,” Ada (Oklahoma)Weekly News, January 5, 1939, 7, accessed Newspapers.com; Bolt, 383.
The National League of Women Voters crafted the language of the original bill which Ludlow then sponsored and introduced. In 1935, the organization passed a resolution that “expressed gratitude . . . to Representative Louis Ludlow of Indiana for championing women’s rights.”
[31] “Ludlow Asks War Act Now,” Indianapolis Star, March 13, 1935, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
[33] “Speech of Hon. Louis Ludlow of Indiana, in the U.S. House of Representatives,” February 19, 1935, Congressional Record, 74th Congress, First Session, Pamphlets Collection, Indiana State Library.
[38] “To Amend the Constitution with Respect to the Declaration of War,” Hearing before Subcommittee No. 2 of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, 74th Congress, First Session, On H. J. Res. 167, accessed HathiTrust; Griffin, 274-275.
[39] Everett C. Watkins, “Ludlow Bill ‘Dynamite’ in House Today,” Indianapolis Star, January 10, 1938, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[48] Louis Ludlow to William Bigelow, January 5, 1936, in Griffin, 282.
[49] U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, War Powers in the 21st Century, April 28, 2009, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 111th Congress, First Session, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Press, 2010), accessed govinfo.gov.
IHB’s Talking Hoosier History podcast team is excited to announce our 2020 release dates. New episodes will be available every six weeks on topics ranging from an indigenous prophet to the history relevance movement to Indiana suffragists. Here’s to a new year of Indiana history. Happy listening and learning!
Photograph by M. B. Parkinson (New York: 1890), Special Collections, University of Virginia.
This has been adapted from its original August 22, 2019 publication in the Weekly View.
Was a Hoosier the inspiration behind the book that sold more copies in the 19th century than any other book except the Bible—Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly? It’s a distinct possibility. Stowe penned the novel during a fearful time in America for persons of color. Fleeing intolerable conditions wrought by enslavement, many risked a perilous journey to the North. This was America after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which mandated that residents of free states return fleeing slaves to their masters or face imprisonment or fines. The country was at odds over the issue of slavery and as to the responsibility of individuals in protecting the peculiar institution. It appeared America was edging ever closer to being torn in two.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes, c. 1856, courtesy metmuseum.org, accessed Britannica.org.
Moved by these events, young abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe put pen to paper and wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, hoping to appeal to the heart and conscience of the nation. The National Era serialized the narrative, with the first of forty chapters appearing on June 5, 1851. A year later it was published in book form and quickly became the most widely-read book in the U.S., selling 300,000 copies in 1852 alone. Stowe’s realistic depiction of American slavery through the character of “Uncle Tom” mobilized support for abolition, particularly in the North.
Playwrights adapted the popular story for the stage, but in doing so distorted Stowe’s original depiction of Tom in order to attract bigger audiences. Readers encountered a benevolent, but deeply convicted character, who would rather lose his life than reveal the location of two enslaved women hiding from their abusive master. The stage version depicts Tom as a doddering, ignorant man, so eager to please his master that he would sell out fellow persons of color. Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology at Ferris State University, notes that because of the “perversion” of Stowe’s portrayal, today “in many African American communities ‘Uncle Tom’ is a slur used to disparage a black person who is humiliatingly subservient or deferential to white people.” Despite the modern implications of the term “Uncle Tom,” the Antebellum stage productions further propelled Americans to take action against the plight of enslaved people in the mid-19th century.
While Stowe acknowledged that the inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin came from an 1849 autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, she’d had personal interactions with former slaves who she had met while living in Cincinnati. She was also familiar with Quaker settlements, which “have always been refuges for the oppressed and outlawed slave.” [1] In a companion book, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe documented “the truth of the work,” [2] writing that the novel was “a collection and arrangement of real incidents . . . grouped together . . . in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture.” [3]
Although Stowe does not mention him by name, Indianapolis residents and newspapers credited a local man with influencing her book: Thomas “Uncle Tom” Magruder. Tom had been enslaved by the Noble family. Dr. Thomas Noble gave up his medical practice and became a planter in Frederick County, Virginia when his brother gave him a plantation sometime after 1782. Tom Magruder was probably one of the slaves on this plantation who, in 1795, were forced to move with Dr. Noble to Boone County, Kentucky, where he established “Bellevue” farm.
Tom managed the farm during his enslavement until 1830, when both Dr. Noble and Elizabeth Noble had passed away. He was “permitted to go free” [4] and he moved his family to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, likely to a free slave settlement. In 1831, Dr. Noble’s son, Indiana Governor Noah Noble, brought the aged Tom and his wife, Sarah, to Indianapolis. There, he had a cabin built for them on a portion of a large tract of land that he had acquired east of the city. The dwelling that became known as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was located on the northeast corner of Noble (now College Avenue) and Market Street. Eventually Tom and Sarah Magruder’s daughter, Louisa Magruder, and granddaughter Martha, known as “Topsy,” joined the household. Tom was a member of Roberts Park Methodist Church and was an “enthusiastic worshipper—his ‘amens,’ ‘hallelujahs,’ and ‘glorys’ being . . . frequent and fervent.” [5]
Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1868, Lenox Library Association, courtesy of Digital Commonwealth, Massachusetts Collections Online.
Living a few blocks from Tom at the southwest corner of Ohio and New Jersey in the 1840s was Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, white pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church. [6] He was “a constant visitor of Uncle Tom’s, well acquainted with his history, and a sincere admirer of his virtues.” [7] Like the main character in Stowe’s novel, Tom Magruder was a “very religious old Negro;” [8] of commanding appearance, his “open, gentle, manly countenance made him warm friends of all persons, white and black, who became acquainted with him.” [9]
It is known that Rev. Beecher mentioned the venerable gentleman in a sermon, which may have been when he preached on slavery on May 34, 1846. [10] Harriet Beecher Stowe visited her brother in Indianapolis that summer and may have accompanied him on one of his frequent visits to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is possible that she left the city with the future title of her novel and its main character in mind. It is likely that the names of the Magruder sons—Moses and Peter—and the name of their granddaughter Topsy remained with Stowe to later find their way into her tale of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. [11]
Jacob Piatt Dunn, Greater Indianapolis; The History, the Industries, the Institutions, and the People of a City of Homes (Indianapolis Public Library, 1910), 242, accessed Archive.org.
Tom Magruder died on February 22, 1857 at about 110 years old. He was buried in the Noble family lot at the city’s Greenlawn Cemetery. At the time of his death, there was a universal belief in Indianapolis that “there are some circumstances which give it an air of probability” [12] that “Old Tom” is “Stowe’s celebrated hero.” [13] Among other things, “‘Uncle Tom’s cabin’ . . . was a familiar phrase here long before Mrs. Stowe immortalized it.” [14] Local papers “stood up for the claim” [15] in the immediate years after Tom’s death. The Daily Citizen wrote in April 1858, “It is believed here that Thomas Magruder . . . was the ‘veritable Uncle Tom,’” [16] and the Indianapolis News in March 1875 bluntly stated, “[Josiah Henson] is a fraud. The original Uncle Tom lived in this city and his old cabin was near the corner of Market and Noble Street.” [17]
In his 1910 book Greater Indianapolis, historian Jacob Piatt Dunn thought it unlikely that Tom Magruder would ever be confirmed as the inspiration behind Stowe’s legendary fictional character. However, he noted that “it is passing strange that none of the numerous friends and admirers of the Beechers in this city received any denial of it, which would necessarily have broken the uniform faith in the tradition.” [18] What Dunn was certain about is that nearly everyone in Indianapolis at the time knew Tom Magruder, “‘for he was noted as an exemplary and religious man and was generally respected.'” [19]
SOURCES USED:
[1] Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (John P. Jewett & Co, Boston, 1858), Part I, Chapter XIII: The Quakers, p. 54.
[5] Jacob Piatt Dunn, Greater Indianapolis, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1910), p. 243.
[6]The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, vol II, 1838-1842 (Indiana Historical Society Press, 1973), p. 164, p. 340.
[7] “An Old Resident Dead,” The Indianapolis Journal, February 24, 1857, 3:1.
