Month: April 2021

Injustice, Genocide, and “Survivance”: Re-centering the Potawatomi at Sycamore Row, Part Two

This is Part Two of a two-part post.

In Part One we presented the text for a new marker at Sycamore Row in Carroll County, Indiana which will replace a 1963 marker that was recently damaged. This new text focuses less on unverifiable legends about sycamore trees sprouting along the Old Michigan Road told by the original marker text, in order to make room for the history of the Potawatomi that is intertwined with the creation of the road. The new marker still tells the story of the trees and their preservation—history that the local community values—but it now also hints at the complex history of the injustices the U.S. perpetuated against the Potawatomi. The marker’s limited space doesn’t allow IHB to tell the larger story, so we are expanding on that here. This story of injustice, genocide, and survivance* is often lost by historians presenting a version of Indiana history as a march towards progress. To truly understand our state’s history and the atrocities perpetuated in the name of that “progress,” we must re-center the Potawatomi and other indigenous People in that story.

“Me-Te-A, A Pottawatimie Chief,” n.d., lithograph, Allen County – Fort Wayne Historical Society Collection, Purdue University Fort Wayne, accessed Indiana Memory.

Potawatomi Removal, Genocide, Resistance, and Survivance

The Potawatomi lived in the land now called the United States for centuries before European people settled here. By the 13th century, but likely earlier, the Potawatomi (then the Bodewadmi) were living in what is now Eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. They were one of a group of Algonquin-speaking tribes united with the Odawa (Ottawa) and Ojibwe (Chippewa) into a collective called Nishnabe, which still exists to this day. (Learn more about the history of the Potawatomi through the Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center). [1]

Over the centuries, the Potawatomi migrated inland as their prophets had predicted, settling around the Great Lakes Region.  Potawatomi men fished and hunted deer, elk, and beaver. Potawatomi women maintained areas of cultivated crops, which have usually been referred to as gardens, but according to historian and professor Jeffrey Ostler, these plots should be recognized as farms. Some of them were as large as 100 acres or more, surrounded by fences and producing bounties of corn, beans, pumpkins, and wheat. According to the Milwaukee Public Museum, in the winter, the Potawatomi lived in small groups coordinated with specific hunting territories. In the spring, they gathered in large villages for communal hunting and food production. Required to marry outside of one’s own community, Potawatomi people created a network of social bonds through these marriages. Trade also strengthened these relationships between communities. The Potawatomi did not have a chief that spoke for the entire tribe, but instead, village heads who met in council with the leaders of other Potawatomi communities to make decisions through intricate diplomatic negotiations. Recognizing this decentralized system of government is important in understanding the duplicitous treatymaking explained later in this post.[2]

After clashes with the Iroquois in the 17th century, the Potawatomi lived peacefully, and for a time, enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership with French trappers in the 18th century, according to John Boursaw, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and former director of the Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center (CPCHC). However, when hundreds of Potawatomi men joined the French to fight in the Seven Year’s War starting in 1757, some returned carrying smallpox. The Great Lakes Potawatomi were devastated by the epidemic. They were also impacted by the defeat of the French by the British in 1763, with different indigenous communities supporting the French, the British, and the fledgling United States. [3]

After the American Revolutionary War, the new United States government began pushing West, surveying and selling land.  The U.S. government worked towards this end through military action, economic pressure, treaty negotiations, and sanctioned genocide in order to make space for white male settlers to farm the land. White squatters and militias also murdered indigenous peoples for their land. (Learn more about 18th and early 19th-century removal and persecution of indigenous peoples in the Midwest). [4]

The Potawatomi resisted U.S. expansion in multiple ways. For example, they fought against the U.S. in the Ohio Indian Wars, they joined Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh’s resistance after 1805, and allied with the British during the War of 1812. Many of the gains the Potawatomi made were lost after the British defeat when the crown ceded its midwestern lands to the U.S. [5]

George Winter, “Pottawattamie Indians,” 1837, watercolor, Tippecanoe County Historical Association Collection, Purdue University, accessed Indiana Memory.

