Summer is upon us, and one of the staples of American summers is fast food. It’s always a blast to roll down the windows, crank up the tunes, and head on over to your favorite drive-thru. Now, we all know about the classics: McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC. But there’s one fast-food giant, wildly popular from 1950s through the 70s, which almost beat them all. That was Indianapolis-based Burger Chef.
San Francisco Call and Post, October 29, 1910. Newspapers.com.
On a “fair, warmer” fall day in Philadelphia, a friendly competition on the city streets occurred. The test would determine whether a “40 horse power gasoline” car or a “runabout” electric car would perform better in the congested thoroughfares of the City of Brotherly Love. Behind the wheel of the gas-powered car sat “Tod” Middleton, described by newspapers as an “expert” driver, “thoroughly familiar with Philadelphia streets.” The electric vehicle’s driver was an “enthusiastic” booster of electric cars, who wanted to prove that they could take on tasks typically associated with gas-powered automobiles.
The rules of the competition were simple: each driver had to make twenty-five trips within Philadelphia’s shopping district, parking and shutting off their car each time they reached a destination. They would then restart their vehicle and travel to the next place on their itinerary. Some of the stops included “department stores, theaters, railroad stations” as well as “hair-dressers, and candy stores.” Whoever completed all their trips the fastest was the winner.
Curiously, this race didn’t happen last week or even last year, and the electric car wasn’t a Tesla or Rivian. It was a Studebaker, the South Bend-based company, and the year was 1908. And the driver of the electric car? Her name was Laure Duval, and she worked as a salesperson at the Studebaker Brothers Company of New York. She wanted to prove the durability, reliability, and efficiency of Studebaker’s electric vehicles. (Efficiency was especially important; since the gasoline car needed to be hand-cranked every time it was started, and the electric car didn’t, this key design component proved instrumental in the 10-minute lead the electric car achieved.) Her race with Tod Middleton received coverage by newspapers all over the country, from Kansas City to San Francisco.
Studebaker’s electric cars became a mainstay of the company during the early years of the 20th century, providing vehicles for personal use as well as transport. They were also marketed in a unique way. Studebaker focused on city businessmen, and especially society women, as the premier customers for electric cars, hence the 1908 Philadelphia car competition. While gas-powered cars became the company’s focus by 1912, Studebaker’s innovative designs and skillful presentation nevertheless made their electric cars more than a mere fad. They showed the country that electric cars could be made cost-effectively and provide customers with a reliable, affordable means of personal transportation.
By 1897, Studebaker was “building and experimenting with a ‘horseless vehicle’,” according to company minutes. The Centralia Enterprise and Tribunepublished an article in their July 10, 1897 issue on a meeting of “forty-five Studebaker service men of the New York Metropolitan area . . . for a clinical demonstration and discussion on modern techniques in automobile repairs.” Studebaker employees, from district managers to branch service representatives, actively discussed how the company would build a car for commercial sale.
The company got closer to their vision by 1901, with help from two of America’s most visionary inventors. The South Bend Tribune reported that none other than Thomas A. Edison, the man behind the lightbulb and the motion picture camera, designed the battery for one of Studebaker’s two prototype automobile designs. “Mr. Edison has promised the Studebakers that they will have one of the first batteries for vehicle purposes,” the Tribune elaborated. The other vehicle prototype was developed with the assistance of Hiram P. Maxim of Westinghouse, Edison’s bitter corporate rival (and Nikola Tesla’s financial backer) in the legendary “electric current wars” of the 1890s. In the end, Westinghouse came out the victor in the “mini” electric current war, producing a battery that would “run the [electric] wagon fifty miles with a fifteen hundred pound load and two men without charging,” according to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in the fall of 1901.
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 18, 1901. Newspapers.com.
On November 16, 1901, Studebaker successfully tested its first electric automobile. The Marshall County Independent provided more detail on its specifications: “The vehicle carries under the middle of the bed an electric storage battery sufficient for a 50 mile run on good roads, and is geared for an average speed of 11 miles an hour.” The article also noted that Studebaker intended to test their electric car in the streets of Chicago, seven years before Laure Duval’s legendary test in Philadelphia.
Studebaker’s electric cars and trucks were quickly put into production and the company sold twenty by 1902. Studebaker executive Albert Russell Erskine, in his company history, wrote that “the first electric runabout was sold [on] February 12, 1902, to F. W. Blees of Macon, [Missouri].” Now part of this is true. F. W. Blees did, in fact, purchase a Studebaker electric runabout, but the date for his purchase is likely closer to October of 1902, according to a newspaper account in the Macon Times-Democrat. Colonel Blees, a onetime prospective candidate for Georgia Governor, ran a successful carriage business. He purchased the electric runabout while attending the Texas State Fair in Dallas, and according to the Houston Post, the state fair ran from September 27 to October 12, 1902. Blee’s purchase had to occur in this window of time and not in February, as Erskine recounted. Colonel Blees likely used his Studebaker electric car for at least ten years, driving it to “Studebaker Day” at the Georgia State Fair in 1912, as noted by the San Francisco Examiner.
With a Westinghouse motor, an Exide battery, and a body built by Studebaker, described by one advertisement as a “combination that speaks for itself,” the company’s electric runabouts sold for $975 in 1903 ($34,604.97 in 2024 dollars). While the price tag limited the car’s marketability to mostly middle- and upper-class Americans, Studebaker managed to sell them effectively. The company showed off its electric vehicle as a part of its 3,000 square foot exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis Fair, which the South Bend Tribune described as “one of the finest to be seen at the exposition. It is simple in construction, safe, easy to operate, and free from vibration and noise.” This exhibit proved successful, since the Washington Post reported in 1905 that, “the well-known Studebaker electric. . . is meeting with a steady sale, and there will be considerable number of them in evidence on the streets in Washington this season.”
Studebaker’s marketing went beyond public exhibits; it also developed flashy newspaper advertisements to attract customers from two urban demographics: city businessmen and society women. As a 1908 ad in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle attested, “For the woman shopping, or for the business man [sic] to make hurried trips about town, it is the ideal and only vehicle.” As one prime example, John Mohler Studebaker, one of the original Studebaker brothers, can be seen in photographs driving the electric car. The Los Angeles Herald even printed a story about him escorting Wu Ting Fang, a government minister from China, in a Studebaker electric during the foreign leader’s trip to the United States. “Although the trip was a dizzy one,” the Herald wrote, “President Studebaker’s perfect control of the car seemed to inspire Minister Wu with confidence and enjoyed the very unusual trip.”
Urban professionals especially took to the Studebaker electric, enticed by ads displaying the ‘gentleman about town’ completing his social calls and articles attesting to its popularity with such men, as Chicago’s Inter Ocean reported. Dr. Jacob Frank, a physician who lived at 49 Pine Grove Avenue, “purchased a new Studebaker electric Victoria last week and uses it daily in calling on his patients,” the Inter Ocean wrote in 1908. Dr. Frank also provided a testimonial to the paper, saying, “I drove a gasoline car for the last two years . . . but for men of my profession it does not compare with the electric for city work. My new Victoria is no trouble whatever and I would not exchange it under any conditions for a gasoline car for around town work.” As a physician who made house calls, the easier starting process for the electric likely shortened time to get to patients and made trips from house to house a smoother experience, as it did for Laure Duval in her legendary race on the streets of Philadelphia.
Alameda Evening Times-Star and Daily Argus, September 28, 1910. Newspapers.com.
By 1907, the marketing to women, especially society women, become supercharged. The company ran ads proclaiming that “the woman whose social duties require the constant use of a carriage will appreciate that advantage of a Studebaker Electric.” That same year, a photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle showcased a Studebaker electric with none other than actress Trixie Friganza in the driver’s seat. A mainstay of stage and screen for decades, Friganza was also a suffragist and attended rallies in support of women’s rights. That Friganza was willing to be photographed driving a Studebaker electric car spoke to its popularity among successful women, something the company continually leaned into.
According to the city’s Press newspaper in 1910, “a notable number of ladies of Pittsburg’s elite have visited this [Studebaker] exhibition and their expressions of approval and delight are particularly gratifying to the company’s executives.” The Press elaborated on this theme with a society woman’s remarks. “There is an elegance of appearance in the Studebaker electric that easily distinguishes it from all other electric pleasure cars,” she said. Idahoan society women agreed. As the Boise-based Statesman noted, “Mrs. Scott Anderson set the pace with her new Studebaker electric and Mrs. O. P. Johnson has ordered a fine Studebaker electric coupe costing $2500. Mrs. Hall followed suit by ordering a Studebaker electric phaeton.” Additionally, owners could charge their cars at home and travel distances well over fifty miles away. All across the country, from Studebaker’s homebase in Indiana to the sunny coasts of California, the Studebaker electric’s brand became synonymous with simplicity, elegance, and cleanliness.
The brand cultivated a reputation for reliability and performance. Numerous newspaper articles documented many interesting experiments with Studebaker electric vehicles. For instance, traveling on rural routes was a concern with potential customers, as Studebaker often marketed its electric vehicles as city transportation. David Clem, a mail carrier in South Bend, tested a Studebaker electric on his rural mail route, with it performing quite well. As the South Bend Tribune reported on July 20, 1907, “the time generally consumed in making the round by Mr. Clem is eight hours, but the auto left the local office at seven in the morning and after completing the trip and delivering the mail, reached the office again at 10 o’clock, consuming only three hours.” Cutting five hours off a rural mail route was pretty impressive, which Mr. Clem likely appreciated. A series of tests in 1908 displayed a Model 22 Studebaker electric runabout expertly traveling from Kansas City, Missouri to Ottawa, Kansas, “in spite of the fact that the roads were very rough in places and a number of steep hills proved to be a severe test for some of the contestants,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote. Drivers also received a helping hand from local farmers, “who turned out in force with scrapers and spades and did their best to get the roads in good condition for the tests.”
Studebaker also manufactured electric trucks and delivery wagons, with prominent companies such as American Express and Gimbel Brothers using them consistently. The U.S. Census Bureau also purchased “a 1,500-pound Studebaker electric. . . for hauling mail, supplies, and publications,” according to a 1912 issue of San Francisco Examiner. The paper noted that “the machine has been in service practically a year and has given perfect satisfaction.” Likely the most newsworthy cargo a Studebaker electric truck ever carried was Tillie, an injured elephant from the Robinson Brothers’ circus, who was transported to a veterinarian in South Bend (the circus’s latest stop) by a truck converted into an ambulance. The Oshkosh, Wisconsin-based Northwestern published a striking photograph of Tillie, with a bandaged left front leg, standing aloft an electric truck with “Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co.” on the side. From transporting letters and telegraphs to industrial machinery and even elephants, Studebaker electric trucks and wagons played a vital role in those early years of the twentieth century.
Furthermore, the history of automobiles indicated a significant shift towards gasoline-powered vehicles and “electric vehicles were pretty much irrelevant by the mid-1930s and would remain so for decades,” according to automotive historian Kevin A. Wilson. Significant technical challenges stalled the wider adoption of electrics, as many early vehicles were slower overall than gasoline-powered cars. “The relatively poor energy density of affordable batteries, however, kept electrics in the shade,” Wilson noted, and “advances in electric propulsion came slowly while limitations of speed and range came to look even greater in the world as it was remade by the gasoline automobile and consumers grew accustomed to long-distance highway travel at increasing velocities.”
Today, this has all changed. With the success of companies like Tesla, Rivian, and BYD, electric vehicles genuinely compete for both customers and road space, since they are just as fast, reliable, and elegant as any gas-powered vehicle. In a sense, the pioneering spirit of Studebaker and many other companies lives on in these new manifestations of electric cars.
For roughly a decade, Studebaker stood at the forefront of an electric vehicle revolution that provided affordable, durable, and reliable cars to the public. The company constantly sought to improve its vehicles through rigorous testing and innovative technological advancements, such as home charging and extended trip times. Studebaker also marketed their cars to a wide swath of consumers, from the city businessman to the society woman. And behind it all was a company based in South Bend, Indiana, that would go on to make gasoline-powered cars for decades until its dissolution in 1966.
One senses that John Mohler Studebaker, one of the original brothers who built the company from the ground up, would be pleased to see electric cars having a dramatic resurgence. Who knows? Maybe he would’ve been photographed driving a Cybertruck if he was around today. Now that would’ve been something for the newspapers.
Crowd gathered outside of Dong Gong Tshun’s laundry, “Chinese Murder Mystery,” Indianapolis News, May 6, 1902, accessed via Newspapers.com.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reported that anti-Asian hate crimes increased by approximately 339 percent in 2022. Indiana was no exception. In 2023, the Bloomington community was shocked when a white woman named Billie Davis stabbed an IU student, who has chosen to remain anonymous, on a public bus because she “looked” Chinese. Events like this stunned the nation and forced Americans to reconsider their historical treatment of Chinese immigrants and, more importantly, where they fit into American society today.
This renewed “Chinese question” has warranted a scholarly reexamination of Chinese immigration history. Recent works have examined everything from the lived experiences of the Chinese immigrants who built the Transcontinental Railroad to the vigilante violence white workers in Tacoma, Washington perpetrated against Chinese workers, whom they viewed as economic competition. While great strides have been made in diversifying Chinese immigrant scholarship, historians have left out one small but critical piece of the narrative–Chinese people who lived in the Midwest. In doing so, scholars inadvertently erased the experiences of midwestern Chinese immigrants, ignoring the deep roots they established in the region. Considering renewed interest in both midwestern history and Chinese immigration as a whole, this piece seeks to illuminate the experiences of Chinese immigrants in midwestern communities like Indianapolis.
