“Actually, Genuinely Welcomed:” How North Meadow Circle of Friends Embraced and Wed LGBTQ Individuals

Friends Meeting House on Talbott Street, courtesy of the North Meadow Circle of Friends.

Before same-sex marriage was legally recognized across the United States in 2015, Quaker organizations in Indianapolis had upheld their roles as LGBTQ allies by marrying same-sex couples, like Mary Byrne and Tammara Tracy, in informal religious meetings. From their advocacy of the abolitionist movement to more modern issues of social justice, the Religious Society of Friends—or Quakers—have a unique relationship with marginalized communities. In Indianapolis, this relationship becomes even more intriguing when looking at Quaker connections to the LGBTQ community, specifically the activism of the North Meadow Circle of Friends, located at 1710 North Talbott Street, in the 1980s. Their meeting house served not only as a site for political engagement, but also as a location where same-sex couples could be wed long before same-sex marriage was legalized. The North Meadow Circle of Friends’ devotion to and involvement in issues central to the LGBTQ community provides a contrasting narrative to the prevailing one that all religious groups have historically opposed same-sex marriage.

Quakers believe God resides in every individual, providing them the ability to discern the will of God. They see each human life as possessing an unique worth, and they rely on the human conscience as the foundation of morality.[1] Throughout history, Quakers have sought to improve their own lives by placing an emphasis on education and the improvement of the lives of others. Friends have co-existed with Native Americans and supported the abolition of slavery. Activism involving abolitionism began with the adoption of strict policies regarding slavery, and by 1780, all Quakers in good standing had freed their slaves.[2] In addition, many Quakers’ homes, including that of Indiana residents Levi and Catharine Coffin, served as “stations” on the Underground Railroad.[3]

This legacy of embracing underrepresented communities is one reason many LGBTQ individuals in the 20th and 21st centuries have found acceptance in the Religious Society of Friends, including the North Meadow Circle of Friends. While generally the Quaker faith has a long history of inclusion, the religion itself has split over LGBTQ inclusion and issues. Some Quaker churches continue to view “the grouping of homosexuality and transsexuality with sexual violence and bestiality” and will only acknowledge a marriage between a man and a woman.[4] This has caused a divide in the Quaker community, as other Quaker churches view being an LGBTQ ally as a foundation of their faith. The North Meadow Circle of Friends has chosen to position itself as one of those allies through association with national queer-friendly organizations and conferences.

“’March On Washington’ April Meeting Report,” The New Works News 6, no. 8 (May 1987): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

One such organization is the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC), a North American Quaker faith community that gathers twice yearly and is a proponent of Quaker support for the LGBTQ community. The FLGBTQC has collected minutes of same-sex marriages and other commitment ceremonies from across the nation, one of which happens to be of the North Meadow Circle of Friends. On April 12, 1987, the North Meadow Circle of Friends wrote to the FLGBTQC that they “affirm the equal opportunity of marriage for all individuals, including members of the same sex.”[5]

In addition to the official beliefs expressed by the North Meadow Circle of Friends in Quaker conferences, their community involvement during the 1980s and beyond demonstrates their commitment to marginalized communities. The Friends engaged in political activism by offering their meeting house as a place in which to mobilize and plan protests. The location on North Talbott Street is mentioned several times in articles in The New Works News, a gay Indianapolis periodical, as a location for meetings in preparation for a “March on Washington” to protest violence against the LGBTQ community.[6] The planning committee held at least two meetings there in the course of organizing the march, which was broadly intended to “show that ‘we are out of the closet and we are not going back.’”[7] In addition to using the meeting house for activism, Indianapolis Friends published the phone numbers of Quaker organizations, like the Friends for Lesbian & Gay Concerns, in gay business and service directories.[8] This Quaker support network appeared numerous times in LGBTQ directories around the early 1990s, indicating the connections between the Friends and the larger LGBTQ community in the city.

“Quaker Group Leaves Church Over Lesbian Marriage,” The New Works News 8, no. 1 (October 1988): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

At times, the North Meadow Circle of Friends’ devotion to the LGBTQ community superseded even their own relationships with Quaker organizations. The Friends at Talbott Street chose to withdraw from the Western Yearly Meeting after controversy followed the 1987 wedding for two women at the Indianapolis meeting house. Since North Meadow refused to rescind their statement on same-sex marriage or promise not to hold future same-sex weddings, they chose to withdraw from the meeting to prevent further fractures among the Friends.[9] The 2004 wedding of Mary Byrne and Tammara Tracy, a same-sex couple married at an Indianapolis Quaker meeting, would reaffirm support for the LGBTQ community and the recognition of same-sex relationships.

An interview conducted by the Indiana Historical Society illuminates Mary Byrne’s and Tammara Tracy’s connection to the Quaker church. Tracy recalled learning that Byrne was a Quaker early on in the relationship, explaining “I kept asking her to take me to a Quaker meeting because they are a little different than just going to a church service where you can walk in the door and be anonymous and sit in the back pew and do that kind of thing.”[10] Tracy described her first meeting as “a really big click,” and recalled that it was a  “wonderful experience because it truly is the first religious experience in which every single part of myself felt welcomed. Not tolerated, not passed over, but actually, genuinely welcomed.”[11] Through the Quaker meetings, Tracy and Byrne were able to get to know each other better and, according to their recollections, they even attended a Quaker lesbian conference.

After being together for almost four years, in 2004 they asked to be married at their Quaker meeting. Byrne explained that a “Quaker meeting is un-programmed . . . whoever wanted to speak during it could speak and then at some point we got up and spoke our vows to each other and then we had a party.”[12] As the wedding was not legally recognized, all 135 attendees signed a certificate saying that the marriage occurred. After a federal judge ruled that Indiana’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional in 2014, the couple legalized their marriage.

Tammara Tracy holds up her wedding license as her wife Mary Byrne (back) is congratulated inside the City County Building, June 25, 2014, accessed IndyStar.

While many churches still grapple with whether to accept or wed LGBTQ individuals, decades ago the North Meadow Circle of Friends was unwavering in its support of both. In fact, North Meadow demonstrated how a church could actually enrich same-sex relationships. For the queer community, Indianapolis’s Circle of Friends provided another safe or third space environment, in addition to bars and public parks, in which they could find acceptance and gain equal recognition of their rights and relationships.

Sources:

[1] “What Is Quakerism?,” accessed Berkeley Friends Meeting.

[2] Rae Tyson. “Our First Friends, The Early Quaker,” Pennsylvania Heritage, 2011.

[3] “About Levi Coffin,” accessed Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site.

[4] Megan Creighton, “Quaker Church Splits Over Disputes on LGBT Issues,” The Crescent, November 10, 2017, accessed George Fox University.

[5] Marriage Minutes, “North Meadows Circle of Friends,” April 12, 1987, accessed Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns.

[6] “’March on Washington’ April Meeting Report,” The New Works News 6, no. 8 (May 1987): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

[7] “The ‘March’ Is Thus Far A ‘Stroll:’ ‘A Report on the March on Washington Committee,’” The New Works News 6, no. 5 (February 1987): 12, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

“The ‘March on Washington’ Gains Momentum,” The New Works News 6, no. 6 (March 1987): 5, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

“’March On Washington’ April Meeting Report,” The New Works News 6, no. 8 (May 1987): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

[8] “NWN’s Gay Business & Service Directory,” The New Works News 10, no. 2 (November 1990): 21, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

“NWN’s Gay Business & Service Directory,” The New Works News 10, no. 4 (January 1991): 16, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

[9] “Quaker Group Leaves Church Over Lesbian Marriage,” The New Works News 8, no. 1 (October 1988): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives.

[10] Mary Byrne and Tammara Tracy, interview by Mark Lee, January 17, 2015, 57, Indianapolis/Central Indiana LGBT Oral History Project, Indiana Historical Society.

[11] Ibid., 57-58.

[12] Ibid., 60.

THH Episode 34: Giving Voice: Kera Lovell

Transcript of Giving Voice: Kera Lovell

Beckley: I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Giving Voice. For this installment of Giving Voice, I’m joined by Kera Lovell, professor of American History at the University of Utah Asia Campus and the author of a forthcoming book about people’s parks. If you haven’t listened to our most recent episode discussing the Black Market Firebombing and the people’s park erected in its place, I recommend you go do so now, as it gives you the context needed to better understand our conversation.

And now, Giving Voice.

[Talking Hoosier History Theme Song]

Beckley: I am here today with Kera Lovell, who is at the University of Utah Asia Campus. She’s a professor of American History there, and she’s currently working on a book about people’s parks. Thank you so much for being here today, Kera.

Lovell: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Beckley: So, when I was doing my primary research into the Black Market and the people’s park that kind of came out of the Black Market tragedy, I was trying to look into people’s parks a little bit more and came across your work and as soon as I saw it, I knew we needed to have you on the show, so I really appreciate you making the time here in this kind of crazy time of ours to come on the show and kind of chat a little bit.

Lovell: Absolutely, I would love to spend this crazy moment with you that we are having in the world. So absolutely, whatever questions you have.

Beckley: Well, I think that we should probably start at the beginning. Could you give us a little bit of a background lesson about the origins of people’s parks and where the movement kind of got its founding?

Lovell: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a great question because they’re not the same thing. So, people’s parks, the reason that we know that phrase, and honestly, probably 99% of your listeners are confused about what that even means. People’s parks is a phrase – a “people’s park” is a phrase that we use in the 1960s and, I say “we” meaning “me,” so it’s a phrase that I use to describe a type of protest in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, honestly some examples came through the ‘80s, in which activists took over vacant lots and converted them into parks. And they called them people’s parks and that’s why I call them people’s parks.

So, the first famous one is in Berkeley in 1969; however, that’s actually not the first one. And so my research covers not only that there were people’s parks, because my research is much more interested in what they were saying through protest, about the visual,  the material, the performative culture, like how is the act of protest a form of communication, but also how can we embed these protests in their particular cities and contexts.

So, if you actually go to the first one that we know of, the first one that I know of is in San Francisco in 1968, and it’s actually this environmental action group called Ecological Action in 1968. They are planning a movement to protest a landlord that’s buying up housing, and so what they want to do is, in response, is protest it at city council meetings and whatnot. Well, one member of the group is actually killed in this really sad car accident, and so instead, in this act of mourning, in protest of this landlord that’s buying up land, they take over a vacant lot and they turn it into a park. And they do this, performatively, visually, materially – in which they plant trees, they make art, they have these performances in the park. And that’s the first one that we know of that’s not just a garden or a gathering spot, but it’s actually a performance protest piece. And it doesn’t last that long – it’s only a few weeks, but that one, which is super interesting, is at the same spot in which more than a year later is the most famous one, which is Berkeley’s People’s Park. Essentially, we had spectators at that one that was like, “Oh, wow, that’s interesting. I see what they’re doing.” And more than a year later, students at the University of California Berkeley do the same thing in which they’re protesting how landlords are buying up affordable housing from students, and so they’re going to take over this vacant lot and turn it into a park. The only difference is that with the first one, it’s very quiet, and so they just bulldoze over the spot. With the second one, they fence it up and bring in the National Guard, and it’s this terrible standoff in which the National Guard troops kill bystanders, and it’s just this horrible public relations campaign that makes it into national news that then sparks this national movement of students and other people that are taking over vacant lots and turning them into parks. So that’s what I study, not only that they did it and where they did it, but how they did it and what it meant to them in this moment of time.

Beckley: Wow, that’s really interesting. I had never dug deep enough, I guess, to find the actual roots of it. I thought that it started at Berkeley. I guess that was kind of where the national movement started, would you say that’s right?

Lovell: For sure, for sure. Absolutely. And I think that’s the difference. Because with the Berkeley’s People’s Park, and again I say Berkeley’s People’s Park, but there’s more than a dozen of them actually in Berkeley, because they’re so good at their campaign that even around the city, there’s many different people’s parks that are started at this time. But I would say that that park is so successful in its campaign, not necessarily successful in its long term campaign, we can actually see other spaces, and I’m happy to talk about them, in which they’re more successful in being culturally accepted or socially accepted, but Berkeley’s People’s Park that’s right next to the university is the most famous because it’s able to utilize the underground press in campaigning for the idea that it’s unjust, what has happened to them, and really capitalize on tens of thousands of readers in a couple of days’ time span and sort of catalyze them into a protest movement against this.

Beckley: So, when you talk about other parks being more successful in being socially accepted, I know that some parks, like Bloomington’s Peoples Park, was later legally sanctioned – do you see a correlation between a park being socially accepted, or, I guess, the movement behind a park being social accepted, and a later legal sanction?

Lovell: I think that’s a great question. So, yes and no, and I think Bloomington’s a great example because, while it becomes legal, it doesn’t become socially accepted. So, in a lot of these different cases, what you find is that because the historical context changes from protest movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s to the demand for space by the late ‘80s and ‘90s, which, if I’m going to refer you to a historian, there’s a great cultural geographer by the name of Don Mitchell, and he writes a really interesting book about the right to space and about how by the late ‘80s and ‘90s, there’s a push for the homeless, because there is an increasingly white homeless population, and their demand for public space, and how a lot of these different spaces like Berkeley’s People’s Park become an issue over free speech and right to public space become an issue of homelessness and how we’re not actually addressing the needs of that. So, I say that all to mean that most of these spaces become socially, culturally tainted of, like, the people that occupy those spaces are no longer the people that are interested in free speech and politics, but are interested in homeless encampments. And I don’t necessarily have a problem with it – I’m not trying to put my speech one way or the other, I’m just saying that the context has changed from the ‘70s to the ‘80s to the ‘90s, in which we’re much more interested in are people poor, and do they have a right to that space, rather than are they students and more political and in the ‘70s, they were much more interested in are you political, should you be in public space, whereas not it’s are you homeless and should you be in public space.

But one positive example that I give, which is, I think, if we’re looking at ranking these parks, the best example of a people’s park I would argue, is Chicano Park in San Diego. And that begins as an illegal park, and that is because it is park – ok, so let me back it up. So, actually, it’s this group of Mexican Americans in San Diego in Barrio Logan, so what they are campaigning the city council for is a park, for years. And so what happens is that they’re campaigning for a park, campaigning for a park, and they never get it. And so what happens is the area where they had been told was going to be their park, actually one day, the state brings in bulldozers to build police headquarters there by the highway. And so they flip out, and they are, justly, very angry at this, and it actually coalesces with the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, in which they take over the lot that they’re actually – the state has decided they’re going to convert into police headquarters and they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re going to make this into a park.” So they take over the bulldozers. They start planting their own things. They start having food. Like, they literally take it over and they start an encampment and they’re like, “We deserve a park for our community, because we’re being run out of town.” And so, what’s important is that, because it happens in 1970, about a year later, after Berkeley’s People’s Park, plus they’re interested in legalizing it in a way that they want it institutionalized. They want a park for their community. So they stick with it for the long haul in a way that I don’t know if other spots in other cities are interested in. So, I say that in meaning that what happens is that in San Diego, they get it legalized. They get it institutionalized as that takeover as a park. And what’s really cool is that, not only is it successful in the takeover, but that the people who created the park were much more interested in, “how do we evolve the park? And how do we push it? And how do we create it as part of, embedded in the community?” Which is more than a political symbol of a takeover of a space. Like, Chicano Park, which you can visit today, is involved in local parades. It’s involved in local festivities. It’s involved in local celebrations of Mexican American culture, in a way that it’s institutionalized in not only a protest over, “We want to claim space,” but it’s also an important part of the local culture of San Diego in a way that I don’t see in a lot of other people’s parks otherwise.

Beckley: Do you think that the People’s Park Movement – I know that you had mentioned, the park right before Berkeley’s park, sorry I’m blanking on the name, but that that one was the first that wasn’t just a garden. Now, I know today, or at least a few years ago, guerilla gardening was kind of a big thing. Do you see a influence from the People’s Park Movement in the guerilla gardener movement?

Lovell: That is an excellent question, and I am – the only reason, I am both excited and hesitant to answer, but only because I‘m excited in that you made a connection, but also hesitant in that I also don’t know the exact origin. For example, there are historians in African American history, for example, that have been able to pinpoint guerilla gardening way before Berkeley’s People’s Park.

Beckley: Wow.

Lovell:  Yea, and so there’s excellent research on, say, if you have poor people that move to a new neighborhood, they create gardens. If you look at immigrants who move to a new neighborhood, they create gardens. And those are inherently guerilla gardens in they’re not on property that they own. So, does Berkeley’s People’s Park make it more fashionable with young college students? I would say yes, because they have a greater handle on popular culture and especially the underground press to push it to become popular. And to be popular meaning that they are trying to make it a political statement. Is guerilla gardening a political statement before Berkeley’s People’s Park? I don’t know if it is. Again, there are historians that will argue that guerilla gardening, for example, during World War I or World War II is a political statement in arguing that it is very much important as a part of a resistance to an “other” identity beyond our country. However, I can’t be a good person to say that, but I’m so glad that you said that, and I think that if you think it’s because, since the late 1960s and ‘70s, Berkeley’s People’s Park has been associated with this leftist political identity of we should take over public space and make it into gardens. However, people have been doing that since there has been land to grow food on.