By 1825, the state and federal governments were applying severe pressure on the Potawatomi to leave Indiana. The government systematically worked to extinguish Indian-held land titles negotiated through previous treaties. And there was always the threat of violence, both from encroaching white settlers and the U.S. military. The state government viewed the Miami lands as blocking the development of the Wabash, and Erie Canal and Potawatomi lands as blocking the creation of the Michigan Road. Indiana legislators pushed for removal of both peoples. [6]

U. S. Government Strategies for Indigenous Land Theft

The U.S. government had several strategies for forcing Native Peoples to cede land. According to Blake Norton, curator of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center,

U.S. leaders exploited tribal autonomy by making treaties with individual villages, rather than large regional bands. This tactic helped divide communities, as gifts and annuities were leveraged against those unwilling to go. [7]

The loss of land in areas where Native Peoples were removed impacted those who remained. They could no longer self-sufficiently live off the land and they became reliant on annuities while being pushed into debt. This was intentional. As Thomas Jefferson explained to William Henry Harrison in an 1803 letter:

We shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among [Great Lakes Indians] run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. [8]

Nellie Armstrong Robertson and Dorothy Riker, eds., John Tipton Papers Volume I: 1809-1827 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1942, Indiana State Library Digital Collections.

By 1826, the United States government tasked three commissioners, including General John Tipton, an Indian agent working out of Fort Wayne, with securing land cessions from the Potawatomi. The proposed treaty would make way for what would become the Michigan Road. John Tipton would benefit professionally and financially from this suppression and disenfranchisement of the Potawatomi—a microcosm of the larger story about the United States building its empire on the stolen lands of Indigenous People. [9]

The U.S. commissioners tasked with treatymaking presented these land cessions to the bands as a way for the Potawatomi to pay off debts claimed against them. Again, the Potawatomi only owed these debts to traders and Indian agents because they had been forced from their traditional livelihoods—an intentional part of the larger government plan to remove them. In addition to clearing accrued debt, the U.S. commissioners also promised the Potawatomi a group of eighty-six land reserves where they would hold title. [10]

According to educator and historian Juanita Hunter, other techniques used by government officials to take the Potawatomi ancestral land included: negotiating with members not authorized to speak on behalf of a tribe while referring to them in treaties as “chiefs;” making treaties with rival tribes with no claims to the land; introducing alcohol into negotiations; and encouraging encroachment of settlers onto Indian land. The threat of military intervention was also ever present. [11]

“Deceitful Lips”: The 1826 Treaty with the Potawatomi

James Otto Lewis, “Me-No-Quet, A Distinguish’d Pottowatomie Chief,” 1827, lithograph, Allen County – Fort Wayne Historical Society Collections, Purdue University Fort Wayne Digital Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

Under these conditions, twenty-four bands of Potawatomi gathered near the Mississinewa River in Wabash County, Indiana, on October 5, 1826. Bands of Miami were also present for similar negotiations. The commissioners began the proceedings by pushing for complete removal. They painted a bright picture of life beyond the Mississippi River and promised white settlement would never touch them there. Commissioner Lewis Cass, also governor of Michigan Territory, claimed:

We are authorized to offer you a residence there, equal in extent to your land here, and to pay you an annuity, which will make you comfortable, and to provide the means of your removal . . . You will then have a country abounding in game . . . Your Great Father will never suffer any of his white children to reside there, for it is reserved for the red poeple [sic]. It will be yours, as long as the sun shines, and the rain falls. [12]

These were empty promises, and the indigenous leaders knew it. They responded that the white men had caused the problems that the indigenous bands were now facing. They explained that they could not go West because there were already people living there—other native groups with their own claims to the land. Speaking for himself and Potawatomi leader Aubanaubee, Miami leader Legro stated:

You speak to us with deceitful lips, and not from your hearts. You say the game is going away and we must follow it; who drove it away?  . . . Before you came, the game was plenty . . . We own there is game there, but the Great Spirit has made and put men there, who have a right to that game, and it is not ours. [13]

James Otto Lewis, “Pe-Che-Co, A Pottowattomie Chief, Painted at the Treaty of Mississinewa,” 1827, Allen County Fort Wayne Historical Society Collection, Purdue University Fort Wayne Digital Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

The secretary documenting the details of the treaty negotiations recorded no more of the proceedings, which continued for several days. It is clear from Legro’s words that they did not want to cede more land, and yet they ultimately did. The terms of the 1826 Treaty with the Potawatomi can give us some clues to what happened. [14]

Article I provided over $30,000 in goods to the Potawatomi. With this provision, white stakeholders profited twice. The traders providing the goods received payment from the government, while the government would turn around and sell the land to settlers for profit. These annuities also furthered Potawatomi dependence on the U.S. government, which would ultimately push them further into debt. [15]

Article I also provided $9,573 in payments for debts that traders claimed the Potawatomi owed them. In a blatant conflict of interest, it was Tipton, a commissioner who regularly befitted from suppressing and removing the Potawatomi through his speculative land dealings, who decided (in his role as Indian agent) just how much debt the Potawatomi owed. [16]