Chinese Immigration in Indianapolis
The U.S. Census did not record Chinese residents in Indianapolis until 1880, nearly three decades after Chinese immigrants began settling in the U.S. during the California Gold Rush. The Chinese population in Indiana remained small during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with eighty-nine residents in 1890, 273 in 1910, and 279 in 1930. Most Chinese immigrants in Indiana settled in Indianapolis, but others migrated to Ft. Wayne and Richmond. The 1880 Census recorded approximately ten Chinese residents in Indianapolis, all single men.[1] Despite these small numbers, the Chinese community in Indianapolis received outsized newspaper coverage and attention from the mainstream Hoosier community, with many residents regarding their new neighbors with curiosity. An 1880 edition of the Indianapolis News covered the presence of new Chinese laundries in the city, stating that the presence of Chinese laundryman “has created a decided sensation . . . At any hour of the day crowds are seen gathered in front of laundries watching the Chinese work.”[2] This interest in the nascent Chinese community continued throughout the years and, later, entrepreneurial types, such as restaurant owner Moy Kee, would learn how to leverage the community’s fascination with Chinese culture to their economic benefit.
R.L. Polk & Co.’s Indianapolis Directory for 1879 (Indianapolis: R. L. Polk & Co., 1879), p. 540, accessed via Internet Archive.
Historian Keith Schoppa noted that for most Chinese immigrants, Indianapolis was a “secondary” settlement, where Chinese people moved after they initially lived in the more populous Chinatowns on the East and West Coasts.[3] It appears many were motivated to move to Indianapolis for economic reasons, with several Chinese residents starting businesses, namely laundries. In 1875, the Indianapolis City Directory recorded two laundries, Sang Lee & Co. on 41 Virginia Avenue and Wah Lee & Co. on Illinois Street.[4] The number of Chinese laundries increased quickly and by 1879, the city directory noted the presence of eight laundries in the city. Notably, the directory also began designating these laundries as “Chinese,” similar to how directories would note if a business was “Black,” and, in doing so, differentiate them from white businesses. The laundries were spread out around the city, along Illinois Street, Washington Street, Mass Avenue, and Kentucky Avenue, indicating the more dispersed nature of the Indianapolis Chinese population.[5]
One point to note is the business acumen of the Chinese residents. They advertised their services in mainstream newspapers to attract new patronage, often capitalizing on existing curiosity about Chinese immigrants to build interest in their businesses.[6] Newspapers show that laundrymen across Indiana maintained connections with one another, often working in tandem to ensure their safety and security.[7] Inter-state networks between Chinese businessmen was critical to the welfare of dispersed Chinese immigrant communities like Indianapolis, where residents were bereft of the typical community and connections present in traditional Chinatowns. Businessmen also were cognizant of supply and demand, as demonstrated in the Indianapolis News, which reported that, “The Chinese considering the laundry business overdone in this city [Indianapolis], are talking of sending a colony to Fort Wayne.”[8] This demonstrates that the Chinese business community in Indianapolis not only paid attention to economic conditions in the city, but also actively collaborated with one another to avoid unnecessary competition. These strategies proved effective and many residents, such as Moy Kee, E Lung, and Sam Sing, died with sizeable fortunes and extremely successful businesses.
Lithograph of W. Washington Street. The rightmost building advertises “Gun Wa’s Chinese Herb and Vegetable Remedies.” Image circa 1890, Hannah House Collection, accessed Indiana Album.
Overall, it appears that the Chinese community of Indianapolis maintained a nuanced relationship with police and white authority figures. While no mobs or overt hate crimes were committed against the Chinese residents in Indianapolis, they were frequently the target of burglaries at the hands of white assailants. Notably, the victims often reported these incidents to police and worked with authorities to recoup their losses, suggesting a somewhat cooperative relationship between the two groups.[9] However, this cooperative relationship was somewhat tenuous, and white Hoosiers were constantly paranoid about the possibility of Chinese crime or “Tong” activity in Indianapolis. Police frequently placed laundries and restaurants under surveillance due to suspicions of illicit activities. Law enforcement conducted multiple raids on Chinese laundries at night in hopes of finding evidence of gambling and the Chinese betting game Fan-tan.
For example, in January of 1911 approximately twenty Chinese residents appeared in court after being arrested during a police raid while gathering at Quong Lee’s laundry on North Delaware Street. The Indianapolis News covered this event, writing, “Twenty-one unsuspecting Chinese, wearing poker faces, were seated around his [Quong Lee’s] table, yesterday afternoon, when the police appeared … Quong Lee and his ‘guests’ were still deep in their game, among Chinese and American coins and dominoes, when the police suddenly stood among them.” The article noted that the Chinese residents were “respectful” in court and twelve of the men quickly pled guilty and settled their fines with the city.[10] Both the police surveillance and newspaper coverage of possible illicit activity were disproportionate compared to the relative size of the Chinese population. A critical Indianapolis Journal article even categorized the police’s raids a “Chinese Scapegoat,” pointing out that “the police have made no raids recently on the various crap games around the city.”[11]
“The Chinese Scapegoat,” Indianapolis Journal, January 31, 1898, accessed Newspapers.com.
To be sure, Chinese residents likely gambled and played Fan Tan after work. However, little evidence exists to suggest these activities extended beyond local betting or were connected to a vast Chinese criminal network, as some Hoosiers speculated. Unwarranted concern over illicit activity likely was due to the sensationalized news reporting from Chicago, San Francisco, and other states, which often reached Hoosier ears. The white community’s dual fascination with Chinese culture and mistrust of the intentions of their Chinese neighbors created a difficult environment for Chinese businessmen to navigate. Chinese residents capitalized on their heritage to encourage patronage to their shops but struggled to dispel negative stereotypes about Chinese criminal activity or Hoosier concerns about Chinese gambling.
Concerns over criminal activity in the Chinese community peaked in 1902, when a prominent Chinese laundryman, Dong Gon Tshun, colloquially known as Doc Lung, was found murdered at his business on Indiana Avenue. Reporters sensationalized the murder, reporting gory details and speculating on possible criminal activity within the Chinese community. Chin Hee, a Chinese man from Chicago, was quickly arrested for the murder. The murder of Lung pushed Indianapolis into near hysteria, with some residents worrying that the Chinese gang members, often referred to as highbinders, were behind the murder and still active in the city. Doc Lung’s funeral procession was even followed by a curious crowd, which, in other circumstances, could have easily erupted into violence. The murder occurred on Indiana Avenue, where the city’s Black population predominantly lived, and increased tensions between the city’s Chinese community and Black community. Many Chinese residents alleged that a Black assailant, rather than Chin Hee, was responsible for the crime. Chin Hee was ultimately not convicted, and the courts would later convict three Black men for the crime based on dubious evidence.[12]
“Scenes at the Funeral of Doc Lung,” Indianapolis News, May 10, 1902, accessed Newspapers.com.
Ultimately, Doc Lung’s murder case epitomized the tenuous relationship between the Chinese community and white authority figures. Chinese individuals often cooperated with the police and court system, using it to protect their businesses. Police, it appears, were also willing to provide this protection and investigate burglaries or violence against Chinese people in Indianapolis. However, the authorities also regarded the Chinese community with suspicion and paranoia. They speculated that Doc Lung was murdered by highbinders without reasonable evidence and were constantly concerned about Chinese criminal activity permeating into the city. This tension shows that, while Indianapolis residents tolerated Chinese immigrants at a level not seen in coastal states, they never fully accepted them.
Chinese residents also frequently utilized the Marion County court system to settle disputes or advocate for themselves, often successfully. In 1894, a Crawfordsville laundryman named Moy You Bong brought a civil suit against Indianapolis resident Lee Wah over a dispute on the sale of a laundry business in Indianapolis. In response, Lee filed a countersuit denying he defrauded Moy. The court ultimately ruled against Moy, awarding Lee thirty-five dollars.[13] This case of two Chinese residents using the courts to settle a business dispute shows a degree faith in the court system. It also stands in stark contrast to places like California, which actively barred Chinese people from testifying at all.
Conclusion
Launderer and business owner, E. Lung.
Chinese laundrymen, restaurant owners, and store owners of Indianapolis achieved relative economic success. They collaborated with one another to ensure their own safety and, in the early years, began experimenting with tying Chinese culture to their business ventures through advertising Chinese goods. Ultimately, the nascent Chinese community in Indianapolis was small, but closely connected and economically astute. Chinese residents utilized the court system and traditional journalism to advocate for their own needs. However, due to unfounded and sensationalized fears over Chinese criminal activity, many were forced to walk a tight line between embracing their culture for economic gain and distancing themselves from their Chinese identity to remain tolerated members of the Indianapolis community.
Historian Anthony J. Miller characterized Chinese immigrants in the Midwest as “pioneers,” who, far removed from Chinatowns, “not only resisted discrimination but were also the first emissaries of their nation to bring cuisine, customs, dress, language, and artwork from their ancestral homeland to states such as Iowa.”[14] While he wrote primarily about Iowan Chinese residents, this characterization too can be applied to Indianapolis’s Chinese population, which displayed resilience and achieved success in the face of discrimination. In doing so, they brought cultural diversity and resources to the Hoosier community. Today, as Americans revisit the “Chinese question,” it is important that scholars expand beyond the coasts and examine a broader spectrum of the Chinese experience. This reveals a narrative not only of exclusion, violence, and discrimination, but also of success, resilience, and community.
Mian Situ, Chinese Family Laundry, 1880, n.d., oil on canvas, accessed MianSitu.net.
For further reading, see:
Joan Hostetler, “Indianapolis Then and Now: Moy Kee Chinese Restaurant, 506 E. Washington Street,” March 21, 2013, accessed Historic Indianapolis.
Kelsey Green, “Moy Kee Part I: The ‘Mayor’ of Indianapolis’s Chinese Community,” Untold Indiana, Indiana Historical Bureau, June 2, 2022, accessed Untold Indiana Blog.
Kelsey Green, “Moy Kee Part II: A Royal Visit,” Untold Indiana, Indiana Historical Bureau, June 27, 2022, accessed Untold Indiana Blog.
Paul Mullins, “The Landscapes of Chinese Immigration in the Circle City,” October 16, 2016, accessed Invisible Indianapolis.
Scott D. Seligman, “The Hoosier of Mandarin,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 23, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 48-55, accessed Digital Images Collection, Indiana Historical Society.
Notes:
[1] Ruth Slevin, “Index to Blacks, Indians, Chinese, Mulattoes in Indiana, 1880 Census,” Genealogy Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis.
[2] “Curiosity of Races,” The Indianapolis News, May 21, 1880, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[3] R. Keith Schoppa, “Chinese,” Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience (Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Press, 1996), p. 88.
[4]Swartz & Tewdrowe’s Annual Indianapolis City Directory (Indianapolis: Sentinel Company Printers, 1874), p. 464, accessed Internet Archive.
[5]R.L. Polk & Co.’s Indianapolis Directory for 1879 (Indianapolis: R. L. Polk & Co., 1879), p. 540, accessed via Internet Archive.
[6] “Wash List,” Indianapolis News, November 12, 1881; “Wah Lee: A Good Hand Laundry,” Indianapolis Star, December 31, 1923, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] “Sam Sing Lee’s Funeral,” Indianapolis News, October 30, 1900, accessed Newspapers.com.
[8] “The Chinese,” Indianapolis News, October 29, 1877, accessed Newspapers.com.
[9] “A Chinaman Robbed,” Indianapolis Journal, June 15, 1885; “The Chinese Laundry,” Indianapolis News, May 10, 1880, accessed Newspapers.com.
[10] “12 Chinese Promptly Settle Fan Tan Fines,” Indianapolis News. January 16, 1911, accessed Newspapers.com.
[11] “The Chinese Scapegoat,” Indianapolis Journal, January 31, 1898, accessed Newspapers.com.
For newspaper coverage of other raids on Chinese businesses see: “Get 22 in Fan-Tan Raid,” Indianapolis Star, January 16, 1911, accessed Newspapers.com; “Inquiry to Follow Arrest of Chinese,” Indianapolis Star, May 23, 1915, accessed Newspapers.com; “Pong Tells of High Stakes in Chinese Gaming House,” Indianapolis News, September 21, 1915, accessed Newspapers.com; “Police Find Lid at Slight Angle,” Indianapolis Star, July 2, 1917, accessed Newspapers.com.
[12] “A Chinaman Murdered,” The Indianapolis Journal, May 6, 1902, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Chinese in Court on Murder Charge,” Indianapolis News, May 21, 1902, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Threats on Moy Kee Cause of Commotion,” Indianapolis News, June 11, 1902, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Prisoners’ Lips Sealed,” Indianapolis Journal, March 21, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[13] “A Cry of Police Falsely Raised,” Indianapolis News, December 22, 1894, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[14] Anthony J. Miller, “Pioneers, Sunday Schoolers, and Laundrymen: Chinese Immigrants in Iowa in the Chinese Exclusion Era, 1870-190,” The Annals of Iowa 81, no. 2 (Spring 2022): 118.
Fred Rohrer, unknown date, located in the Thirtieth Anniversary Souvenir Edition of the Witness,1926, accessed Indiana Memory.
