Indiana, a state claimed as “free” from its statehood in 1816, was nevertheless the 7th highest non-southern state with racial terror lynchings, with 18 separate incidents. When searching through Indiana newspapers, many stories emerge of outlaw vigilantes who terrorized and brutalized African-Americans, sometimes for nothing more than alleged crimes. Since many were lynched before they received equal justice under the law, many of their lives ended tragically through injustice under the lariat.
While the vast majority of lynching occurred in the south, a sizable portion occurred in the Midwest. Indiana, a state claimed as “free” from its statehood in 1816, was nevertheless the 7th highest non-southern state with racial terror lynchings, with 18 separate incidents. One way historians have uncovered these horrific crimes is with newspapers. When searching through Indiana papers, many stories emerge of outlaw vigilantes who terrorized and brutalized African-Americans, sometimes for nothing more than alleged crimes. Since many were lynched before they received equal justice under the law, many of their lives ended tragically through injustice under the lariat.
One of the earliest lynchings in Indiana newspapers was chronicled by the Marshall County Republican on November 23, 1871. Three African-Americans, whose names were only given as “Johnson, Davis, and Taylor,” were accused of the murder of the Park family in Henryville, Clark County. Matthew Clegg, “a shystering lawyer” from Henryville, had a dispute with the Parks and when he likely had them murdered, he pushed the blame to the three local African-American men. When the grand jury couldn’t find enough evidence to indict them, the local vigilance committee took matters into their own hands. They broke through the jail, grabbed the three men, placed nooses around their neck, and dragged them through the street. They were then strung up next to each other on a tree. The Republican described their bodies in painful detail; Taylor’s description was the most gruesome: “His form was nude, save the slight remnants of a white shirt that was stretched across his lower limbs, while the hangman’s knot under his chin threw his head back in, a gasping movement, and his white teeth and distended lips grinned with a fiend-like scowl . . . .” It is unclear from the newspaper account if anyone was tried for the lynching.
In 1886, the Indiana State Sentinel reported the lynching of Holly Epps, who had been accused of the murder of a local farmer in Greene County. Around 12:50 on the morning of January 18, a “crowd of masked men” brandishing “sledgehammers and various other implements” descended on the Knox County jail. After failing to cajole the sheriff to open the door, the horde broke in, smashed through the jail cell, and dragged Epps out into the cold of night. Using the closest tree they could find, the mob strung Epps up and “for fully fifteen minutes he struggled for life, when death came to his relief.” The mob left his hanging remains on the courthouse grounds to be found by the county prosecutor. The sentiment of the citizens of the county, as recorded by the Sentinel, was one of satisfaction. “Citizens of all classes justify the lynching, and the moral sentiment is that the Greene County vigilants did a justifiable act in summarily removing the fiend from the face of the earth,” the Sentinel commented. The lynch mob were never prosecuted for their actions.
The 1889 lynching of Peter Willis in northern Kosciusko County received weird and contradictory coverage in the Indianapolis Journal. In its July 22, 1889 issue, the Journal ran a nondescript blurb about Willis’s lynching at the hands of a mob after he was charged with assaulting a little girl. The South Bend Tribune and the Indiana State Sentinel also ran stories with the same details. Then six days later, completely disregarding its previous coverage, the Journal published an editorial claiming “the assault and lynching episode referred to by the Sentinel [as well as the Tribune] never occurred, and is wholly an imaginary tragedy . . . .” The editorial further noted that “the only truth contained in the item is the superfluous information concerning the geographical location of Kosciusko county, which it says ‘is not in Mississippi or South Carolina,’ . . . and the further assertion that ‘it is the banner Republican county of Indiana.’” There’s nothing named Kosciusko in South Carolina and only a town named that in Mississippi; it was the Sentinel’s and Tribune’s way of saying it was in Indiana and highlighting that this can happen in the north. If the Journal thought they could drive a wedge of doubt through their phrasing, they were wrong. Furthermore, the fact that a county has Republican leanings says nothing about whether a lynching can occur there. This editorial was likely a political device to stave off criticism against a northern, Republican-leaning Indiana county. Sadly, it was misleading people about the unlawful execution of a person who had not yet been proven guilty in a court of law.