The Potawatomi pushed back for larger payments and succeeded to some extent. They were able to negotiate for an annual payment of $2,000 over a period of twenty-two years with additional money provided for education and for a mill built at government expense. But Legro’s prediction was correct. The government spoke with “deceitful lips,” and the Indigenous Peoples would not receive twenty-two years of payments. Instead, the government would force them off their ancestral land within only twelve years. [17]

Article II of the treaty was even more disastrous for the Potawatomi. In this section, which included the provisions for the future Michigan Road, the treaty makers were careful not to define the route of the road. The Potawatomi thought they were ceding a mile-wide strip of land in a straight, contiguous line for the route. Even Tipton, in private correspondence, admitted that this was also his understanding of the provision. He told the land office commissioner Elijah Hayward:

I feel bound to state to you, and through you to the President, that, at the time of negotiating this treaty, these Indians did not understand that their land, not embraced within the bounds of the tract then ceded, would be required to construct this road, except where the road passed through the country retained by them . . . This was also my understanding of this treaty at the time it was made. [18]

Instead, when the State of Indiana began surveying the route, they chose a circuitous route around swamps and other undesirable land. The Potawatomi resisted this change, stopping and confronting surveyors, and delaying the road-building operation. Other councils were held between commissioners and some Potawatomi members while settlers and government officials continued to press for complete removal. In September 1831, Potawatomi members of dubious authority ceded the land for the circuitous route. Without information from the indigenous perspective it is hard to know exactly how this happened. Reports of U.S. officials claim that through an interpreter “of mixed blood,” who was educated in white schools and worked for a fur trading company, they were able to get “a few young chiefs” intoxicated and convince them to cede more land. Looking at the history of U.S. negotiation tactics, it is likely that these young men were not authorized to make such a deal. [19]

The new route for the Michigan Road cut through the remaining Potawatomi lands, further isolating and cordoning off the indigenous bands. According to Hunter, ” The commissioners, in fact, saw this fractionalization as one reason for the ratification of the treaty.” John Tipton wrote:

It was then important that the Indians be separated into bands, by the intervention of our settlements . . . We could not purchase any particular district near the centre of the Pattawatamie [sic] country; but that tribe freely consented to give us land for the road described in the treaty, and for the settlement along it. Such a road . . . will sever their possessions, and lead them at no distant day to place their dependence upon agricultural pursuits, or to abandon the country. [20]

The Potawatomi refused to sell the bulk of their lands. However, the commissioners planned the road so that it cut through the middle of indigenous lands. This purposeful intercession combined with white settlement along the road, cut Potawatomi territory into unconnected pieces, weakening their holdings. State and government officials then turned their attention to removal.

Map, “Potowatomie Reserves by Treaty of 27th October 1832,” March 27, 1832, Indiana State Archives, accessed Indiana Memory.

Trail of Death

In May 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing “an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi.” [21] The state and federal government, along with white settlers and squatters, continued to apply pressure for Potawatomi removal. In the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe, Potawatomi “chiefs” supposedly sold much of the remaining land. Menominee, an important Potawatomi leader, denied the validity of this treaty and resisted removal. [22] He wrote to a federal Indian agent, referring optimistically to President Van Buren:

The President does not know the truth . . . He does not know that you made my young chiefs drunk and got their consent and pretended to get mine. He would not drive me from my home and the graves of my tribe, and my children, who have gone to the Great Spirit, nor allow you to tell me that your braves will take me, tied like a dog. [23]

Menominee stood his ground and gathered followers. In response, Indiana Governor David Wallace had him arrested and ordered the forced removal at gunpoint of most of the remaining Potawatomi. The CPCHC explained:

On the morning of September 4, 1838, a band of 859 Potawatomi, with their leaders shackled and restrained in the back of a wagon, set out on a forced march from their homeland in northern Indiana for a small reserve in present-day Kansas. To minimize the temptation for the Potawatomi to try to escape and return home, militia members burned both fields and houses as the dejected members of the wagon train departed. [24]

George Winter, “Pottawattamie Emigration,” 1838, Tippecanoe County Historical Association Collection, accessed Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center, https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/encyclopedia/trail-of-death/

A white witness described the scene:

The whitemen were gathering thick around them, which was but a sad necessity for their departure. Still they clung to their homes. But the flames of the torch were applied—their villages and wigwams were annihilated. [25]

It was John Tipton who led the militia group that forced the Potawatomi on this Trail of Death. In a horrific twist of irony, the route they took followed part of the Michigan Road. According to the CPCHC:

The journey was a 660-mile trek for which the Potawatomi were not prepared and through terrain to which they were not accustomed. The heat was oppressive and water was often scarce. They had only a few hundred horses to carry people and supplies, and promised additional wagons did not arrive before their departure; so, even the weak and elderly were forced to walk. The pace and conditions of the march debilitated the health of travelers. A day rarely passed that a member of the party did not die, usually a child, forcing their bereft and exhausted families to leave the bodies behind in hastily dug graves. In the end, more than forty people died during what the Potawatomi came to call the Trail of Death. [26]