On December 24, 1903, an article from a Kentucky-based newspaper known as The Bee highlighted the following: “Not daunted by the fact that his house was blown up by dynamite, by being assaulted twice and severely beaten, nor by an attempt to made to lynch him, Fred Rohrer, editor of the Berne Witness, declares that he will continue his relentless war upon the saloon element of the town.”[1] That year had proved to be a defining moment for both Rohrer and the City of Berne. With the help of the Berne Witness, Rohrer tied Berne to the Temperance Movement, and helped put Indiana on the national map to Prohibition.
Religion and the Rise of Temperance
In the early nineteenth century, Indiana and other states across the Midwest saw the arrival of Mennonites, who traveled from northeast Switzerland, and Germany. Their religious beliefs stemmed from the Anabaptist Movement of the sixteenth century and encompassed a range of practices, such as “believer’s baptism, the separation of church and state, personal nonviolence, a rejection of church hierarchy and the refusal to take an oath.”[2] A range of societal changes influenced their exodus from the homeland, such as the Napoleonic Wars, poor harvests, and mandatory military service. As more Mennonite families experienced a world of religious and social freedom on America’s frontier, extended kin soon followed.[3] The network of chain migration resulted in the creation of small, German speaking settlements across the Midwest landscape, as Swiss Mennonites made the U.S. their new home.
Interior of Mennonite Church in Berne, courtesy of the Thirtieth Anniversary Souvenir Edition of the Witness,1926, accessed Indiana Memory.
This was the case for sixteen-year-old Fred Rohrer, who emigrated from Berne, Switzerland to Sonneberg, Ohio, in the spring in 1883 with his parents and thirteen siblings. Three years later, the Rohrer family made their way to the newly incorporated town of Berne, Indiana, named after their original hometown. They arrived at a pivotal time in the town’s history. Rumblings of the Temperance Movement gripped the city leaders within the freshly established city, as the Mennonite population dealt with Berne’s growth. Historian John Eicher explains that during the late nineteenth century, the Temperance Movement began to influence religious and political identities of the United States and inspired the many secular organizations to link alcohol consumption to moral and economic problems that faced the U.S. landscape.[4] Methodist groups served as the bedrock of early temperance activism, and soon more religious groups followed, with the first major temperance group in Indiana appearing in 1826 with the formation of the American Temperance Society. However, it was not until 1828 that activism surrounding temperance intensified in Indiana.[5] Between 1830 and 1850, temperance organizers helped pass nearly 125 laws throughout the state that bolstered temperance by regulating liquor prices and amount sold.
Eicher explains that beliefs of piety, self-restraint, and morality connected Mennonites to the Temperance Movement. Drunkenness coincided with sex work and gambling – all sins originating in the saloon.[6] Rohrer was quick to join the fight against liquor consumption. After purchasing an old Washington hand press and equipment from the Decatur Press and Decatur Democrat offices, Rohrer established the Berne Witness in 1896, publishing its first issue on September 3. Recognized as a Temperance paper, the Berne Witness began as a weekly newspaper that by the turn of the century had a circulation of about 700. At the time, the city had a population of approximately 1,037 individuals.[7] That same year, Rohrer incorporated a supplement to the Witness in the German language, reflecting the steady growth of the Mennonite population. Berne’s status as a respected Hoosier town was emerging – but in 1902, the discovery of oil just a few miles outside of Berne’s city limits threatened the population’s solitude. Transient single, working-class male workers, alongside prominent oil men seeking a fortune, flooded the local population. As a result, concerns over vice-related activities, like drinking, gambling, and sex work, skyrocketed.[8] Many prominent leaders believed this was the perfect opportunity to enforce liquor laws before the town became any bigger.
Image courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.
As a leading supporter of Prohibition, as well as an active voice within the Christian Temperance Society of Berne (CTSB), Rohrer’s role in establishing the city as a dry town is highlighted in the Berne Witness. Tales of his protests, his success and failures, and his dedication to upholding his religious beliefs are spread across nearly twenty years of publications. His influence in the CTSB allowed Rohrer to use his paper to establish a fluid connection between Temperance activists and the larger community. Rohrer and the Witness played a crucial role in turning Berne into a dry town. It frequently reported updates on local Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s meetings, alongside changes in Indiana’s liquor laws and liquor license requirements. More importantly, the Berne Witness became a weapon that enabled Rohrer to call out local authorities and saloon owners for their illegal activities. As his paper grew in popularity and readership, Rohrer became a local legend – but his fame also made himself the main target for retaliation.
Rohrer’s Fight
In September of 1902, Rohrer met with several other men met to discuss the “enforcement of the local option provision” brought on by the Nicholson Law.[9] The law required a two-year waiting period between liquor license applications and its issuance. Additionally, the law allowed for remonstrances – or public votes and petitions – for the denial of any liquor license.[10] The CTSB was quick to form petitions against every saloon in Berne. Rohrer, also a member of Indiana’s Anti-Saloon League, commented on the remonstrance’s in the Witness in 1902, saying that Christian patriotic forces in Indiana were attempting to solve the saloon question by eradicating saloons all together. “The saloon must go,” he wrote, “Remonstrances have been circulated and a great majority of the names of voters have been secured.”[11] Initially, these remonstrances were successful. The Witness reported on December 5 that two saloons – one owned by Jacob Brennaman and the other by Jacob Hunsicker – officially closed, with another to cease in March of 1903.[12]
However, the celebration of these closures did not come without complaint from others. Though the Berne Witness gave him unfettered access to disseminating his opinion, it also opened the door to immense retaliation by saloon owners and liquor drinkers. And, by the start of the new year of 1903, tensions escalated between saloon owners and Rohrer. Early in January, Rohrer posted a notice on the front page of the Witness, incentivizing the community to report liquor violations and sign their public petitions:
Opponents to the remonstrance often said that there would be more liquor sold in Berne if licenses were refused than if said license were granted. To assist in demonstrating the matter, $100.00 has been deposited with the undersigned to be used as follows: $10.00 to be paid for the first, $15.00 for the second, and $25.00 for the third conviction of any one party by the Adams Circuit County. Money to be paid by the undersigned to such parties that file the complaint.[13]
Monetary incentives, however, failed and remonstrances were ignored. The board of commissioners approved liquor licenses for several men across town, directly violating the Nicholson Law. The CTSB complained but were forced to take their grievances to the circuit court.[14]
Rohrer spent the summer of 1903 biking ten miles to Decatur daily to bring Berne locals remonstrances to the circuit court. As early as March, the Decatur Democrat reported on Fred Rohrer’s appearance in Decatur on “temperance and saloon business.”[15] On June 4, the Democrat claimed that the City of Berne, despite protests, was still “wet,” as the commissioners court granted a license to John Reineker to operate a saloon in town. Rohrer’s remonstrance against Reineker had been declared insufficient due to his lack of attorney.[16] A month later, the Democrat claimed that Rohrer was still busy in the auditor’s office, where he filed remonstrances containing 396 local signatures “against the granting of license to sell liquors to J. M. Ersham, William Sheets and Sammuel L. Kuntz.”[17]
Berne Witness staff,1906, courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.
Tensions between Rohrer, Berne’s saloon owners and local anti-Temperance supporters peaked by September. After midnight on September 10th, Rohrer’s wife, Emma, awoke to a scratching noise coming from the first floor of the house. After investigating and finding nothing out of the ordinary, she returned to bed. Twenty minutes later, Rohrer awoke to two heavy explosions in his home. As Rohrer and his family slept on the second floor, someone slipped one stick of dynamite through a downstairs window and another under his front porch. The explosions destroyed half of his home. Rohrer described the wreckage in the Berne Witness a few days later:
We looked out the windows in the kitchen and dining room and then came into the sitting room, just beneath the bed room we were all sleeping in. The moon was shining in through a large hole in the wall where the front door used to be, and through two other large holes where windows were missing. A few shreds of the curtains left hanging from the top were wafted in by the south wind and made a spectral noise and together with the debris of broken pieces of glass and dishes and furniture lying topsy-turvy gave the room a ghastly appearance.[18]
Local carpenters were quick to get to work on repairing Rohrer’s home the following morning. News of the attack spread across the Midwest, with articles regarding the murder attempt appearing in the Indianapolis News, the Kentucky Post, and even the Salt Lake Herald.[19] But many, especially Rohrer, were not surprised. He wrote in the Berne Witness, “As had been stated in Friday’s issue and in other papers, the attack was not unexpected to us…Every night as we went to bed last week I told my wife to be prepared for almost anything.”[20] It was later reported that the special grand jury tasked with investigating the incident failed to bring any indictments in the case, and no one was charged.[21]
Rohrer’s home, courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.
Women within the CTSB began surveilling Rohrer’s home shortly after the attack. The Plymouth Tribune reported that five women, armed with their husbands’ revolvers, kept guard to ensure that Rohrer could rest peacefully. In fact, their continued support encouraged him to move forward. On September 11, the morning after the bombing, Rohrer biked back to Decatur to approach the commissioners’ court with a remonstrance against Joseph Hocker, a Monroe resident who was seeking to apply for a liquor license in Berne. The Berne Witness stated that Rohrer also brought thirty-three cases of law violations to a grand jury against Berne saloonkeepers, claiming that the attack on his house was “very naturally connected” with the saloon fight in town. A grand jury convened and handed down six indictments and saloonkeepers had to pay a minimum fine, As a result, on November 18, sixty suspected patrons of Berne’s saloons received subpoenas to appear before the court to testify. [22]
“Only Women Guard at Night,” The Plymouth Tribune, October 1, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
Enraged by the indictment, a mob against Rohrer formed on November 19. Resident Louis Sprunger approached Rohrer in the Berne Witness offices, challenging him to a fight out on the street, which Rohrer refused. Later that evening, Sprunger followed him into the post office, and Sprunger attacked him. Two female workers came to Rohrer’s defense, tackling Sprunger and forcing the man to leave. After retreating to the safety of the Witness offices, the president of the town council, Abe Boegly, attempted to drag Rohrer out but failed to get him on the street. Instead, Boegly decided to give Rohrer a “beating” until the local marshal arrived at the scene to break up the fight. As Rohrer was taken to safety, a mob – consisting of saloonkeepers and other locals – gathered outside of the Witness offices to determine the extent of Boegly’s assault.[23]
The Indianapolis News covered the incident and stated that Rohrer was advised by the local sheriff to temporarily leave Berne out of fear of more violence. He found asylum in Decatur, where he released a statement that he “proposes to continue the fight against the saloon until his enemies kill him.” Rohrer did not return home until a week later, and on December 4, the Kansas Prohibitionist reported that Rohrer began arming his home and offices with revolvers and shotguns. His wife, who refused to leave her husband’s side, began practicing with the weapons to protect the home. The increased violence in the town, however, forced saloonkeepers to come to a compromise with Rohrer and the CTSB. On December 18, the Berne Witness reported that John Reineke, J. M. Ehrsam and Samuel L. Kuntz offered a compromise – the saloonkeepers would go out of business on April 1 of 1904, provided they were dismissed on paying the costs of their current indictment charges.[24]
Image courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.
As concessions were deliberated, Rohrer released another statement on Christmas Eve, declaring that he would not concede despite his friends fearing that he would be murdered. It was clear that Rohrer would not back down, no matter how much violence saloonkeepers and liquor supporters inflicted on him. On December 29, the Indianapolis Journal reported that “after one of the bitterest anti-saloon battles in the history of the State,” saloon owners Reineke, Ehrsam, and Kuntz agreed to close their doors on the grounds that within a few days Rohrer would drop his cases against the men regarding various liquor violations.[25] As the City of Berne approached the new year, it seemed that the liquor fight was finally coming a peaceful end.
Moving Forward – Rohrer’s Legacy
Ultimately, 1903 proved to be the most defining year for Rohrer’s activism and for the City of Berne. Over the next three years, Rohrer and the Witness reported the continued forced closures of Berne’s saloons and liquor law violators. However, the election of Governor James Franklin Hanly – a staunch supporter of Prohibition – in 1904 brought an end to the violence that accompanied Rohrer’s fight. Governor Hanly’s involvement in the Temperance Movement solidified the ban of alcohol at the highest political level with the Moore Amendment, which enacted a county option law regarding the ban of alcoholic beverages.[26] The liquor fight officially ended in 1907, when the city rejoiced over the last quantities of alcohol being carried into the street and drained. Berne was officially a dry town and remained that way until the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1932.[27]
* The Berne Witness will soon be digitized and incorporated into the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database and IHB’s own Hoosier State Chronicles, to give historians the chance to explore Hoosier grassroots efforts within the Temperance Movement and Prohibition.
Notes:
[1] “Indiana Editor, Takes His Life in His Hands,” The Bee, December 24, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] U.S. Census Bureau, “Indiana City/Town Census Counts, 1900 to 2020,” City and Town Census Counts: STATS Indiana, accessed https://www.stats.indiana.edu/population/PopTotals/historic_counts_cities.asp. According to the 2020 Census, the population of Berne is just above 4,000 people.
[8] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 2; Learn more about the connection between vice and industrialization with our post about the effects of the Gas Boom in Muncie, Indiana.
[9] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 21; In 1895, the Nicholson Law was passed in Indiana. This law states that the majority of voters in townships and cities can halt the approval for liquor licenses issued to any applicant. See the Indiana Historical Society’s Temperance and Prohibition Time Line for more information on Indiana legislation regarding Temperance.