The beginning of the new century brought with it the same kinds of lawlessness that led to lynching, despite the Indiana General Assembly passing anti-lynching laws in 1899 and 1901. George Moore, an African American accused of assaulting two women and fleeing law enforcement, was lynched on the evening of November 20, 1902. He was “hanged to a telephone pole” in Sullivan County after a mob of roughly 40 men fought against the sheriff’s department. Moore had been a fugitive, attempting an escape to Illinois when he was captured by authorities in Lawrenceville, Illinois. The mob “beat him over the head with their weapons” before they hanged him. Governor Winfield T. Durbin was troubled by the situation and tried to stop it, but the requisite military and law enforcement officers couldn’t get there in time. It was another instance of mob violence instead of real justice, and the Indianapolis Journal said as much two days later in an editorial. “It is no excuse for mob law to say that the legal penalty in such cases is inadequate,” the Journal declared, “That is not for any mob or any community to say. If the penalty is not severe enough let the law be changed in a regular way, but while the law stands it should be observed.”
It is a common notion that lynching, much like racism, was a southern phenomenon in the United States. These select stories from Indiana newspapers illustrate just how wrong that notion is. The prejudice that people felt motivated them to take the law into their own hands, with disastrous consequences. Justice should be applied by democratic institutions, not by mob rule. That’s how we ensure the principle of equality under the law. But animus against African Americans was stronger than the virtue of justice. As a group of preachers declared in a 1910 article for the Indianapolis Recorder:
. . . so long as wild men will be permitted to roam at will with ropes, shot and torch, so long will a cloud of national shame hang over the government. It is known that almost all of the lynched are members of the colored race, and in many instances the color of their skin is their only crime. It is also known that in the section of the country where almost all this barbarous and un-Christian practice is loved and cherished the colored people have no voice at the courts of mercy.
In knowing these stories, we can begin the process of healing. It will neither be swift, nor easy, but it is vital for our democracy. We owe it to the names engraved on each corten steel beam in Montgomery, Alabama, of at least 18 are from the Hoosier state.
Thanks for watching. Please click “like” in you enjoyed this video and make sure to subscribe to keep updated on all new videos. To learn more about Flossie Bailey, check out Nicole Poletika’s article from the Indiana History Blog. Learn about other stories of lynching at Chronicling America and Hoosier State Chronicles. The links are in the description. Finally, have you visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice? Were you aware of lynchings in Indiana before? What do you think we can do today to advance peace and justice? Leave your answers in the comments below. We want to hear from YOU.
Articles from Chronicling America and Hoosier State Chronicles
William Dudley Pelley with Silver Shirt “L” emblem on shirt, courtesy of the William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America Collection, Indiana State Library.
William Dudley Pelley tapped into a small, but growing contingent of Americans who admired Hitler’s fascist agenda, particularly his oppression of the Jewish population. With the formation of the Silver Shirts in 1933, Pelley not only cultivated a degree of power and influence, but amassed a small fortune through his “‘fanatical and misled followers.'”[1] Using his North Carolina printing press, the “little Fuehrer” disseminated fascist tenets and groomed a Christian-based militia, with the goal of overthrowing the American government.[2] Throughout his life, Pelley spun together political ideologies and spiritual dogmas to suit his needs.
After evading serious punishment following a House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities hearing, he transferred his operation to Noblesville, Indiana in 1940. There, he established the Fellowship Press with the assistance of former state policeman and Klan leader Carl Losey. However, the men underestimated the resistance they would encounter in the conservative Indiana town, already humming with the manufacture of war munitions.
Hoosiers hotly rejected Pelley’s extremist propaganda. Their resistance, along with congressional investigations and consistent local media reporting, helped stamp out the efforts of “America’s No. 1 seditionist,” who posed a tangible threat to America’s national security during a period of global unrest.
William Dudley Pelley in American Magazine (March 1918), accessed Ancestry Library.