Beckley: So, I’ve just – my mind’s kind of working now, and I’m thinking of another, I don’t know if I would classify it as a movement, but something that’s happening in, I believe San Francisco, people are grafting fruit tree limbs onto decorative trees in the middle of medians and things like that in order to – ‘cuz those limbs will then produce fruit still – they’re doing that in the hopes of providing a free source of food for the homeless population – do you, especially it being in California, I just, I can’t get past that there might be a connection there but then it just might be that it seems like a good idea and I’m just making connections where there aren’t any.

Lovell: No, I think you’re right on track. I think that the only difference is that in my research, what I can see, is that when this movement starts, and I say movement meaning that there is a huge source of these parks that start in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, they don’t use the word homeless. So, they use the word street people. They use the word, like, “It’s parks for the people.” And so, they’re interested in, like, “it’s free, because it’s for the people.” So it’s really not until we go to the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, in which we begin to use the word homeless that it begins, that people start to talk about, like, “we need a space for the homeless.” And it’s not because we don’t have people living on the streets beforehand, it’s just, it’s not necessarily part of their identity as, like, a social ill. And again, that’s even problematic to say because if you looked at Reagan, he would definitely say that street people in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was a social problem and an identity, but they themselves wouldn’t see it. And so, to me, the answer to that question is best explored in the history of Berkeley’s People’s Park, because there’s actually so many archival sources on this one park, because you can go through and see its design over the years and how through the early ‘80s, in which they’re actually thinking about homelessness, and they’re actually thinking about access to people with disabilities, and we have new activist groups that are trying to redesign the park to make it more accessible and to make it more accessible not only for people in wheelchairs but for people that are homeless. And how, it’s never easy, like, they’re constantly struggling with, “how do we design it? And how will people accept it?” And I think it reveals more about how people are more increasingly trying to situate themselves within the context and be better, and yet they’re struggling with the issues that are going on within society.

Beckley: I’m wondering, what do you see as some of the direct legacies of the movement that are still seen in society today?

Lovell: Ohh, that is an excellent question. I think that, if we were fresh on the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would be really easy, because that was such an easy time to be able to say that people are interested in the relationship between space and power. And understanding the idea that if you take over a space in public and you claim it as your own illegally, it is a form of power, and how do people negotiate that? And so, I think that that parallel to what we see in the late ‘60s and ‘70s in which people are much more interested in the performative, symbolic act of, we’re not necessarily going to grow a field and it last for 20 years, but, like, we are going to take this over and see how people react and see how we can bring communities together. So I think that’s one thing that I think people find – it’s confusing for people nowadays that want to have their backyard and find it difficult, the idea that someone would go to a vacant lot and take it over as a symbol of protest – it’s very confusing, and I totally understand that. So I think that, if you take that away and we’re not just looking at symbolism and protest, one thing that I think would be very important is that Berkeley’s People’s Park is this really famous symbol at the very beginning of the environmental movement, so we have a lot of other environmental issues that are going on in America, and yet the human factor of Berkeley’s People’s Park, the fact that, if we’re just looking at symbolism at the end of the day, it’s a lot of people that are planting flowers in this vacant lot and they are shot for that. And for understanding of very different ways. But the fact that people are shot for gardening, it catalyzes this national – even international – movement in which people are interested in planting flowers and are interested in bettering the environment. And we actually see for many years after that in different environmental actions in which they refer to Berkeley’s People’s Park as this moment in which we can see people just trying to care for public space. And so, I think that’s very important that at the time, it was a catalyst for we should take care of the environment and care about it and care about the people that are tending to the environment. And I think that it’s only later because of public relations that we’ve kind of gotten confused on that issue, but at the time that was the number one thing that comes about was that we have environmental action campaigns in Berkeley, nationally, and in other cities that are really important.*

Beckley: I love speaking with you because every time you kind of bring up a new facet of the People’s Parks Movement, I kind of see it reflected in Bloomington’s Peoples Park as small scale as it was. I found a lot of newspaper clippings talking about people experiencing homelessness being there and then being kicked out of there and then camping on sidewalks and being allowed back there with increased police presence. And just everything you say kind of brings me back to Bloomington’s Peoples Park, which is something I love about history -just all of the little connections between such a big national and international movement and something that happened here in Bloomington, Indiana.

Lovell: It’s true! And I didn’t even mention racism, which is such a critical component of Bloomington’s Peoples Park, and which often doesn’t get talked about with the early people’s parks in the Bay Area, but it absolutely was like the first people’s park in San Francisco, which is about ecological, created by ecological action, but what they do is they’re very much interested in how can we create these parks and neighborhoods in which we can bring white people and Black people together? And even with Berkeley’s People’s Park, in which it becomes national news, they’re very much interested in how can we create a space in which we can get the Black Panthers involved? Or we can get anti-racist activists involved. And they’re very interested in how we can use these parks as coalitional issues, which I think is so beautiful about the Bloomington’s Peoples Park, in which it is, even though symbolic, a beautiful moment of coalition for people in that community.

Beckley: Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to end today. Thank you so much for being on the show. I think that this is one of our best conversations to date, and I cannot wait for people to hear it.

Lovell: Yay! I’m so glad. Thank you so much, Lindsey.

Beckley: Thank you.

[Talking Hoosier History Theme Music]

Beckley: Once again, I want to thank Dr. Lovell for taking the time to talk with me for this episode. We’ll be back soon with another new episode, but 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.

Thanks for listening!

*Note: This Giving Voice episode was recorded in May 2020, before the widespread Civil Rights protests began in reaction to the killing of George Floyd and other instances of police brutality across the nation. During the recent protests, some interesting parallels with the People’s Parks Movement have emerged, the most striking of which is Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. The Autonomous Zone, alternately called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), is a section of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood which has been occupied by protesters and labeled as a “no-police zone.” It is meant to be a place to live out the ideals behind the Black Lives Matter movement, an experiment in decreased policing and communal living. The parallels between CHOP and the People’s Park Movement are very clear – a group of people have illegally taken over public spaces visually, materially, and performatively in order to demand action. As of June 23, 2020 the CHOP is still active, although Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has announced that the city will be working with Black community organizers to clear the encampment after three shootings occurred in the area.

Show Notes for Giving Voice: Kera Lovell

Learn more about Dr. Lovell and her work here.

Contact Dr. Lovell at keralovell@gmail.com.

Learn more about the history of people’s parks here.

 

A Silent Roar: Indiana Suffragists’ 1913 March to the Statehouse

The Indiana woman’s suffrage movement was not a monolith. Its supporters held a spectrum of beliefs formed from their different backgrounds and perspectives. Nowhere was this more apparent than in rifts over strategy. Hoosier suffragists all believed women should have the vote, but clashed over the best course of action for winning it.

By 1912, Indiana’s organizations most assiduously acting in the political arena were the Woman’s Franchise League (WFL) and the Equal Suffrage Association (ESA). Both groups had strong leaders and experience with organizing, lobbying, and publicizing their views, meetings, and arguments for suffrage. Their work had recently become more urgent as Governor Thomas Marshall proposed a new, increasingly-restrictive state constitution that would further cement women’s disenfranchisement. They needed to influence the new 1913 Indiana General Assembly to create equal suffrage legislation before it was too late. They disagreed, however, on where to start. [1]

On the heels of its successful state convention in 1912 and success organizing new branches (including African American and labor branches), the ESA was well-positioned to unite the movement. Dr. Hannah Graham rallied ESA members behind the “Woman’s Declaration of Independence,” which called on women to break ties with any politician not willing to make a public declaration of their support for women’s suffrage. Suffrage took precedent over political alliances. [2]

Indianapolis News, June 6, 1912, 12, Newspapers.com

The WFL also had a banner year in 1912. Prominent members traveled the state in automobile tours, handing out literature and reaching women in smaller towns. They organized high profile events that garnered press attention and signatures for suffrage petitions. And the WFL took on the important work of convincing women who were indifferent to suffrage that they could improve their everyday lives, their children’s schools, and the health of their communities with the vote. Despite the shared goals of the ESA and the WFL, they took opposing positions on a bill introduced by Indiana Senator Evan B. Stotsenberg in January 1913 that proposed granting women partial suffrage to vote in school board elections. [3]

The clash between the ESA and WFL over this bill embodied a major conflict within the larger suffrage movement. Should suffragists accept partial suffrage to get their foot in the door and later work for full suffrage or demand full suffrage as their inalienable democratic right? While both Indiana suffrage organizations had taken different stances on this issue previously, in January 1913, the ESA supported the partial suffrage bill, while the WFL opposed it as inadequate. [4] The debate between ESA and WFL leaders before the Senate committee on rights and privileges got . . . heated.

ESA leader Dr. Hannah Graham was an outspoken proponent of full suffrage, but put her ideological stance aside. She felt like Hoosier women couldn’t miss the opportunity that this bill afforded. According to the Indianapolis Star, ESA members voted to support the partial suffrage bill because “such franchise is as much as can be expected at this time.” [5] Simply put, a little suffrage was better than none and might help in garnering full suffrage down the road.

WFL leaders vehemently disagreed. Digne Miller noted first that the bill would only grant this partial suffrage to women in Indianapolis and Terre Haute – more a fractional suffrage bill than a partial one. Dr. Amelia Keller expressed her fear that the bill could actually hurt the larger movement. [6] Dr. Keller argued:

If that bill goes through it will be immediately sent into the courts on protest of being unconstitutional and then when the vote for full suffrage really comes we will receive our answer, ‘O that question is now in court. Wait until that is settled and we’ll see about it then.’ [7]

In fact, some WFL members thought that delaying the full suffrage vote was the senator’s reason for introducing the bill in the fist place. Sen. Stotsenberg had also introduced a full suffrage bill that would have had to pass two legislative sessions and then go to a statewide referendum, a process that would take years. So it was not entirely unreasonable to think that he wanted to kick the problem down the road. [8]

Even within the organizations, there was disagreement. Prominent league member Belle Tutewiler broke with her WFL colleagues to support the bill. Her argument in favor of partial suffrage was to use this limited franchise to pry open the door of full suffrage. Her valid point may have been overshadowed by her fiery language. She called the league’s opposition “childish” and stated:

It is mere child’s play to say that if we can not get all, we will take nothing. I think it would be better to take school suffrage now and use that as an entering wedge for full suffrage later. [9]

Muncie Star Press, October 21, 1912, 3, Newspapers.com

As discussion continued, the women’s language grew more contentious. In the midst of the discussion, Elizabeth Stanley of Liberty threw open a suitcase “scattering yards and yards of cards bearing a petition for full suffrage” and “ridiculed the idea of using school suffrage as a wedge.” [10] The women exchanged more heated words before the ineffective meeting was adjourned and the partial suffrage bill abandoned.

The Indianapolis Star clearly delighted in the drama. The newspaper devoted long articles to the debate, written in a patronizing tone. Front page headlines read:

Suffrage Hosts Scorn Offerings

Resentful Women in Public Meeting Condemn Bill to Give Vote on Schools

“Childish” Starts Storm

Accusation from Lone Defender of Measure Brings Heated Denial of “Imbecility” [11]

Indianapolis Star, August 2, 1912, 7, Newspapers.com.

This public disharmony was not a good look and both organizations knew it. The WFL and the ESA were experienced publicists and aware that they needed a major public event to draw positive press coverage. The groups had to come together, if only briefly, and present a united front before the General Assembly. The WFL took the lead. The group organized a march to the Indiana statehouse for March 3, 1913, the same day 5,000 suffragists marched through the nation’s capital. [12] This was the perfect opportunity to present a united front and ESA leader Dr. Hannah Graham contacted the WFL asking to join forces. The WFL agreed. Just two months after their public disagreement over partial suffrage, the groups would march shoulder to shoulder before the Indiana General Assembly. [13]

It’s unclear if Black suffragists joined the march. African American ESA Branch #7 wouldn’t be organized until that summer. Newspapers catering to a white audience made no mention of their participation and the Indianapolis Recorder seemed to have been frustrated by the lack of Black suffrage information. A vexed Recorder writer, who went only by her first name of Dorothy, wrote on March 8:

What part did the colored women take in the suffrage movement at Washington last Monday? What part are they taking at any time? What are they, women or mice? Let us hear from you. Speak up! [14]

It is likely that Black suffragists at least knew about the march. The Woman’s Civic Club was an African American organization that worked to oppose race and gender discrimination in 1913. The Indianapolis branch had ninety-one members and promoted their events with the words of W. E. B. DuBois: “Protest, Reveal the truth and refuse to be silenced.” [15] The club had recently hosted Mary Tarkington Jameson at their regular meeting. Jameson was a prominent WFL member and spoke to the Woman’s Civic Club prior to departing for Washington D.C. to represent Indiana in the suffrage parade. The Recorder reported that Jameson delivered a “splendid address on Woman’s Suffrage” for the club. [16] It seems unlikely that Jameson would not have talked about current issues and upcoming events. Whether the Black suffragists in attendance would have been welcomed or felt safe in attending, would have been another matter. Unfortunately, this information is absent from sources.

Indianapolis Recorder, March 8, 1913, 2, Hoosier State Chronicles.

On Monday afternoon, March 3, 1913, Hoosier suffragists from across the state, 500 strong, marched into the statehouse. [17] This was not a celebratory parade, nor was it a raucous demonstration.  It was a protest. The suffrage bills being considered by the General Assembly were unlikely to pass “as the house of representatives was known to be unfriendly to equal suffrage,” and the Senate had already rejected at least one of the pending propositions earlier in the day. The suffragists were there not because they thought any “immediate good” would come from the day’s session. [18] Five hundred women marched into their capitol that day to make their presence known. They were there to “work on the legislature,” to show them that this was not a fringe movement, that a large number of Hoosier women demanded the vote. [19] WFL president Dr. Amelia Keller stated,

We wanted to show the legislators that we are in earnest and that ‘we’ means not a handful of enthusiasts, but hundreds of women. [20]

A pro-suffrage stance was edging towards the mainstream in 1913 but needed a push. It wasn’t a view that needed to be kept secret like it was when the Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society first met conspiratorially in 1878, but nor was it ubiquitous. [21] The more conservative members of the Indiana Federation of Clubs, for example, still had not endorsed suffrage at the time of the march, though they would later that year. [22] Suffrage in Indiana was at a tipping point and so they marched.

Indianapolis Star, March 4, 1913, 3, Newspapers.com

Several unlikely suffrage measures were before the Indiana General Assembly on the day of the march. Representative Earl K. Friend had introduced a resolution to amend the constitution, removing the word “male.” This resolution was pending in the House Judiciary Committee B, also known as the “graveyard committee” because it is where dead bills were buried. There was no hope for the suffragists there. The identical resolution introduced by Senator Harry E. Grube had already failed in the Senate that morning. [23]

The United Press wire service reported that several suffrage leaders had also been working with Rep. Friend on an amendment to the bill introduced by Rep. Stotsenburg, which also aimed to amend the constitution to remove the word “male.” Some of the women may have warily hoped that this proposal would gain support, but were not expecting any immediate results. Even if the bill passed, it had to be approved again at the next session in 1915, and then voted on in a statewide referendum in 1916 at the earliest. [24] Hoosier suffragists had lost this battle before, celebrating the passage of suffrage bills at one session, just to be disappointed at the next. [25] The women marching in the statehouse that day would not have had anything to celebrate, even if the bill passed, because they would have been made again to wait for equality. Their spirit would have been somber and determined, not hopeful. Their solemn march matched the moment.

The 500 Hoosier suffragists walked through the statehouse stopping to pin suffrage ribbons on a few willing lawmakers. Governor Samuel Ralston “cheerily” accepted a ribbon as did the legislators representing the Progressive Party, the only party to add a suffrage plank to their platform. [26] Most Indiana lawmakers did not take a ribbon, and pages mocked the women’s efforts. [27]

Indianapolis News, March 1, 1913, 11, Newspapers.com.

Indianapolis newspapers either misunderstood the suffragists’ goals or reporters intentionally decided to recast the scene through a condescending lens. The Indianapolis Star called their attempt to distribute ribbons to lawmakers “a game of hide and seek.” [28]  The newspaper claimed that prominent writer and WFL leader Grace Julian Clarke “moaned in grief” because her husband, Senator Charles B. Clarke refused a ribbon. [29] The Indianapolis News was even more patronizing.