This tragedy was not some unintended consequence of settlement. Removal was the plan from the beginning. The U.S. government, state governments, and white settlers chose the systematic genocide of Indigenous Peoples in order to take their native lands for their own use. Methods for the perpetuation of this crime included the tactics seen here: making treaties with people not authorized to speak on behalf of indigenous bands, pushing Indigenous Peoples into debt and dependence through encroachment and over hunting, flagrantly violating treaties, and finally, violence and murder. White people benefited directly from this genocide, taking the fertile land and prospering while continuing the persecution of Native Peoples. [27]

For example, Tipton, who helped negotiate the 1826 Treaty and led the forced removal of the Potawatomi, bought several sections of land along the Michigan Road. He later benefited financially from the sales of these lands as businesses and residences sprung up along the road. In 1831, John Tipton purchased the land surrounding the section of the Old Michigan Road called Sycamore Row, where IHB and local partners will install a new historical marker. We can only hope that the phrases on that marker about the 1826 Treaty and the pressure put on the Potawatomi will spur interest in learning more about this enduring people. [28]

George Winter, “Sinisqua,” 1842, watercolor, Tippecanoe County Historical Association, Purdue University, accessed Indiana Memory.

Survivance

And they did endure. Even in the face of persecution and genocide, the Potawatomi continue today as sovereign nations, including the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation located in Kansas and the Pokégnek Bodéwadmik, or Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, located in Michigan and Indiana. These tribal governments maintain their own educational and health systems, infrastructure, housing developments, law enforcement, and more. The Potawatomi people also continue to teach future generations traditional culture, arts, history, and language. In 1994, the U.S. government finally recognized the sovereignty of the Pokagon Band through an act of Congress signed by President Bill Clinton. [29]

“Pokagon Band of Potawatomi commemorate 25th anniversary of Reaffirmation of Sovereignty,” (Winnipeg, Canada) Indian Life, November 4, 2019, https://www.newspaper.indianlife.org/.

According to the Pokagon Band:

The Pokagon people have endured thanks in part to their values of Wisdom, Love, Respect, Truth, Honesty, Humility, and Bravery. Adapting these deeply-rooted ideals to contemporary circumstances has made the Band an engine for economic development and a model for sustainable living in the region. [30]

Learn more about the Potawatomi culture through the Pokagon Band Potawatomi website and the Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center.

http://www.pokagonband-nsn.gov/

* “Survivance” is a term coined by White Earth Ojibwe scholar Gerald Vizenor to explain that Indigenous People survived and resisted white colonization and genocide and continue as a people to this day. Theirs is not a history of decline. Their work preserving and forwarding their culture, traditions, language, religions, and struggle for rights and land continues.

Sources:

[1] Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center, “History,” https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/history/; Jon Boursaw, “The Flint Hills: A Major Chapter in Potawatomi Migration,” Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal (2011): 28-37, Kansas State University Library, newprairiepress.org/sfh/2011/flinthills/3/.

[2] Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center, “History,” https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/history/; “Potawatomi,” Milwaukee Public Museum, http://www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-56.

[3] Boursaw, 29-30; Jeffrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 34-35.

[4] Jill Weiss Simins, “Democracy for Some: Defining the Indiana Landscape through the Rectangular Survey System,” Untold Indiana, December 2017, https://blog.history.in.gov/democracy-for-some-defining-the-indiana-landscape-through-the-rectangular-survey-system/. For a more thorough study of the genocidal policies and actions of the United States government, area militias, and squatter-settlers, see Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).

[5]”Potawatomi,” Milwaukee Public Museum.

[6] Juanita Hunter, “Indians and the Michigan Road,” Indiana Magazine of History 83, No. 3 (September 1987): 244-266.

[7] “The United States’ Handling of the ‘Indian Problem’,” Citizen Potawatomi Nation, September 7, 2018, https://www.potawatomi.org/the-united-states-handling-of-the-indian-problem/.

[8] Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-39-02-0500.

[9] John Tipton, Land Deed, State Volume Patent, Indiana, Issued January 3, 1831, Document Number: 11836, Accession Number: IN1110_.054, U.S. Department of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, accessed glorecords.blm.gov/; John Tipton, Land Deed, State Volume Patent, Indiana, Issued January 3, 1831, Document Number: 11837, Accession Number: IN1110_.055, U.S. Department of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, accessed glorecords.blm.gov/; Nellie Armstrong Robertson and Dorothy Riker, eds., John Tipton Papers, Volume I: 1809-1827 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1942), accessed Indiana State Library Digital Collections; “Trail of Death,” Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center, https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/encyclopedia/trail-of-death/.