The son of a Methodist minister, William Dudley Pelley was born in 1890 in Massachusetts, where he developed an affinity for the written language. According to Jason Daley’s Smithsonian Magazine article, Pelley wrote prolifically in his youth and by the age of 19 had developed “ideas about how Christianity would have to morph if it were to survive in the modern world.”[3] He quickly parlayed his literary skills into a career, writing short stories for publications like the Saturday Evening Post, Washington, D.C.’s Sunday Star, and Red Book Magazine.[4] Pelley experienced some success as a script writer in Hollywood, where he likely learned the value of image. He employed his trademark goatee, bespoke suits, and plume of cigarette smoke to project an air of poise and authority. Through his persona, Pelley convinced others that he was a visionary, quite literally.
In 1929, Pelley detailed an existential experience in his American Magazine article, “Seven Minutes in Eternity—the Amazing Experience that Made Me Over.”[5] He claimed he had communed with spirits and even Jesus Christ himself. Perhaps the instability of the early Great Depression years attracted some Americans to the man who claimed to possess answers about the future. By 1931, Pelley garnered enough support that he was able to move to Asheville, North Carolina, where he opened a publishing company.[6] Initially focused on metaphysical topics, he pivoted to right-wing fringe issues via publications like The New Liberator (later Liberation).
Letterhead from letter to Mr. Sallume, December 9, 1933, William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Shirt Legion of America Collection, S1050, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library.
According to WNC Magazine, in 1933—the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany—Pelley put these ideals into practice by forming the Silver Legion of America. Better known as the Silver Shirts, Pelley envisioned the group to operate as a “‘Gentile American Militia.'”[7] The Silver Shirts emulated Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (the “Brown Shirts”) paramilitary organization, as uniformed Legion members quietly mobilized across the country in defense of racial purity. They were guided by Pelley’s alarmist publications, which espoused a mosaic of “isms,” including isolationism, anti-Communism, and, most staunchly, anti-Semitism. The New Republic described his ideology as “‘a mad hodgepodge of mystic twaddle and reactionary, chauvinistic demagogy.'”[8]
Pelley’s publications not only drew the attention of a congressional committee that investigated un-American activities, but ultimately led to his arrest for financial crimes.[9] Perhaps these charges were unsurprising, considering members had to divulge their income, banking institution, and real estate holdings on their membership questionnaire.[10] In 1935, a jury found Pelley guilty of violating North Carolina’s “Blue Sky” laws after he misrepresented the value of Galahad Press’s stock. In other words, he bilked investors for personal gain.[11] However, Pelley managed to avoid prison time after agreeing to a set of conditions, which included “good behavior for five years.” Such probation terms would prove difficult for a man of his temperament.
In fact, his legal woes and notoriety seemed only to embolden Pelley. Just months after his sentencing, Pelley announced his candidacy for president via the national Christian party, running on the platform of “Christ and the Constitution.”[12] His ill-fated run garnered less than 2,000 votes. As he had many times, Pelley didn’t dwell on the loss and instead shifted focus. He turned his attention back towards expanding the Silver Shirt Legion.