[8]Jacob P. Dunn, “Indiana’s Part in the Making of the Story ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’” The Indiana QuarterlyMagazine of History 7, no. 3 (September 1911), 115.
[9] “Early Recollections. Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Daily State Sentinel, December 31, 1862, 2:4.
[10]The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, vol. III, 1844-1847, (Indiana Historical Society Press, 1974), p. 62, p. 259.
[11] Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1852), title page.
Beckley: I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Giving Voice, from Talking Hoosier History.
Beckley: On this Giving Voice, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Rachel Smith, an assistant lecturer on Women and Gender Studies at Ball State University. She studies the intersection of Modern American Spiritualism and Feminism. If you haven’t listened to the latest full episode, “Spiritualism: Beyond the Spectacle,” you might want to do that now before listening to our conversation, as it will give you a good base of knowledge about the history of Spiritualism in Indiana.
And now, Giving Voice.
(Music)
Beckley: I’m here today with Rachel Smith and I’m going to go ahead and let you introduce yourself, Rachel.
Smith: My name is Rachel, and I am an assistant lecturer at Ball State University in the Women and Gender Studies program. Um, I’m also a non-tenured faculty for the history department and I’m also the office manager for Historic Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana.
Beckley: And of course, that’s why you’re here talking with us today.
Smith: It is, yes.
Beckley: Um, so our most recent episode, just to fill you in a little bit, is about spiritualism, and kind of the history of that and it includes a history of Camp Chesterfield – a very brief history of Camp Chesterfield. But we don’t go into the intersection – I mention it briefly – the intersection of Feminism and the Woman’s Rights Movement and spiritualism and I brought you in today because you are an expert on the subject. How did you get interested in the intersection of those two, on their own, very fascinating fields?
Smith: Well, by nature I’m a feminist. And so, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. But also the fact that I teach Women and Gender Studies and my master’s degree is in history with an emphasis on religious history. When I started working at Camp Chesterfield, I actually worked part time when I was in grad school I got hired because of my interest in religious history. And, as time has now went on and it’s nearly 15 years later and I’m still there – they haven’t been able to get rid of me – and I’ve learned so much by being there that it’s about – especially of the areas in which feminism really played a role, and the suffrage movement played a role, in Indiana and the women of Camp Chesterfield playing a role in that suffrage movement and then nationally, so, it – it just piqued my interest.
Beckley: That was one of the things, as I was reading through some of the early history, I kept coming across all these women that are involved in ways that they’re not involved in other religions, so that really caught my interest and that’s how I came across you, actually. So, um, I was wondering if you could talk about the early history of spiritualism and how women’s rights and suffrage and, really, other radical movements kind of played a role in the early history.
Smith: Well, spiritualism itself, I mean, the birth of spiritualism happened in the mid-1800s, so, one of the things that did come naturally from that, and especially a large group of Quaker and having a Quaker background, a lot of these people – Quakers also naturally had a background of feminism within themselves and equality and so that kind of transferred over into Modern American Spiritualism. And so when spiritualism developed – it came about, that came with it. That aspect of it came with it. And interestingly enough – one of the things that seems kind of amazing and something that somebody at Camp Chesterfield said – a male resident at Camp Chesterfield said that spiritualism is matriarchal and that Camp Chesterfield is matriarchal. And you find that historically, spiritualism has given women the opportunity to become ordained. They’ve given them the opportunity to be leaders. They’ve given them the opportunity to be teachers. You know, during a time when women were supposed to be in the private sphere, they weren’t supposed to be in the public sphere, and they certainly weren’t supposed to be preaching or moving people religiously by any means. And even all those times when there were splits in mainstream churches – you know one of the big splits to happen, especially like in and around the 1980s of where main line religions they – women were pretty much told that you need to submit to your husbands, you need to go back to your homes, you need to get off the pulpit. Spiritualism didn’t do that to women and so you kind of find that women did flock to spiritualism – not just for the communication with spirit aspect, but also for the aspect that they were treated and were on a level playing field with the men. And of course, you have very famous spiritualists like Victoria Woodhull who definitely rocked the boat and spiced it up a little bit – more so than what people would like. But I was also reading not too long ago – Susan B. Anthony would actually write into spiritualist newspaper and particularly to the Sunflower Newspaper at Lily Dale, New York. And so, even prominent, you know, Women’s Movement, people like Susan B. Anthony, Anna Shaw – Reverend Anna Shaw – you know, and they would be writing into these newspapers and getting women involved.
Beckley: That’s awesome. I actually – right before we came in here – I was reading the introduction of a book Radical Spirits and – it’s a great book – and she was talking about the book the History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement that is edited by Susan B Anthony and Cady B. Stanton, and in it, they say that spiritualism is the only religion that, from its beginning, has included women, and in fact, promoted women not only being in it but being at the forefront of it, which is, just such an amazing thing that I think often gets passed over in its quote unquote spooky beginnings and its ghostly tales and things like that so I’m glad we’re having this conversation to kind of bring that more towards the front.
Smith: Yea, a woman by the name of Amelia Colby-Luther actually, she was a nationally known suffragette, but she was also one of the founders of the charter for the Indiana Association for Spiritualists at Camp Chesterfield and at one time she was also Camp Chesterfield’s vice president of the association. And so, I mean, you have women like her who were known on a national scale for suffrage, but who religiously also participated in places like Camp Chesterfield and who help a leadership position. Not only just in the suffrage position but also then in their religious community as well. And so, you really don’t see that too often, even now.
Beckley: That’s extremely interesting cause then you look at somebody like May Wright Sewall, where she was nationally known for her suffrage and then at the very end of her life came out as a spiritualist for the last two decades, so, that’s such an interesting dichotomy of – you know – I think a lot of people think back to that and think that maybe May Wright Sewall’s reputation was overshadowed as a suffragist by her late revelations of spiritualism. But it went hand and hand so much back then that I think that being so far removed we often forget that now.
Smith: Well, and I also think too, especially for her case – for May Wright Sewall, I think for her case too, because of the profession that she was in – I mean, she was in education, right? – and even though spiritualism was very much at its peak and in its heyday and very much popular – it was still on the outside and it was still considered radical and so I think that there are people who argue, and I’d want to do a little more digging before I could definitively say, but I think she may have been a spiritualist for a lot longer than just the end of her life. I think that she just may have come out of the closet towards the end of her life because it was acceptable to do so.
Beckley: Well, she writes in her book that it was 25 years before, so I think she died in 1917, so – that would have been at the height, right? I mean, she says she was converted at Lilly Dale, which would make sense.
Smith: Well, in her book, she also talks about lily Dale. It is sad to me that, of course, Camp Chesterfield was literally right up the road, you know, and she didn’t make it up there. Or, at least, if she did she didn’t write about it. I’m still going through old hotel ledgers so, I’m looking to see if I could come across her name, which would be nice.
Beckley: That would be a good find.
Smith: That would be a good find, yes.
Beckley: Especially with the suffrage centennial upcoming.
Smith: That’s right. Yes.
Beckley: So, are you working on any specific projects in conjunction with the suffrage centennial?
Smith: We actually are. One of the things that we’re doing is at Camp Chesterfield is, we’re going to hold a suffrage and spiritualism conference. It will be a one day conference on August 22 and we’ll be sending out a call for papers soon. So, we would really like for people to come in and to really tour the grounds of Camp Chesterfield and, you know, it’s going to turn 134 years only this year, and it’s beautiful and it’s relaxing and it’s also a place with a very deep history and a very deep spiritualist and suffrage history for women and I think that often people get so wrapped up in the spookiness of spiritualism or the ghost aspect or the spirit aspect of spiritualism that they don’t pay attention that these people were real people and these people did real things. It wasn’t – their entire life was not just contacting, you know, they spirit world – they did, you know, tangible things that have benefited everyone.
Beckley: Absolutely. Um, I’m wondering how – ‘cause, you know, you said how, even at its peak and its heyday, it was still an outside movement, and I think suffrage is very much the same way, it was still a few “radical” women and men taking on the “norms” of society and I think that also, in the late 19th early 20th century, people often lumped them together and said: “here, look, this is what’s wrong with society. These radicals are coming in and trying to change the whole fabric of our life.” So, from our vantage point looking back, do you think that the tight association between spiritualism and suffrage, over all, hindered or helped suffrage: did it promote it, did it further the cause, or did it, maybe – was it a hindrance?