[10] Armstrong Robertson and Riker, Tipton Papers: Vol. I, 537; Ratified Indian Treaty 146: Potawatomi – Near Mouth of Mississinewa Upon the Wabash, October 16, 1826, National Archives Catalogue No. 121651643, Record Group 11, National Archives, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/121651643; Hunter 244-45.

[11] Hunter, 246.

[12] Armstrong Robertson and Riker, Tipton Papers: Vol. I, 578-80; Hunter, 252.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.; Ratified Indian Treaty 146: Potawatomi.

[15] Ibid.; Hunter, 254; Tipton Land Deed 11836; Tipton Land Deed 11837.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ratified Indian Treaty 146: Potawatomi; Hunter 254-56.

[18] Armstrong Robertson and Riker, Tipton Papers: Vol. II, 419; Hunter, 256.

[19] Hunter, 256-57.

[20] Armstrong Robertson and Riker, Tipton Papers: Vol. I, 602; Hunter, 266.

[21] “An Act to Provide for an Exchange of Lands with the Indians Residing in Any of the States or Territories, and for Their Removal West of the River Mississippi,” May 28, 1830, Twenty-First Congress, Session I, Chapter 148, 411, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, American Memory, Library of Congress.

[22] “Articles of a Treaty Made and Concluded on Tippecanoe River, in the State of Indiana, between Jonathan Jennings, John W. Davis and Marks Crume, Commissioners on the Part of the United States, and the Chiefs, Headmen and Warriors, of the Pottawatimie Indians” (Treaty with the Potawatomi, 1832), The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/pot1832.asp.

[23] “Potawatomi Trail of Death,” Kansapedia, 2012, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/potawatomi-trail-of-death/17944.

[24] “Trail of Death,” Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center, https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/encyclopedia/trail-of-death/.

[25] “Potawatomi Trail of Death,” Kansas Historical Society.

[26] “Trail of Death,” Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center.

[27] See footnote 4.

[28] Tipton Land Deed 11836; Tipton Land Deed 11837. See also footnote 9.

[29] Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, The Official Website of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, https://www.pbpindiantribe.com/; Pokégnek Bodéwadmik, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, https://www.pokagonband-nsn.gov/; “Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Commemorate 25th Anniversary of Reaffirmation of Sovereignty,” (Winnipeg, Canada) Indian Life, November 4, 2019, https://www.newspaper.indianlife.org/.

[30]“Our Culture,” Pokégnek Bodéwadmik, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, https://www.pokagonband-nsn.gov/our-culture.

A Marriage Tested: How the Allens Overcame Personal Tragedy and Systemic Discrimination

J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen with family, courtesy Civil Rights Heritage Center, accessed Shannon Nolan, “Indiana’s First Female African American Lawyer Worked in South Bend,” abc57, February 2, 2019.

* See Part 1 to learn about the Allens’ work for equality in the judicial system and World War II employment.

When the clouds of World War II lifted, South Bend activists and attorneys J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen had achieved many of their professional and philanthropic goals. The couple, who had opened their own law firm in 1939, had uplifted the Black community by crafting legislation, organizing social programs, and creating jobs. But institutional oppression and immense personal loss that followed in the war’s wake appeared to test their marriage. In these modern times of social unrest and pandemic-related stress, we can draw strength from the Allens’ ability to not only weather personal tragedy and systemic discrimination, but serve their community.

As the early Atomic Era unfurled, J. Chester plunged back into his fight to fully desegregate South Bend’s Engman Natatorium. The effort had begun in the 1930s and resulted in the park board’s meager concession of allowing Black residents to swim a few hours per week, when white residents were not there. In 1950, J. Chester and a group of attorneys, including white lawyer Maurice Tulchinsky, appeared before the parks board to again make the case for integration. Seemingly racism cloaked in Cold War rhetoric, one board member told the men that Tulchinsky’s involvement hinted at communist impulses. J. Chester replied, “‘You don’t have to be a communist to defend equal rights, opportunities and treatment for all people under the law. The Constitution and Bill of Rights mandate it.'” Threatening to file suit unless board members agreed to end segregation entirely, the lawyers at last won their long fight for equality, likely with the aid of Elizabeth Allen.

Flyer, Ruth Tulchinsky, Voice of the People, February 13, 2009, St. Joseph County Public Library, accessed Michiana Memory Digital Collections.