The News sarcastically described the suffragists as wearing “warpaint of fine feathers and pretty gowns” and commented on the group’s choice to walk up the stairs en masse instead of splitting up to take the elevators. [30] The News claimed that one woman stated that by taking the stairs they hoped “the men will see that we are not afraid of some of the hardships,” but that if they gained the vote “one of the first things that we will do will be to add more elevators to the statehouse.” [31] This quote is dubious in authenticity, and the jab was certainly patronizing, but all in all, a comparatively harmless aside. The rest of the News article, however, must have been infuriating to these politically savvy suffragists.

The Indianapolis News claimed that while the suffragists marched around the statehouse, they had no idea what legislation was pending, or that the suffrage amendments were being dismissed. The newspaper claimed that the suffragists were in the chambers when Sen. Grube introduced the resolution calling for the constitutional amendment but that “it was done so unobtrusively that the women did not seem to know that it had been done.”[32]  And about the identical resolution introduced in the House by Rep. Friend, the writer scoffed:

The women had hardly been out of the state house more than an hour, however, when the house judiciary committee B voted in favor of killing the Friend house resolution . . . [33]

In case the newspaper’s readers missed this claim of female ignorance, the writer drove home the point:

Although hundreds of suffragists were jammed in the senate when Senator Grube introduced a resolution providing for an amendment to the state Constitution to allow women suffrage, not one of them seemed to realize what ‘was doing.’ No demonstrations of any sort took place. [34]

This claim is certainly false. First, these suffrage leaders were the most prominent women in the state. Indiana legislators were their friends, husbands, and family members. Second, the leaders of the WFL and ESA kept current on political issues related to suffrage at the state and national level. They wrote articles, gave speeches, organized meetings, and gathered signatures for petitions based on this knowledge. Most importantly, they had been working with members of the General Assembly on the legislation pending that day. The UP reported:

The leaders of the women planned to have Friend introduce a new resolution in the form of an amendment . . . [35]

They didn’t just know about the resolution, they were integral in its introduction to the legislature.

They knew the General Assembly would fail them that day. Their march was a protest, and this is why they chose silence. They came to make it clear to lawmakers that large numbers of the state’s most upstanding citizens were watching them. The General Assembly would have to face them before voting to continue to deny them their right as citizens. The UP reported that “dignity marked the demonstration,” as women representing “the best type of Indiana’s womanhood” gathered in the statehouse corridors.[36] They silently filed first into the House and then to the Senate. The UP reporter continued,

It was a silent demonstration. The leaders of the women attempted to make no speeches. They merely hoped that the number of mothers, wives and daughters, society leaders, professional women and working girls would cause the legislature to think about woman suffrage. [37]

The Indianapolis newspapers interpreted or framed their silence as ignorance, but it was the opposite. The suffragists knew that March 3, 1913 was not their day, but they made it clear that they would not stop their work until it was.

Indianapolis News, March 4, 1913, 4, Newspapers.com.

They did, in fact, achieve their goal in marching. The ESA and WFL presented a united front, countering the picture painted by their clash over partial versus full suffrage months earlier. All of the newspapers, even the condescending ones, that covered the march noted the joint appearance by the state’s major suffrage organizations. The UP reported that the event “was said to evidence the friendly relations between the two societies.”[38] Dr. Graham explained that this show of solidarity meant that “the legislators can no longer doubt the sincerity of the request of the women.” [39]

While Hoosier suffragists had a long road ahead of them, organized protests like this one, combined with lobbying, street meetings, sharp speeches, and savvy publicity stunts, helped to move public opinion and force lawmakers to give in to their demands. The press painted them at times as flighty, catty, or any other manner of stereotype, but their actions showed otherwise.  While their methods sometimes produced discord between them, it was through the constant political work of these knowledgeable, experienced, calculating suffragists that they won for themselves the vote. As they marched on the statehouse, they chose silence, but through their numbers, dignity, and righteousness, they roared for the vote.

Notes and Sources

[1] Anita Morgan, We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2020), 101, 111.
[2] Ibid., 112-13, 117-18; Jill Weiss Simins, “‘Suffrage Up In The Air:’ The Equal Suffrage Association’s 1912 Publicity Campaign,” accessed Indiana History Blog.
[3] Anita Morgan, “Taking It to the Streets: Hoosier Women’s Suffrage Automobile Tour,” accessed Indiana History Blog. Prior to the discussion, Senator Stotsenberg withdrew his school suffrage bill and replaced it with a bill that would allow women to serve on school boards but not vote in the elections. Despite this change, the suffragists debated partial school suffrage versus full suffrage.
[4] Morgan, We Must Be Fearless, 118-19.
[5] “Bill Is Approved: Equal Suffrage Association Board Favors School Franchise Measure,” Indianapolis Star, January 25, 1913, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
[6] “Suffrage Hosts Scorn Offering,” Indianapolis Star, January 25, 1913, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. Stotsenberg’s full suffrage bill, even if it passed in 1913, would have had to pass again in 1915, and then go to a statewide referendum in 1916 or 1917.
[9] Ibid.
[10] “Women Divided on Ballot Bill,” Indianapolis Star, January 28, 1913, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
[11] “Suffrage Hosts Scorn Offering,” 1.
[12] “Woman’s Franchise League Will Go to Statehouse Monday and Ask Suffrage Amendment,” Indianapolis News, March 1, 1913, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
[13] Morgan, 122.
[14] Dorothy, “Of Interest to All Women,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 8, 1913, 2, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[15] “Woman’s Civic Club Notes,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 8, 1913, 2, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[16] “Woman’s Civic Club Notes,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 1, 1913, 2, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[17] “500 Suffragists Invade Capitol,” Indianapolis Star, March 4, 1913, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
[18] “Indiana Women Work on the Legislature,” Huntington Herald, March 3, 1913, 1, accessed Newspapers.com. The Herald ran the article received from the United Press wire service.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] “500 Suffragists Invade Capitol,” 3.
[21] Morgan, 62.
[22] Ibid., 95.
[23] “Indiana Women Work on the Legislature,” 1.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Morgan, 75. See Morgan for the political tricks that killed a suffrage bill in 1881 only to disappear from consideration in 1883.
[26] “500 Suffragists Invade Capitol,” 3.
[27] Ibid.
[28]Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] “Assembly Besieged by Nearly 500 Women,” Indianapolis News, March 4, 1913, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] “Indiana Women Work on the Legislature,” 1.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] “500 Suffragists Invade Capitol,” 3.

 

THH Episode 33: The Black Market Firebombing

Transcription for The Black Market Firebombing

Beckley: Even the largest college towns fall quiet during winter break. Students return home. Faculty too. The hustle and bustle of the end-of-semester exams relaxes into the stillness of life put on pause. And the day after Christmas is especially hushed, with families recovering from large meals or helping children assemble their new toys. At least, that’s how it should be. On December 26, 1968, the quiet was ripped away from one Midwestern college town. First, the sound of breaking glass. Then, the roar of a fire, followed by sirens. When the smoke had cleared, it was apparent that this was no accident, but rather a targeted attack.

On this episode of Talking Hoosier History, we’ll explore the events leading up to the firebombing of the Black Market on December 26, 1968 in Bloomington, Indiana, and the reverberations of that attack that have lasted for decades.

I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Talking Hoosier History.

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. At the end of January, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. News coverage of the highly coordinated attacks shifted American views on the war dramatically and led many young people to protest ongoing U.S. involvement in the area.

In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, leading thousands to protest in the streets. In May, 3,000 impoverished people from across the nation arrived in Washington, D.C. and constructed a shantytown called “Resurrection City,” where they lived for 6 weeks in the Poor People’s Campaign. In September, feminists and civil rights advocates protested the Miss America contest, alleging that both sexism and racism were inherent in the structure of the pageant.

Interspersed within these events were other historic moments: the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the controversial stripping of two Olympic medals from winners who rose their fists in protest against the treatment of Black Americans, the tragic assassination of Robert Kennedy . . . and the list just keeps going.

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 the national level also played out within the confines of the Indiana University campus in Bloomington.

The local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, protested various aspects of the Vietnam War, eventually sending a list of demands to the acting university president, Herman B Wells, which declared,

Voice actor: “We condemn all ties which link IU to the military apparatus: recruiting in our recreational facilities, learning how to kill in our classrooms, performing military research in our laboratories.”

Beckley: Following student objections about racist judging standards, the university cancelled the IU Homecoming Queen pageant permanently. And African American students demanded more representation in all aspects of campus life, staging a sit-in at the annual bicycle race, the Little 500. That sit-in led directly to the removal of discriminatory covenants in the by-laws of Indiana University fraternities.

While this wave of revolutionary fervor was cresting both nationally and on IU’s campus, another was close behind – the “third wave” of the infamous hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. During the Klan’s second wave in the 1920s, the Indiana Klan wielded incredible political power, boasting 250,000 members. Their influence peaked in 1924, and the organization was largely dismantled by the end of the decade.

This new Klan, rising in response to the Civil Rights Movement, was much smaller, but much more violent. Approximately 40,000 members belonged to the Klan nationally in the 1950s and 60s. The relatively diverse, liberal campus of Indiana University and the surrounding city of Bloomington became a target for the local Klan’s hate.

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. The Indiana Daily Student on November 7, 1922 described the supposed first appearance of the Klan in the city:

Voice Actor: “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.”

Beckley: Although county officials blocked a similar scene to that just described 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 threatening phone calls.

In the face of threats such as these, Black Indiana University students continued to come together to demand more representation and equal treatment on campus. An organization founded in the spring of 1967, the Afro-Afro-American Student’s Association, or AAASA, served as an organizing force within the Black community on campus. The AAASA had four separate areas of interest: artistic, educational, political, and social.  A Daily Student article lays out the aims of the organization, which were threefold:

Voice actor: “The first would be the general improvement of communications between black students. Out of communications, comes a greater sense of unity, the second aim of AAASA. The third aim of AAASA is to promote greater black student participation in campus affairs.”

Beckley: Through these aims, the organization hoped

Voice actor: “to cooperate with individuals and organizations dedicated to the eradication of those impediments to human progress such as racism and segregation.”

Beckley: It was in pursuit of this goal that the AAASA organized protests, such as that at the Little 500 against the segregation of fraternities. 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, one that had many of the same goals as the AAASA – The Black Market. Financed entirely by Black faculty and staff, the Black Market was a shop specializing in products made by African and African American artists. According to an article in IU’s student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, this included

Voice actor: “free-flowing African garb, Black literature and records, African and Afro-American fabrics, dangling earrings, and African artifacts.”

Beckley: 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, both of which aligned with AAASA’s. First, it was to act as a cultural center for Black students at the university, who had limited social opportunities in the predominantly white city. Second, he aimed to eliminate “misconceptions about black people” by exposing IU students and Bloomington locals to Black culture.

After its late-September opening, it seemed as though the shop would be a success. Joking that the Dashikis sold in the Black Market would soon supplant the more mainstream fashion of the day, the Daily Student said,

Voice actor: “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.”

Beckley: However, at the same time that the shop was proving to be a popular enterprise with IU students, factions within Bloomington were pushing back against its very existence. Larry Canada, the owner of the building in which the store was located, reported receiving threatening phone calls for renting the space out to Turner and his backers. These threats became reality 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. In the following comment from the alternative student newspaper The Spectator, we have redacted one offensive word. The paper commented:

Voice actor: “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 threats because he allowed the ‘n––rs’ to use the space for the store.”

Beckley: 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, was a hand lettered sign that read, “A COWARD DID THIS.”

Eight months would pass before those students learned the identity of the man responsible for the attack. In the intervening time, IU students and faculty came together to raise enough money to repay 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. Sadly, the bomber got what they wanted, but it wasn’t without a price.

­­­­Details about the search for the perpetrator 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 Spectator alluded to a person of interest in their coverage of the attack, saying:

Voice actor: “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.”

Beckley: Whether or not either the reward offered or the description of a person of interest played any part in the search for the perpetrator, or if they were identified in some other way, on August 6, 1969 the Monroe County Circuit Court issued arrest warrants for two men in relation to the crime.

One of those men, Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., pleaded guilty to the second-degree arson charges while also implicating an accomplice, Jackie Dale Kinser, who he accused of driving the get-away vehicle. Eventually, the charges against Kinser would be dropped, just before he pled guilty to three unrelated crimes. While it’s unclear if the charges being dropped was directly related to Kinser’s guilty pleas, the timing of the two does seem to suggest the possibility.

Both men had strong ties with the local Ku Klux Klan. Kinser was a member who in subsequent years would be arrested multiple times for Klan-related crimes. Briscoe’s Klan membership is 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, stated that Briscoe himself claimed to be a Klan member. The headline of Briscoe’s obituary in the Vincennes Sun-Commercial proclaimed, “Notorious Klansman Dies in Prison.” As late as 1977, he was arrested while committing crimes alongside Klan members, reportedly 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, he at the very least maintained close ties with the terrorist organization and shared their racist ideology. He was sentenced to one to ten years and was released on April 7, 1973 after serving approximately three and a half years.

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 of the Indiana University campus stretched beyond the 1960s, and the space would once again be used as a venue for activism.

­­­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 recently stood. These new 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.

We’ll discuss the origins and legacy of the people’s park movement on the next episode of Giving Voice, where I’ll be joined by Kera Lovell, professor of American Studies at the University of Utah’s Asia Campus, and preeminent People’s Park scholar.

In Bloomington, work had started on the new people’s park by May 1970. Anyone who was interested in the enterprise was encouraged to help 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:

Voice actor: “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.”

Beckley: Over the next five years, various issues threatened to put an end to the park’s existence. 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 heritage, hosting anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, protests against the U.S. involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s, music festivals, flea markets, and, more recently, it housed the Occupy Bloomington movement. Today, the park serves as a reminder of the revolutionary ideals that swept through Indiana University’s campus in the 1960s and 1970s.

That reminder is important because the number of hate groups in the United States has nearly doubled since the year 2000, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some of those groups have deep roots. Others have sprung up in response to political and social movements in the country. In 2019, the center tracked 20 hate groups in Indiana alone.

In the 1960s, African Americans finally started gaining the rights they had worked towards for so long (and which had been promised for over 100 years), and we saw more Black Americans than ever standing up to demand those rights. Those demands were often met with violence.

Today, as LGBTQ+ and other groups join the struggle to gain more rights and demand their voices be heard, we see similar reactions. Violent marches in the streets of Charlottesville. Bombs being mailed to prominent politicians. Shootings at mosques, temples, and other places of worship.

Seeing these echoes from history resurface is unsettling, and even disheartening. But if you look past the violence, there is hope there too. Yes, the year 1968 shook America to its core, but it resulted in a more just country. No, not a perfect one. But better. We can come out of this period of violence even stronger. But it won’t just happen. It didn’t just happen in the 1960s – people worked for it. They marched. They protested. They demanded justice. What will we do to make sure we come out a more just country?

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. In the show notes for this episode, found at blog.history.in.gov, you will find a link for teachers and students about dealing with the tough issue of the n-word, which guided our decision to redact that word in today’s episode. You’ll also find a full transcript with helpful links, as well as a list of all sources used in the making of this episode. Talking Hoosier History is written by me, Lindsey Beckley. Sound engineering on this episode was by Justin Clark. Production by Jill Weiss Simins. Join us in two weeks for our next installment of Giving Voice, where we’ll hear from Kera Lovell on the history and legacy of People’s Parks. Until then, catch us on social media as Indiana Historical Bureau and remember to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening!

Show Notes for The Black Market Firebombing

Note: Newspapers accessed via Indiana State Library microfilm collection unless otherwise noted. More sources are available in the IHB’s Black Market Firebombing marker file, available upon request.

Newspapers

“County Klan to ‘Walk’ Bloomington,” (Martinsville) Reporter-Times, March 11, 1968, 8.

“University Cannot Rightfully Stop KKK I.U. Forum Speaker – Snyder,” Indiana Daily Student, March 27, 1968, 1.

“Judge Blocks Klan Event in Bloomington,” Rushville Republican, March 28, 1968, 7.

“Hill Issues Order Halting Klan Visit,” Indiana Daily Student, March 28, 1968, 1.

“Black Students to Demonstrate; Will Present Grievances to Star,” Indiana Daily Student, March 30, 1968, 1.

“Klan Card Left at Butler Door,” Indiana Daily Student, October 1, 1968, 2.

“Bringing It All Back Home, The Spectator, 7, no. 4, (October 1968): 3-4.

“Racism: In the Greek Tradition,” The Spectator, 7, no. 9, (November 1968):4.

“Socially Significant Soul Styles Replace Whitey’s Duds for Blacks Who Have ‘Arrived,’” Indiana Daily Student, September 28, 1968, 1.

Jim Helm, “To Offer Reward for Arson Information,” Bloomington Herald Telephone, January 5, 1969, 3.

“’Black Market’ Firebomb Destruction Brings University and City Response,” Indiana Daily Student, January 7, 1969, 1.