Smith: I think that’s a double edged sword. Because women like Victoria Woodhull, I mean, honestly, I don’t think she would have been able to do what she did had she not been so popular because of spiritualism and through her mediumship and then her connection to the Vanderbilt’s. And so, even though people looked down on her, and even the more proper spiritualists, you know, very much looked down on her for her behavior and for the things that she said or would write in her newsletter, I think, though, that she would never have been able to do what she did – I don’t think that she would have been the first woman to run for president, had she not had that background and I think that also at the same time, spiritualism and suffrage go hand in hand. I mean, you have a religious organization that views women as equals. And yet you had at the time, a national government who most certainly did not. And so, it’s a double edged sword – I think that in some ways it helps and some ways it hinders because of both being on the outskirts and both being considered radical ideas and notions. But I don’t think that it could be one or the other. It’s a mish mash of both.
Beckley: Right. For the listeners at home, can you just explain a little bit about Victoria Woodhull?
Smith: Victoria Woodhull, she was an interesting woman and if ever get the chance to read on her, she was amazing. But she was very loud, she was ver boisterous, she had several husbands, she was also a very huge advocate of free love, which also did not go over very well during the Victorian era. She had associations with the Vanderbilt’s and, actually, she was able to create a brokerage firm because of a loan that she had received from them. And so, she was a savvy business woman and she was a spiritualist and she was a medium and she was known for this and she actually became the first woman to run for president in the United States, which is in and of itself, I mean people always like to – and don’t get me wrong, it was great that Hillary was so close last time, but, she wasn’t the first, you know. And so, I think that people have a tendency to forget her because she was so much on the outside and she was so radical and so people really didn’t appreciate her candor as much as she gave it because, boy did she ever, yes.
Beckley: Yes, I know I’ve read a little on her, not as much as I’d like, but she’s definitely an interesting figure.
Smith: Yes. Yes. She was.
Beckley: So, is there anything ongoing – would you say that spiritualism now is still in the realm of feminism, is it still working for some of the same equal rights as it was, you know, in the 1800s and early 1900s?
Smith: I do believe so, yes, absolutely. I think that if you look back at the numbers and if you look at Camp Chesterfield, for example, has a seminary which is the Chesterfield Spiritualist College, these people will go through classes and training in order to develop mediumship and get certifications, but even become ordained spiritualist ministers. And if you look at the numbers, you will see that far more women are actually becoming ordained than males. And so that’s not to say that it’s for women and men need not apply, you know, but it is saying that it very much is a place where women can thrive. And in a world – especially in a religious world – that often times wants to push women to the sides and say that you don’t belong here.
Beckley: So you think that is a direct outcome of spiritualist’s history of being accepting of women, it’s just continuing.
Smith: It is. And I think that it pushes not just for women, but it pushed that whole equality thing, whether it’s for the LGBTQ community, the Trans community – it pushes diversity always. And they really are huge advocates and proponents of equality and making sure that people are treated equally. You know, because quite frankly when it comes to spiritualists and in the spiritualist mind, a spirit comes through when they come through and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter – sex and race and all of that stuff, it just happens.
Beckley: Yea – so, if people are interested in learning more about the history of spiritualism, your work, or about spiritualism in general, could you give them some places to go to learn more about that?
Smith: Yep, absolutely. Of course, naturally the first place you can go is CampChesterfield.net, the website for historic Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana. There is also Camp Chesterfield’s Facebook page as well as a twitter account, an Instagram account, were trying to – we’re the best kept secret of Indiana and so, we do have an online and a social media presence, but at the same time, the spiritualist community, they don’t recruit, and so people will find it when they need to find it or when they are ready to find it. But that’s definitely a good place to start – at Camp Chesterfield, there is a book store and of course, there’s book stores everywhere so if you just pick up any book on Modern American Spiritualism, it’s always a really great place to start, but if you’re really specifically wanting to know about Indiana History, spiritualism in Indiana, then a good trip up interstate 69 is going to be your best bet.
Beckley: Awesome, well, thank you so much for coming in today. This has been a wonderful conversation.
Smith: Yes, Thank you very much.
(Music)
Beckley: I want to thank Rachel once again for taking the time to come talk with us for this episode. If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America by Ann Braude. It’s a fascinating read and delves deep into some of the topics we covered today. We’ll be back next month with another episode of Talking Hoosier History. IN the meantime, follow the Indiana Historical Bureau on Facebook and twitter for daily doses of Indiana History tidbits. Subscribe, rate and review to Talking Hoosier History wherever you get your podcasts.
Voice actor reading from newspaper: The town of Andrews [Indiana] . . . is much disturbed over the result of several spiritualistic séances, which have been held there by a medium named Johnson.
The first séance was held last Saturday night. At the meeting the terrible wreck at Keller’s station some years ago was called up. The five men killed in that wreck, including Trainmaster Wilcox, were talked to, and the noise made by the fated train, the puffing of the engine and the crash of the wreck were plainly reproduced. Those who were present in the room were terribly frightened, so realistic was the scene. A second séance was held at the residence of Robert Hart, with twenty people present. At this séance there were the customary exhibitions of tambourine playing, bell ringing, etc. While the bell was ringing someone requested that it be thrown, and it was hurled across the room with great violence, breaking a lamp chimney in its flight. After the séance was over the medium requested his audience never again to ask the spirits to throw anything, because that was one thing they always did when commanded.
Beckley: Scenes such as this, described in the July 11, 1893 issue of the Indianapolis News, were more common place in the Hoosier state than you might imagine at this time. By the late 19th century, American Spiritualism had swept the nation, including Indiana. And if you look past the spectacle described in that article – the tambourine playing, bell ringing, and flying furniture – you can glimpse the complexities surrounding Spiritualist beliefs. That story, like so many stories in Spiritualism, begins with tragedy. Five local men were killed in a dreadful accident, and here were their neighbors and friends still trying to find closure by calling them back from the dead. In this episode, we’ll explore a movement that meant different things to different people. For some, a night of entertainment. For others, a coping mechanism for unbearable grief.
I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Talking Hoosier History.
Beckley: American Spiritualism, as opposed to spiritualism in the general sense of the word, was a religious movement based in the belief that not only do spirits exist, but they’re able and willing to communicate with the living through mediums. The root of the movement can be traced to the spring of 1848 when the Fox family began to hear knocking noises coming from the walls of their Hydesville, New York home. As the knockings continued, two of the Fox children, Margaret and Catherine, discovered that they could communicate with what they had come to believe was a spirit. Soon, the sisters took this new-found talent to nearby Rochester, New York, where they met prominent Quaker abolitionists Isaac and Amy Post.
In turn, the Posts introduced the young women and their ability to communicate with spirits to their prominent Quaker, Abolitionist, and Methodist friends. Through this network, Spiritualist beliefs were introduced into the highly mobile upper crust of East Coast society. This, alongside the accessible nature of the new movement which replaced the hierarchy and specialized facilities of other religions with a more informal structure, allowed Spiritualism to spread rapidly. Just months after the initial rappings were heard in Hydesville, there were thousands of so called “spirit circles” communicating with sprits in drawing rooms and kitchens up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
Spirit circles, or séances, were a part of Spiritualism from the very beginning. Early séances conducted by the Fox sisters were described by historian David Chapman.
Voice actor reading from Chapman: Séances would begin with a prayer, while the party sat around a wooden table in a darkened room. If a spirit made its presence felt, participants could ask it yes-or-no questions, or the spirit might ‘call for the alphabet’ by knocking five times in rapid succession. If this happened someone would recite the alphabet until a knock was heard on a particular letter. This would be repeated until words and sentences were spelled out. The spirits had to be treated with great respect, or else they might refuse to participate.
Beckley: Soon, public demonstrations where hundreds of people gathered to witness the Fox sisters communicating with the spirits were organized.
[Eerie music]
Beckley: This is yet another factor in the rapid dissemination of American Spiritualism – each and every person who attended a séance or public demonstration was able to go back to their home town and hold a similar circle in their own home, with their own friends, who could in turn repeat the pattern, spreading the movement even further.