Oral history interviews and secondary sources suggest that Elizabeth drew up the original complaint and advised behind the scenes, pointing out that African American taxpayers helped fund the pool and therefore deserved to use it. Her name does not appear on official documents, perhaps because she was still in law school or because the lawyers feared that her involvement as a Black woman could hurt the cause. If Tulchinsky was accused of working on behalf of the Communist Party, one can only imagine what nefarious influences board members would assign Elizabeth if she was involved in the effort publicly.

A series of interviews with the couple’s son, Dr. Irving Allen, bespeaks the constant frustration Elizabeth experienced from having to shelve her ambitions due to gender and familial norms and/or racial discrimination. In 1936, Elizabeth declared her candidacy for state representative, but withdrew, perhaps, because as interviewer David Healey suggested to Irving, she was “always overshadowed by circumstances” or “convinced that your father would have a better chance of winning.” Irving agreed that this sense of disappointment was probably compounded by the “loss and loneliness,” resulting from J. Chester’s absence while he served in the Indiana General Assembly between 1939 and 1941. Elizabeth could be “explosively judgmental” about J. Chester’s legislative efforts, accusing him of being too accommodating to white voters while campaigning. Perhaps this criticism stemmed partly from never having a chance to campaign for office herself.

International Hod Carriers and Building Laborers’ Union formal gathering, circa 1950s, Elizabeth Allen fourth from left and J. Chester Allen fifth from left, second row, Streets Family Collection of the Civil Rights Heritage Center, Indiana University South Bend Archives, accessed Michiana Memory Digital Collection.

Irving imagined the scrutiny she experienced as a Black female lawyer in South Bend during the “Dark Ages” of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. He remembered his mother coming home and criticizing local judges “who she just despised and felt mistreated by.” This likely included Circuit Judge Dan Pyle, who in May 1952 fined her for contempt of court during a hearing in which she served as counsel. The South Bend Tribune reported that the “woman attorney” was fined for refusing to “abide by his instruction to refrain from dictating a lengthy statement for the court record.” Pyle ruled her “out of order in the request and demanded that she be quiet.” Irving recalled the incident, saying “she took it racially and cursed him out basically . . . and ended up in jail. Daddy got her out and got the whole thing, I think, squashed.”

Institutionalized discrimination and the stressors of working in the public eye seemed to breed resentment that spilled over into their marriage. The Allen household, while loving, was also highly-charged, in part because Elizabeth and J. Chester diverged sharply when it came to political allegiance and temperament. Irving recalled, “you were never sure whether the issues were where the vitriol was coming from or whether it was personal stuff that was being argued out through the politics.” But from a young age, Irving learned to tune out his parents’ disagreements. He stated there was “often too much venom involved in the . . . arguments about politics or nuances of how black folks could best be served in South Bend or the country.”

In Irving’s opinion, his parents were incapable of relaxing and resetting, prioritizing the needs of others over themselves in their work with organizations like the NAACP and Hering House. He noted that money was another source of tension for the Allens. Although they were attorneys, systemic racism affected their success and often meant they didn’t get the “big” cases. Determined that their children would get a good education, efforts to save for college proved stressful due to the lack of lucrative cases.

Elizabeth Allen serving as Judge Protem in the South Bend City Courts, submitted by state historical marker applicant.

Irving suspected that the “pressures of work had enormous bearing” on his mother’s “existence.” Of his parents, Elizabeth had a poorer “capacity to separate work from the rest of her life. . . . I would just imagine the shit she took. Must have been unimaginable . . . unimaginable. And where’s it gonna go? It’s probably gonna come home into the relationship with her husband.” It surely did not go unnoticed that newspaper articles referred to her husband as “Attorney J. Chester Allen” and her as “Mrs. J. Chester Allen,” despite being an accomplished attorney in her own right. Probably equally frustrating, Elizabeth was subjected to scrutiny about her appearance and mannerisms in a way her husband undoubtedly was not, exemplified by this 1950 South Bend Tribune description: “feminine, but brusque. She has a no-nonsense attitude that contradicts the ultra-feminine hat on her head.”

Despite the many obstacles Elizabeth had to overcome, she received public recognition in 1953, 1955, and 1960, when she served as Judge Protem, filling in on occasion when the city judge was absent. “Her Madame Honor” was likely the first woman to wield a gavel in South Bend’s courtrooms. While a temporary role, Irving believed that the appointment was symbolic, honoring her legal career. Elizabeth worked to carve out educational and career opportunities for other Black women, generally relegated to domestic service in that era. Recognizing that de facto segregation would endure despite the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, Elizabeth sprung into action, hosting an emergency meeting for the United Negro College Fund. She also worked to get Black women into her Alma Mater, Talladega College.