According to the Legion’s handbook, entitled One Million Silver Shirts by 1939, the group sought to make it illegal for American Jews to own property in “‘any city but one in each state.'”[13] The handbook also proposed dismantling President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. It called for the repeal of congressional measures enacted to bolster the depressed economy, such as the Social Security Act and National Labor Relations Board. And, Pelley instructed his 25,000 followers, if doing so “‘meant force it meant force.'”[14] According to Daley’s Smithsonian piece, in 1938, the organization “began a big membership push and started showing signs that it was moving towards violence.”[15]
Indeed, National Guard officer and ENT specialist Dr. Samuel Rubley, of Logansport, Indiana, later testified that he requested the Silver Shirts dispatch him to Detroit.[16] There, he reportedly mobilized a Legion “cavalry,” tapping into the growing Klan presence in the region. Dr. Rubley taught classes like horsemanship to Klansman, as well as reserve officers and their wives. These efforts were undertaken, he said cryptically, in an effort to prepare to “‘defend their homes.'” He anticipated that “the snows would be dyed red in Detroit,” as the nation would again be at Civil War over clashing political ideologies. Dr. Rubley admitted later that he had been “listening too much to ‘alarmists'” and “‘became inflamed for a while until it became a little too fantastic.'”[17]
Dr. Rubley’s statements certainly lent credence to the sentiments of an unnamed columnist in the Indiana Bremen Enquirer, who wrote:
that Mr. Pelley should be able to muster a group of followers calling themselves Americans, who had so little understanding of the fundamental basis of Americanism, is a sorry commentary upon the intelligence and understanding of a considerable sector of the American people.[18]
The individuals described in the editorial sought to foment unrest in the name of patriotism and the doctrine of isolationism. While the United States had officially maintained neutrality in World War II, by 1940 it supplied money and munitions to aid Allied resistance efforts. As France struggled desperately to hold off Nazi forces, President Roosevelt delivered an address warning of the dangers of an American “fifth column.”[19] This column was comprised of subversive elements, who tried “to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and, eventually, a state of panic. . . . The unity of the State can be sapped so that its strength is destroyed.” The “fifth column,” Roosevelt asserted, operated like a “Trojan Horse,” which would ultimately betray “a nation unprepared for treachery.” Those inside the bowels of the horse not only opposed war against Hitler, but attempted to undermine efforts to halt his advancements.
The House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (HUAC)—better known as the Dies Committee—formed to investigate such subversive groups, including the German-American Bund and Communist Party USA. In 1939, the committee opened an investigation into Pelley, finding that he had been “operating on a nationwide basis,” and that his exploits spanned cities like Detroit, New York, Boston, and even Windsor, Ontario and Villa Acuna, Mexico.[20] Via this network, the committee determined that he disseminated material from the German Ministry of Propaganda, suppressing or misrepresenting its origins to Legion members.[21] The Dies Committee also highlighted his failure to pay his income tax, despite “publishing and distributing for personal profit.” This lucrative material included “booklets and pamphlets containing scurrilous statements, half-truths, re-prints of propaganda of a foreign power, and un-American and unpatriotic material, statements and propaganda.”
Poster, Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, In Our Own Backyard – Resisting Nazi Propaganda Exhibit, courtesy California State University, Northridge, accessed calisphere.org.
By the fall of 1939, Pelley faced a two-front war. The Dies Committee subpoenaed him to appear for a hearing and North Carolina Judge Zeb Nettles signed off on a warrant for his arrest, having violated the terms of probation with his behavior.[22] This behavior, Judge Nettles alleged, consisted of consorting with “‘enemies of American institutions,'” attempting to overthrow the government via his publications, and leveling “‘disgusting epithets at the office of the President of the United States.'”[23] But Judge Nettles and Dies Committee members would be remiss if they expected Pelley to turn himself in. He had apparently been laying low in the State of New York to prepare for another charge of embezzling funds from the Legion.[24] In fact, famed columnist and radio commentator Walter Winchell received information that Pelley, whom he deemed a “Shamerican,” had disguised himself and was hiding in Yorkville, NY. Winchell had heard Pelley was “in need of a physician because he is suffering from fear and shock.”[25]
Perhaps breaking under unrelenting pressure, the ever-elusive Pelley emerged publicly and appeared before the Dies Committee in Washington, D.C. in February 1940.[26] Despite Winchell’s reports, when Pelley at last took the stand before the committee, he was the pinnacle of poise.[27] When pressed about his un-American activities and denouncement of the Dies Committee, he had quite the about-face. Amused columnists noted that Pelley now “thoroughly approves the committee’s work” and offered a “handsome apology” for his past actions. The Palladium-Item reported that Pelley told the group demurely that “‘meeting the committee face to face and finding out what a fine group of Christian gentleman you are'” had changed his mind. He tried to assure the committeemen that, in fact, the Legion was actually a pillar of democracy, as one of its goals was to halt Communism in America. Unfortunately, Pelley conflated Communism with Judaism, and openly admitted his anti-Semitism.[28] However, he assured HUAC that since its committee had proven they took the Communist threat seriously—just by virtue of the committee’s formation—he would gladly dissolve the Silver Shirts.