In this way, Spiritualism quickly reached the Midwest. By the mid-1850s, less than a decade after the Fox Sisters first made contact with the spirits in upstate New York, Spiritualism was fairly widespread in Indiana. It’s hard to estimate the number of practitioners since there was no formal system of reporting, but one historian claims that by the 1860s, 90% of Angola, Indiana residents were practicing Spiritualists. Of course, that’s an extreme case and the rest of the state was by no means majority-Spiritualist, but it shows how deeply the new religion had permeated Hoosier society. To get an idea of what at least some Indiana spirit circles were like, let’s look at Charles Cathcart, a judge and ex-congressman turned spiritualist.
[Music box music]
Beckley: Originally a skeptic, Cathcart attended his first spirit circle at the home of Mr. Poston of La Porte County, Indiana, with the goal of exposing the fraud he was sure was taking place there. The séances held at this particular circle were much different from those held by the Fox sisters which I described earlier – you see this a lot in Spiritualism since there was no official church structure and practitioners were able to just kind of make things up as they went along. The Poston circle, styled after circles held in Ohio, was a lively affair, similar to that described in the newspaper article at the top of the show.
[Dramatic music]
Beckley: Cathcart arrived to the séance armed with a homemade device that, when deployed, would light up the room in a flash. The lights were put out and the show started with a spirit referred to as “old king” taking up a bass drum. Cathcart deployed his flash device and described what he saw next in the Spiritual Telegraph, a New York-based spiritualist newspaper.
Voice actor reading from newspaper: What a picture for an artist! . . . [I] witnessed the stick beating the drum as if handled from above, and no mortal nearer than about eight feet of it! After striking a few blows by itself, in the light, the stick rose yet higher and leisurely, a curve in the air, gingerly fell on the shoulder of Miss Poston.
Beckley: With this shocking turn of events, Cathcart was a convert. He started his own spirit circle, also in LaPorte County, which was attended by many of his affluent acquaintances. Unsurprisingly, given the theatrical nature of his first encounter with Spiritualism, Cathcart’s own circles were quite showy with flying furniture, disembodied voices, and a veritable ensemble of spirits playing everything from a triangle to the guitar. Obviously, this strain of Spiritualism is much closer to entertainment than to the expression of grief it was for many others. This included May Wright Sewall, who is better known as Indiana’s preeminent suffragist.
In 1895, Sewall’s husband and work partner, Theodore Lovett Sewall died. In the wake of his death, she wrote:
Voice actor reading from Sewall: Unlike many bereaved, I did not seek to forget my sorrow or him whose removal had caused it; on the contrary, I strove to keep the memory of him always present in my own mind.
Beckley: This reluctance to “move on” or forget is prevalent in many who eventually find themselves face to face with a medium, attempting to contact the dead. So it was with Sewall. In August 1897, after delivering a suffrage speech at Lily Dale, one of the largest Spiritualist camps in the country, a series of misfortunes stranded her in the camp for several days. During that time, she met with a medium, a meeting which she describes in her book Neither Dead Nor Sleeping.
Voice actor reading from Sewall: In that sitting, quite contrary to my own expectations, and equally so to any conscious desire, I received letters written upon slates which I had carefully selected from a high pile of apparently quite new and empty ones, had carefully sponged off, tied together with my own handkerchief, and held in my own hands, no other hand touching them. These letters, when read later in my room. . . were found to contain perfectly coherent, intelligent and characteristic replies to questions which I had written upon bits of paper that had not passed out of my hands.
Beckley: From that first experience, Sewall began visiting mediums on a regular basis and kept in regular communication with her deceased husband for the remaining two decades of her life. This was a something she did not share publicly. Neither Dead Nor Sleeping wasn’t published until July, 1920, twenty-three years after she first made contact with her deceased husband. In it, she revealed her Spiritualist beliefs and experiences and laid out her reasons for that belief.
The book was fairly well received, being heralded as an exceptionally logical exploration of the practice of Spiritualism, if a surprising subject for a woman of Sewall’s esteemed reputation to write on. But just two months after its release, with the revelation of Sewall’s convictions still fresh in the minds of Americans, Sewall died in Indianapolis. Her death following so close on the heels of Neither Dead Nor Sleeping resulted in the majority of her obituaries giving an inordinate amount of weight to that part of her life, leaving some of her very impressive accomplishments in the shadows.
Of course, Sewall wasn’t the only prominent Hoosier Spiritualist. Long before Neither Dead Nor Sleeping revealed May Wright Sewall as a convert, Dr. John and Mary Westerfield of Anderson, Indiana, were introduced to the movement. This introduction would eventually lead to the establishment of what would become one of the nation’s most prominent Spiritualist centers.
In 1855, John’s and Mary’s only son, John Jr. died at the age of fourteen. The couple, who organized lectures on various topics of a scientific and pseudo-scientific nature, were already familiar with the idea of Spiritualism. So, perhaps it was natural that they turned to the comfort offered by mediums in their grief. Over the next months, many of those who had attended their lecture series also converted to Spiritualism and this small group began to advocate for a state-wide organization of Spiritualists.
[Music]
Beckley: Alongside this effort to organize, the Westerfields also began searching for a location for a Spiritualist camp, where believers could congregate and commune.
[Music]
Beckley: From these efforts, the Indiana Association of Spiritualists was founded in the late 1880s, and in 1890, thirty acres of land was purchased in Chesterfield, Indiana where their Spiritualist camp – Camp Chesterfield – was established.
If you’re imagining a small, backwoods operation, you’re mistaken. When the camp opened, there was a dining hall, lodging house, two séance rooms, a few small cottages, and a tent auditorium structure that seated 500 people. By 1895, an office building, Bazaar building, stables, a grocery store, an ice cream parlor, and a wooden auditorium building had been added to the site, showing a phenomenal amount of growth.
This was far from the last growth spurt that the camp experienced. Under the leadership of Mable Riffle, the camp reached its zenith in the 1920s. Two fully furnished hotels were constructed, as well as a chapel, several more cottages, and a decorative outdoor area. By 1927, the six week season at Champ Chesterfield was drawing an average of 20,000 people. Some of these visitors came seeking the thrill of communing with the spirits and others looking to reach deceased loved ones during a time a grief, illustrated by the increase in attendance in the wake of both World War I and World War II.
Throughout its history, Camp Chesterfield hosted mediums with a wide variety of different Spiritualistic abilities. These included materializing mediumship, a phenomena where a medium summons the physical form of a spirit, and spirit photography, in which the forms of dead loved ones can be seen in the presence of their living family members. And also slate writing, or writing done without the aid of human hands – usually on a slate using chalk.
Yet, not everyone who experienced these supposedly otherworldly happenings were convinced by their experiences at the camp.
[Music]
Beckley: In 1925, at the height of its popularity, reporter Virginia Swain attended the camp and participated in several séances, which seem to have quite missed the mark on all accounts. The first of a long series of articles written about her time there starts.
Voice actor reading from newspaper: I have met a brother whom I had never heard of before. Nevertheless he died in my arms six months ago – he told me so himself!
Beckley: She goes on to detail a long list of almost laughably bad readings she received at the camp, but even more damaging than the bad press – she reported the perceived fraud to the police and on the very same day her first article ran, news of a mass arrest of 14 mediums was reported. The charges were dropped just weeks later, but the exposé and the arrests left a wake of soured public sentiment in its wake.
In 1960, scandal arose once again when Tom O’Neill, editor of the popular Spiritualist magazine the Psychic Observer and researcher Dr. Andriga Puharrich uncovered fraud while trying to capture the first motion pictures of the materialization of a spirit. With the full knowledge and permission of the mediums conducting the séance, the two men took an infrared camera into the séance room. Looking through the lens of the camera, they saw that what in the dark had looked to be wispy figures emerging from nowhere were actually workers of the camp entering the séance room from a hidden door.
When these findings, and the images captured during the séance, were published in the Psychic Observer under the headline “Fraud Uncovered at Chesterfield Spiritualism Camp,” something rather surprising happened. It was O’Neill, rather than the camp, that came under fire, with droves of advertisers dropping their support for the magazine, eventually leading to its demise. I suppose that’s a clear demonstration of just how deeply adherents to Spiritualism hold their beliefs.