The Allens opened their house to Black Notre Dame students who had nowhere to stay due to discrimination and the housing shortage exasperated by World War II. Historian Emma Lou Thornbrough noted that in the 1940s many black families were forced to crowd into one or two bedroom units in substandard buildings. Elizabeth had worked during WWII and post-war years to improve housing options and clear local slums because “delinquency and crime are resulting from sub-standard housing.” In the 1950s, J. Chester helped a group of Black Studebaker workers navigate discriminatory lending and real estate practices to form a building cooperative called “Better Homes of South Bend.”

Baton twirlers in the annual Better Homes’s Elmer Street Parade, August 1962. Photo courtesy Vicki Belcher and Brenda Wright, accessed Better Homes of South Bend, 97.

By the middle of the decade, twenty-two families of the co-op had moved in along North Elmer Street and helped build a vibrant community, filled with  activities like family cookouts, kickball, and building snowmen. Irving described a “haunting aspect of the Better Homes story.” Although they had “outstanding credentials as good citizens and an established law practice,” the Allens encountered difficulties purchasing a home of their own. Perhaps such discrimination led J. Chester to further leverage housing reform when he was elected the city’s first Black Councilman in 1959. He quickly got to work trying to prevent the displacement of Black families as new developments arose. As Councilman he also got more African American appointed in city government. One Indianapolis Recorder writer was optimistic that Allen’s “devotion to the law as the shield of liberty” would enable him to “protect the rights of minorities and at the same time guard the welfare of the majority.”

J. Chester’s and Elizabeth’s work served as a tide that lifted many boats in St. Joseph County. But the couple soon experienced a devastating personal blow. Their daughter, Sarah-whom Irving described as a “brilliant student” at Central High School-was awarded honors at Wellesley College, before attending Tennessee’s Fisk University. In 1960, the South Bend Tribune noted an “illness forced her to leave college.” She had since been working as a secretary at the family’s law practice and receiving psychiatric care in her hometown. Shortly before dinner at the Allens’ house one summer evening in 1963, the family discovered that she had died by suicide. Only 27-years-old, Sarah undoubtedly possessed the astuteness and determination of her parents, but suffered from the era’s limited treatment options for mental health issues. Days after her passing, loves ones paid their respects at the city’s Episcopal Cathedral of St. James and the city council passed a resolution expressing sympathy for the loss of Councilman Allen’s daughter.

J. Chester with daughter, Sarah, South Bend Tribune, May 6, 1959, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.

One can only imagine the impact such a catastrophic event had on the family. Perhaps it contributed to the fragmentation of the Allen and Allen law firm, which Irving said “kind of came unglued” in the early part of the decade. It’s possible it was the trigger for Elizabeth’s own hospitalization in the 1960s. Surely it contributed to the 1965 South Bend Tribune announcement of the couple’s separation after 37 years of marriage. Ultimately, the Allens chose not to go through with the divorce, perhaps a testament to their tenacity and love.

Work and community uplift likely became a haven from grief for the African American couple. In the years after her daughter’s passing, Elizabeth seemed to focus on advocating for women. She served as legislative chairman of the 1964 National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, leading a workshop on “The Role of Business and Professional Women in the War on Poverty” at the organization’s annual meeting. Towards the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Elizabeth served on the board of St. Joseph’s first Planned Parenthood clinic. According to Irving, his mother was a feminist before the term existed. She would “go to war over women divorcing or getting beaten up by their husbands,” but, being ahead of her time, she fought a war “without any constituents.” Nevertheless, she was “‘incredible example to women—black or white.'”

South Bend Tribune, January 9, 1962, 23, accessed Newspapers.com.

J. Chester poured himself into education equality as the first Black member of the South Bend school board of trustees in 1966. One editorial contended that he was an ideal representative of Black educational interests, citing his “Quick intelligence, independence of thought, hard work and a genuine affection for his home community.” He used his legal skills in 1967 to advocate for equality, appealing a verdict that ruled the Linden School building, a Black school, could safely reopen despite a classroom ceiling collapsing during the school day.

While continuing to grieve, sons Irving and J. Chester Allen, Jr. pursued their professional goals. Their parents were determined that they would attend East Coast schools because, Irving noted, Black Americans had to be “twice as good” as their white colleagues. He earned his medical degree at Boston University in 1965 and practiced psychiatry in Massachusetts. Like his parents, J. Chester Jr. beat the drum for equality, leading an NAACP march protesting the police force’s refusal to hire a Black officer. He told the South Bend Tribune, “‘Maybe we’ll fill up that jail of theirs until they get tired of seeing us in it and hire one of us to get rid of the rest of us.'”