[11] “War on Saloons,” The Berne Witness, November 11, 1902; In this context, a “remonstrance” refers to a forceful protest, expression of complaint, or formal statement of grievance.
[12] “The Liquor Fight,” The Berne Witness, December 5, 1902; “War on Saloons,” The Berne Witness, November 11, 1902.
[13] “Liquor Being Sold Illegally in Berne?,” The Berne Witness, January 20, 1903; For reference, $100.00 is equivalent to about $3,549.23 today.
[22] “Only Women Guard at Night,” The Plymouth Tribune, October 1, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “F. Rohrer’s Home Dynamited,” The Berne Witness, September 11, 1903; Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 26.
[23] “Editor Rohrer Brutally Assaulted,” The Berne Witness, November 20, 1903.
[24] “Editor Rohrer in Peril from Mob at Berne,” The Indianapolis News, November 19, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Fred Rohrer Again,” The Kansas Prohibitionist, December 4, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com; “Saloon Keepers Offer Terms,” The Berne Witness, December 18, 1903.
[25] “Indiana Editor, Takes His Life in His Hands,” The Bee, December 24, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com; “Editor Fred Rohrer Wins a Long Fight,” The Indianapolis Journal, December 29, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com.
The Talking Machine World, January 15, 1921, 27, accessed archive.org.
Historians of blues music and folk culture consider Mamie Smith to be the first African American woman to record blues vocals. In 1921, only a year after this historic recording, Smith performed to sold-out crowds in Indiana. Newspapers covered the release of Smith’s records and her Indiana performances extensively. We were interested especially in a spring 1921 performance by this African-American star in Richmond, Indiana, a Ku Klux Klan stronghold at the time.
Before 1920, African American entertainer Mamie Smith, who was born in Cincinnati, worked in Harlem as a chorus girl and cabaret singer. Here she met the black pianist, singer, and composer Perry Bradford who had found success in theater and minstrel circuits in New York. Bradford, who was interested in preserving African-American musical traditions in recordings, convinced Fred Hager, recording director of the obscure label OKeh Records to take a chance on recording Mamie Smith. Bradford convinced Hager that African American music lovers were an untapped market and that “they will buy records if recorded by one of their own, because we are the only folks that can sing and interpret hot jazz songs just off the griddle correctly.”
“A studio headshot portrait of American blues singer Mamie Smith,” photograph, circa, 1923, Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images accessed “Mamie Smith and the Birth of the Blues Market,” All Things Considered, NPR.
In February 1920, Smith recorded “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” for OKeh Records. Blues music historians consider this to be the first blues recording by an African American woman. Record producer Hager received boycott threats if he recorded Smith or any other African American singer. In the face of the controversy, Bradford convinced Hager to continue backing Smith, as opposed to the white singer Sophie Tucker, who Hager was alternatively considering. Bradford recalled:
Mr. Hager got a far-off look in his eyes and seemed somewhat worried, because of the many threatening letters he had received from some Northern and Southern pressure groups warning him not to have any truck with colored girls in the recording field. If he did, OKeh Products – phonograph machines and records – would be boycotted. May God bless Mr. Hager, for despite the many threats, it took a man with plenty of nerves and guts to buck those powerful groups and make the historical decision which would echo aroun’ the world. He pried open that old ‘prejudiced door’ for the first colored girl, Mamie Smith, so she could squeeze into the large horn – and shout with her strong contralto voice.
Smith recorded another set of songs penned by Bradford for Okeh in August of 1920. The track “Crazy Blues” became massively popular and in less than a year the record sold over a million copies. According to long-time music writer Jas Obercht, Smith’s “Crazy Blues” “could be heard coming from the open windows of virtually any black neighborhood in America.” Okeh Records called it “a surprise smash hit.” According to New Orleans jazz musician Danny Barker:
There was a great appeal amongst black people and whites who loved this blues business to buy records and buy phonographs. Every family had a phonograph in their house, specifically behind Mamie Smith’s first record.
Indiana newspapers ran ads for Mamie Smith’s records not long after the release of “Crazy Blues.” Often the ads for Smith’s records were also attempts to sell phonographs as Barker mentioned in the above quote. A downtown Indianapolis music store ran this advertisement in the Indianapolis News in November:
The C. W. Copp Music Shop ran an advertisement in the South Bend News-Times in December for the hit “Crazy Blues,” but also let an interested public know that they stocked other Mamie Smith records. Hoosier interest in Smith’s records continued into the new year. In March of 1921, the same South Bend music shop ran several advertisements for five new Smith records and the Hammond Times ran an advertisement for Okeh Records releases, featuring Smith, and to sell listeners the phonograph to play them on:
According to Obrecht, Mamie Smith recorded 22 songs this year and “between sessions, she kept a grueling schedule of concert appearances.” The Talking Machine World magazine reported that Smith and a revue of entertainers were going to perform in all the major U.S. cities. By April 1921, many Hoosier music fans were familiar with Mamie Smith, as we can see from the newspaper ads. So when the news broke that she was booked to play in Indiana, the coverage continued almost daily until the performance.
According to the Talking Machine World she performed in Indianapolis and Evansville on this tour, but a search of Hoosier State Chronicles and our recent work to digitize the Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram shows that she also performed to sold out crowds in Richmond and South Bend. This is especially interesting considering 1920s Richmond was only about 5% African American, while perhaps as many as 45% of white males belonged at some point to Whitewater Klan #60, an active chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. We wondered, what brought Smith to Richmond and how was she received?
The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram ran a notice of Smith’s Saturday, April 23, 1921 performance at the Coliseum for weeks before the date. Here are some great examples:
On April 21, 1921 alone there were three ads for Smith’s upcoming performance and records, including this extensive listing of popular songs:
Richmond Palladium and Sun Telegram, April 21, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.“Famous Colored Star Sings Here Saturday,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.
Advertisements were not the only coverage of Smith’s upcoming appearance in Richmond. On April 18, 1921 the Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram reported on the “forthcoming appearance here of Mamie Smith, the popular phonograph star of the colored race, and her All-Star Jazz Revue next Saturday night at the Coliseum,” and called it “the greatest jazz concert that has ever been sent on tour.” The newspaper called Smith “a phonograph star of the first rank” and claimed that she “has done more than any other singer perhaps in America to popularize the genuine ‘blues’ song of the day.” The writer continued to laud Smith for her ability to make songs into “living, potent things charged with a pulsing and individual rhythm.” The paper reported that the popularity of her record had made Richmond residents excited to see her perform live and that they were expecting a “sold-out house when she reaches this city.”
Jazz Revue Seats On Sale Wednesday,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.
Perhaps the most interesting article in the Palladium was the one that appeared the following day, April 19, and covered not Smith but the revue company traveling with her. Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds were the headlining, crowd-drawing act, but her tour included other acts as well: dancers, vaudevillian comedians, and minstrel performers. The appearance of a newly-minted blues and jazz star on the same stage as the historically popular minstrel performers marks and intersection of trends in African American music and performance history. While minstrel performers had both conformed to stereotypes out of employment necessity and defied them through their self-presentation (learn more), Mamie Smith’s rise to stardom ushered in a new era of music divas who presented themselves as upper class, educated, rich, and demanding of respect.
Obrecht writes:
While blues music had been performed in the American South since the very beginning of the twentieth century, no one had made recordings of it before, largely due to racism and the assumption that African-Americans couldn’t – or wouldn’t – buy record players or 78s. “Crazy Blues” changed all that, sparking a mad scramble among record execs to record blues divas. The stars they promoted in this short-lived era of “classic blues” were not the down-home country singers who’d record later in the Roaring Twenties, but the glittering, glamorous, and savvy veterans of tent shows, minstrel troupes, and the vaudeville stage. These mavericks defied stereotypes…
“Colored Star Wears Exprensive Creations,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 22, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.
As if in response to this very idea, on April 22 the Palladium followed the coverage of the revue with an article detailing the glamorous appearance and presentation of Smith. The newspaper stated that through her record royalties “the popular young colored star is enabled to indulge her fancy in the latest creations both from Paris and New York, and in each city in which she has appeared a gasp of astonishment has greeted her every appearance, for her gowns are described as riots of color and beauty.”
In a telling sentence, the article called Smith “one of the most gorgeously dressed stars of the musical comedy world.” This notes both the respect for her appearance and success and a misunderstanding of her role in music history. While African American music fans were connecting to Smith’s sincere and authentic portrayal of the blues music that they grew up with, this white Midwestern newspaper still saw her as part of the vaudeville and perhaps even minstrel genres — understandably perhaps since it was marketed as such. While Smith had come from such a tradition, through her work with the blues and and jazz performers she had transcended her past. Black newspapers understood her importance much earlier than white newspapers. On March 13, 1920, the Chicago Defender wrote:
Well, you’ve all heard the famous stars of the white race chirping their stuff on the different makes of phonograph records . . . but we have never – up to now – been able to hear one of our own ladies deliver the canned goods. Now we have the pleasure of being able to say that at last they have recognized the fact that we are here for their service; the OKeh Phonograph Company has initiated the idea by engaging the handsome, popular and capable vocalist, Mamie Gardner Smith.
Similarly, the African American gospel, jazz, and blues music Thomas A. Dorseyexplained, “Colored singing and playing artists are riding to fame and fortune with the current popular demand for ‘blues’ disk recordings and because of the recognized fact that only a Negro can do justice to the native indigo ditties such artists are in demand.”
There were African American audience members at the Richmond performance, who likely had a better understanding of the significance of Smith’s success. The Richmond PalladiumSun-Telegram reported: “The best seats are selling fast from the plat at Weisbrod Music company as white and colored folk alike are wager to see and hear the ‘Queen of the Blues,’ a capacity house is predicted for Saturday night.”
Unfortunately, there are no extant issues of the historic African American newspaper the Indianapolis Recorder for this period. It would be interesting to explore the differences in the coverage of Smith’s performances between a white and black newspaper and perhaps this could be accomplished using the Chicago Defender, but is outside the scope of this post.
As expected, Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds sold-out the Richmond Coliseum, which held 2,500 people, for the April 23, 1921 performance. The next year, the KKK also sold-out the same venue. The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegramreported on December 12, 1922 that a crowd awaiting a Klan rally “taxed the space at the Coliseum waiting for the ceremonies quite a long time before the Klansmen finally arrived.” So how was the white population of Richmond able to enjoy an African American musician one year and then attend a Klan rally the next?
While this contradiction may seem surprising, there was (and some argue still is) a tendency for white Americans to de-contextualize African American music from African American culture. That is, the white residents of Richmond were able to appreciate black music while continuing to oppress black people. There has been much written on this topic (two good places to start are Imamu Amiri Baraka‘s The Music: reflections on Jazz and Blues and Perry Hall’s “African American Music: Dynamics of Appropriation and Innovation“) and an extensive analysis of Smith’s career through this lens is outside the scope of this post. However, advertisements continued after her performance, from which we can draw that she was a hit regardless of why. Notice the advertisement claims that there was “a capacity audience.”
While we were unable to find an article reviewing the Richmond performance or the crowd’s reception, it likely went well because she returned to Indiana the next month. On May 31, 1921, she performed to another capacity crowd at the Oliver Theater in South Bend. The South Bend News-Times covered her performance in much the same manner as the Richmond Palladium. The paper noted in various articles, her fame, her genius, and her status as “the first colored girl artist to attain world-wide fame as a singer and phonograph record star.”
Mamie Smith’s importance to music history is hard to overstate, according to a story on NPR’s All Things Considered for which famed activist Angela Davis (now a professor at University of California/Santa Cruz ) was interviewed. Davis summed up Smith’s importance succinctly:
“The recording of ‘Crazy Blues’ led the way for the professionalization of black music, for the black entertainment industry, and indeed for the immense popularity of black music today.”
Newspaper history is full of myths, “viral” stories, and tall tales. Folklore and journalism are often close cousins, especially the colorful “yellow journalism” that sold outright lies to rake in subscriptions. In the annals of Hoosier and American journalism, one persistent, tantalizing tale continues to baffle the sleuths at the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Who wrote the famous slogan “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country”? It’s one of the great catch phrases of Manifest Destiny, an exhortation that echoes deep in the soul of Americans long after the closing of the frontier. But when you try to pin down where it came from, it’s suddenly like holding a fistful of water (slight variation on a Clint Eastwood theme) or uncovering the genesis of an ancient religious text — especially since nobody has ever found the exact phrase in the writings of either of the men who might have authored it.
“Go west, young man” has usually been credited to influential New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. A New Englander, Greeley was one of the most vocal opponents of slavery. Antebellum Americans’ take on “liberal” and “conservative” politics would probably confuse today’s voters: a radical, Greeley famously opposed divorce, sparring with Hoosier social reformer Robert Dale Owen over the loose divorce laws that made Indiana the Reno of the nineteenth century. A religious man, he also promoted banning liquor — not a cause “liberal” politicians would probably take up today. Greeley helped promote the writings of Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau and even took on Karl Marx as a European correspondent in the 1850s. (Imagine Abraham Lincoln the lawyer reading the author of The Communist Manifesto in the Tribune!) In 1872, the famously eccentric New York editor ran for President against Ulysses S. Grant, lost, and died before the electoral vote officially came in. Greeley won just three electoral votes but was a widely admired man.
Greeley around 1860. Daguerreotype by Matthew Brady.