Perhaps the worst blow to the camp came in 1976, when medium Lamar Keene wrote his exposé The Psychic Mafia, in which he laid bare allegations of widespread fraud throughout the camp. According to his claims, there were rooms full of tens of thousands of notecards with information on every person who had ever had a reading at the camp. He told stories of stealing, pickpocketing, and more, all in the name of a good spiritualist reading.
But, of course, even this exposé didn’t spell the end for Champ Chesterfield, which is now considered to be the longest continually active Spiritualist camp in the nation. The camp, like Spiritualism itself, has persisted through scandal, bad press, and more. Today, the camp is a mixture of American Spiritualism, with several resident mediums available for readings, New Age Spiritualism, with meditation retreats and Tai Chi classes, and a training center for up and coming Spiritualist leaders.
Even outside of historical camps like Chesterfield, of which there are a handful left scattered across the country, we still hear the echoes of Spiritualism in modern America. Take, for instance, mediums such as TLC’s “Long Island Medium,” Theresa Caputo, or if you’re a 90s kid like me, Sylvia Brown. Like the Fox sisters in the mid-1800s, these women mix entertainment with amateur grief counseling, helping people through difficult times by giving them the chance to communicate with lost loved ones. Or, if one wants to be cynical about it, using people’s grief for financial gain and personal fame.
But that’s what makes Spiritualism such a wonderfully complex topic. It can be a coping mechanism. It can be entertainment. It has film-flam men and sincere practitioners. Some people feel genuinely helped, and others feel helplessly duped. And we didn’t even get to this, but it was led, in large, by women and had close ties with both the abolition and women’s suffrage movements. But many of its practitioners, like May Wright Sewall, were tarnished by their association with it. Spiritualism is often used as an entry point into ghost stories and ghastly tales, something to be trotted out for Halloween and then put back into the closet with the paper skeletons on November 1, but that paints a much more one dimensional picture of it than in reality. Join us in two weeks when we dig further into this topic with Ball State University professor Rachel Smith, who studies the intersection of Spiritualism and feminism.
[THH theme music]
Beckley: Once again, I’m Lindsey Beckley and this has been Talking Hoosier History. Talking Hoosier History is a product of the Indiana Historical Bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library. If you would like to see my sources for this episode, visit blog.history.in.gov and click “Talking Hoosier History” at the top to see a full transcript and show notes. Talking Hoosier History is written by me, Lindsey Beckley. Production and sound engineering by Jill Weiss Simins. Thank you to Justin Clark and Dr. Michella Marino of IHB for lending their voices to today’s episode. Find us on Facebook and Twitter at the Indiana Historical Bureau and remember to Subscribe, rate and review Talking Hoosier History wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for Listening.
Show Notes for Spiritualism: Beyond the Spectacle
Braude, Ann, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Britten, Emma Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism, New York: MDCCCLXX,
Chapin, David, “Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity, Amhurst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.
Keene, M. Lamar, The Psychic Mafia, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1997.
Sewall, May Wright, Neither Dead Nor Sleeping, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1920.
Newspapers
“Events in Hoosierdom,” Indianapolis News, July 11, 1893, 6.
“Mediums Under Bond After Raid,” Muncie Evening Press, August 24, 1925, 1.
“Football Notre Dame (South Bend) by South Shore Line,” 1926, broadside, Indiana State Library Broadsides Collection, accessed Indiana State Library Digital Collections.
The history of the traditionally Irish-Catholic University of Notre Dame located in South Bend, Indiana, has paralleled the larger story of Catholic immigrants making their way in the United States. Starting as a persecuted minority, Irish Catholics integrated into the fabric of the American tapestry over the twentieth century. [1] The challenges and threats posed to Notre Dame in the 1920s, mirrored those periling Indiana, the United States, and in many ways, democracy. As Americans reacted to shifts in U.S. demographics brought by immigration and urbanization, those threats to equality and justice included rising nationalism, animosity toward Jews and Catholics, discrimination against immigrants and refugees, and even violence against those not considered “100% American.” No group represented these prejudices as completely as the Ku Klux Klan. While the Klan had gained political power and legitimacy in Indiana by the early 1920s, it had yet to find a foothold in South Bend or larger St. Joseph County. The Klan was determined to change that. [2]
University of Notre Dame leaders and officials understood that the only way to combat the xenophobia and anti-Catholicism of the Ku Klux Klan, while maintaining the school’s integrity, was to not play the Klan’s game. So the school chose another – football. During the 1920s, renowned coach Knute Rockne led Notre Dame’s football team to greatness. But these athletes fought for more than trophies. They played for the respect of a country poisoned by the bigoted, anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Klan. They played to give pride to thousands of Catholics enduring mistreatment and discrimination as the Klan rose to political power.
By 1923, the young scholars writing for the Notre Dame Daily, the student newspaper, expressed concern over the rise of the Klan. Several students had also given speeches on “the Klan” and “Americanism.” The Klan’s use of patriotic imagery particularly bothered the young scholars. In one Notre Dame Dailyop-ed, for example, the writer condemned the Klan’s appropriation of the American flag in its propaganda while simultaneously “placing limitations upon the equality, the liberty, and the opportunity for which it has always stood.” [3]
This was not only a philosophical stand. For the students of predominately Catholic and of Irish immigrant origin, the Ku Klux Klan posed a real threat to their futures. The Indiana Klan was openly encouraging discrimination against immigrants, especially Catholics. The hate-filled rhetoric they spewed through their newspaper, the Fiery Cross, as well as speeches and parades, created an atmosphere of fear and danger for Hoosiers of the Catholic faith or immigrant origin. The Klan encouraged their membership not to do business with immigrants, worked to close Catholic schools, and most destructively, elected officials sympathetic to their racist position and lobbied them to impose immigration quotas. [Learn more about the Klan’s influence on immigration policy here.] While the 1920s Klan was a hate group, it was not an extremist group. That is, its xenophobia, racism, anti-Catholicism, and antisemitism were the prevailing views of many white, Protestant, American-born Midwesterners. In other words, the students of Notre Dame had to worry about facing such prejudice whenever they left campus – even for a football game. [4]
By 1923, Notre Dame football had made great strides towards becoming one of the most prestigious athletic programs in the country. University President Father Matthew Walsh had recently added Princeton to the team’s schedule and moved the Army game to New York [from West Point] where many more Notre Dame alumni could attend. Father Walsh also hoped that the large number of Irish Catholic New Yorkers would make the team their own. These were also significant strides towards creating enough revenue to build a legitimate football stadium at Notre Dame, thus attracting more opponents from more prestigious teams. More importantly, the team was almost unstoppable. [5]
(Muncie) Star Press, October 18, 1923, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
By the time they met Army in October 1923, the Notre Dame players were in peak physical condition and coming off of several Midwestern wins. They quickly wore out Army’s defense, winning 13-0 in front of 30,000 people. [6] Notre Dame’s gridiron battle with Princeton on the Ivy League team’s home turf was even more important. According to Notre Dame football historian Murray Sperber:
The game allowed the Fighting Irish* to symbolically battle their most entrenched antagonists, the Protestant Yankees, embodied by snooty Princeton . . . A large part of Notre Dame’s subsequent football fame, and the fervent support of huge numbers of middle class and poor Catholics for the Fighting Irish, resulted from these clashes with – and triumphs over – opponents claiming superiority in class and wealth. [7]
Example of Gridgraph. “Michigan Stadium Story: The First ‘Broadcast of a UM Football Game,” Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
On October 20, the Irish beat the Princeton Tigers handily, 17-0, as Notre Dame students back home watched on the Gridgraph and celebrated in town. [More on “Football Game Watches” here.] The returning players were greeted by their fellow students with a celebration around a blazing bonfire. The students cheered, a band played and speakers, including President Walsh and an Indiana senator Robert Proctor extolled the team. [8]
Caption from Notre Dame Archives: Football Game Day – Notre Dame vs. Army, 1915/1106 Students and fans gathered outside of Jimmie & Goat’s Cigar Store getting a wired play-by-play report of the game, updated on a chalkboard on the street.