“A Coward Did This: The Bombing of the Black Market,” The Spectator, 7, no. 13, (January 1969): 4.

Jeannene Seeger and Karen Carle, “Peace Between Races Dead, Black Leader Tells Students,” Indiana Daily Student, January 11, 1969, 1.

“Klan Members Held for Arson,” Lizton Daily Citizen, August 7, 1969, 1.

“2 Men Charged in Store Fire,” Indianapolis Star, August 7, 1969, 16.

“Local Man Enters Guilty Plea in Fire at ‘Black Market,’” Indiana Daily Student, September 16, 1969, accessed Indiana University Archives Exhibits.

“Funds Established to Offset Loss at Black Market,” Indiana Daily Student, January 14, 1969, 4.

“Black Market Fund Reaches Goal,” Indianapolis Star, January 26, 1969, 19.

“Dunn Meadow Festival,” The Spectator, 10, no. 4 (February 1970):8, accessed Independent Voices.

“People’s Park,” Indiana Daily Student, April 27, 1970, 4.

“People’s Park Needs Human Support,” Indiana Daily Student, May 1, 1970, 1.

“Freedom Fourth,” Indiana Daily Student, July 6, 1971, 1.

“Antiwar Rally at Bloomington Today,” (Columbus) Republic, May 10, 1972, 16.

“Dream to Come True in Musical Park Tour,” Indianapolis News, July 12, 1985, 55.

Books

Indiana University Yearbook Archives, iuyearbook.com.

Thomas Clark, Indiana University Midwestern Pioneer: Volume IV/ Historical Documents Since 1816, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977, 755-787.

Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Revised Edition, New York:  Bantam, 2013.

Mark Kurlansky, The Year that Rocked the World, New York: Random House, 2005.

Documents

“Bench Warrant – Circuit Court,” State of Indiana, Monroe County, Warrant issued for Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., Second Degree Arson, August 6, 1969.

“Bench Warrant – Circuit Court,” State of Indiana, Monroe County, Warrant issued for Jackie Kinser, Second Degree Arson, August 6, 1969.

Criminal Court Docket, Monroe Circuit Court,” Case No. C69-S125, State of Indiana vs. Jackie Kinser and Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., Carlisle Briscoe Enters Guilty Plea, September 15, 1969.

Criminal Court Docket, Monroe Circuit Court,” Case No. C69-S125, State of Indiana vs. Jackie Kinser and Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., Motion to Dismiss charges against Jackie Kinser. March 23, 1971.

“Quit-Claim Deed,” land deeded to the City of Bloomington from Katherine Canada, December 17, 1976.

“Suffrage Up In The Air:” The Equal Suffrage Association’s 1912 Publicity Campaign

By the start of the twentieth century, Hoosier suffragists were experienced political actors. They had spent decades exerting pressure on public officials to end discriminatory practices against women and lobbying for the vote. They delivered speeches and petitions to the Indiana General Assembly and the United States Congress. They marched, organized, lobbied, and strategized. But their success was limited because of one infuriating Catch-22: the women trying to gain the vote were often ignored by politicians because they were not voters. It became clear that they needed to change public opinion on a grand scale. They did this through broad public actions like demonstrations and parades, but they were not above the occasional publicity stunt.

During the summer of 1912, the women of the Equal Suffrage Association (ESA) had become “masters of publicity,” according to historian Dr. Anita Morgan.[1] The stakes were high. Governor Thomas Marshall was attempting to introduce a new state constitution with stricter voter requirements that would continue to exclude women from the ballot box. In response, the ESA worked to expand its organization, adding labor and African American branches, and reach women across the state.[2] In the spring and summer of 1912, during the weeks leading up to the state convention, the ESA got especially innovative.

Indianapolis News, January 11, 1912, 3, Newspapers.com.

In May, physician and ESA leader Dr. Hannah Graham of Indianapolis invited sociologist and suffrage lecturer Elizabeth N. Barr of Topeka, Kansas to speak at an upcoming meeting. Barr planned to deliver her speech, “Active and Passive Opposition to Suffrage.” Barr hoped this would draw some anti-suffragists to the meetings as she was “anxious to debate with some person who is opposed to woman suffrage.”[3]

Indianapolis Star, August 2, 1912, 7, Newspapers.com.

Determined to draw press attention to this important talk, Dr. Graham came up with a creative strategy. She proposed they charter a hot air balloon to carry Barr high above Indianapolis and drop suffrage buttons to curious onlookers below. Barr agreed to the stunt, “declared that all true suffragists are ‘game,’ and was glad to prove the contention to the public.”[4]

Dr. Graham and other ESA leaders followed the balloon through the city in a parade of automobiles, drawing even more attention to their campaign. Her strategy worked and the press reported widely on the “Balloon Jaunt,” as the Indianapolis Star called it.[5] Fortunately, the stunt didn’t overshadow their message as newspapers reported on the upcoming meeting and Barr’s speech, as well as Graham’s goals with the airdrop:

Dr. Graham said the association encouraged the flight in order to show that woman was capable of entering any sphere of life, even a high one.[6]

“Votes for Women Button Early 1900s,” Indiana Historical Society Digital Collections.

Interestingly, the balloon, the Duesseldforfer II, was donated for the trip by the Indianapolis Brewing Company. This is notable as some suffrage organizations were also prohibitionists, an alliance that had regularly hurt the suffrage cause throughout Indiana history. The ESA was likely making a public statement that they were working only for the vote not for prohibition. They likely hoped this public collaboration with a brewing company would draw people to their cause who supported women’s rights and enjoyed their beer.

“The Successful Start for Westminster,” photomechanical print, Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, Rare Book And Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.
“Mureil Matters,” photomechanical print, 1909, NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, Rare Book And Special Collections Division, Library of Congress.

Dr. Graham and ESA leaders were evidently studying the tactics of other suffrage organizations around the globe, as there were a few recent precedents for the balloon stunt. In 1909, Australian-born British suffragist Muriel Matters chartered an airship (similar to a blimp) to fly over West Minster during a procession of the members of Parliament led by King Edward VII. Her balloon, branded with a large “Votes for Women,” was blown off course and did not make an appearance over Parliament. Nonetheless, Matters garnered an enormous amount of publicity for the Women’s Freedom League.[7]

The ESA’s May 1912 success in drawing press attention with the balloon air drop would have been on their minds as they prepared for their statewide conference in June.

[Anna Dunn Noland] Indianapolis Star, June 18, 1916, 47, Newspapers.com.
For the state convention they pulled out all the stops. ESA organizers posted “press notices in every daily and weekly paper” and ensured “large posters [were] put up at the cross roads in every county” with “banners stretched across Broadway announcing the date.”[8]  They created circulars that were sent to women’s club and suffrage meetings across the state. On June 22, 1912, the Saturday before the state convention, the ESA arranged for “the meeting circulars announcing it and a parade were dropped over the city from an airship.”[9] The circulars were written by Anna Dunn Noland, a leading Logansport suffragist and the ESA’s publicity chairman. Her words remain powerful:

To the Progressive Women of Indiana, Greetings:

On June 28 and 29, 1912, the equal suffragists of Indiana will assemble in state convention at Logansport, Ind. To report the progress of the woman suffrage and to confer upon existing conditions and the best methods to work in the state.

Since the purpose of the Indiana Equal Suffrage Association is to secure for the women of the state the right to vote, we have called this convention.

Six of the states of the Union have granted full suffrage to women, and many of our neighboring states are in the midst of active campaigns, but Indiana still refuses to allow her voters to consider this question.

This will not be a convention of an exclusive class, but a democratic meeting of all classes.

Come and take part in the discussions and give the stimulating influence of your presence to the work.

Women of Indiana, this is your organization and this is your work. Come and show that you are no longer satisfied to be ignored and that you insist in having a voice in this government.[10]

The ESA’s hard work paid off. Over 50,000 Hoosiers watched the suffragists parade through the streets of Logansport and “every business house was beautifully dressed in suffrage colors.”[11] In addition, “the convention was widely noticed by the press” and other suffrage organizations. In fact,that September, Wisconsin suffragists hired a “great air pilot,” who “scattered suffrage flyers from the airship which he took up into the clouds at the State Fair in 1912.”[12] The ESA’s success with their suffrage circular airdrop may have been their inspiration.

Fort Wayne News, August 7, 1912, 1, Newspapers.com.

The ESA’s much anticipated state convention was progressive and productive. The organization committed to further political action. Dr. Graham reported to the large convention audience that ESA representatives recently attended the Democratic State Convention to pressure the party to add a women’s suffrage plank to its platform. Unfortunately, only “one or two of them thought of putting such a plank in the platform worth considering.”[13] In response, they would be attending the Republican State Convention to again advocate for a suffrage plank. Dr. Graham called on ESA members to pressure candidates to make public statements in support of suffrage and to sever ties with political candidates who did not support their right to vote. She called this the “Woman’s Declaration of Independence” and the convention voted to adopt it. The ESA declared:

We believe that women will attain their inherent right by agitation and organization, and that they may have influence in the political world; be it

Resolved, That the delegates of the third annual convention of the Indiana Equal Suffrage association hereby instruct our incoming officers to forward a communication to each candidate for the Indiana state legislature of each political party, requesting an expression from said candidate on the subject of equal suffrage for the purpose of placing all candidates for the Indiana general assembly on record.[14]

Finally, the convention circulated a petition to present to the next Indiana General Assembly calling for a suffrage amendment to the state constitution. The ESA continued their publicity campaign throughout the summer. According to the History of Woman Suffrage:

Billboards were covered with posters and barns, fences and stones along the country roadways were decorated with ‘Votes for Women.’ Free literature was distributed and handbills were given out at every opportunity. Sunday afternoon meetings were held in picture show halls in many towns. Booths were secured at county and street fairs. Tents were placed on Chautauqua grounds with speakers and all kinds of suffrage supplies. This program was kept up until the World War called the women to other duties.[15]

In 1912, women’s suffrage was truly “up in the air.” It was not just a “matter of time.” Many people, including Indiana’s governor and many lawmakers, opposed women’s right to vote. Women gained suffrage because of their hard work and shrewd politicking, but the odd stunt in some sort of aircraft probably didn’t hurt either.

Further Reading

Read more about Hoosier suffrage publicity campaigns in Dr. Anita Morgan’s Indiana History Blog post: “Taking It to the Streets: Hoosier Women’s Suffrage Automobile Tour.”

This post was inspired by Dr. Morgan’s mention of the air drop on page 102 of her book, We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana.

Notes

[1] Anita Morgan, We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2020), 102.
[2] Ibid., 102, 110-112.
[3] “Suffragist to Take Balloon Jaunt Here,” Indianapolis Star, May 11, 1912, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Suffrage Up In The Air,” Indianapolis News, May 11, 1912, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] “The Successful Start for Westminster,” photomechanical print, Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, Rare Book And Special Collections Division, accessed Library of Congress; Beverley Cook, “Shades of Militancy,” January 31, 2018, Museum of London, accessed https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/shades-militancy-forgotten-suffragettes.
[8] Chapter 13: Indiana, Part 1, in History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Ida Husted Harper (New York: J. J. Little & Ives Company, 1922), 168, accessed  GoogleBooks.
[9] Ibid.
[10] “Suffragets [sic] Held Meeting,” Elwood Call-Leader, June 25, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[11] Chapter 13: Indiana, Part 1, 168.
[12] Theodora W. Youmans, “How Wisconsin Women Won the Ballot,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 5, No. 1 (September 1921): 21, accessed JSTOR.
[13] “Meeting of Suffragists,” Tipton Daily Tribune, June 29, 1912, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[14] “Mrs. Nolan Again Head of Equal Suffragists,” Muncie Star Press, June 30, 1912, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
[15] Chapter 13: Indiana, Part 1, 168.

THH 32: Giving Voice: Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe

Transcript of Giving Voice: Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe

Beckley: I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Giving Voice.

For this installment of Giving Voice, I was lucky enough to speak with Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe. If you haven’t listened to THH’s two-part series covering the life of Tenskwatawa, I’d suggest going back to do that now, as I do reference those episodes a few times throughout the discussion and they give some good context for understanding where our conversation picks up.

And now, Giving Voice.

Beckley: I’m here today with Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe. I’m so happy that you had time to come on and talk with us today.

Barnes: Thank you very much, Lindsey. I appreciate the invite.

Beckley: Of course. We’re absolutely thrilled to have you on the show. So, I thought we would start off with a super basic question. I know we use the term tribe or tribal nation a lot and I’m not sure that people know exactly what that means, what all that entails, and what being a member of a tribe entails. If you could give us a little bit of insight into that, I would really appreciate it.

Barnes: It’s probably easiest to summarize it in the way the federal government defines it. The constitution of the United States states that there are three types of sovereigns. There is the federal government, there is the states, and there are the tribes. So tribal nations are separate inherent sovereigns within the United States similar in some ways to state governments. So, the constitution dictates that these three entities are sovereigns within each other in our nation. So, for a tribal nation such as the Shawnee Tribe, we are one of those sovereigns and we have been here since prior to the United States, identifying as Shawnee People. We’ve had numerous flags over portions of our area – Spain to the French to Canada to Britain and the Republic of Texas as well as the United States.

Beckley: And to be a part of the Shawnee Tribe or, I guess, any tribal nation, could you give us a little bit of insight into what it means to become a member and what it takes to become a member?

Barnes: If you’re a citizen of Italy, you know you’re a citizen of Italy. You were born, you met the standards of citizenship or Italy. It is much the same with tribal nations. You are a member of that nation. Your ancestors are a part of that community, you have citizenship within that nation. So the government of that tribe recognizes you as a citizen of that indigenous nation of peoples.

Beckley: So, to talk a little bit more about Shawnee history in Indiana, or in present-day Indiana – I think a lot of people think about Potawatomi and Miami maybe, if they think about Native history in Indiana, and they might not know much about the Shawnee connections here. Could you speak to that a little bit?

Barnes: I think you also have to define terms. You’re talking about Indiana. Indiana was much larger than in was at time of statehood. Indiana territory was also Illinois, so Indiana was a very large area. And even before that, Indiana was part of a larger western holding of colonial powers. So, inside what is the current state of Indiana, you have present-day Prophetstown, you have Shawnee villages along the White River. Fort Wayne is also known by other names – Kekionga by the Miami or Chillicothe amongst the Shawnee people. So, the old city of Chillicothe, which is the Shawnee town that was located at Fort Wayne. So, you have Prophetstown where Tenskwatawa the Prophet – he had a town that he lived in, and his brother. During the War of 1812, that was a stronghold for them and they even, prior to the War of 1812, Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa lived along the White River, hatching their plan for pan-Indian resistance to colonialism.

Beckley: Yeah, and if folks have listened to our previous two episodes, they know a little bit more about that, so I’m glad that you touched on that a little bit. I know that you’re still active in the state and that you’re still coming here and doing some work every once in a while. Could you speak to the sort of causes you work for when you come here and how folks can learn more about that?

Barnes: There are federal and state laws that require tribal interactions with the other sovereigns, the federal and the state. And amongst those is a law called NAGPRA – Native American Protection and Repatriation Act. Because Shawnee’s lived in Indiana, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced eastern tribal nations to be relocated to western states like Oklahoma and elsewhere, those villages and the graves of those villages – there are people still buried there. So, as cities expand, as someone puts in a mini mall, as highways are built, occasionally graves are discovered. So, for the Shawnee and other tribes of historic Indiana, we engage in at the state and federal levels with those entities to make sure we’re doing what is best for those people there, and try to be as respectful to the people and make sure those remains are being treated as respectfully as possible, just like you would do with any other cemetery relocation. So, there are federal laws that mandate this for tribal nations and tribal cemeteries.

There is also an educational component that we work with as well. We have a great relationship with the Indiana University staff in various departments – folklore, anthropology, archaeology et cetera, we work very well with them. There’s an ethno-musicology archive of traditional music there at the campus in Bloomington. You know, we’ve known them for more than a decade. And early anthropologists called – a great many of them came out of Indiana University. A lot of that was because one of the early fathers of industry in Indiana, Eli Lilly, had an obsession with Indian artifacts and he hired teams of anthropologists, cartographers, linguists, et cetera to do research on tribal nations. He sent researchers out and one of the peoples that were rich in culture and language were the Shawnee, so Indiana University has known the Shawnee for a long time. And it’s been a pleasure for my tribe to become acquainted with them in the last ten or fifteen years and renew those relationships, but this time on our terms, rather than just having a bungee jumping anthropologist come into our communities, extract data for their own purposes, with no intention of reciprocity with that community.

Beckley: Yeah, we talked a little about that with Chris Newell. . . . about anthropologists coming into communities and using the knowledge of the people living there, and then creating a basis of work that is created out of the ancestral knowledge of these people. Basically, they’re building a career on the knowledge of others.