Though Greeley was always interested in Western emigration, he only went out west once, in 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush. Originally a utopian experimental community, Greeley, Colorado, fifty miles north of Denver, was named after him in 1869. The newspaperman often published advice urging Americans to shout “Westward, ho!” if they couldn’t make it on the East Coast. Yet his own trip through Kansas and over the Rockies to California showed him not just the glories of the West (like Yosemite) but some of the darker side of settlement.
“Fly, scatter through the country — go to the Great West,” he wrote in 1837. Years later, in 1872, he was still editorializing: “I hold that tens of thousands, who are now barely holding on at the East, might thus place themselves on the high road to competence and ultimate independence at the West.”
“At the West” included the Midwest. Before the Civil War, Indiana was a popular destination for Easterners “barely holding on.”
A major cradle of Midwestern settlement was Maine, birthplace of John Soule, Greeley’s competitor for authorship of the mystery slogan. As the logger, writer, and popular historian Stuart Holbrook wrote in his 1950 book Yankee Exodus, Maine’s stony soil and the decline of its shipping trade pushed thousands of Mainers to get out just after it achieved statehood in 1820. The exodus was so bad that many newspaper editors in Maine wrote about the fear that the new state would actually be depopulated by “Illinois Fever” and the rush to lumbering towns along the Great Lakes — and then Oregon.
J.B.L. Soule, courtesy Blackburn College Archives.
One Mainer who headed to the Midwest in the 1840s was John Babson Lane Soule, later editor of The Wabash Express. Born in 1815 in Freeport, Maine — best known today as the home of L.L. Bean — Soule came from a prominent local family. His brother Gideon Lane Soule went on to serve as president of Phillips Exeter Academy, the prestigious prep school in New Hampshire. Though the Soules were Congregationalists, a likely relative of theirs, Gertrude M. Soule, born in nearby Topsham, Maine, in 1894, was one of the last two Shakers in New Hampshire. (She died in 1988.)
J.B.L. Soule — whom an 1890 column in the Chicago Mail claimed was the man who actually coined the phrase “Go west, young man” in 1851 — was educated at Bowdoin College, just down the road from Freeport. Soule became an accomplished master of Latin and Greek and for decades after his move west published poems in New England literary magazines like The Bowdoin Poets and Northern Monthly. A poem of his called “The Wabash” came out in Bowdoin’s poetry journal in August 1840, so it’s safe to assume that Soule had moved to Terre Haute by then. By 1864, he was still writing poems with titles like “The Prairie Grave.”
While Soule’s conventional, classical poetry might be hard to appreciate today, he was hailed as “a writer of no ordinary ability” by the Terre Haute Journal in 1853. Additionally, Soule and his brother Moses helped pioneer education in Terre Haute, helping to establish the Vigo County Seminary and the Indiana Normal School (precursor of Indiana State University) in the 1840s. J.B.L. Soule taught at the Terre Haute Female College, a boarding school for girls. The Soule brothers were also affiliated with the Baldwin Presbyterian Church, Terre Haute’s second house of worship.
John Soule later served as a Presbyterian minister in Plymouth, Indiana; preached at Elkhorn, Wisconsin, during the Civil War; taught ancient languages at Blackburn University in Carlinville, Illinois; then finished his career as a Presbyterian pastor in Highland Park, Chicago. He died in 1891.
He seems like a great candidate to be the author of “Go west, young man,” since he did exactly that. But it’s hard to prove that Soule, not Horace Greeley, coined the famous appeal.
The Wabash Express, under Soule’s leadership, was “Devoted to the Whig Policy, News, Commerce, Literature, and Good Morals.” A piece written in first-person by Horace Greeley on the front page of Soule’s very first issue suggests that the New York Tribune editor might have visited Tippecanoe County in 1853 to see the Indiana State Fair. Courtesy of Chronicling America.
Four decades later, in October 1891, an anonymous writer in the Chicago Mail reported a tale from an equally anonymous “old-timer,” told in an anonymous Chicago bar. The “Dick Thompson” of this story is Richard Wigginton Thompson. Originally from Culpeper, Virginia, Thompson moved out to Bedford, Indiana, to practice law, and settled in Terre Haute in 1843. During the Civil War, Dick Thompson commanded Camp Dick Thompson, a training base in Vigo County. Oddly for a man from almost-landlocked Indiana, he served as Secretary of the Navy under President Rutherford B. Hayes from 1877 to 1880. He died in Terre Haute in 1900.
U.S. Navy Secretary and Terre Hautean Richard W. Thompson around 1880. Courtesy Library of Congress.
“Do you know,” said an old–timer at the Chicago club, “that that epigrammatic bit of advice to young men, ‘Go west,’ so generally attributed to Horace Greeley, was not original with him? No? Well, it wasn’t. It all came about this way: John L.B. Soule was the editor of the Terre Haute Express back in the 50’s, and one day in ’51, if I remember right, he and Dick Thompson were conversing in the former’s sanctum. Thompson had just finished advising Soule to go west and grow up with the country and was praising his talents as a writer.
“‘Why, John,’ he said, ‘you could write an article that would be attributed to Horace Greeley if you tried.’
“‘No, I couldn’t,’ responded Mr. Soule, modestly, ‘I’ll bet I couldn’t.’
“‘I’ll bet a barrel of flour you can if you’ll promise to try your best, the flour to go to some deserving poor person.’
“‘All right. I’ll try,’ responded Soule.
“He did try, writing a column editorial on the subject of discussion—the opportunities offered to young men by the west. He started in by saying that Horace Greeley could never have given a young man better advice than that contained in the words, ‘Go West, young man.’
“Of course, the advice wasn’t quoted from Greeley, merely compared to what he might have said. But in a few weeks the exchanges began coming into the Express office with the epigram reprinted and accredited to Greeley almost universally. So wide a circulation did it obtain that at last the New York Tribune came out editorially, reprinted the Express article, and said in a foot note:
“‘The expression of this sentiment has been attributed to the editor of the Tribune erroneously. But so heartily does he concur in the advice it gives that he endorses most heartily the epigrammatic advice of the Terre Haute Express and joins in saying, ‘Go west, young man, go west.'”
Though the story shook the foundations of the slogan’s attribution to Greeley, even on the surface the Chicago Mail piece is doubtful. What would Dick Thompson — no literary man — have to get J.B.L. Soule (a graduate of Phillips Exeter and Bowdoin College and one of the best writers in Terre Haute) to get over his modesty? The story also makes Thompson out to be a patriarch giving advice to the young. In fact, he was only six years older than Soule. It’s hard to imagine Thompson acting the father figure and “advising Soule to go west and grow up with the country” while they sat in a “sanctum” in Terre Haute — which was the West in 1851. Soule, from Maine, had already come farther than Thompson, from Virginia. And he kept on going.
Greenfield Daily Reporter, October 16, 1939. Newspapers.com.
The bigger problem is that there’s only a few surviving copies of the Terre Haute Express from 1851, and nobody has ever actually found the exact phrase “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country” in its pages or in any of Horace Greeley’s extensive writings. It would be understandable if the “old-timer” of the Chicago Mail or Richard W. Thompson got the date wrong after forty years, but researchers who have scoured all extant copies of the Terre Haute papers and Horace Greeley’s works have never found a single trace of the famous slogan in its exact wording.
The exact phrase probably never got written down at all, but entered popular memory as short-hand for Greeley’s exhortations to migrate. Iowa Congressman Josiah B. Grinnell, a Vermont expatriate, used to be identified as the “young man” whom Greeley urged to get out of New York City and go west in 1853. But Grinnell himself debunked claims that he got that advice from Greeley in a letter. Even the oral advice Greeley gave Grinnell wasn’t the precise phrase we remember him for. Instead, he said “Go West; this is not the place for a young man.”
Wherever the phrase originated, as late as 1871, a year before his death, Greeley was still urging New Englanders and down-and-out men tired of Washington, D.C. to hit the western trails. However, the editor himself mostly stuck close to the Big Apple, venturing only as far as his Chappaqua Farm in Westchester County, New York during the summertime. While only at the big city’s edge, Greeley continued to play the role of western pioneer.
Horace Greeley at Chappaqua Farm in New York, 1869. Wikimedia Commons.
Detroit, Michigan, March 30, 1965. Two men meet at a small press conference before the funeral of a slain civil rights activist. Their meeting seems like an unlikely pairing for us today—one a slick haired, brash, and controversial labor leader and the other a measured, eloquent, and inspirational pastor who had galvanized the civil rights movement. The former was there to present a check for $25,000 for the latter’s work on racial equality. Their stories varied tremendously but, at this moment, they intersected, manifesting all the complicated and contradictory impulses of American life during the middle of the twentieth century. Those two men were Jimmy Hoffa and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Music: “The Things That Keep Us Here” by Monomyth, “Almost A Year Ago” by John Deley and the 41 Players, “Crate Digger” by Gunnar Olsen, “Crimson Fly” by Huma-Huma, “Dreamer” by Hazy, “Eternity” by Lahar, and “I Am OK” by Vishmak
At just 110 pounds, Sullivan, Indiana-native Will Hays was not exactly the imposing figure you’d expect to be the film industry’s regulator, but he nevertheless left a substantial mark on the movie industry during the first half of the twentieth century.
Edwina Whitlock, circa 1940s, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 320, accessed Internet Archive.
Gary American editor Edwina H. Whitlock wrote in the California Eagle in 1961, “I might perhaps be forgiven for posing as a political authority, but those who know Indiana must acknowledge that basketball and politics are monkeys on the backs of every Hoosier.”[1] The life of Edwina Whitlock, the first and only female editor of the Gary American, is a story that evokes critical insights into the most influential periods in Black history and showcases Black women’s dedication to the long Civil Rights Movement. Whitlock illuminated the rise of the “Black bourgeoisie” and their advocacy for equal rights between the 1920s and into the 1980s, herself having grown up among the small community of Black elites in Charleston, South Carolina. She witnessed the vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance through her adopted father, strove to emulate W.E.B. DuBois’s ideals regarding Black excellence, and utilized her class privilege to advocate for civil rights and equality through journalism and activism.
The Early Life of Edwina (Harleston) Whitlock
The Black side of the Harleston family held deep roots within the American South, which defined early on by issues of race and class. Edwina Harleston Whitlock’s ancestors were enslaved. Her maternal great-grandmother Kate Wilson lived in bondage and bore eight of the plantation owner’s children. Harleston never married, and upon his death in 1835, the mixed-race Harleston children, who were denied their inheritance, were pushed back into Black society, and refused inheritance from white relatives. Despite these circumstances, the Harleston’s blossomed in the Jim Crow South, utilizing their status as “mixed-race” in order to toe the line of segregation to make a name for themselves.[2] Together, the family integrated into the small, middle-class population of Black Elites in Charleston, South Carolina.
Gussie Harleston in 1924, photographed by her adoptive mother Elise Forrest Harleston, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 318, accessed Internet Archive.
Originally named Gussie Harleston, Edwina was born in Charleston on September 28, 1916, to Kate Wilson’s grandson, Robert O. Harleston and his wife, Marie Forrest. When she was just two and half years old, Edwina and her sister Slyvia were sent to live with their uncle, Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston, after their parent’s contracted tuberculosis.[3] However, after the passing of both their parents, the girls were adopted by Teddy and Elise so they could raise them as their own. Teddy Harleston proved to be an inspiring innovator to the girls. As a young boy at the Avery Normal Institute, Teddy developed an interest in painting portraiture and scenes associated with Southern Black culture, which would define his career for the remainder of his life. He went on to attend Atlanta University, where he studied under Black sociologist and activist W.E.B Du Bois.[4] Du Bois and Harleston became life-long friends, and he encouraged Teddy to use his elite social standing to precipitate equality.
Du Bois’s influence permeated the Harleston family. Later in adulthood, Edwina Harleston describes that the family reared their children according to Du Bois’s theory of the “talented tenth,” a concept that emphasized the necessity of higher education to develop the leadership skills among the “most able 10 percent of Black Americans.”[5] They also instilled a work ethic in their children, reflecting Booker T. Washington’s theory that “African-Americans must concentrate on educating themselves, learning useful trades, and investing in their own business.”[6] She contributed her success to these two ideologies, and what ultimately led to Harleston’s academic drive and early involvement in journalism and newspapers.
The Herald Sun, November 4, 2001, accessed Newspapers.com.
As a young girl, Gussie’s uncle, Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins, ensured that she was always working in some capacity at the orphanage that he ran in Charleston with his wife, Eloise “Ella” Harleston. She recalls that she had a choice: work on the orphanage farm and dig sweet potatoes, or work on the orphanage’s newsletter, The Messenger. She wrote local updates, which spearheaded her interest in journalism.[7] Harleston began calling up different people and groups– churches, community leaders, and businessmen – to ask them questions about their daily activities so she could write up reports regarding what was going on around town. Tragedy struck in 1931, when Edwin “Teddy” Harleston passed away at the young age of forty-nine.[8] To honor these men, fifteen-year-old Gussie Harleston changed her first name to Edwina.