Nancy Kavadas, “Niles Area NACP [sic] Groups Conduct Orderly Demonstration,” South Bend Tribune, February 9, 1964, 8,  accessed Newspapers.com.
“Wednesday Rites for Judge Allen,” South Bend Tribune, December 27, 1983, 28, accessed Newspapers.com.

Like his parents, J. Chester Jr. was able to break racial barriers; he was sworn in as St. Joseph County’s first Black Superior Court Judge in 1976. Three years after J. Chester Jr.’s historic achievement, his father passed away. The man who had apparently stumbled upon South Bend did much to even its playing field for minorities. Black residents were better educated, politically- and civically-empowered, financially stabler, and able to enjoy the city’s facilities because of his tireless efforts as an attorney and elected official.

Unfortunately, his son’s promising career was cut short in 1983. J. Chester Jr. died of natural causes on Christmas Day, the same day his father was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1900. Matriarch Elizabeth Allen was now a widower who had lost two children. But her life was never defined by tragedy. In disregarding an admissions officer’s advice to forgo law school in favor of marriage years before, she started down a path canopied by improbable accomplishments, bitter disappointments, professional accolades, and personal heartbreak. Her fortitude and persistence meant that future generations would endure fewer obstacles than she did.

Behind her walked another Black female attorney from Chicago married to an ambitious Black attorney: First Lady Michelle Obama. The two women experienced the highs of professional accomplishments as a minority, the frustrations of sacrificing for their husband’s ambitions, public critiques of their appearance, and allegations of being too outspoken. Unlike Michelle, Elizabeth’s story has largely yet to be told, but South Bend writer Dr. Gabrielle Robinson and IHB are changing that by installing a state historical marker in 2021. Elizabeth, largely overshadowed by her husband, will quite literally have an equal share of recognition with this marker.

“Golden Anniversary,” South Bend Tribune, March 5, 1978, 31, accessed Newspapers.com.

Sources:

“Public Angered at Whitewash,’” Indianapolis Recorder, June 1, 1935, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

“Jellison Takes Petition to Run for Congress,” South Bend Tribune, February 16, 1936, 23, accessed Newspapers.com.

Mary Butler, “Mrs. Elizabeth Allen Lays Down Law to Family,” South Bend Tribune, July 30, 1950, 39, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Circuit Judge Fines Lawyer for Contempt,” South Bend Tribune, May 10, 1952, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

“First Woman Presides City Judge,” South Bend Tribune, November 19, 1953, 29, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Field Chief Will Meet Fund Group,” South Bend Tribune, March 25, 1957, 24, accessed Newspapers.com.

Program, “Leaders for Workshops on Three Areas Affecting the Urban Family,” Woman’s Council for Human Relations, [1968], accessed Michiana Memory.

“Hon. J. Chester Allen,” Indianapolis Recorder, January 2, 1960, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

“Adult Award Winner,” South Bend Urban League and Hering House, Annual Report, 1960, p. 5, accessed Michiana Memory.

“Sarah Allen Found Dead,” South Bend Tribune, July 25, 1963, 43, accessed Newspapers.com.

Nancy Kavadas, “Niles Area NACP [sic] Groups Conduct Orderly Demonstration,” South Bend Tribune, February 9, 1964, 8,  accessed Newspapers.com.

“Divorce Cases Filed,” South Bend Tribune, March 5, 1965, 30, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Irving Allen Wins Degree,” South Bend Tribune, June 10, 1965, 46, accessed Newspapers.com.

Ruth Copeland et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. South Bend Community School Corporation et al., Defendants-Appellees, 1967, 376 F.2d 585 (7th Cir. 1967), May 8, 1967, accessed JUSTIA US Law.

“Family Plan Unit Names Officers,” South Bend Tribune, January 26, 1968, 31, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Rites for Allen Wednesday,” South Bend Tribune, May 12, 1980, 21, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Wednesday Rites for Judge Allen,” South Bend Tribune, December 27, 1983, 28, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Allen, Former Civic Leader and Attorney, Dies at 89,” South Bend Tribune, December 28, 1994, 15, accessed Newspapers.com.

Marilyn Klimek, “Couple Led in Area Racial Integration,” South Bend Tribune, November 30, 1997, 15, accessed Newspapers.com.

Oral History Interview with Dr. Irving Allen, conducted by Dr. Les Lamon, IU South Bend Professor Emeritus, David Healey, and John Charles Bryant, Part 1 and Part 2, August 11, 2004, Civil Rights Heritage Center, courtesy of St. Joseph County Public Library, accessed Michiana Memory Digital Collection.

Barack Obama, A Promised Land (New York: Crown Publishing, 2020).

Email, Dr. Irving Allen to Nicole Poletika, March 19, 2021.