Barnes: That’s correct. Like, we can take an example- Eli Lilly hired a linguist, Charles Vogel [Voegelin], and [Voegelin] came into Shawnee communities and collected linguistic data, and the purpose of the linguistic data was not to preserve the language. It was not to make sure this language continued to be spoken in the Shawnee community. It was not to develop curriculum so that children could more easily learn the language of their ancestors as they were facing the pressures of assimilation. His goal was to bring that information back to Indiana, use it to create Masters and PhD’s and prove the richness of the university experience and part of the linguistics of Indiana. And so, untold careers were launched literally off the bones of our ancestors – the voices of our ancestors, with no thought for reciprocity towards the people that were contributing that knowledge. So that richness of these indigenous communities that lifted up these scholars, there was no reciprocity back to our communities to make sure that these cultures could benefit from the research that was going on. There has been a change in academia – largely because of pressure and interest from tribal nations wanting to engage with academics and journals and other academic publishing – to tell a truer story of early America. To make sure that Native voices are included in those narratives, that the context is not lost and that we can re-contextualize those old documents and put Shawnee voices back into them.

Beckley: Absolutely. We talk a little bit about that in our past two episodes. We’re using these colonized documents, but we have to find a way to contextualize them with Native voice and make sure that we’re telling as complete of a story as we can.

Barnes: That’s how it started for me . . . I initially got into tribal government, there was a couple of key issues and one of them was language preservation. So, quickly, when you do the work of language preservation, you come in contact with the archive. So, Indiana, there is this troika of institutions. The triad of institutions that hold the corpus of Shawnee language and one of them happens to be Indiana, and that’s because of Charles [Voegelin] and his time and tenure as a linguist in the employ of Eli Lilly.

Beckley: So, what sorts of things are you doing to promote the language, the Shawnee language? Are you doing curriculum? Is that something that you’re interested in? What kinds of things are you working towards?

Barnes: Curriculum and pedagogy methods. So, the world’s turned, and it’s changed and it’s becoming more digital and while we are able to, like, you and I are talking from a vast distance today, across a couple of computers. In prior generations, it was the telephone, and before that we had to send letters, so the method of teaching needs to adapt to become more like 2020 than 1920. And unfortunately, a lot of language teaching methods are still based in early-20th century teaching methodologies. Well, that doesn’t work in a diaspora community where people are spread across a continent. And so, we have to find new ways to deliver content and to deliver curriculum.

Beckley: I think that being here in a time when we are all separated by a distance and communicating through various methods – Zoom, Google Hangouts, and whatnot, I think that that has really opened our eyes to a few more opportunities as far as teaching methods and stuff like that. I know I’m taking an online baking class this weekend so it’s interesting to see how much people have kind of opened up different avenues for teaching different topics.

Barnes: Yeah, there’s a little irony for me . . . you know, we’re talking about these bungee jumping anthropologists that would jump into our communities and take data, you know, and they were observing our communities. Well, now, we find that the coin is flipped and we’re watching you guys in the glass bubble of academic institutions and seeing how you’re going to handle campuses that are closed. How are you going to be able to deliver curriculum? Universities have been loathe to move to an online learning model – they’re stuck in the Oxford method of teaching people. One person stands in front of a class and teaches forty or fifty people. Well, how are you going to accomplish that now with social distancing? So, it’s interesting and ironic to me. Now we’re watching you, instead of, a century ago, you were watching us.

Beckley: Hopefully we’ll be able to navigate it a little bit better than – I think we’ve pivoted a bit. It took a little bit, but it seems like people are slowly but surely figuring it out. Speaking of COVID-19 and the social distancing, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to how the pandemic has hit your people and just Native populations in general.

Barnes: I suspect it’s much like other states. We’ve been watching other states and other locals deal with this and I see Kentucky responding differently than Tennessee, or I see this county respond differently than that county or this city compared to this city. So, each one has its own type of leadership. And it’s much the same in Indian country. One county’s more progressive in its measures, you know, they put in more restrictive methods. We have another county that wants to have the economic – has more economic concerns. They may have a tax issue in their city and there’s a real cash need to make sure that things go back to normal as quick as possible, seeing how those things are balanced. So, we’re watching those things.

But, at least with the Shawnee tribe, within our government itself, we find ourselves in an advantageous position that we are equipped financially to ride this out and keep our people employed. We’ve been lucky to secure food, and for Shawnee citizens, we have ShawneeRelief.org, where we’re providing food for the elderly to keep them indoors as much as possible. We try to keep everyone up to date. Language curriculum is now being delivered in an online – it’s forced us to move to an online format sooner than we wanted. We had a project that was in the planning process for 2020, to be deployed in 2021, to deliver online language classrooms to our citizens. Well, we’re finding ourselves having to do that now and we’re not even halfway through the year.

Beckley: It sounds like you guys are, along with all of us, pivoting well. I’m glad to hear that.

Barnes: We’ve been really lucky. We’ve found that some of our best resources have been our tribal citizens. I found a epidemiologist that is a tribal citizen and she lives in Norman [Oklahoma] and works at the University of Oklahoma, and she’s an epidemiologist. So, actually being able to have someone who is able to interpret some of the details that I just don’t understand, I don’t have the education to interpret. . . . And to be able to draft policy at a governmental level, send it to an epidemiologist, and have them give me professional advice on what that should look like and on what areas we can do better, what steps are unnecessary – that is invaluable. So, we are very fortunate that we have the citizens that have the skill sets to be able to contribute to their tribal nation in this difficult time of social distancing.

Beckley: I think that is about all the time we have, but I was hoping you could tell the folks at home how they can learn more about your work, and about the Shawnee Nation and about Shawnee history – is there any online resources for them that you would suggest?

Barnes: Online resources are always dodgy when it comes to indigenous peoples because you always have to question the source – who wrote it, what was the context of it? The three Shawnee Tribes are the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Shawnee Tribe. Each of us have our own corresponding website. Those are the three Shawnee tribes. There has been a body of work that has been written by scholars. The best is a guy named Stephen Warren. Stephen Warren’s written a couple of books on Shawnee people. There’s others that have written on treaties like Collin Calloway, he’s written on Shawnee people. So, I would start with a couple of those books and look at the references at the back of the book – who did they cite, who did they read, who did they research? Because those are two top notch scholars.

Beckley: We’ll put a link to those things in our show notes which are found at blog.history.in.gov. Ben, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been a real pleasure talking with you.

Barnes: Thank you for the invite. We appreciate it.

Beckley: Once again, I want to thank Chief Barnes for taking the time to talk with me for this episode. As mentioned at the end of that discussion, check out the show notes for useful links for resources to learn about the Shawnee Tribe. We’ll be back on June 10 with a new episode! 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.

Thanks for listening!

Integrity on the Gridiron: Notre Dame’s 1924 Football Team Battles Klan Propaganda

“Football: Notre Dame (South Bend) by South Shore Line,” 1926, broadside, Indiana State Library Broadside Collection, accessed ISL Digital Collections.

This is Part Two of a three-part series, but also stands alone as a story of the incredible strength of the 1924 Notre Dame football team and the university’s struggle to combat prejudice in the age of the Klan. See Part One for the 1923 Notre Dame football season, context on the political strength of the Klan in Indiana, the May 1924 clashes between Klan members and an alliance of Notre Dame students and South Bend’s Catholic residents of immigrant origin, as well as the ensuing damage to the university’s reputation.

Notre Dame students returned to campus in the fall of 1924 under the looming threat that the Klan would return before the November elections. Just months earlier, in May, the Klan had been able to bait Notre Dame students into a violent confrontation. While initially embarrassing to the Klan, as they were all but driven out of town by students, the Klan’s propaganda machine was able to revise history. Using widely circulated brochures and newspaper articles, the hate group painted the students as an unruly mob of Catholic immigrant hooligans who attacked good Protestant American businessmen assembled peacefully. By fall, local Klansmen still wanted revenge for the previous spring’s humiliation, while state Klan leaders sought to show voters that they needed protection from the “Catholic menace.” Notre Dame University staff and leadership prepared for further violence and worked to rehabilitate the school’s image in the wake of the spring clash between students and Klansmen. The school needed a public relations miracle to combat the Klan’s far reaching propaganda.

University President Father John O’Hara devised a strategy for countering the negative press coverage inflicted on Notre Dame by highlighting one university program that was beyond reproach, not to mention already popular and exciting enough to draw press coverage. Father O’Hara’s inspired strategy was to put the full weight of the university behind championing its successful football team and the respectable, upright, and modest team members. The Fighting Irish football team had finished the 1923 season with only the one loss to Nebraska and a decent amount of newspaper coverage.* Much more was riding on the 1924 football team’s success. The school administration, the student body, alumni, as well as Catholics and immigrants in Indiana and beyond, looked to the Notre Dame players to show the world that they, and people who shared their religion and heritage, were proud, hardworking, dignified, and patriotic. The model team could prove the Klan’s stereotypes about Catholics and immigrants had no resemblance to reality. [1]

Father O’Hara recognized that linking the players’ Catholicism with their success on the gridiron created a strong positive identity for the university. Since at least 1921, he had arranged for press to cover the players, Catholic and non-Catholic together, attending mass before away games. He provided medals of saints for the team to wear during games and distributed his Religious Bulletin, in which he wrote about “the religious component in Notre Dame’s football success,” to alumni, colleagues, and the press. [2] According to Notre Dame football historian Murray Sperber, Father O’Hara conceived of an ambitious outreach plan for the 1924 season as a direct response to the Klan’s propaganda. In fact, O’Hara may have gotten the idea from a 1923 New York Times editorial that sarcastically reported on the reason for the Klan’s rise and extreme anti-Catholicism in Indiana:

There is in Indiana a militant Catholic organization, composed of men specially chosen for strength, courage and resourcefulness. These devoted warriors lead a life of almost monastic asceticism, under stern military discipline. They are constantly engaged in secret drills. They make long cross-country raiding expeditions. They have shown their prowess on many battlefields. Worst of all, they lately fought, and decisively defeated, a detachment of the United States Army. Yet we have not heard of the Indiana Klansmen rising up to exterminate the Notre Dame football team. [3]

This editorial and other similar articles implied that making the football team the symbol of Catholicism at Notre Dame could serve to combat the Klan in the press. In 1924, Father O’Hara created a series of press events to align with the game schedule, hoping to link the school’s proud Catholicism with the excitement of the winning team. [4] Of course, for this strategy to work, the team had to keep winning games.

Hammond Times, October 6, 1922, 16, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Coach Knute Rockne, who had led the Fighting Irish since 1918, had built an almost unstoppable football team by the close of the 1923 season. In six seasons, the team only lost four games. Two of these were tough losses to Nebraska where the players faced anti-Catholic hostilities. [5]  In 1924, with the eyes of the nation on them, the Notre Dame team needed a perfect season. Luckily “the 1924 Notre Dame Machine was bigger and better than ever,” according to the editors of the Official 1924 Football Review. [6]

Harry McGuire and Jack Scallan, eds., Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, 24, accessed Notre Dame Archives.

The season opened October 4, 1924 with a home game against Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. Coach Rockne employed a brilliant opening strategy. He started his secondary unit, called the “shock troops” who would “take the brunt of the fight” during the opening game and “wear down the opposition.” [7] Rockne then put in his main players, who most coaches would have started. This strategy meant that their opponents, in this case Lombard, would think they were holding their own against the Fighting Irish. Then the eleven regulars would show them the full force of the team. While the Chicago Sunday Tribune reported that Lombard “outplayed the second team Rockne started,” aka the “shock troops,” Notre Dame decisively beat the Illinois team 40-0. [8]

South Bend Tribune, October 12, 1924, 12, accessed Newspapers.com

On October 11, the Irish defeated Wabash College just as handily, winning 34-0. The South Bend Tribune reported, “Notre Dame took the game easily and without much apparent effort . . . The Irish were never forced for a touchdown by that old spirit known as a fight.” [9] While Notre Dame was clearly the better team, the Tribune criticized them for being “crude and lumbering” and the play “slow and listless.” In fact, the local paper was fairly pessimistic about the upcoming games, noting that the Irish “may crumple” in the following week’s game against Army or “give way” to Northwestern. The game against Army would decide if Rockne’s 1924 team was as good as the previous season’s hype foretold. [10]

While the Fighting Irish prepared for the battle against Army, Notre Dame officials readied for another kind of clash. The Klan had declared their intention to return to South Bend 200,000 strong on October 18 – the same date as the upcoming game. They also claimed to have the support of local officials. The Fiery Cross reported:

Chief of Police Lane and Mayor Siebert have promised their support to the demonstration and the procession will be escorted by a squadron of police on motorcycles, lest their be a repetition of last May’s attack on Klansmen by Roman Catholic Notre Dame students. [11]

Fiery Cross, October 10, 1924, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Notre Dame officials had no way to know if the Klan gathering was to be believed or if it was just Klan propaganda. What President Walsh did know was that he couldn’t trust city officials to protect his students. If the Klan descended on South Bend, Notre Dame would stand alone. As October 18 neared, Walsh noticed that the city was not making preparations to host a large gathering. Walsh also heard from Republican insiders that the state party was trying to quiet these kind of Klan demonstrations and distance itself (in public but not behind closed doors) from the Klan in order to not lose voters before the November election.

Drawing on this information, Walsh predicted that the rally would not happen. In fact, Indiana Republican Party Chairman Clyde Walb had forced the Klan to cancel the meeting by threatening to close the party headquarters. This would have left Republican state candidates, including those supported by the Klan, to fend for themselves for promotion and organization right before the election. [12] But the Fiery Cross continued to promote the rally, using the event to repeat their version of the clash earlier that spring. The Fiery Cross reminded its sympathetic readers:

Last May, when the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan attempted to hold a peaceful demonstration in this city, they were set upon — along with other Protestants — by Roman Catholic students from Notre Dame. They were beaten, kicked, and cursed, the women were called vile names and the American flag was trampled under foot. [13]

This was of course not what had happened (see Part One), but through continued repetition, the Klan convinced many people of their biased version of the story. Despite the Fiery Cross‘s claim that 200,000 Klansmen would take over South Bend “from morning to midnight,” they ceded to the political pressure and called off the rally. [14] Notre Dame officials and supporters must have breathed a sigh of relief. They could now return their focus to the upcoming game and all the hopes that rested on this win.

“The Squad” in Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, 8, accessed Notre Dame Archives.

The sports media’s hype was intense leading up to the October 18th Notre Dame – Army game that would take place in New York. This press coverage was owed in part to the East Coast alumni. Several graduates were in the city drumming up support for their alma mater by feeding Notre Dame-produced press statements to New York newspapers and proselytizing at Catholic social organizations like the Marquette Club. Another factor, likely more influential, was Rockne’s decision to hire a New York Times writer for an exorbitant sum. This all but guaranteed a round of good press for the Irish. [15] All they had to do was win.

“Running the Army Ends,” in Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, 28, accessed Notre Dame Archives.

The New York Times reported that the 60,000 person crowd that gathered at the New York City Polo Grounds was the largest ever in that city. The reporter raved about “Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame football machine, 1924 model” and their “speed, power, and precision.” [16] He gave special notice to the backfield, referring to their “poetry of motion.” Writing for the New York Herald Tribune, reporter Grantland Rice went further in praising the backfield of Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.  In a passage described by Sperber as perhaps the most famous in sports history, Grantland wrote:

Outlined against a blue, gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore, they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, and Layden. [17]

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Each kiss flamed with danger!” New York Public Library Digital Collections.

In fact, this famous line came from Notre Dame’s own publicity machine. George Strickler, a press assistant employed by the university had just seen Rex Ingram’s new movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Strickler mused that the Notre Dame backfield recalled “those ethereal figures charging through the clouds.” [18] Rice took the idea and made it his lead. The article quickly found a life of its own. The catchy lead was picked up by other newspapers and the nickname stuck. Strickler was delighted with the press coverage and determined to make the most of it. He called the university and arranged to have a photographer shoot a picture of the “horsemen” upon their return — on horseback, of course.

“Four Horsemen Are Ready for Gallop to Coast,” Minneapolis Daily Star, December 11, 1924, 10, Newspapers.com
Princeton-Notre Dame football program, October 25, 1924, Princeton University Archives, accessed https://princetonarchives.tumblr.com.

With more attention on them than ever before, the Fighting Irish still had most of their season ahead of them. When they faced the Princeton Tigers on October 25, 1924, it seemed like they might not survive the increased scrutiny. Despite the previous year’s upset, Princeton was favored to win as the Tigers defensive line was much improved. When the game kicked off before 45,000 spectators, Coach Rockne again started his substitutes. At one point in the first quarter, Princeton nearly scored, with the second-string Irish stopping the Tigers at the three-yard line. The game quickly shifted in Notre Dame’s favor when the starters entered the fray. The Four Horseman again stole the show. The New York Times reported that “the darting thrusts of Notre Dame’s lightning backfield were more than Princeton could handle today.” Left half-back James Crowley scored two touchdowns for a 12-0 Notre Dame win. [19] But all was not smooth sailing for the Irish, as quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, who was responsible for the most yards gained that game, was injured. Notre Dame was down one horseman as they returned to South Bend.

Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, 34, accessed Notre Dame Archives.

On November 1 Notre Dame faced Georgia Tech for their homecoming game at Cartier Field. By now, Coach Rockne’s method of tiring out the opposing team while holding back his best players had been published in newspapers across the country. Perhaps recognizing that their best chance at scoring was against the second string starters in the first quarter, the Georgia Tech Golden Tornado team came out strong. The Chicago Tribune reported:

Georgia Tech took advantage of the Notre Dame seconds early in the first period, and [full back Douglas] Wycoff promptly ran through the bewildered Rockmen for 40 yards, placing the ball on Notre Dame’s 35 yard line. [20]

Georgia Tech “place-kicked” for three points and the second-string Irish struggled through the first quarter. While Rockne’s strategy was no longer a surprise, it was still effective. When the varsity Irish started the second quarter they were unstoppable, even without the injured Stuhldreher. The other three horsemen led the team to a 34-3 victory with several substitutes also making important contributions. [21] Next, the Irish were ready to take on their first Big Ten team.

Notre Dame faced the Wisconsin University Badgers on November 8th before a crowd of 40,000. While it was an away game for the Irish, it didn’t feel like it to the players. The game was the main attraction for an annual student trip, and so the blue and gold section in the stands was full. The Notre Dame marching band came as well and marched out onto the field playing fight songs. The first quarter saw Rockne’s second-string starters equally matched with the starting Badgers and the quarter ended 3-3, but the tide quickly turned in favor of Notre Dame. The Notre Dame Official 1924 Football Review reported on the start of the second quarter:

Then came the call, and the entire first team burst onto the field while the Notre Dame stands went into an uproar. Then the fun began. [22]

1924 Football Review, accessed Notre Dame Archives.

With all four horsemen in the game, the Badgers didn’t stand a chance. “They simply galloped over the foe,” the Chicago Tribune reported. [23] The score was 17-3 at the half and 31-3 within the first ten minutes of the third quarter. Rockne called in his varsity players and gave some third stringers and rookies the chance to play. The Tribune joked that “no one in the press stand could call them by name” and that Coach Rockne probably could not either. [24] In the final quarter, Rockne put back in his starting “shock troops” who brought the final score to 38-3 for a sweeping Notre Dame win. The students in the stands threw their hats and rushed onto the field to follow their marching band, snaking across the gridiron while singing and dancing. The Chicago Tribune spotted some “well-known Chicago men of Celtic origin out there romping with the students.” [25] Notre Dame was becoming the beloved team of people with Irish heritage across the country. Thus, it was even more important that they beat Nebraska.

The Klan had not forgotten about South Bend. On November 8, while the Fighting Irish celebrated their win over Wisconsin, 1,800 Klansmen and women “from Chicago and from a number of Indiana cities,” gathered just outside the city limits. [26] Between six and seven o’clock they paraded through the streets of South Bend, a quick clip compared to other Klan parades and events. There was little reaction to their presence and the South Bend Tribune reported that “few people were on the streets.” [27] It’s not clear why there was no response from students. Perhaps they simply didn’t have advance notice of the parade, and when the event happened quickly, they didn’t have time to form a response. Maybe they simply refused to be baited into further confrontations. Either way, the Klan had surely succeeded in reminding the Irish Catholic students that the threat of violence still loomed.

The Fiery Cross claimed that the Klan held yet another South Bend parade on November 11, just days after the quiet, uneventful rally of a few days earlier. The newspaper claimed that thirty-five thousand members from across the Midwest gathered and paraded through the city, purportedly “one of the biggest Ku Klux Klan demonstrations ever held in this section of the country.” [28] The Fiery Cross again claimed that the Klan had the cooperation of the mayor and the police chief. No other newspaper reported on the event. The Klan newspaper’s claims are dubious. A crowd this large would surely have drawn at least passing comment from the South Bend Tribune. It seems more likely that this was hype generated by their propaganda machine after the turnout for the rally on the 8th was reported by the South Bend Tribune to have been small. Whether the Klan gathered that day or whether this was just more propaganda, Notre Dame students and officials certainly felt the continued threat. For now, however, the Notre Dame players and their supporters had their eye on a different kind of opponent, albeit one with anti-Catholic prejudices of their own.

The last time they faced the Cornhuskers, the 1923 Fighting Irish team encountered prejudice and xenophobic epithets from Nebraska fans. The university was also still facing public backlash and disapproval from the violent confrontation with the Klan the previous May, as well as the Klan’s ongoing propaganda campaign. In an attempt to remedy their school’s reputation, the 1924 Notre Dame football players had handled themselves with dignity throughout the season, serving as examples of upstanding Catholic American citizens and scholars. But they still needed to beat Nebraska for two reasons. One, the symbolic victory of the hardworking and stoic Irish Catholic school over a team with anti-Catholic fans would be significant to their Irish Catholic supporters in an era dominated by the Klan. Two, to revenge their only loss of the previous season and make 1924 an undefeated perfect season would give them the public platform they needed to further improve the reputation of Notre Dame.

“Football: Notre Dame (South Bend) by South Shore Line,” 1926, broadside, Indiana State Library Broadside Collection, accessed ISL Digital Collections.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish faced the Nebraska Cornhuskers November 15, 1924 at home in South Bend. Notre Dame supporters packed the stands at the recently enlarged Cartier Field while overflow fans stood on the sidelines or even sat on the fences. The local newspaper estimated the crowd at 26,000 people, the largest to date. [29] Recognizing the increasing popularity of the Notre Dame team to those in the wider area, the WGN radio station in Chicago delivered a live broadcast of the game. [30] Likewise, the South Shore interurban line, which ran between South Bend and Chicago, created large color posters of Notre Dame football players in action to advertise their service. [31]

Photograph from Notre Dame Archives, accessed “This Day in History: Irish Topple A Nemesis,” Department of Athletics, University of Notre Dame, https://125.nd.edu/moments/this-day-in-history-irish-topple-a-nemesis/.

Football fans had a beautiful day for the game, which was “easily the headliner” of Midwestern match ups that week, according to the Lincoln Star. [32] The newspaper reported: “A glorious November sun was shining through golden haze and the tang of frost was in the air.” [33] Photographs from game day show supporters well-bundled in hats and coats.

This game had been the focus of the entire season for Notre Dame. The players’ had written slogans on their dressing room lockers such as: “Get the Cornhuskers” and “Remember the last two defeats” (losses in 1922 and 1923). [34] A Lincoln newspaper complained that “Rockne has pointed his team for Nebraska and doesn’t mind telling the world about it.” One reporter stated simply: “They hope to taste revenge.” [35]

The players took the field at 2:00 and it was clear almost immediately that Rockne’s shock troops would not be able to handle the Cornhuskers. The second stringers fumbled early, got penalized for being offsides, and Nebraska pushed through to the four-yard line. Not taking any chances, Coach Rockne swapped the troops for his first-stringers. But it was Nebraska’s ball and they were able to drive through the remaining yards for a touchdown. [36] That touchdown would be Nebraska’s last of the game.

Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, accessed Note Dame Archives.

The Irish thoroughly outplayed the Cornhuskers with much of the credit going to the Four Horsemen. The South Bend Tribune reported:

First it was Miller circling around the ends for notable gains, then it was Crowley, and then there was Layden splitting the line with the speed and momentum of a cannon ball. Then to top it off there was Stuhldreher to carry the ball or to toss the pigskin with deadly accuracy into the hands of his waiting backs. They were all there, they were all stars and together they make Notre Dame the greatest eleven in football history. [37]

Harry McGuire and Jack Scallon, eds., Official 1924 Football Review,

In the end, Notre Dame beat Nebraska 34-6, but even that score did not reflect how well the Irish played. The Tribune reported, “Twenty-three first downs for Notre Dame gave the fans some idea of the complete swamping the western players received.” [38] The most significant aspect of the win for the Fighting Irish though was symbolic. They had finally overcome a rival who had not only ruined their otherwise perfect 1923 season, but had insulted them with anti-Catholic, anti-Irish slurs as well. The Tribune summarized the feeling that day for the victors:

There may be games with more sensational playing, with more artistic foot-ball handling, but none, past or future, will ever appeal to the heart of Notre Dame men as this game which witnessed Rockne erasing the memory of two years defeat, but trouncing the huge Cornhusker squad soundly, without apology. [39]

Rockne reveled in both the football win and the symbolic victory of besting a team whose fans had personally humiliated his players. Rockne said, “Nebraska, as usual, was the dirtiest team we played, and after the game, a few of their players even called me a few choice epithets.” [40] The next game would have symbolic undertones as well. Catholic Notre Dame would face Methodist Northwestern.

Chicago Tribune, November 23, 1924, 25, Newspapers.com

For the November 22 Notre Dame – Northwestern match up, Rockne manged to move the game from Northwestern’s hometown of Evanston, Illinois, to Chicago. As the Irish middle class grew in Chicago, so did support for Notre Dame football in the city. Over 45,000 people bought tickets, the majority of them Notre Dame fans. [41] The game played that day at Grant Park (soon to be called Soldier Field) was the most difficult of the season. Northwestern held the lines against the Horsemen for much of the game and their halfback, All-American Ralph “Moon” Baker “threatened for a time to act as presiding host at an Irish wake,” according to one Chicago reporter. [42] After Northwestern almost immediately scored three points, fans began chanting for the Horsemen, and Rockne put in his first stringers. But Northwestern scored another three, giving them six points and leaving Notre Dame scoreless. The Irish rallied soon after and began to arduously shift the game in their favor. Stuhldreher ran for a touchdown in the second with Crowley’s field goal giving the Irish a one point advantage by the half. After a scoreless third quarter, Layden ran 45 yards for a touchdown in the fourth. Notre Dame won 13-6 against a tough Northwestern team. [43]

“Camera’s Eye Catches Thrilling Plays in Carnegie-Notre Dame Game,” Pittsburgh Sunday Post, November 30, 1924, 26, 26, Newspapers.com.

Notre Dame played their last game of the regular season against Carnegie Tech on November 29, 1924. Tech played well, scoring three touchdowns – two against the shock troops but one against the regulars, minus one Horseman (Bernard Livergood and William Cerney filled in for Elmer Layden who was injured). Even so, Notre Dame dominated the contest with their passing game drawing note in the press. The Fighting Irish beat Carnegie Tech 40-19, and closed the season undefeated in nine games. [44] This perfect record was everything the university administration had hoped for in order to engage their publicity machine and improve the school’s marred reputation. A trip to the Rose Bowl gave them the opportunity to set their plan into action. On New Year’s Day 1925, Notre Dame would play the Stanford University Indians, a game that’s long remembered in the history of this classic Fighting Irish Team. More significantly, the several week tour by rail of the Midwest and West masterminded by Father O’Hara forever repaired the university’s reputation. According to Notre Dame historian Robert E. Burns:

O’Hara saw the Rose Bowl invitation as an almost providential opportunity to counter the extremely negative Klan-inspired image of Notre Dame . . . [and] might well turn out to be the most successful advertising campaign for the spiritual ideals and practices of American Catholicism yet undertaken in this century. [45]

The Klan continued their propaganda campaign into December, through the weeks leading up to the Rose Bowl. As they prepared for the big game, the Fighting Irish faced anti-Catholic vitriol and hatred that the Klan had helped to make socially acceptable. Nonetheless, the Notre Dame football team would establish themselves not only as the greatest players in the country, but also as patriotic Americans, many the sons of Irish immigrants, and as proud Catholics.

Check back for Integrity on the Gridiron Part Three.

Notes

*The University of Notre Dame did not officially accept the name “Fighting Irish” for their athletic teams until 1925, but newspapers had been using it for quite a while beforehand.

[1] Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999) 347-48.
[2] Murray Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993, reprint, 2003), 157-158.
[3] “Where the Klan Fails,” New York Times, November 1, 1923, accessed timesmachine.nytimes.com.
[4] Sperber, 157-58.
[5] Burns, 348.
[6] Harry McGuire and Jack Scallan, eds., Official 1924 Football Review, University of Notre Dame, 24, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[7] Ibid., 17.
[8] “Notre Dame Too Husky; Lombard Loses by 40 to 0,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 4, 1924, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[9] Notre Dame Defeats Wabash, 34-0,” South Bend Tribune, October 12, 1924, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[10] Ibid.
[11] “Expect 200,000 at Gathering: South Bend To Be Host to Klansmen,” Fiery Cross, October 10, 1924, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[12] Burns, 342-44.
[13] “Prepare for Large Gathering: South Bend Ready for Many Visitors from Four States,” Fiery Cross, October 17, 1924, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Sperber, 164.
[16] “Notre Dame Eleven Defeats Army, 13-7; 60,000 Attend Game,” New York Times, October 19, 1924, 118, accessed TimesMachine.
[17] Sperber, 178-79.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Notre Dame Sweeps Princeton to Defeat,” New York Times, October 26, 1924, 116, accessed TimesMachine.
[20] “Notre Dame Is 34-3 Victor Over Golden Tornado,” Chicago Tribune, November 1, 1924 reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Official 1924 Football Review, 36, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[23] James Crusinberry, Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1924, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] “Klansmen in Parade,” South Bend Tribune, November 9, 1924, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
[27] Ibid.
[28] “No Violence of Any Sort Mars Parade,” Fiery Cross, November 14, 1924, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[29] Kenneth S. Conn, “Notre Dame Soars Over Corn-Fed Nebraska,” South Bend Tribune, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, 39, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[30] “N. Dame Stakes National Title on Tilt Today,” Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1924, 17, Newspapers.com.
[31] “Football: Notre Dame (South Bend) by South Shore Line,” 1926, broadside, Indiana State Library Broadside Collection, accessed ISL Digital Collections.
[32] Edward C. Derr, “Nebraska – Notre Dame Classic Dominates Interest,” Lincoln Journal Star, November 14, 1924, 16, Newspapers.com.
[33] Cy Sherman, “Nebraska Battles Notre Dame: Cornhuskers Clash with Irish Eleven,” Lincoln Star, November 15, 1924, 1, Newspapers.com.
[34] Jim Lefebvre, Loyal Sons: The Story of The Four Horsemen and Notre Dame Football’s 1924 Champions, excerpt reprinted in “This Day in History: Irish Topple A Nemesis,” Department of Athletics, University of Notre Dame, https://125.nd.edu/moments/this-day-in-history-irish-topple-a-nemesis/.
[35] Edward C. Derr, “Nebraska – Notre Dame Classic Dominates Interest,” Lincoln Journal Star, November 14, 1924, 16, Newspapers.com.
[36] Cy Sherman, “Nebraska Battles Notre Dame: Cornhuskers Clash with Irish Eleven,” Lincoln Star, November 15, 1924, 1, Newspapers.com.
[37] Kenneth S. Conn, “Notre Dame Soars Over Corn-Fed Nebraska,” South Bend Tribune, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, 39, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Sperber, 167.
[41] Ibid., 167-68.
[42] Jimmy Corcoran, “Notre Dame is Forced to the Limit,” newspaper not cited, November 22, 1924, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, 41, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[43] Ibid.; “Game By Quarters,” South Bend Tribune, November 23, 1924, 14, Newspapers.com.
[44] Warren W. Brown, “Notre Dame Gallops Over Carnegie Tech,” Chicago Herald Examiner, reprinted in Official 1924 Football Review, 43, accessed Notre Dame Archives.
[45] Burns, 369.

THH Episode 31: Tenskwatawa: The Rise and Fall of a Nation

Transcript of Tenskwatawa: The Rise and Fall of a Nation

Beckley: I just wanted to drop in here at the top of the episode to give a little bit of a disclaimer. We are currently working from home due to COVID-19, so the sound quality of this episode might be a little bit different from what you’re used to hearing from Talking Hoosier History, since I’m using different equipment than usual. And now, on to the show.

Jump to Show Notes

Written by Lindsey Beckley, produced by Jill Weiss Simins, sound engineering by Justin Clark.

[Flute Music]

Beckley: This is the second of a two-part series covering the life of Indigenous leader Tenskwatawa. If you haven’t listened to the first part, I highly recommend you go do so now and come back after listening. Otherwise, you might be a bit lost coming in at this point in the story.

In “Tenskwatawa: The Making of a Prophet,” we explored the years leading up to and immediately following the birth of Tenskwatawa into the Shawnee tribe. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there was a cycle which played out all across North America. Colonial, and later American, settlers invaded Native Land, Native People fought to keep their land, but were forced to settle elsewhere only for white settlers to once again violently invade, restarting the cycle.