As a high school student, Edwina Harleston remained a veteran writer for The Messenger.[9] During the height of the Great Depression, Harleston’s familial wealth offered her the rare opportunity to attend a university. In 1934, she went on to attend Talladega College, an HBCU, where nearly “all of the students came from light-skinned African American families in urban centers.”[10] Historian Joy Ann Williamson-Lott explained that, for many Black Americans at this time, advanced study at Black institutions remained rare. However, these environments provided a rich opportunity for Black scholars to educate themselves. Edwina was a part of an emerging generation of educated Black Americans, dubbed “The New Negro,” which celebrated Black history, life, and culture through educational advancement.[11] She majored in English literature, taking classes in Chaucer and Shakespeare, while becoming president of her sorority Delta Sigma Theta. She maintained an active social life in school, even forming a secret society with other young women called Sacred Order of Ancient Pigs (SOAP), where the members got together on slow school nights to
gossip.[12]
F.B. Ransom Family Portrait, circa 1935. A’Lelia is on the far left, standing next to her father, accessed Indiana Historical Society.
It was through this group that Harleston met A’Lelia Ransom, daughter of Indianapolis lawyer Freeman Briley Ransom (better known as F.B.).[13] Ransom’s father served as legal counsel to Madame C. J. Walker and her company. A’Lelia and Edwina became great friends, making their own secret club called “Ain’t-Got-Nothing Club.” Every week, A’Lelia’s father would send the girls newspaper clippings from Indianapolis, along with a dollar or two, and they would read the news and spend A’Lelia’s allowance.[14] A’Lelia Ransom would later become the last president of Walker Manufacturing in 1953.[15]
Harleston graduated from Talladega in 1939 and upon her mother’s suggestion applied to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. By the fall of 1940, after spending her whole life in the South, she moved to Chicago to attend graduate school, working towards a master’s degree in journalism. Harleston reveals that this was her first time encountering real racism:
In Charleston, I had been sheltered from it, because the white world and the black world were parallel, never touching. Then I got to Northwestern, the so-called great Methodist Institution. Two things happened that surprised me. The star football player, who was black, was meeting the requirements of his major, but he was not allowed to swim in the university pool. . . . There was also the policy of this supposedly religious university that prevented black students from living in the dormitories on campus. . . . Once I was studying for finals with a friend who wasn’t black. I was invited to her dorm room, but at midnight was told by the matron I had to leave because I was colored. I was frightened and furious and had to stumble back across the railroad tracks to my room at the minister’s house.[16]
Northern racism became a constant obstacle and prominent topic of discussion in her work as a female journalist.
While working towards her master’s degree, Harleston worked as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Defender and the Negro Digest. Her experience in writing for newspapers would play a critical role in the next seventeen years of her life. After meeting Henry Oliver Whitlock at Northwestern, the couple married in April of 1945 and Whitlock found herself moving to the booming, deeply segregated City of Gary, Indiana. A year earlier, Henry had taken over operations of his father’s newspaper, the Gary American – one of the largest Black newspapers in Northwest Indiana. By 1947, Edwina Whitlock would appear on the masthead as Lead Editor as the couple oversaw the dissemination of the publication.
The Gary American: Northwest Indiana’s Early Guardian of Northern Equality
Map of Gary, Indiana in 1929, Map Collection, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, accessed Indiana Memory.
Forty-five minutes from the southside of Chicago and situated next the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan, the United States Steel Company built Gary’s foundations in 1906. Other businesses followed suit. Between 1910 and 1920, Gary’s population jumped from 16,802 to over 55,000.[17] Gary garnered attention, earning the nickname the “Magic City,” as Eastern and Southern Europeans flocked to the area for industrial jobs. However, World War I largely disrupted European migration, and steel companies turned to the Southern portion of the U.S. for labor. The resulting Great Migration drew Black Southerners to Gary’s mills, where they were paid disproportionately low wages.[18]
The influx of Black residents in Gary did not go unnoticed by whites, especially those returning home from World War I to find their jobs had been “taken over” by Black Southerners. In fact, 1920s Indiana was a hotbed for Ku Klux Klan activity, with approximately 300,000 members.[19] Valparaiso, Indiana – only 30 minutes from Gary – became a center for Klan activity in the Northwest region, with the Klan nearly purchasing Valparaiso University (then Valparaiso College). Racism and terror within the region, coupled with the growing Black population, culminated in the creation of the Gary’s own Black newspaper. The publication would disseminate Black news and highlight instances of inequality that did not appear in mainstream publications. In 1927, Arthur B. Whitlock, David E. Taylor, and Chauncey Townsend headed the formation of the Gary American Publishing Company. On November 10, 1927, the Gary Colored American began as a weekly African American paper, publishing its first issue with Townsend as editor and Whitlock as manager.
Postcard Roosevelt High School, Gary, Indiana, circa 1949, accessed the Indiana Album.
In its first year of publication, the Gary Colored American led reports on the 1927 Emerson School walkout, when white students and parents protested the integration of six Black students into the school. As a result, the school board decided to reinforce existing de facto segregation, transferring the children out of Emerson, and agreeing to build Roosevelt High School, an all-Black school in the Midtown neighborhood. Gary’s Black population remained divided on this issue, with some advocating for total desegregation and others celebrating the decision to create a new school. The Gary Colored American advocated for the construction of Roosevelt High School to serve Gary’s African American children, citing it as an achievement for Black excellence. [20]
In 1928, the Gary Colored American changed its name to the Gary American, quickly becoming one the city’s most prominent Black newspapers, paving the way for publications like the Gary Crusader. While initial circulation numbers are unavailable, in 1928, the GaryAmerican claimed a readership of nearly 2,000 readers. In 1929, its masthead asserted that the GaryAmerican was an “independent paper” devoted to Black interests in Northern Indiana.[21] The paper columns reflected the upsurge of white supremacy in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in Jim Crow terrorism that plagued Black communities across the U.S. In 1934, the front page of the GaryAmerican showcased an extensive article about the NAACP’s report that approximately 28 known lynchings occurred the previous year in the U.S. This marked nearly a 200% increase in white terror from 1932 to 1933.[22] By the end of that year, the Gary American published a message to readers, stating, “the Negroes of Gary can look only to The Gary American, their own and only newspaper, for all the news primarily of interest to them and concerning their activities,” claiming that they were the servant of Gary’s Negroes during this tumultuous time period.[23]
Editor Arthur Whitlock left the company in 1938 and attorney F. Louis Sperling was elected editor and acting manager. His legal influence filtered through the Gary American as a plethora of articles featured race and legal rulings within in the U.S. criminal justice system. The Gary American drew attention to a Richmond Times-dispatch editorial in 1937 about the federal Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937:
Now that the rest of the week is apparently available for debating the anti-lynching bill, is it too much to hope that the Southern senators will discuss this measure on its merits, instead of consuming days in flamboyant and bombastic posturing, in apostrophies to the fair name of Southern womanhood, in hysterical outbursts concerning the future of Southern civilization? [24]
The bill passed in the House of Representatives, but was held up in the Senate during a filibuster, where First Lady Elanor Roosevelt sat in the Senate Gallery to silently protest those participating in the blockade. Ultimately, the Anti-Lynching Bill failed to pass in the Senate, despite the Gallup poll revealing that nearly three in four Americans (72%) supported anti-lynching legislations and called for it to become a federal crime.[25]
Additionally, in 1938, Editor Sperling released an open letter to Indiana Governor M. Clifford Townsend on the front page of the paper to draw his attention to corruption that was happening within the city. Sperling claimed that a public official, who was responsible for distributing “hundreds of thousands of dollars of the taxpayers’ money” to majority Black families receiving government assistance, was withholding funds to coerce them to vote for her candidate for mayor, Dr. Robert Doty, and for her trustee candidate, P. D. Wells. Sperling wrote, “and what is much worse, [she] has entered into a deliberate campaign to intimidate both colored and white voters of this city who are already on relief rolls, telling them that they will have to support her ‘program’ or be they will be cut off relief rolls.”[26]
Champion of Local Activism and the Civil Rights Movement
Henry O. Whitlock and Edwina Whitlock, with their son Henry Whitlock Jr., posing next to the 1949 Christmas Release of the Gary American, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 322, accessed Internet Archive.
In the following decade, the Whitlock’s returned to the Gary American. Arthur’s son, Henry O. Whitlock, became manager in 1944 and his wife, Edwina, becoming editor in 1947. She was a mother and teacher at Froebel High School by day and a journalist by night. The family thrived under the post-war conditions that encouraged a growing middle-class, so much so that they hired a live-in nanny for their children and bought a vacation home in South Haven, Michigan.[27] She saw herself a part of the elusive “Black Bourgeoisie,” which highlighted the white American ideals – Black men worked professional jobs, while the women kept the home with the children. Along with running the Gary American, Henry Whitlock worked as an investigator in the Lake County prosecutor’s office.[28] Following in her adoptive father’s footsteps, Edwina exceeded the realities of Black life, promoting the middle-class lifestyle that many Black Americans lacked, because they did not share her fair skin or generational wealth. But the Gary American gave her unlimited access to disseminate her own ideas about family, Black excellence, and how in Gary’s Black community could fight for self-determination.
During the burgeoning Civil Rights Era, the GaryAmerican focused on issues like discriminatory education funding, the creation of Gary’s first Black Taxicab Company, and the local boycott against Kroger Stores for refusing to hire minority employees.[29] Whitlock published her own column, First Person Singular, for many years. Her editorial topics varied, ranging from marriage and childrearing issues to discussions of race and education. One editorial, appearing in October of 1948, discussed her husband’s opinion that “women dress for other women.” She challenged her readers to question their own partners on the matter to determine if purchasing clothing was self-indulgent as society moved away from the wartime economy and the rationing system.[30] Another editorial, appearing in 1946, was simpler and to the point, “No brains, no hearts – is it any wonder that the Ku Kluxers are also stooges? Right now, they’re stooges for a few racketeers who are clipping them for ten spots or so for the privilege of going around with pillowcases on their heads.”[31] She tackled both the complexities of womanhood and race, offering an intersectional lens to the history of the growing Black population in Gary.
Following World War II, more Black Americans moved to the city, and as a result, they were forced into the central, downtown district, but the city’s boarders grew too slowly to keep up with the expanding population. Rents increased as investments in building repairs dropped, and landlords became virtually unresponsive to Black tenants. By 1940, the U.S. Census reported that only thirty percent of Black families lived in one-family homes, and the remainder lived in apartment houses or small homes converted into apartments, with multiple families living under one unit.[32] Additionally, the Gary Housing Authority – despite its role in maintaining segregated neighborhoods – reported that in 1950, 11,582 families were living in substandard homes or slums, approximately 1,000 more than existed ten years prior to the GHA organizing.[33]
In 1949, she gave birth to the first of four children, whom she raised during her editorial career. That summer, Whitlock addressed her concerns about congestion of the Central District and the strains it imposed on families via poor living conditions and warned about the urge to fall into consumerism rather than focusing on the preservation of the natural world. Her solution was simple – Whitlock proposed an eight-day living week and a thirty-hour work week. She suggested supermarkets offer prepared meals so breadwinners could save money on groceries and utilize the funds for the necessities, like owning a home. Whitlock saw the value in equal payment for all laborers, Black or white, and advocated for the spreading of wealth to relieve the crowded living quarters of the Gary’s Central District. These statements were made during the height of the McCarthy-era, in which rampant persecution of left-wing individuals took center stage of the American political scene. Whitlock did not care. “I sound like a Communist, you say? Well, if Communism means subscribing to a theory that every man’s labor is worth as much as every other man’s,” Whitlock wrote, “having the conviction that the color of a man’s skin should be no deterrent in selecting a place to live – then, come on Revolution. H. O., hand me your shotgun.”[34]
Towards the end of the 1950s, white residents fled to suburban areas like Merrillville due to the city’s increased Black population. Middle-class white families moved away from Gary’s downtown metropolitan center, depleting it of a tax base which thrusted Gary into a state of decline. Black residents, however, were barred from following suit. Once again, housing was featured prominently in Whitlock’s editorials. In 1959, Whitlock discusses her opinions on housing, and the refusal of banks to provide loans to Black locals. Edwina wrote:
Chatted a while today with one of the leading mortgage brokers and I suggested that he and his cohorts could clean up this whole mess with one broad sweep. Instead of refusing to lend money to Negroes who seek better accommodations for themselves by moving to late fringe areas, they should refuse to loan money to the whites who try to run away. If a white family has decent housing in a decent community and the broker suspects that they’re trying to run away from their colored neighbors just let the family do their own financing.[35]
As Edwina pointed out, Black residents struggled to secure access to well-built homes and a welcoming community. However, segregated housing projects were not new – the development could be seen in Gary during the 1930s, and the Gary Housing Authority, established in 1939, continued to segregate residents by placing Black families in the central district, and white families outside of the downtown area.