Notre Dame continued their winning streak, beating Georgia Tech 35-7 and Purdue 34-7 over the following two weeks. [9] On November 10, the Irish faced the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. Unfortunately, the Nebraska team attracted a group of “rabidly anti-Catholic Lincoln fans.” [10] In fact, the Daily Nebraskan, in trying to stir up Cornhusker fans before the big game, wrote that there was a rising “loyalty to Nebraska which bodes ill for the conquering ‘Micks’ from the Hoosier State.” Mick was a derogatory term for an Irishman. The Nebraska newspaper concluded: “LET’S SETTLE THE IRISH QUESTION!”[11]
“Nine Teams Stand as Undefeated Elevens of the Country,” [Oshkosh, WI] Daily Northwestern, October 29, 1923, 10, accessed Newspapers.comNebraska crushed Notre Dame 14-7. After this game, the Irish would go on to beat Butler University, Carnegie Melon, and University of St. Louis. The Nebraska game proved not only to be Notre Dame’s only loss of the season, but a mortifying experience for the players who were subjected to bigoted vitriol from some Nebraska fans. In an editorial in the Notre Dame Daily, a student newspaperman wrote about the game and especially the fan reaction. He wrote that when the “whistle blew in far-off Nebraka,” the eleven players on the field couldn’t believe what had happened: The undefeated Irish had lost to the Cornhuskers. In the Notre Dame gym there was silence. He wrote, “Little lights stopped flickering on the Gridgraph” and “two thousand hearts near burst.” The worst part for the players was not the loss, but the jibes from the stands. The editorial concluded:
But, beaten and bruised, stung even by the insults of your hosts, you came off that field with more glory in defeat than many another team has found in victory. [12]
To their credit, Nebraska students, coaches, and administrators condemned the anti-Catholic behavior and issued public and sincere apologies. Nebraska football coach and athletic director Fred T. Dawson wrote the Notre Dame Daily editor: “We are all mortified indeed to learn that the members of the Notre Dame team felt that Nebraska was lacking in the courtesies usually extended to the visiting teams.” Dawson assured the South Bend students that the “many people” heard making “remarks to the Notre Dame team as it withdrew from the field” were in no way connected to the university. He concluded, “our student body and alumni had nothing in their hearts but friendship for Notre Dame.” [13] The Notre Dame Daily graciously accepted Nebraska’s explanation and apology. [14] They had bigger problems at home.
“Attendance at Husker-Irish Battle Shatters Valley Records,” Lincoln State Journal, November 11, 1923, 9, accessed Newspapers.com
By the spring of 1924, the Klan was thoroughly integrated into Indiana communities and politics. South Bend was an exception. In addition to the Irish Catholic students at the university, St. Joseph County had become home to a large number of Catholic immigrants born in Hungary and Poland. Notre Dame historian Robert E. Burns explained that to the Klan, South Bend was their “biggest unsolved problem.” [15] Klan leader D.C. Stephenson worked to change that, sending in Klan speakers and increasing anti-Catholic propaganda in the widely-circulated Fiery Cross newspaper. He created a plan that was a sort of two-sided coin. On one side, he attempted to legitimize and normalize the hate organization through philanthropic actions and grow its power through politics and law enforcement groups. On the other side, he worked to demonize minority groups such as immigrants and Catholics. [16]
W. A. Smith, “Ku Klux Klan Group Photo,” 1922, photograph, W. A. Smith Photographs Collection, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections, accessed Ball State University Digital Media Repository.
He did not have to work very hard. Burns explained:
The Klan did not invent anti-Catholicism . . . Throughout the nineteenth century anti-Catholicism had been both endemic and respectable in American society. Protestant ministers inspired their congregations with it, and politicians captured votes by employing it. [17]
“Ku Klux Klan Picnic, Freeport, Indiana,” circa 1919, photograph, Mary Ann Overman Collection, accessed The Indiana Album.
The Klan successfully used anti-Catholicism as a driving principle because Hoosiers already accepted it. Stephenson hoped that a large Klan rally in South Bend would be the match that lit the powder keg of prejudice. If he could bait a reaction from Notre Dame’s Catholic students and St. Joseph County’s Catholic residents, he could paint them as violent, lawless, un-American immigrants in contrast to his peaceably assembled 100% American Klansmen. This might convince Hoosiers to vote for Klan members or Klan-friendly candidates. On May 17, 1924, just three days before the Indiana Republican Convention, the Ku Klux Klan would hold a mass meeting for its Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois members in South Bend. [18]
Fearful for the safety of their students and local residents, Notre Dame and South Bend officials worked to stop a potentially violent incident. South Bend Mayor Eli Seebirt refused to grant the Klan a parade permit, although he could not stop their peaceful assembly on public grounds.[19] President Walsh issued a bulletin imploring students to stay on campus and ignore the Klan activities in town. He wrote:
Similar attempts of the Klan to flaunt its strength have resulted in riotous situations, sometimes in the loss of life. However aggravating the appearance of the Klan may be, remember that lawlessness begets lawlessness. Young blood and thoughtlessness may consider it a duty to show what a real American thinks of the Klan. There is only one duty that presents itself to Notre Dame men, under the circumstances, and that is to ignore whatever demonstration may take place today. [20]
“Ku Klux Klan at Main Street Interurban Terminal,” 1926, photograph, Allen County Public Library, accessed Allen County Community Album.
Father Walsh was right. “Young blood” could not abide the humiliation of this anti-Catholic hate group taking over the town. The Fiery Cross had hurled insults and false accusations at the students. The propaganda newspaper called them “hoodlums,” claimed that Notre Dame produced “nothing of value,” and blamed students for crime in the area.[21] As Klan members began arriving in the city on May 17, 1924, South Bend was ready to oppose them.
The South Bend Tribune reported:
Trouble started early in the day when klansmen in full regalia of hoods, masks and robes appeared on street corners in the business section, ostensibly to direct their brethren to the meeting ground, Island park, and giving South Bend its first glimpse of klansmen in uniform. [22]
Not long after Klan members began arriving, “automobiles crowded with young men, many of whom are said to have been Notre Dame students” surrounded the masked intruders. The anti-Klan South Bend residents and students tore off several masks and robes, exposing the identities of “kluxers” who wished to spread their hate anonymously. The Tribune reported that some Klan members were “roughly handled.” The newspaper also reported that the anti-Klan force showed evidence of organization. They formed a “flying column” that moved in unison “from corner to corner, wherever a white robe appeared.” By 11:30 a.m. students and residents of South Bend had purged the business district of any sign of the Klan. [23]
“South Bend Ku Klux Klan Headquarters,” July 4, 1924, photograph, General photograph collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Indiana State Library Digital Collections.