We also followed Tenskwatawa’s transformation from a relatively obscure figure into a political and spiritual leader for thousands of Native Peoples. We left off just after Tenskwatawa received his directives in a vision from the Great Spirit – he was to eschew all European customs, not only to return to the old ways, but also to start a new chapter in the Native story, one in which all Native People are united under the teachings of The Prophet.

Tenskwatawa’s village near modern-day Greenville, Ohio, was structured to reflect this idea of a pan-Indian identity, at least ideally. When people came to Greenville, they were to leave behind their tribal affiliations and become part of the greater whole.

And we left off with Tenskwatawa summoning Native People to gather at Greenville to witness a demonstration of his power. He was going to “put out the sun.” When the appointed day came and the sun did indeed disappear from the sky in a total eclipse, the Prophet sat in his tent while his followers observed the fulfillment of his prophesy. When he finally emerged from his tent, he spoke:

Voice actor: “Behold! Did I not prophesy correctly? See, darkness is coming.”

Beckley: With those words, the sun returned, illuminating his wisdom and power.

I’m Lindsey Beckley and this is Talking Hoosier History.

From our vantage point, it may be easy to think about the Prophet’s attempt to create an autonomous pan-Indian nation as being doomed to fail.  But putting yourself in the shoes of those living through these events might change how you see them. To Tenskwatawa and his followers, and to the white settlers of the area, the Prophet’s movement looked formidable, because it was. And it was this threat, as well as the unpredictability of settler-Native interactions that intimidated U.S. leaders.

In the early 1800s, Tenskwatawa led the largest population center in the region, and his following was only growing larger. And Native People had governed themselves and the land they lived on for millennia before European contact – why would it seem implausible to think a version of that could be restored?

Today, we look at a moment many historians view as the tipping point of Tenskwatawa’s power –the Battle of Tippecanoe. Before the battle, anything was possible. After it, all was lost. This narrative has been repeated in books and classrooms for decades. But is that really the case? Could it really be that cut and dry? No, of course not. And let’s explore why.

After Tenskwatawa’s prophesy was fulfilled, cementing his followers’ faith in him and lending further credence to his movement, many indigenous people traveled to Greenville. In the months after the eclipse, white settlers from as far away as present-day Wisconsin reported that:

Voice actor: “The Indians are crowding down upon us from the Green Bay on their way as they say to see the Shawonese at Greenville.”

Beckley: With so many Native People on the move, the white authorities of the Northwest began to grow uneasy. They questioned whether the mass of people gathering around Greenville were there just to hear the teachings of the Prophet and, indeed, if those teachings were purely religious in nature.

Playing on rising tensions between England and the United States, conspiracies of an impending British-backed Native assault on nearby American settlers swirled among the white communities, but it never came to fruition. In fact, Tenskwatawa had already received another message from the Great Spirit commanding him to move his followers away from Greenville. So, in the spring of 1808, Tenskwatawa and his people arrived just north of present-day Lafayette, Indiana. This new settlement would be called Prophetstown.

This move, ordained by the Great Spirit, was also quite advantageous to the prophet and to his followers. Prophetstown was situated at the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers – meaning that it could only be approached from two sides. It was also a very fertile area, an important feature, as the Prophet’s followers had nearly starved at Greenville in 1807.

Prophetstown featured European-style houses, wigwams, a large storehouse, a central structure where any visiting Native person could stay called the House of the Stranger, and possibly even a blacksmith shop. All trees around the town were cleared, a strategic move, which stripped the land of any concealment for an oncoming army.

The Prophet had plenty of reason to prepare for that eventuality. Prophetstown was a mere 150 miles from Vincennes, the seat of government in the Northwest Territory. William Henry Harrison, the territorial governor and future U.S. president, was wary of his new neighbors, who numbered somewhere between three and six thousand people. By comparison, Vincennes, the capitol of the territory, had an approximate population of 1,500 around the same time. Harrison was convinced that Prophetstown was more than a holy city – he thought it was a rising political and military threat. And he wasn’t completely mistaken.

While Tenskwatawa was a religious leader, many of his teachings, such as his assertion that all land occupied by Native Peoples was owned collectively and without tribal distinction, as well as his advocacy of a pan-Indian nation, were inherently political. Success in these endeavors would have undercut European power in the area, making it impossible for government officials to exploit tribal differences when conducting negotiations or going to war. Eventually, this could stop the encroachment of white settlers on Indigenous peoples’ lands. Tenskwatawa and his warriors would defend their border, but it’s important to note, he was not intending to launch an offensive attack. In fact, he was offering peace. In a message delivered to Harrison in June 1808, Tenskwatawa said:

Voice actor: “It never was my intention to lift up my hand against the Americans . . . We had determined to follow the advice of the Great Spirit, who has told us that our former conduct is not right: that we ought to live in peace upon the land he has given us.

. . . I am now very much engaged in making my new settlement but as soon as it is completed, I will pay you a visit and hope to remove every bad impression you have received against me.”

Beckley: Harrison accepted the Prophet’s offer of a summit and in August of 1808, Tenskwatawa and William Henry Harrison came face to face for the first time in Vincennes. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, the two kind of hit it off. The Prophet stayed in Vincennes for several weeks and the men spoke of religion and politics. By the end of the visit, Harrison’s fears of an attack from Prophetstown seemed to have been quelled. He wrote to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn:

Voice actor: “I am inclined to think that the influence which the Prophet has acquired will prove rather advantageous than otherwise to the United States.”

Beckley: Harrison also agreed to send funds for provisions to Prophetstown – a much needed break for the settlement as drought had destroyed the majority of their crops. Resulting food shortages caused many followers to lose faith and return to their home villages.

The goodwill that resulted from this meeting didn’t last long, however. And it wasn’t enough to dissuade Harrison from his mission of expanding the United States’ land holdings in the Northwest. Just over a year later, Harrison gathered representatives of the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, Wea, and Kickapoo at Fort Wayne. Conspicuously absent was the leader of the largest population center of the Old Northwest – the Prophet hadn’t even been informed of the proceedings.

Harrison had strategically chosen who to invite to the negotiations – all leaders he thought he could coerce to sign a treaty. And he was right. After days of cajoling, bribing, threatening, and supplying a few hundred gallons of rum, coupled with the ever-present threat of military and economic pressure, the leaders at the summit were compelled to sign the Treaty of Fort Wayne in September of 1809, ceding 300,000 acres of land to the U.S. government.

Tenskwatawa was furious at this perceived betrayal. Although the land didn’t include Prophetstown, he believed that all Nations were one and so no land belonging to any Indigenous group could be sold without the consent of the leader of the pan-Indian nation – him. The Prophet wasn’t the only one upset, either. People flocked to Prophetstown after the news of the treaty spread. They came from many nations – Miami, Wyandot, Sac, Iowa, Winnebego, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Shawnee, Ojibwe, and Ottawa. But once they arrived in Prophetstown, Tenskwatawa declared them one people.

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Fort Wayne, Tenskwatawa’s older brother emerged as the military leader of Prophetstown, while The Prophet continued his role as political and religious leader. Tecumseh, who up to this point had widely been known simply as “The Prophet’s brother,” began to travel to tribes affected by recent white expansion and recruit them to his brother’s cause, with considerable success. In 1810, his diplomatic role expanded when he attended what was supposedly a peace summit with William Henry Harrison. Harrison, however, had already made up his mind – he wanted to eliminate Prophetstown for its resistance to the Treaty of Fort Wayne. Unsurprisingly, the peace summit, which began with threats of a shoot-out, didn’t go well. Relations were, if anything, more strained by the end of the “peace talks.”

Harrison wanted to attack Prophetstown but leaders in Washington declined to give their permission, saying he could only act defensively. So, Harrison did the one thing he knew would provoke Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh into action. He sent surveyors into land which had been ceded to the U.S. government in opposition to Tenskwatawa’s wishes. One day into the mission, the surveyors were kidnapped by members of the Wea tribe, allies of the Prophet. Although the men were released the next day, the damage had been done. Harrison, with this “proof” of aggression from Prophetstown, wrote to the Secretary of War asking for approval of his war plans multiple times in the following months. Finally, he got the answer he wanted – he could attack Prophetstown.

And there was no better time than the present. Tecumseh, the war leader of the settlement, was away on a diplomatic mission, a vulnerability known to Harrison. So, on September 26, 1811, American troops set out from Vincennes in the direction of Prophetstown. In early November, Harrison and his troops arrived just outside of Prophetstown and set up camp.

Tenskwatawa, hoping to avoid battle, asked for peace negotiations. Harrison, although resolute in his decision to attack, accepted. The meeting was set for the following day, November 7, 1811. The meeting would never happen though, and while we know the broad strokes of the events that followed, it’s impossible to know the exact sequence of events leading up to the battle.

Traditionally, historians have relied on a mixture of Harrison’s account of the events and that of Shabonee, a man from the Ottawa tribe who was a follower of Tenskwatawa’s teachings but later allied himself with the Americans.

In this version of events, the request for negotiation was nothing but a ruse by the Prophet, who ordered a sneak attack on Harrison’s camp to be carried out  two hours before sunrise, when Harrison’s men would be blinded by their camp fires. In this account, the Prophet’s forces snuck soundlessly out of the dark to fire upon Harrison’s men.

This narrative is often recited as fact, but historian Adam Jortner raises questions about the veracity of the sources. Harrison had political motivations for casting Tenskwatawa as carrying out a sneak attack after requesting peace under false pretenses. And Shabonee, while he was a follower of Tenskwatawa during the battle, didn’t give his account until decades later, after adopting an accommodationist ideology and while employed by the United States government.

Jortner, along with historian Alfred Cave, propose a different sequence of events, this one based on reports given to American Indian agent Matthew Elliott by an unnamed Kickapoo chief just weeks after the battle. So, not a perfect source as it’s still secondhand and relayed by a white agent, but its proximity in time to the events makes it a little more trustworthy.

In this second version, American sentinels panicked and accidentally shot two Native warriors patrolling in the night. The news spread through Prophetstown and their forces attacked the next morning, either with the reluctant consent of Tenskwatawa or against his wishes entirely.

It’s quite possible that neither version is wholly accurate. And considering that neither of these accounts came directly from Tenskwatawa, and neither are free of a white lens, it’s almost guaranteed they are not completely accurate.  Even if we did have access to an account of events directly from the Prophet, the events probably would have looked different depending on which side you were on, and the search for an “objective truth” is often futile.

What we do know is that fighting broke out and what followed was what we know today as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison labeled the battle a great victory and used it very successfully to bolster his political reputation, eventually becoming a top U.S. military leader and then president.

As is so often the case, the victor, even if he was but a self-proclaimed one, wrote the story. Shabonee’s and Harrison’s version of the story would be recounted by historians for much of the next 200 years. But were the outcomes of this battle as clear as Harrison led the country to believe? Absolutely not.

Looking at casualty counts alone would suggest Tenskwatawa was the victor. He lost approximately fifty soldiers to Harrison’s 180. However, Tenskwatawa retreated, abandoned Prophetstown to Harrison, and watched as Harrison burned it along with all the crops surrounding it.

This was certainly a blow, but even so, Prophetstown was reconstructed in less than a month. Additionally, an unprovoked American attack earned the Prophetstown movement more followers in the immediate aftermath of the clash, further discounting the assertion that the Battle of Tippecanoe itself was a devastating and ultimately fatal blow to Tenskwatawa’s movement.

Perhaps the most impactful outcome of the battle was actually  Harrison’s portrayal of the battle and its effect in Washington. Members of Congress concluded that the Native Peoples wouldn’t have fought against the Americans, risking annuities provided by the government, simply to preserve their land. No, there had to be more to it. They decided that the only plausible explanation was that Tenskwatawa and his warriors were in league with the British, who were surely promising annuities of their own. There was no evidence to support this besides Governor Harrison’s long-standing accusations that Prophetstown was working for the British.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government held it as a fact. This belief – that the British were conspiring with Native forces to launch attacks on American forts and other holdings – was one in a string of complaints against Britain. The American belief that the British were inciting Native attacks, along with ongoing naval issues regarding freedom of the seas, economic sanctions, and American sovereignty led Congress to declare war on June 18, 1812 against Great Britain. Today, we call this the War of 1812.

During the War of 1812, Tenskwatawa took a back seat to his brother, who was a better warrior with more experience. Just as the war was starting, Tecumseh established an alliance with British forces – an unsurprising move given the prolonged tensions between Prophetstown and the American government. After battling to preserve the land the Prophet had claimed for his people in present-day northern Indiana during the early war, a devastating blow for the movement came when Tecumseh died in battle in October 1813. After that battle, Tenskwatawa fled the pursuing American forces to Upper Canada, where he and a small group of followers stayed for over a decade, well past the 1815 end of the war.

Following these years of exile in Canada, the Prophet returned to the U.S. in 1825 to lead a contingent of Shawnee to Kansas, where he set up the last, much smaller iteration of Prophetstown. He lived there until his death in 1836.

[Music]

Beckley: While his movement ultimately failed, Tenskwatawa and his followers at Prophetstown represent a piece of history often overlooked – organized resistance to white settlement. Many look back at history and see the eventual removal of Native Peoples to the west as an inevitability. However, in the aspirations of Tenskwatawa, we see another possible outcome – one in which an autonomous pan-Indian nation could succeed and coexist adjacent to the United States, something which the Prophet advocated for, saying:

Voice actor: “I hope what I now say will be engraven on your heart. It is my determination to obey the Great Spirit and live in peace with you and your people. . . . This is what the Great Spirit has told us repeatedly. We are all made by him, although we differ a little in colour. We are all his children and should live in peace and friendship with each other.”

Beckley: I want to reiterate the importance of remembering that this outcome – the dwindling of the Prophet’s power – was by no means inevitable. The failure to establish an autonomous pan-Indian nation was also not inevitable. In fact, part of the terms of the wartime alliance between Prophetstown and the British forces was the establishment of a “buffer state” between Canada and the United States. This agreement put the Prophet and his followers in the best position for success and autonomy after the war, as the “buffer state” was to be an independent Indigenous nation, a possibility that remained as feasible, if not likely, right up to the end of the war.

Considering the outcomes of historical events to be pre-ordained – especially when discussing something as complicated as this – erases the agency of the people involved. It erases the fact that these were real people fighting for a real cause with real reason to hope for success. And who are we to take that away?

The story of Prophetstown is not by any means the entire story of Native resistance to white encroachment, and removal and resistance is not the entire story of Native People in the Hoosier state. There are Indigenous people living in and making history in Indiana today. And we at IHB have committed ourselves to preserving this history. If you are an Indigenous person living in Indiana, we want to hear from you. We are looking for the stories that have been left out of the textbooks and have not been commemorated by historical markers. What stories did you grow up hearing? Who did you look up to? We’d love to listen to your recollections and do what we can to help you preserve your history. Email me at lbeckley@library.in.gov with any questions, suggestions, or stories you’d like to share.

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. The music in this episode was written and performed by multi Native American Music Award winner and Indian Summer Music Award winner Golaná from the Echota Cherokee tribe. All tracks used were from the albums “Meditations for Two” and “Path to the Heart.” You can learn more about Golaná’s music and purchase his albums at oginali.com. You can find a link in the show notes. I used the book The Gods of Prophetstown by Adam Jortner as 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. Talking Hoosier History is written by me, Lindsey Beckley. Sound engineering on this episode was by Justin Clark with help from Jill Weiss Simins. Join us in two weeks for the next installment of Giving Voice, where we’ll be talking to Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes. Until then, catch us on social media as Indiana Historical Bureau and remember to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening!

Show Notes for Tenskwatawa: The Rise and Fall of a Nation

Music:

All music in this episode was produced by award-winning Native artist Golaná from the Echota Cherokee tribe. Listen to and purchase Golaná’s music here: oginali.com.

The tracks heard in this episode are from the albums “Meditations for Two” and “Path to the Heart.”

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), 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 Story, (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), 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).

Websites:

Candey, Robert, and Young, Alex, “Total Solar Eclipse of 1806 June 16,” accessed https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearch/SEsearchmap.php?Ecl=18060616.

Academic Journals:

Cave, Alfred, “The Shawnee Prophet, Tecumseh, and Tippecanoe: A Case Study of Historical Myth-Making,” Journal of the Early Republic, 22, no. 4 (Winter, 2002), accessed https://www.jstor.org/stable/3124761?read-now=1&loggedin=true&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

How Indiana’s Religious Institutions Kept the Faith During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Indianapolis woman wearing a mask during the Spanish Flu epidemic, November 27, 1918, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.