The Gary American also took a vested interest in the desegregation of the city’s parks, particularly Marquette Beach. Federal programs during the Depression years expanded Gary’s Park system and as a result, U.S. Steel provided the city with a lake-front area. The WPA transformed it into a large park, equipped with a beach, picnic area, and a pavilion. Early editorials reveal how Whitlock felt about lack of community beaches, saying: “But to be continually denied even the elementary right to take a dip in Lake Michigan without having to travel 15 miles to do so, strikes me as being a pretty rotten deal.”[36] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the city took it’s time when it came to the construction of the new de-segregated section of the beachfront, and many Black residents grew frustrated. Whitlock offered another revolutionary solution: staging a sit-in picnic right on the whites-only beaches. “Getting a few heads bashed in would only be a small price to pay,” Whitlock urged, “for providing our youngsters with an example of forthright action on the part of real men and women.”[37]
Even after Marquette Beach came to fruition, white beachgoers used harassment and violence to keep the sand segregated. However, forced integration occurred only after an uproar in the late 1950s.[38] In fact, Marquette Beach had been a center of white terrorism against local Black beachgoers, with the Gary American reporting in 1949 that a peaceful protest for integration, known as “Beachhead for Democracy,” turned violent when “white hoodlums” hurled bricks, bats, and pipes against vehicles of those who were attending the protest. Police arrived twenty minutes later, closing the beach to demonstrators, which caused the white attackers to disperse.[39] However, the Gary American reported that the protest fueled KKK activity for the next three nights – with white residents burning crosses on the shores of Marquette beach, attacking the homes of “ring leaders” with rocks, bricks, and firing holes into windows with guns, even leaving notes telling residents to leave town.[40]
The protests led to the desegregation of Marquette Beach Marquette Beach remained a contentious site. In the summer of 1961, the Gary American produced extensive coverage over the beating of 21-year-old Murray W. Richards. On Memorial Day, Richards and three female friends were enjoying their time at the beach, when fifteen to twenty drunk white men approached the group and demanded that Murray and his friends leave the beach. After refusing, they attacked Richards unprovoked, hitting him in the jaw with a beer bottle, bashing his face with a baseball bat, and striking him with 2×4 plank. One of the young ladies was dragged toward the water under the threat that the gang of men would drown her. Richards explained to the American that “he feared they would carry out their threat to kill him if he were to fall down.” It was revealed that Richards saw one policeman, Officer George Stimple, standing by his squad car, watching the attack, but did nothing to stop it, even after being informed of what was happening by a young white girl.
Richards was left with lacerations on both ears and his scalp, fractures in his jaw and skull, and multiple contusions on his face, arms, chest and back which needed stitches.[41] Only one of his attackers was taken into custody and prosecuted. The beating fueled unrest across Gary, with the paper reporting that more than 500 citizens packed the Council Chambers on June 6, protesting the inaction of Officer Stimple. Charles Ross, First Vice President of the NAACP, stated that the police department had consciously and deliberately refused to provide the minimum protect to Gary’s Black citizens.[42] The protest led to an investigation into Officer Stimple, but on July 7, the Gary American reported that, after a five-hour hearing, Stimple was found innocent by the civil service commission on the charges that he failed to aid Murray Richards. Commission secretary Thomas G. Kennedy claimed, “The evidence presented in support of the charges was inconclusive.”[43] A little over a month later, the Gary American reported on another white attack against Black citizens at Marquette.[44]
Exposing and challenging racism in Northwest Indiana became the goal for Whitlock and her husband. In an interview with Edward Ball, an American author who focuses on history and biography, she recalled just how influential the Gary American was when it came to dismantling segregation in her community:
The American was a local paper, and we fought to get black bus drivers in Gary, when there were none. We fought the electric utility to hire black women because they didn’t have any. Henry’s father, who started the paper, was on the board of the Urban League, and tried to get certain jobs in the steel mills opened to Negroes, because not all of them were. All our circle and all our friends belonged to the NAACP and attended annual meetings.[45]
The Gary American never reached the status of the Chicago Defender, which was in production less than an hour away, but its influence within The Region was wholly felt.
Living History
Henry Whitlock died on May 5, 1960, and the Gary American announced his death on May 13, saying “Henry Oliver Whitlock . . . gave his all to the community. He was for modern, efficient government. He was for the complete integration of Negroes into all facets of American life.”[46] Edwina continued to run the Gary American by herself until February of 1961, when she sold the publication to Edward “Doc” James and James T. Harris, Jr. The Gary American continued to operate until the 1990s, and even expanded its publication beyond Gary into East Chicago/Indiana Harbor.[47]
That same year, Whitlock moved south of Los Angeles with her four children on the edge of Watts, a predominately Black neighborhood that had been isolated from white California. The area faced intense poverty and inequality. Whitlock took on a job in public relations at Watts Savings & Loans. But in August of 1965, Whitlock found her family thrusted into turmoil when the Watts Uprising gripped the neighborhood. Stepbrothers Marquette and Ronald Frye were pulled over right outside their house by a white California Highway Patrol officer while driving their mother’s car, where Marquette was arrested after failing a sobriety test. Back up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and a crowd of Black locals formed and watched the arrest unfold, causing one officer to pull his gun out. As a result, Frye’s mother, who witnessed the event unfold outside her house, went to defend her son. All three were arrested, enraging the residents of Watts, who took to the streets to protest police profiling and the conditions of their neighborhood.[48]
Getty Image, courtesy of “Looking Back on the Watts Riots, 55 Years Later: In Photos,” WSLS, accessed https://www.wsls.com/features/2020/08/11/looking-back-on-the-watts-riots-55-years-later-in-photos/.
Between August 11 and 16, Black residents engaged in a massive protest, confronting the LAPD and taking items from local stores to acquire the goods they were often unable to afford due to pay disparities. In the end, the United States dispatched in 14,000 National Guard troops to Watts, forcing protesters back into their homes. The movement took thirty-four lives and led to over 4,000 arrests. For Whitlock, however, the uprising only motivated her get back into the community, and she quit her banking job to train as a social worker. She told biographer Edward Ball, “I studied for the ‘War on Poverty,’ which is what the Lyndon Johnson administration called it. I guess I was one of those advanced soldiers in the war . . . they were idealists, and we all believed in what President Johnson promised about finding jobs for Blacks.”[49] After passing the civil service exam, Whitlock became a social worker, traveling throughout the city into both Black and white neighborhoods to help families less privileged than her. Along with her new career, she continued her work in journalism with articles appearing in publications like the California Eagle.[50]
By the end of Whitlock’s life, encountered her long-lost cousin, white author Edward Ball, that she finally got the opportunity to tell the world about her family’s contributions to Black history.[51] After an extensive interview process, combing through letters and photographs and outlining her family lore, Ball and Edwina worked together to publish The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South in 2001. One year later, Edwina passed away Atlanta, Georgia in November of 2002, at the age of eight-six.[52] Edwina Whitlock’s dedication to highlighting issues of inequality illuminates many of the forgotten Black women at the heart of the long Civil Rights Movement. Through her work as a journalist and her continuous involvement in her community, she utilized her own privilege to promote and sustain equality. The Gary American will soon be digitized and incorporated into the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database and IHB’s own Hoosier State Chronicles, to give historians the chance to uncover Northwest Indiana’s often discounted, but rich Black history and unveil more stories like Edwina Harleston Whitlock’s.
Notes:
[1] Edwina H. Whitlock, “Gary, Ind., Negroes Help Run City Gov’t,” California Eagle, October 19, 1961, accessed Newspapers.com.
[2] William’s and Kate’s son, Edwin G. “Captain” Harleston proved to be an American pioneer, establishing a successful funeral business that allowed his five children to thrive. His son, Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston, became a successful painter and renowned portraitist. Another son ran an orphanage, whose young Black children became musical prodigies in the group Jenkins Orphanage Band.
[3] Robert Harleston and Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston were two of Edwin “Captain” Harleston’s seven children. Captain Harleston was Kate Wilson’s fifth child with white plantation owner, William Harleston. In Charleston, Captain ran a profitable funeral business that serviced the Black community.
[4] E. Rudwick, “W.E.B. Du Bois,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed Brtannica.com.
[5] Edward Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South, New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, 297, accessed Internet Archive.
[6] “Booker T. Washington,” Teach Democracy, accessed crf-usa.org; Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside, 297.
[8] Teddy’s father, Captain Harleston, died in April of 1931, after catching pneumonia. A few days after his father’s funeral, Teddy caught pneumonia as well. Later in her life, Edwina recounted to Edward Ball that the doctor reported that Teddy had a good chance of recovery. However, the grief of losing his father superseded his will to fight the infection. Teddy Harleston passed one month later, on May 10th, 1931; [8] Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside, 286-287, accessed Internet Archive
[9] Edwina was also a singer in the Avery glee club and president of her high school class; Ibid, 298.
[11] Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018), p. 21-22, accessed Google Books.
[15] Douglas Martin, “A’Lelia Nelson, 92, President Of a Black Cosmetics Company,” The New York Times, February 14, 2001, accessed The New York Times; “Mrs. Nelson Heads Madam Walker Firm,” The Indianapolis News, February 10, 1951, accessed Newspapers.com.
[18] Neil Bretten and Raymond A. Mohl, “The Evolution of Racism in an Industrial City, 1906-1940: A Case Study of Gary Indiana,” The Journal of Negro History, 59, no. 1 (Jan 1974): 52, accessed https://doi.org/10.2307/2717140.
[28] “Heart Attack Claims Publisher,” The Times, May 5, 1960, accessed Newspapers.com.
[29] “Pass Up Roosevelt High: Negro School to get No Funds for Facilities,” The Gary American, September 29, 1944; “Negro Taxi-Cab Company in Operation with 3 Cabs, Fleet of Five Cars Expected to be in Service Next Week,” The Gary American, November 23, 1945; “Continue Boycott of Kroger Stores, Attempts to Arbitrate Fail,” The Gary American, October 3, 1958.
[30] Edwina Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, October 8, 1948.
[31] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 26, 1946.
[32] Bretten and Mohl, “The Evolution of Racism,” 59.
[33] Gary Housing Authority, The First Twenty Years: Report of the Gary Housing Authority, 1939-1959, n.d., 14, accessed HathiTrust.
[34] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 1, 1949.
[35] Edwina Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, December 24, 1959.
[36] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 19, 1946.
[38] Gary Housing Authority, The First Twenty Years, 56.
[39] The Gary Post Tribune stated that the demonstration at Marquette Beach seemed “pointless” as there were no legal restrictions against Blacks utilizing the facilities there. This is just one example of the stark differences between white reporting and Black reporting within the city; The Terre Haute Star, August 31, 1949, accessed Newspapers.com.
[40] “Beach Project Leads to Violence: KKK Becomes Active,” The Gary American, September 4, 1949.
[41] “Youth Brutally Beaten at Marquette Beach, Girls Scream for Help as Police Stand By,” The Gary American, June 2, 1961.
[42] “500 Jam-Pack Council; Protest Actions of Police,” The Gary American, June 9, 1961.
[43] “Stimple Found Not Guilty,” The Gary American, July 7, 1961.
[44] “Hoodlums Attack Again At Marquette Park,” The Gary American, August 11, 1961.
[50] “President John Kennedy, Gov. Pat Brown Electrify 600 Attending Links Inc., Affair,” California Eagle, November 23, 1961, accessed Newspapers.com.
[51] Whitlock’s experience as a journalist spurred a desire to document her rich family history. In 1970, after her daughter Sylvia wrote a term paper on Teddy Harleston, Edwina’s interest in genealogy was re-ignited. She spent years going through the large collection of the Harleston family papers, photographs, and letters. While researching, she attended lectures at institutions like Mann-Simons Cottage to talk about her adoptive mother, Elise Forrest Harleston, one of the first Black female photographers in the US. Whitlock’s goal, however, was to publish her family history.
[52] “Whitlock,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 2002, accessed Newspapers.com.
Sometimes when you think back over your old history texts, and remember that the accounts there relate the deeds of men- not women- doesn’t it give you a marvelous feeling to realize that the greatest chapter of history of mankind is being written today, and that you women are going to have your names in the headlines?
-LaVerne Heady, columnist for Republic Aviation News
Reliable, versatile, and fast, the P-47 Thunderbolt is considered one of the most important fighter-bombers in World War II. Manufactured by Republic Aviation Corporation and debuted in 1943, the P-47 served in both the European and Pacific theaters and quickly became the Allied Forces’ main workhorse. By the end of the war, Republic Aviation produced 15,683 Thunderbolts, which performed more than half a million missions, shooting down more Luftwaffe aircrafts than any other Allied fighter. What’s more impressive than its statistics, however, is the pilots’ testimonials on the durability of these planes, which quickly gained a reputation for their ability to deliver a pilot safely home after sustaining otherwise catastrophic amounts of damage.[i] One of the most dramatic examples of the Thunderbolts’ durability occurred in 1945, when the entirety of a P-47s right wing was sheared off during a bombing mission. The pilot returned to base unharmed, and the plane was reportedly repaired and flown for another 50 missions.[ii]
Headshot of Heady, Republic Aviation News, Indiana State Library.
Military history often focuses on aircraft design and the pilots who flew them. However, who built these planes is equally intriguing. Almost half of the manpower behind P-47 production were women. Known as “Raiderettes,” these women served in a wide array of positions at Republic. This piece will examine the lived experiences of the Raiderettes at the Republic plant in Evansville, Indiana and how their hard work, sacrifices, and patriotism contributed to the production of over one-third of the Thunderbolts manufactured during World War II.
ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE: WOMEN’S ROLES AT REPUBLIC AVIATION
Evansville played a major role in the home front effort throughout the war. In total, fifty different Evansville companies received over $580 million in defense contracts. This included Sunbeam, Serval Inc., Chrysler, and the Missouri Valley Bridge & Iron Co. Shipyard, which produced critical defense industry products such as ammunition, tracer rounds, and landing ship tanks. This booming industry nearly tripled Evansville’s manufacturing workforce and revitalized the previously struggling city. [iii] In 1942, Republic and the U.S. War Department announced they would build a second P-47 factory south of the Evansville Regional Airport. The first facility was located in Farmingdale, New Jersey. Construction commenced at a rapid pace and the plant was finished in August of 1943, three months ahead of schedule. However, P-47 construction was already underway before the factory was even finished, with newly hired workers manufacturing parts in garages, rented factory spaces, and other facilities. Evansville’s first P-47 dubbed “The Hoosier Spirit” flew from the plant on September 19, 1942. The Hoosier Spirit marked the first of over 6,000 Thunderbolts manufactured in Evansville during the span of three years.