Meanwhile, Klan leaders continued to lobby city officials for permission to parade, hold meetings in their downtown headquarters, and assemble en masse at Island Park. Just after noon, the group determined to protect South Bend turned their attention to Klan headquarters. This home base was the third floor of a building identifiable by the “fiery cross” made of red light bulbs. The students and South Bend residents surrounded the building and stopped cars of arriving Klansmen. Again, the Tribune reported that some were “roughly handled.” The anti-Klan crowd focused on removing the glowing red symbol of hate. Several young men “hurled potatoes” at the building, breaking several windows and smashing the light bulbs on the electric cross. The young men then stormed up the stairs to the Klan den and were stopped by minister and Klan leader Reverend J.H. Horton with a revolver. [24]
The students attempted to convince Klan members to agree not to parade in masks or with weapons. While convincing all parties to ditch the costumes wasn’t easy, they did eventually negotiate a truce. By 3:30 p.m., “five hundred students and others unsympathetic with the klan” had left the headquarters and rallied at a local pool hall. Here, a student leader spoke to the crowd and urged them to remain peaceful but on vigilant standby in case they were needed by the local police to break up the parade. After all, despite Klan threats, the city never issued a parade license. The plan was to reconvene at 6:30 p.m. at a bridge, preventing the Klan members from entering the parade grounds. In the end, no parade was held. Stephenson blamed the heavy rain for the cancellation in order to save face with his followers, but the actual reason was more sinister. [25]
Stephenson knew that he had been handed the ideal fuel for his propaganda machine. Using a combination of half truths and blatant lies, he could present an image of Notre Dame students as a “reckless, fight-loving gang of hoodlums.” [26] The story that Stephenson crafted for the press was one where law-abiding Protestant citizens were denied their constitutional right to peacefully assemble and were then violently attacked by gangs of Catholic students and immigrant hooligans working together. They claimed that the students ripped up American flags and attacked women and children. [27] The story picked up traction and was widely reported in various forms. In the eyes of many outsiders, Notre Dame’s reputation was tarnished. Unfortunately, they would have to survive one more run-in with the Klan before they could begin to repair it. [28]
The press they garnered from the clash in South Bend had been just what Stephenson ordered. He figured one more incident, just before the opening of the Indiana Republican Convention, would convince stakeholders of the importance of electing Klan candidates in the face of this Catholic “threat.” Local Klan leaders just wanted revenge for the embarrassing episode. [29] Only two days later, on Monday, May 19, the Klan set a trap for Notre Dame students. Around 7:00 p.m. the lighted cross at Klan headquarters was turned back on and students began hearing rumors of an amassing of Klan members in downtown South Bend. The South Bend Tribune reported, “Approximately 500 persons, said to have been mostly Notre Dame students, opposed to the klan . . . started a march south toward the klan headquarters.” [30] Meanwhile, Klan members armed with clubs and stones spread out and waited. When the students arrived just after 9:00 p.m., the Klan ambushed them. The police tried to break up the scene, but added to the violence. By the time university leadership arrived around 10:00 p.m., they met several protesters with minor injuries. The students were regrouping and planning their next move; more violence seemed imminent. Climbing on top of a Civil War monument, and speaking over the din, Father Walsh somehow convinced the Notre Dame men to return to campus. The only major injury sustained was to the university’s reputation. [31]
Some secondary sources have claimed that it was the Notre Dame football team that led the flying columns and threw the potatoes that broke the lit-up cross. These sources claim that that the football team were leaders in these violent incidences. [32] While it is possible that the players were present at the events, no primary sources confirm this tale or even mention the players. It’s a good story, but likely just that.
“Football Team Photo: Starting Team in Formation,” 1923, Item: GBBY-57g199, Bagby Negatives, accessed University of Notre Dame Archives.
But there is a better story here. It’s the story of how the 1924 Notre Dame football team stood tall before a country tainted by prejudice as model Catholics and American citizens of immigrant heritage. It’s the story of how they polished and restored the prestige and honor of their university. It’s the story of how one team established the legacy of Notre Dame football and fought their way to the Rose Bowl.
This is the end of Part One of this two-part series. See Part Two [in two weeks] to learn about the historic 1924 Notre Dame football season, the university’s media campaign to restore its image, and the players victory on the gridiron and over its xenophobic, anti-Catholic detractors.
Notes and Sources
*The University of Notre Dame did not officially accept the name “Fighting Irish” for their athletic teams until 1925. I have felt free to use it here as students, alumni, and newspapers had been using “Fighting Irish” at least since 1917.
Further Reading:
Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Murray Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993, reprint, 2003)
Notes: [1]Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), ix.
[2] “For What Purpose?” Huntington Press, October 1, 1922, 1, Newspapers.com. This editorial decries the Klan trying to establish itself in South Bend, noting the city’s history of tolerance around the university.[3]“Class Orators Awarded Place,” Notre Dame Daily, May 20, 1923, 1, University of Notre Dame Archives;“Washington’s Birthday,” Notre Dame Daily, February 21, 1924, 2, University of Notre Dame Archives.
[4] Jill Weiss Simins, “‘America First:’ The Ku Klux Klan Influence on Immigration Policy in the 1920s,” Indiana History Blog.
[5] Murray Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993, reprint, 2003), 138-139.
[6] “Surprises in Indiana Foot Ball Results,” Greencastle Herald, October 15, 1923, 1, Hoosier State Chronicles.
[7] Sperber, 147-8.
[8] “Irish Victory Is Celebrated,” Notre Dame Daily, October 23, 1923, Notre Dame Archives; Sperber, 148-9.
[9] Thomas Coman, “Rockmen Conquer Georgia Tech, 35-7,” Notre Dame Daily, October 28, 1923, 1, Notre Dame Archives; Thomas Coman, “Irish Gridders Beat Purdue, 34-7, Notre Dame Daily, 1, Notre Dame Archives.
[10] Sperber, 149.
“It Shall Be Done,” Daily Nebraskan in “What They Say,” Notre Dame Daily, November 10, 1923, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[12] “To Those Who Can Read,” Notre Dame Daily, November 17, 1923, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[13] “Letter Box,” Notre Dame Daily, November 27, 1923, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[14] “Settled,” Notre Dame Daily, December 15, 1923, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[15] Burns, 278.
[16] Ibid., 265-280, 302.
[17] Ibid., 267-9. Burns also explains the reasoning Klansmen and others employed to justify their anti-Catholic prejudice.
[18] Ibid., 303-5.
[19] “Heads, Not Fists,” Notre Dame Daily, May 17, 1924, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[20] “Yesterday’s Bulletin,” Notre Dame Daily, May 18, 1924, 2, Notre Dame Archives.
[21] “Notre Dame Students Stage a Riot,” Fiery Cross, March 16, 1923, 1, Hoosier State Chronicles.
[22-25] “Klan Display in South Bend Proves Failure,” South Bend Tribune, May 18, 1924, 1, Newspapers.com.
Based on first-hand descriptions in the article, its clear that the South Bend Tribune reporter was on the scene during the May 17 event. Thus, this article proves the most reliable of the many that ran in newspapers throughout the country. The Tribune‘s report, unlike many later reports in other papers, was untainted by subsequent Klan propaganda. Thus the descriptions of the event in this post are drawn from this article only, though others were consulted.
[26] “Arrogance of Notre Dame Students Gone,” Fiery Cross, June 13, 1924, 5, Hoosier State Chronicles.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Burns, 314-316.
[29] Ibid. [30] “Mayor Seebirt Moves Toward Peace in Klan War,” South Bend Tribune, May 20, 1924, 1, Newspapers.com.
[31] Ibid.
[32] In his 2004 book Notre Dame vs. the Klan, Todd Tucker tells a fictionalized version of the May 17 incident using a composite student character. [Tucker named this fictional character named Bill Foohey after an actual Notre Dame student who appeared in a photograph wearing one of the confiscated Klan robes, but left no further record of his involvement]. In Tucker’s version of the incident, Notre Dame quarterback Harry Stuhldreher threw a potato in a “perfect arc” to hit the “lone red bulb” remaining in the cross at Klan headquarters. Stuhldreher hit it and the crowd cheered like it was a football game. Tucker wrote in his author’s note at the beginning of the book that he had “taken a great liberty” in the creation of Foohey and that he had “extrapolated historical events to bring out the drama of the situation.” However, several other sources have now repeated Tucker’s version as factual as opposed to fictionalized. For a thoroughly researched, factual account of events, see Chapter 9 of Robert Burn’s Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934.
Beckley: I’m Lindsey Beckley and this Giving Voice, from Talking Hoosier History.
In this installment of Giving Voice, I talk to Jeremy Turner, Director of the HIV/STD Viral Hepatitis Division of the Indiana State Department of Health. I first saw Mr. Turner speak at the dedication ceremony for the Ryan White state historical marker earlier this year, and his passion for HIV and AIDS treatment and prevention were apparent. So, when we were thinking about who would be able to give a more modern perspective on the topic, I knew Jeremy would be a great resource for us.
If you haven’t listened to the latest full episode – “Overcoming Stigma: Ryan White’s AIDs Education Advocacy,” I would encourage you to do so before listening to this interview, as it gives the historical context needed to better understand a lot of what Mr. Turner talks about here.
And now: Giving Voice.
[Talking Hoosier History Theme Music]
Turner: You know, it’s amazing to be here today, particularly during this time during the epidemic. I started working in HIV services fifteen years ago down in Evansville in Southern Indiana and it’s just great to be here at the State Department of Health during a time when we’re looking at ending the HIV epidemic.