For many Hoosiers across the state, this week marks the sixth week that they’ve been asked to stay at home to help flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID-19. In addition to the many schools, businesses, libraries, and other enterprises that have been impacted, so too have Indiana’s religious institutions. During this stretch, Christians could not come together as parishioners to celebrate Holy Week as they have for centuries past. Jews had to find alternative ways to observe Passover. And last week, with the start of Ramadan, Muslims could not gather in mosques or with family to mark the month of spiritual rejuvenation as they traditionally would.

Beyond adjusting to holiday commemorations is the general desire among worshipers to practice their religion and attend daily or weekly services together as normal. Most religious leaders across the state have made the difficult, but necessary decision to help comply with social distancing orders in an effort to do their part and protect their followers and other Hoosiers.

Muncie Evening Press, October 7, 1918, p. 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

Historical records show us that this is not the first time Indiana’s religious institutions have faced such circumstances. When the Spanish Influenza pandemic hit Indiana in the fall of 1918, U.S. public health service officials mandated a statewide quarantine here and in most other states. The order, put in place by October 6th, called for the immediate closure of “all schools, churches, theaters, amusements of all kinds, and to put a ban on all public meetings and gatherings.”[1] In a previous Indiana History Blog post, IHB historian Nicole Poletika examined how Hoosiers coped with the quarantine in a number of ways. Here, we take a more in-depth look at how the order directly impacted Indiana’s religious institutions and believers in late 1918.

As we’ve seen today, Hoosiers have not let the stay-at-home order prevent them from finding creative ways to come together, celebrate, and in some cases mourn. While technological advancements might afford us more opportunities to “see” one another and connect virtually now, religious leaders in 1918 also found many ways to help keep the faith among their followers as the number of influenza cases grew.

South Bend Tribune, October 12, 1918, accessed Newspapers.com.

Many used the local press to stay connected with members, give each other hope, and encourage the continued practice of their religion. Through the newspapers, they shared scripture readings, offered Bible school lessons, and encouraged their followers and anyone else interested to worship as individuals or together as a family. In mid-October 1918, A.F. Mitchell, chairman of the press committee of the Ministerial Association, issued the following statement to city church members in Richmond, which was published by the Palladium Item on October 12, 1918: [2]

On account of the ban laid upon congregational assemblies there will be no public services of the churches until after October 20. During this period of time there should be no cessation in Bible study or worship. The home is still fundamental and the basis of all good government. . . Let the home then be true to its highest privilege and around the family altar keep the home fires burning adding even a brighter glow while the churches are closed.

Rev. G.P. Fisher published a similar statement in the Culver Citizen a few days later, urging all families to continue to pray at the stated hours of services.[3] When the statewide ban was extended to the end of October, First Presbyterian Church in Rushville implored members to “make [Sunday] a day of prayer and meditation in their homes” and the pastor offered an outline of readings to unite the congregation despite their physical isolation.[4]

Muncie Evening Press, October 19, 1918, accessed Newspapers.com.

Some newspapers went a step farther and dedicated larger portions of their publications to celebrating Sunday morning services. In a series the Indianapolis Star named “Worship with the Star,” the paper featured a full page that included opening and closing hymns, a scripture lesson, and sermons.[5] The Muncie Press responded similarly in their October 19, 1918 issue, presenting sermons from the pastors of First Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church, and High Street M.E. Church.[6]

Indianapolis Star, October 13, 1918, p. 30, accessed Newspapers.com.

Religious leaders sought other ways to maintain contact with their members and keep services going during the influenza pandemic. Today, during the present COVID-19 crisis, we’ve seen a trend among a number of churches across the country to offer “drive-in” services. Some worshipers have also celebrated services on their front lawns in an effort to comply with social distancing regulations. In 1918, some church leaders actively proposed and, in some cases held, open air services, believing that “brief religious services in well ventilated churches” could be held “without in any serious sense compromising the health of the community.”[7]

Local health boards across the state discouraged this practice. On October 13, 1918, a policeman had to be dispatched to the Adelbert Polish Catholic Church in South Bend when the pastor of the church offered one such service.[8] Similarly, in Evansville, the local health officer denied granting permission to the Assumption Church to hold open air services at Bosse Field in mid-October, stating that “even a gathering in the open air might prove dangerous.”[9] As conditions seemed to improve in early November and the ban was lifted, many churches held open air services with the approval of their local boards of health.[10]

Fort Wayne Journal, November 13, 1918, p. 6, accessed Newspapers.com.

Rev. F.E. Smith of Jackson Street Christian Church in Muncie came up with one of the more creative ways of safely “getting around the flu order.” Working with the Central Union Telephone Company, Rev. Smith arranged to hold services by having members of the church call in and listen by phone, our modern equivalent to following services online or watching them broadcast on television.[11]

Muncie Evening Press, October 12, 1918, p. 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

As the flu pandemic went on, worshipers and religious leaders alike wondered what the lasting impact might be once buildings began to reopen and gatherings were again permitted. A cartoon in the Fort Wayne Sentinel offered one view, with different families seated apart from one another in church and everyone required to wear masks upon entry to help contain the spread of germs.[12]

Fort Wayne Sentinel, October 16, 1918, accessed Newspapers.com.

As new outbreaks of the flu occurred in late November and December, health authorities across the state strongly urged all people attending churches or theaters, or visiting stores to wear regulation masks.[13] Some churches curtailed services, while others closed again for a few weeks under new bans. In December, board of health officials in some areas ordered churches to keep their services to one hour in length and “instructed [pastors] to devote fifteen minutes of that hour to the subject of ventilation in the homes and business houses as a preventative of influenza.”[14]

Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, December 6, 1918, p. 1, accessed Newspapers.com.

Like businesses across the state, religious institutions also had to deal with the financial strains imposed by the pandemic. Several weeks of missed weekly offerings left heavy burdens on some churches. Many religious leaders looked for ways to continue collections as their buildings remained closed, with some publicizing specific hours whereby members could safely drop off their offerings.[15]

Temple Beth-El, South Bend, Indiana. Photo courtesy of Temple Beth-El.

Pastors and rabbis also sought ways to help those more directly afflicted by influenza. In mid-October 1918, Rabbi Julius A. Leibert of Temple Beth-El in South Bend offered the city the “use of the temple as an improvised concentration hospital where cases of influenza could be taken.”[16] Local board of health members discussed the plan with other leading health experts and declined the offer, fearing that concentrating larger numbers of people at the temple at that time would increase the mortality rate. Other actions were taken elsewhere in the state as the pandemic continued. For example, as the number of influenza cases grew in Tipton County in December, leaders at Elwood’s First Christian Church converted the building into a temporary hospital to help offer aid to those afflicted.[17]

First Christian Church, Elwood, Indiana, ca. 1908. Photo courtesy of Indiana Memory.

Though pressure to end the state’s COVID-19 quarantine has increased in the last few weeks, it remains unclear when businesses, cultural institutions, and religious buildings will reopen and what guidelines will be enacted when they do. The 1918 influenza pandemic offers us examples of how religious leaders and worshipers handled closures and bans on gatherings in the past and how they continued to safely practice their faith and serve the community in the midst of a crisis.

Notes:

*All newspaper articles were accessed via Newspapers.com unless otherwise noted.

[1] “Closing of All Public Places is State Order,” Muncie Evening Press, October 7, 1918, 1, 8.; “No Public Assemblages,” Princeton Daily Clarion, October 7, 1918, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.

[2] “Keep Church Work Going, City Urged,” Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN), October 12, 1918, 5.

[3] “Preacher to People,” Culver Citizen, October 16, 1918, 4.

[4] “With the Churches,” Daily Republican, October 26, 1918, 3.

[5] “Worship with the Star,” Indianapolis Star, October 12, 1918, 1.; “The Star’s Sunday Morning Services,” Indianapolis Star, October 13, 1918, 30.

[6] “Go to Church Sunday with the Muncie Press,” Muncie Evening Press, October 19, 1918, 2.

[7] “Urges Open Air Church Service,” South Bend News-Times, October 13, 1918, 3.

[8] “Polish Priest Holds Open Air Service in Defiance of Health Order,” South Bend News-Times, October 14, 1918, 3.

[9] “The Influenza is Decreasing Reports Show,” Evansville Press, October 17, 1918, 6.

[10] “Hold Services in Open Air,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, November 9, 1918, 1.; [Untitled], Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 10, 1918, 2.; “Celebrated Masses in Open-Air Sunday,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 13, 1918, 6.

[11] “Church Services by Phone to Get Around ‘Flu’ Order,” Muncie Star Press, October 12, 1918.; “And Don’t Forget to Put Baby to Sleep,” Muncie Evening Press, October 12, 1918, 8.

[12] “Church Services Might be Resumed Under Conditions Represented Below,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, October 16, 1918.

[13] “The Need of Precaution,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, November 20, 1918, 7.; “Flu Mask Order Stands; Option is Permissible,” Indianapolis Star, November 24, 1918, 1.; “Must Wear Flu Masks,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, December 3, 1918, 1.; “Epidemic Fought by Wearing Masks,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, December 6, 1918, 1.

[14] “Ban is Lifted as to Churches,” Columbus Republic, December 17, 1918, 4.; “Health Board Rapped for Closing Churches During the Epidemic of Flu,” Columbus Republic, December 25, 1918, 3.

[15] “Pastors Need Support While Flu Ban is On,” Indianapolis Star, October 25, 1918, 9.; “Church Needs,” Indianapolis News, October 26, 1918, 6.

[16] “Board of Health Rejects Temple Beth-El Offer,” South Bend News-Times, October 20, 1918, 2.

[17] “Condition Serious at Elwood,” Tipton Daily Tribune, December 13, 1918, 1.; First Christian Church, Elwood, Indiana, photograph, ca. 1908, accessed Indiana Memory.

Being a “Bicyclienne:” Balancing Freedom and Femininity

Miss Schiffling and her wheel on the roof of the National Surgical Institute, 1890s, Herman List Collection, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.

Akin to the freedom afforded by the bicycle during this period of quarantine, women in the 1890s discovered a sense of liberation when pedaling on their cycles. No longer did women depend entirely upon men for transportation, and no longer were they encumbered by layers of petticoats. With this newfound autonomy, the bicycle became a symbol of the fight for women’s equality. As noted by the National Women’s History Museum, “Having the ability to be fully self-reliant, often for the first time in their lives, would encourage women to be more courageous in other areas, such as demanding voting rights.”

But while the bicycle led to shifts in gender norms, much to the angst of some, female riders were expected to maintain a sense of grace and femininity atop the apparatus—from the way they outfitted themselves, to the way they dismounted, and even to the method of breathing while pedaling. Essentially, women were expected to adorn the cities and countrysides in which they traversed. Here, we will go over some of the biking decorum suggested by The Indiana Woman, and see how you would fair as a “bicyclienne” in the 1890s. We’re guessing you’ll have a new sense of appreciation for headbands and Fabletics leggings.

Ad, The Indiana Woman 3, no. 25 (May 8, 1897): 16, courtesy of Digital Indy, Indianapolis Public Library.

Before you take your bicycle—perhaps the Ben-Hur model—to Cyclorama riding school, it is imperative to assemble an outfit that strikes a winsome yet serious note. The Indiana Woman, in its May 15, 1897 issue, warned riders to avoid sweaters, as the “sight is not pleasing. If you ask your brother about it, his answer will be emphatic almost to the point of rudeness.” Then what should you wear? A “pretty bicycle suit” will do, so long as it is not made of corduroy, unattractive fabric that it is. Brown or gray suits are best, but whatever you do, avoid red, as a “woman awheel attracts enough attention anyway, without even a tiny bit of color in her costume.” The suit’s skirt should almost reach the tops of one’s shoes, and it goes without saying that an underskirt has no place in one’s wardrobe. Bloomers are acceptable undergarments, so long as the waistband has a deep yoke. You do want your waist to remain trim, don’t you?

When it comes to headwear, one writer lamented “Why, O why, will you wear that monstrous hat, tipped with feathers and garlanded with flowers when you are on your wheel?” No! Mademoiselles should “Either buy yourself a bicycle hat, or stay home.” When it comes to footwear, golf stockings paired with “low shoes” are most appropriate (p.9). Whatever you choose, always keep in mind that “There has been such a revulsion of feeling against all things mannish, that ‘advanced’ modes have received their unmistakable death-blow, and cyclists now dress to appear strictly feminine.”

Ad, The Indiana Woman 2, no. 2 (May 16, 1896): 15, courtesy of Digital Indy, Indianapolis Public Library.

Now that you are sure to please to the eye, it is time to learn to ride, daintily of course. You can head over to H.T. Hearsey’s Cycle Co.’s riding school in Indianapolis, or like one “M. C. C.,” enlist the help of your brother’s friend, an expert cycler. For two hours, the pair “ran up and down that street, the poor instructor almost ready to drop from fatigue” (p.7). The next day, when M. C. C. was at a “good clip,” the instructor released her and she headed  towards a wall of bricks, leaving her bruised and disheartened. “Wisdom, however, came with the fall,”and after a few other incidents of careening into Indianapolitans, she “can now ride with one pedal, one handle bar or no handlebar at all.” This would come as no surprise to a contributor for the May 1, 1897 issue, who stated “It has been noted as a curious fact that women cyclists keep their heads better, are more alert, vigilant and resourceful among the dangers of the streets than most men are” (p.14). The writer mused further that “Strange as it may seem, the women seem better able to keep their wheels bright and clean than most men.”

Clara J. Anderson with her bicycle at the Indianapolis YWCA, ca. 1899, courtesy of the Nicholas Horn Collection, The Indiana Album.

Now, to work on our form. One writer advised in the April 18, 1896 issue, that to be a good rider one must see that “every detail of her costume is correct” prior to mounting. Once atop your bicycle, do not “fall into the ungainly humped-up postures of many masculine riders” (p. 13). Sit upright as if on horseback, making sure to avoid “automatic stiffness” and “limp ungainliness.” Be careful to study the anatomy of the wheels, so as to be able to repair them in case of “small injury,” or at the very least familiarize yourself with repair prices. Do not be among the many women who struggle to “keep their mouths shut,” being that one doctor warned granite particles and microbes kicked up by a spinning wheel are injurious to one’s health (p.7).

Once you have gotten the hang of it, take great care not to ride like a “scorcher,” blazing down the beaten path at godforsaken speeds. Unless you hope to be a professional cyclist, this practice should only be undertaken by men. One is neither interesting nor attractive with her  “hat awry, her hair disheveled, and her face scarlet with exertion.” Scorching also causes poor complexion and, perhaps worse, results in “muscles developed at the expense of her feminine grace.” The “inveterate scorcher” misses out on the beauty of land and sky in an attempt to ride as many miles as possible. Plus, you never know when you might cross paths with prominent bike enthusiasts like Clemens Vonnegut or Carl Fisher—you know what they say about first impressions.

Miss Estep posing in a tree, ca. 1899, courtesy of the Joan Hostetler Collection, The Indiana Album.

Whether you and your party are riding to the Indianapolis Country Club or countryside, the issue of greeting passersby remains. Should men and women forsake manners in the name of safety? Shall, one author in the July 11, 1896 issue asks, “a lady make a sweeping courtesy, or just one of those careless, saucy little good morning nods that sends a man’s heart up under his necktie and results in his speech becoming temporarily embarrassed?” (13). Do your best to maintain gentility, especially on “evening spins” as they have “led to a number of young people falling victim to Cupid’s wiles last year, and that the wedding bells rang out” for couples who met atop their wheels (May 15, 1897 issue, p. 10). If you are lucky enough to be struck by the mischievous cherub’s arrow, be sure to purchase a tandem bicycle to ensure the flames of romance remain stoked.

You’ve now used your wheels to explore the countryside, run errands at the market, and improve your health via “daily constitutionals.” While physicians agree that bicycling is permissible for women, even beneficial in moderate doses, you should heed one author’s advice before jumping into the “latest fad:” the bicycle dinner. The writer noted that pedaling from house to house over the course of eight meals, could “induce violent dyspepsia.” These indulgent dinner parties are an “American idea,” being that “No such a provocation to nervousness and indigestion would emanate from a foreign mind.”

Bicyclists in Madison, Ind., ca. 1895, courtesy of the Indiana History Room Archives, The Albany Floyd County Public Library.

Mastering the art of the wheel as you have you, dear bicyclienne, you deserve to indulge in a little accessorizing. Perhaps you would like to document your escapades with a camera that hooks neatly onto your handlebars. A wicker basket for picnics is not only charming, but practical. Equip your cycle with all the handlebar bells and bangle whistles to alert passersby of your presence. A silver or gold scarf-pin in the shape of a cyclist or riding saddle lends a certain elegance to your fetching figure.

As you journey across Indiana’s many trails, bike paths, and parks— after faithfully oiling your wheels, of course—appreciate that the two wheels beneath you once helped transport Hoosier women to a more autonomous world. Godspeed, and for goodness sake, do not be a scorcher!