From the beginning, Republic sought to hire a substantial number of women workers because men were fighting overseas. Republic recruited women through newspaper advertisements and provided free, educational opportunities. Evansville College (now the University of Evansville) partnered with Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Education to offer twenty-two-night classes in engineering, science, mathematics, aircraft drafting, and other industrial skills. Notably, the Evansville Press wrote that, for the night classes, “Women especially are urged to enroll… The War Manpower Commission estimates that at least two million more women must enter war industries this year.”[iv] Soon after night classes began, Evansville College and Purdue began to offer daytime classes as well to fulfill the needs of night shift workers at Republic and other defense companies. E. C. Surat, district manager of the Purdue war training program, told the Evansville Courier and Press that “Women with mathematical training may be placed at once” in factory positions and urged that women seeking a defense industry job “enroll in the qualifying mathematics course.”[v]
The Evansville Mechanic Arts School also recruited women for their industrial classes. Previously, the school designed courses solely for men, but, upon the outbreak of the war, opened to women “without a halt.” The school especially appealed to homemakers and unemployed women to enroll.[vi] In her article, “Diary of a Riveter,” Raiderette Mary Ellen Ward describes the challenges of these types of training courses and adjusting to the “nerve wracking” noise as they learned drilling techniques, how to measure rivets, and built physical strength to rivet for fourteen plus hours a day.[vii] The City of Evansville and the Republic Aviation Corporation recognized early on the integral role women would play in the home front effort and began recruiting them and providing key training and education for them to succeed in manufacturing roles.
Women from the “tri-state” area of Illinois, Kentucky, and Southern Indiana performed a diverse number of roles, including managerial positions, across the Republic plant. Raiderettes could be found working side by side with men in machining parts, welding metal, wiring electrical components, inspecting aircrafts, and transporting supplies. This makes it impossible to describe a singular, definitive experience among the Raiderettes. However, women across the plant embraced their roles, seeing it as a patriotic duty, and exceeded the expectations of the public. The Muncie Evening Press reported that, in some tasks, women workers across the country exceeded men’s production output by 10 percent or more.[viii] Day-to-day life in the plant consisted of 10 to 14-hour shifts across various departments and, for many, included long commutes of up to 80 miles away a day. Beyond production work, women actively participated in work-adjacent roles, leading the charge on key social services for all Republic employees. Given the amount of time spent at both work and Republic-related events, almost all Raiderettes experienced World War II primarily through the lens of their position at the Evansville plant, making it a key experience to analyze in order to better understand the Indiana home front during World War II.
Article showcasing “Who’s Who” among the Raiderettes and their various positions at Republic, January 29, 1943, Republic Aviation News, photo cropped by IHB, accessed via the Indiana State Library.
One Raiderette, Mildred F. Harris, participated in an oral history interview in 2002, providing key insight into the subjective experience of women at Republic. A schoolteacher, Harris entered war work when her husband was drafted in 1943, commuting 55 miles a day, six days a week from her home in Kentucky to work at the Evansville plant. Harris was placed in a supervisory role managing other aircraft inspectors and supervising factory operations. She stated that men respected her and other female inspectors’ position of authority “as long as the inspectors had this army badge on,” and that they recognized the need for women to work in factories as “they couldn’t get enough men to do it.” Despite this, Harris still experienced sexism in the workplace with some of the men calling her nicknames like “Rose,” “Buttercup,” or “Daisy,” despite her position supervising them. Harris largely ignored these nicknames and kept to herself while she performed her job. Like many women, Harris felt a duty to support both her country and male relatives who served in the war, underlining the importance of her position as an aircraft inspector and the pressures of such long days and high stakes. Her experiences also demonstrated that, simply because women now appeared in “male roles,” that sexism and gender roles still pervaded most Raiderettes experiences. [ix]
Harris in 1943, courtesy of Mildred F. Harris, courtesy The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
Women also contributed to the company culture at Republic, actively participating in clubs, the company newspaper, and sports leagues for basketball, softball, bowling, golf, and ping pong. Republic’s clubs competed against other manufacturing companies in Evansville. In addition, women led the charge on hosting social functions like skating nights, formal dances, and even a holiday musical production called “Flying High.” A daycare service was provided for working mothers at the reduced price of 50 cents per week.[x] This proved to be critical as women often found themselves to be “two-job” workers, working at Republic for fourteen hours a day while also continuing to maintain the domestic sphere and raise children, often without the support of their spouse who may have been drafted. Women also formed the “war matrons club,” which catered specifically to older Raiderettes whose sons were serving overseas. This club tracked soldier’s birthdays, wrote to them, and provided a support system for mothers separated from their children due to the war.[xi] While easily overlooked, these services provided necessary social outlets during a period of great change and anxiety in the United States and fostered a strong sense of community for all Republic employees. They also provided workers, many of whom had family members serving overseas, with vital social connections and filled a key gap in societal recreation and relaxation.
Members of the War Matrons Club, June 18, 1943, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.Republic Aviation News. v. 6 n. 3-v. 11 (1944-1945): 3, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
While women were praised for their patriotism and largely welcomed into the plant, gender roles still defined the Raiderettes’ wartime experiences. Often, the work of women was more heavily scrutinized than men’s and feminine traits characterized as a detriment to wartime production. This can be seen in Republic Aviation News through warnings against “super-sensitiveness” in the workplace and constant reminders that a woman must uphold or surpass the standards of the men who worked alongside them.[xii] Additionally, extra emphasis was placed on women’s fashion and social life with an entire column called Strictly Feminine. The column reported on social news, like who danced with whom at the canteen, what women were wearing to social functions, and other, non-work related, news. Women were often expected to meet their position’s expectations and perform social and emotional labor while doing so. Republic Aviation News paints a more nuanced picture than that of the one-dimensional and patriotic “Rosie the Riveter,” who flawlessly steps into a traditionally male position just as a man would. Women’s positions and experiences in home front factories were distinct and laced with gender roles and bias as they were expected to do a “man’s job” but in a traditionally feminine manner.
A major point of friction between women and men in the factory was whether women would continue working after the war concluded or if their jobs ought to be relinquished back to male workers. Inspector Harris, upon reflecting on the closure of the plant, stated “Now, what they [the male factory workers] expected them to do, what they wanted them to do when the war was over, [was] to go back home and wash dishes like they had been doing.”[xiii] This attitude is reflected in the fact that, after the government cancelled their wartime contracts with Republic, women disproportionately lost their jobs compared to male workers.[xiv] While it is debated whether women truly desired to return home or sought to continue working in the factories- likely a mix of both- they unilaterally faced unfair obstacles in remaining in the workforce post-war.
Pictured is restricted radio operator Naomi Johnson, September 3, 1943, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.
Despite the continued presence of gender bias in the factory, Raiderettes pushed against and broke the glass ceiling in various ways. For example, Naomi Johnson was notable for being the first woman restricted radio operator- a position that allows users to utilize advanced aircraft radios to communicate and direct pilots- in the region. Originally from Marion, Kentucky, Johnson moved to Evansville in 1937 and earned her operator license in 1940 from the Federal Communications Commission. Johnson originally tested police radios in cars but, upon the outbreak of the war, transitioned to Republic Aviation. She began working on electrical equipment but, after nine months, was transferred to a radio control board, where she communicated with pilots flying and landing P-47s at the Evansville Regional Airport. Due to her strong interest in and advanced knowledge of aviation, she was made an honorary member of the Civil Air Patrol. When interviewed by Republic Aviation News, Johnson expressed her strong passion for her work, stating, “The thing I like best about radio work is the fact that it’s something you can never learn enough about. You can just keep studying and studying. But I wouldn’t mind being called a book-worm if I could read about radio.”[xv]
Reclamation agent Eunice Hall, January 7, 1944, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.
Another woman, Eunice Hall of Newburgh, Indiana, became the first “reclamation agent” at the Evansville plant, a new position that encouraged the conservation of factory materials to reduce waste in the various plant divisions. Working with the Utility Shop division, Hall also served as the division’s Safety Council representative. While Republic Aviation News minimized her position by comparing it to a “housekeeping” role, Hall excelled at leadership by defining this new company role and taking the lead on both shop safety and material conservation, a key aspect of the home front’s defense industry economy.[xvi]
Other women broke into aviation and flew P-47s domestically. The Women Airforce Service Pilots, (WASPs) were elite civilian pilots who supported the war effort by ferrying, testing, and transporting planes. Described as “polished” and having perfect uniforms, the WASPs visited the Evansville plant numerous times to transport Thunderbolts to military bases.[xvii] On October 10, 1943, Theresa James and Betty Gillies landed in Evansville to deliver two Thunderbolts and transport two others. Gillies is notable as the first ever woman to fly a P-47 aircraft.[xviii] In 1944, WASPs regularly began transporting P-47s from the Evansville plant, with Republic Aviation News stating that 85 women would participate and, each month, 16 of them would fly to the Evansville plant to ferry completed planes to military bases.[xix] While the activities of the WASPs generated much interest both in the news and amongst factory workers, it is reported that the WASPs largely stayed separated from the rest of the factory and focused on their positions.[xx]
Raiderettes continue to work after the announcement of V-E Day, Republic Aviation News, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
As evidenced by the previous examples, women held diverse roles within Republic Aviation and navigated their new, public-facing roles in a variety of ways. Some women, like those in the War Matrons club or Eunice Hall, embraced social responsibilities at the plant by serving on committees and clubs and embracing a more “traditionally feminine” role at Republic. Meanwhile, others, such as the WASPs or Harris, were more reserved in their roles and attempted to ignore or minimize gender roles and bias. However, the common thread of all of these women is that they collaborated with both male workers and one another, pushing against traditional gender roles to best serve the United States during World War II. Their sacrifices were largely recognized and praised by the public. However, it was also expected that they would revert to traditional roles upon the end of the war which, generally, is what occurred. Despite this, these women successfully navigated a challenging period in American history to provide a vital service on the home front and ought to be remembered for their work.
Republic Aviation News. v. 6 n. 3-v. 11 (1944-1945): 6, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
On August 21, 1945, Republic Aviation announced they would be ending all production at Evansville and the plant was soon listed for sale. Upon its closure, the plant had produced over one-third of all the P-47 Thunderbolts in the world, hired thousands of employees, and infused millions of dollars into the local economy. In addition, the plant had gained national recognition, earning three Army-Navy E awards for “excellence in production.”[xxi] This prestigious award was granted to 5% of all eligible plants and represented the top echelon of home front production.[xxii] The plant’s production was considered so outstanding, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt even visited the plant on April 27, 1943 as part of a 17-day, 20-state tour of America’s defense industry, presenting awards to multiple employees.[xxiii]
Without the thousands of women who worked at the Republic plant, these national honors would not have been achieved. Similarly, the quality and reliability of the P-47, which is world-renowned and contributed to Allied Forces’ air superiority during WWII, would not have been possible without the dedicated hands that constructed the planes at an unprecedented pace. While the lives and roles of the Raiderettes at the Republic factory did not ascribe to the simplified “Rosie the Riveter” archetype, they were critical to the defense effort nonetheless, and ought to be commemorated as both Indiana and national heroes.
[iv] “College to give Classes in War Work,” Evansville Press, September 12, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[v] “Day War Training Classes Planned,” Evansville Courier, October 15, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[vi] “These Doors Never Close: Mechanic Arts School Has Prominent Part in War Work Training Program,” Evansville Courier and Press, July 2, 1942, accessed Newspapers.com.
[vii] Mary Ellen Ward, “Diary of a Riveter,” Republic Aviation News, February 12, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[viii] “Two-Job War Worker: She Does a Man-Sized Job on Production Line Plus ‘Women’s Work’ of Maintaining a Home,” Muncie Evening Press, November 5, 1942, accessed Newspapers.com.
[ix] James Russell Harris, “Rolling Bandages and Building Thunderbolts: A Woman’s Memories of the Kentucky Home Front, 1941-1945,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, (Spring 2002): 167-194, accessed JSTOR.
[x] “New Plan for Child Care Offered: Play Center Fills Need Before and After School,” Republic Aviation News, November 26, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xi] “War Mothers Organized at Republic Plant,” Evansville Press, April 29, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[xii] “A Message from Ellen J. Dilger,” Republic Aviation News 100, no. 2, January 29, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xv] “First Woman Restricted Radio Operator in This Region is Republic’s Naomi Johnson,” Republic Aviation News, September 3, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xvi] “Utility Shop Girl Becomes First Official Reclamation Agent at Indiana Division,” Republic Aviation News, January 7, 1944, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xviii] “First Woman Ever to Fly a Thunderbolt is One of Two Girls Landing Here in P-47s,” Republic Aviation News, October 15, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xix] “First Squadron of Girl Pilots Here to Fly P-47’s,” Republic Aviation News, August 1, 1944, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xxiii] “Camera Highlights of the President’s Visit to the Indiana Division on Tuesday, April 27,” Republic Aviation News, May 21, 1943, p. 4-5, accessed Indiana State Library; “Roosevelt visits Evansville; Sees P-47 Dive at 500 M.P.H,” Indianapolis News, April 29, 1943, p. 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Evansville Aircraft Plant Receives Visit of President,” Muncie Evening Press, April 29, 1943, p. 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