Beckley: Absolutely. And that’s something that I definitely want to talk about ‘cause you had spoken at the Ryan White marker dedication and you had mentioned that and that really, kind of drew my attention. I was wondering if you could talk about, like, some of the concrete steps that we’re taking here in Indiana or across the nation that is going to meet that goal.
Turner: You know, Ryan White being from Indiana provided us a unique opportunity to have the spotlight shone on how HIV effects people here in the Midwest. And we’ve come a long ways since the early days of the epidemic. Our HIV system of treatment in Indiana was built by a network of community action groups, what we call “CAGS” now, many of whom are still in existence but grew up to be those HIV service agencies, those non-profit organizations, placed in regions across the state, who are providing care for folks living with HIV. Now, we know that keeping people engaged in care is one of the most important parts of ending the HIV epidemic. We’re so fortunate to be in a state where our state health commissioner, Dr. Chris Bucks, has embraced the ideology of “u equals u.” Undetectable equals untransmittable. And so we know when we provide good access to care and we can keep people living with HIV engaged in care, that that limits the viruses ability to transmit to other people. And we also know that we have this amazing prevention tool, this biomedical intervention called PrEP. It’s one pill a day and it is as effective at preventing HIV transition as the use of traditional prophylactics like condoms. And so with combining “undetectable equals untransmittable” with easy access to biomedical interventions, we see a path where we can end HIV. And so we have done our best here to work with our local organizations, our local health departments, our non-profit agencies to make sure that we are addressing not only the medical needs of our clients, but those social determinants of health that have prevented people in the past from being able to stay engaged in care. That’s keeping people housed. Keeping people fed. Getting access to mental health and substance use treatment facilities. All of those things combined are going to be what it takes to end the epidemic.
Beckley: I was – I was wondering how innovations like PrEP and other treatments have affected AIDS education – you know Ryan White was a big advocate of AIDS education – and I wonder if that’s changed the conversation around AIDS. You know, it’s not the death sentence it once was, so I was wondering how that has changed education.
Turner: Well, you know when we talk about education, we really have to take a very broad look at what that means. Because Prep being new and being something not everyone is familiar with, we have education not only to do with young folks and people who are at risk, but also our medical service providers about how to prescribe PrEP, about what the risks might be. So, we’re engaged in a variety of different levels, making sure that we’re not only touching the communities that we hope are going to initiate PrEP, but also working with our partners at the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center who do a lot of provider education to get out there and—and instill a confidence in our family practice physicians and particularly providers in rural settings who may not have infectious disease specialty or may not be as familiar with providing infectious disease care, and getting them up to speed.
We have another great project called the HIV echo project and it is a format that allows providers – doctors, nurse practitioners – without an infectious disease specialty to essentially case conference with some of our leading providers in the state about how to provide care to those folks who are struggling with accessing those services in urban areas because they might live in remote rural parts of the state. And so, you know, it’s a really – ending the epidemic is not one component, but all of the components put together. And I really do think we’ve seen early progress. We’ve expanded a lot of Ryan White funded activities in Indiana and if we keep up the trajectory, I do believe that we will make it across the finish line by our goal date.
Beckley: And that’s 3030, correct?
Turner: Uh…
Beckley: Or, 2030.
Turner: 2030.
Beckley: I’m way in the future, I guess.
Turner: By 3030, I hope that we’ve ended all the epidemics.
Beckley: Well, we can make that the next goal, I suppose.
Turner: Right?
Beckley: So, in the episode, in the full episode of Talking Hoosier History, we talked about how Ryan White and Hamilton Heights used education specifically to combat the stigma surrounding an AIDS diagnosis. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the continuing stigma that is still around a diagnosis and how we might take steps towards combating that stigma.
Turner: Well, you know, one of the things that we can – almost goes without saying now – is that people with HIV can live long, happy, health lives. People who stay retained in care and who can maintain viral suppression, are going to have a normal life expectancy.
Beckley: Can you explain what viral suppression is?
Turner: Yea, uh – we know that if we can keep people’s viral loads to below what they call an undetectable level, doesn’t mean that the virus is completely gone from the body, but just means that the tests that we use, the sensitivity of it, there are fewer copies of HIV than can be detected. And we know that unfortunately once somebody has HIV that they will always have the virus for the rest of their lives, but we also know that the treatments that we have now, we can essentially keep HIV suppressed within the body to a level where people who get HIV can get diagnosed early will never progress to AIDS and that they will experience a normal life expectancy.
Beckley: And do you think that that is lessening the stigma surround being diagnosed?
Turner: I think that that does help. However, stigma doesn’t turn on a dime and so you know, we’re dealing with the concept of now getting out and saying “undetectable equals untransmittable.” The CDC has embraced this, and so you know, we want to make sure that we don’t let the fear of HIV keep people from getting tested. So, stigma looks a lot of different ways. And one of the things – one of our biggest barriers in ending the epidemic is making sure that everybody who has HIV knows their status. And we know that the majority – 90% of new transmission occurs among the 10-13% of people, that region in there, who don’t know their status. And so, one of the things that can be a barrier to being tested is the fear of discovering your status. And I know that that can sound kind of wonky but at the same time, people are afraid sometimes to go in and find out if they have HIV so it’s easier to do what I call the ostrich method of sticking your head in the ground, rather than confronting, and then addressing the issue.
But I do think that knowing that treatment is so much easier now, that there are resources out there to help people afford the care that they need, and that maintaining suppression means that you don’t have to worry about passing on HIV to someone else. I do think that all of those things are great. But, you know, we also have to deal with the stigma of being on a medication to prevent HIV. There is a lot of conversation in the community – particularly when Prep was first introduced, about, you know – what are the implications of someone taking a pill every day in order to prevent a potential HIV infection? And so there was a lot of – and there continues to be, a lot of vibrant dialogue around what that means for us, but what I know and from my perspective, is that we want to keep people healthy. And if we can stop the spread of HIV, and if we can detect everyone who has HIV, and we can get them enrolled in the services that they need, that we can end it within this generation. But stigma has been a huge barrier and will continue to be. We are doing our best to come up with messaging and to provide education that will help eliminate that.
Beckley: It sounds like the education is shifting from teaching people what HIV is to teaching people about the treatments available and the preventatives available. It’s shifted in my lifetime from, well, everybody now is aware of the epidemic and has lived through part of it, or has at least, you know, the tail end here, hopefully. And now we’re all shifting to looking forward to how to end it. And that’s extremely hopeful and I can’t imagine that, you know, people who were living through the peak of it in the 80s and 90s would even imagine that we would be so close today.
Turner: Absolutely, but you know, one of the things that I have long been concerned about is that I don’t – we are remiss if we don’t acknowledge that HIV is still the same virus that has impacted so many people. More people in our country have died as a result of their HIV infection than all the soldiers who have fought in all the wars we’ve been engaged in and fallen in battle. And so when you think about it in that regard, over just a much shorter period in time, this is still the same virus. And we are only able to, you know, address it because of all the advancement we’ve made, but people who are late diagnosed can still experience some of those same health outcomes that we saw in the earlier days of the epidemic. So that’s why it’s important – if you’ve not been tested for HIV, that you utilize one of many services that are available across the state to find out your status. And if you continue to engage in risk behaviors, it’s important to get tested every six months so that you can stay on top of that and if an issue does arise and if you do come back positive for HIV, then you are referred quickly into care so that we can start that, the therapy process and make sure that we get people to viral suppression as quickly as possible.
Beckley: Great. Jeremy, could you tell our listeners where they can learn more about the HIV epidemic, and the steps we’re taking to end it and where they can go and get tested if they are needing to be tested?
Turner: Absolutely. Our state department of health website is a great resource for people. We also have a great network of service organizations around the state that we can, from ISDH here, help direct people to get them enrolled in care.
Beckley: Great, thank you. And thank you again for being on the show. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.
Turner: I appreciate it. Thank you all.
[Music]
Once again, a big thanks to Jeremy Turner for sitting down to talk with us – he’s an incredibly busy man so I felt especially privileged to have the opportunity to take a bit of time to chat.
We’ll be back next month with another episode of Talking Hoosier History. In the meantime, follow the Indiana Historical Bureau on Facebook and Twitter for daily doses of Indiana History tidbits. Subscribe, rate, and review Talking Hoosier History wherever you get your podcasts.