“Pelley’s Wait Before Surrender to Dies Seen as Legal Move to Escape Prison Term,” Evansville Press, February 10, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Pelley’s assurances rang hollow and, as he stepped off the witness stand, Washington police arrested him on behalf of North Carolina officials.[29] He was released on bond after a couple days. In the unfolding months, the Dies Committee renewed its scrutiny, listening to testimony that Pelley had planned to march on Washington with the goal of becoming dictator of the United States.[30] With the walls seemingly closing in, Pelley sought to relocate.
Just days before Christmas 1940, two moving vans departed Biltmore, North Carolina. Throughout the evening, they transported files and printing equipment to a former box factory in Noblesville, Indiana, where former state police officer and Klan member Carl Losey awaited.[31] William Dudley Pelley had appointed Losey president of his new publishing company, Fellowship Press. Newspapers speculated that Losey’s close friend and former Klan Grand Dragon, D. C. Stephenson, would assist in the new endeavor once he was released from his prison sentence for murder. Stephenson vehemently denied any connection to Pelley.[32]
“Noblesville Stirred as Silver Shirt Founder Seeks to Locate Plant in City,” Anderson Dailey Bulletin, January 4, 1941, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
Having experienced the notoriety that came with the Stephenson trial, Noblesville residents wanted nothing to do with the Silver Shirts leader. Regarding Pelley’s move, one editorialist wrote, “We do not want our state to become a center of agitation for intolerant anti-Semitism, American Fascism, and sympathy for Hitler’s Nazism.”[33] Losey tried to assuage their concerns by telling reporters that the forthcoming publication was “‘strictly a magazine for businessmen.'”[34] It would focus solely on political and national events, he assured, saying, “‘I feel that the people are not getting all the truth out of Washington and we propose to get and publish the truth.'”
Pelley himself told the Indianapolis News on Christmas Day that no “‘deep and dark exploits'” were afoot, that his press would only print commercial and “esoteric and metaphysical books.”[35] Seemingly aligned with the caring spirit of the season, he told the paper that he had indeed dissolved the Silver Shirts and would “‘conform my activities to the support of the Dies committee and the government’s efforts to keep this country neutral and at peace.'” Pelley failed to assuage the Dies Committee, however, who sent an investigator to Noblesville, just a couple days after these statements. They sought to investigate the leader of what they dubbed the “New Front,” and learn more about how Pelley financed the operation, the contents of the publications, and the activities of his friend Losey.[36]
An exasperated Pelley told the Indianapolis News that he came to “Indiana for a supposed period of respite from the investigations and persecutions out of Washington and elsewhere covering the last eight years.”[37] He had been living with like-minded benefactors in Indianapolis and commuting to his Noblesville company, despite trying to minimize his role there.[38] The Indianapolis Star reported that Noblesville residents had mixed opinions about Pelley’s presence, with a minority willing to give him a chance to prove the legitimacy of his press. Many others felt like one editorialist, who wrote that the city was “‘heavy at heart,'” and that:
‘If Mr. Pelley and his associates have selected Noblesville as a screen for unfair practices, they will find it extremely difficult to foster such literature upon the community. We sincerely hope they will devote their time and energies to beneficial works that will be a credit to local residents.’
Governor M. Clifford Townsend had no qualms about denouncing Pelley’s activities. While he did not mention Pelley by name, he released a statement on December 28 stating, “‘I feel that it is the opinion of the people of Indiana that there is no place in this state for any organizations or groups which advocate in principle, policies or practice any un-American doctrine.'”[39]
Noblesville Ledger owner D.M. Hudley, too, had no tolerance for Pelley. Before buying the box factory, Pelley, using a fake name, approached Hudley about purchasing the Ledger outright, enticing him with a $10,000 cash down payment.[40] Once Hudley discovered Pelley’s identity and intentions, he turned him away and reported him directly to the Dies investigator temporarily residing in Noblesville. The investigator also had an ally in the Indiana post of the American Legion. Legion representative William E. Sayer stated that the organization was monitoring Pelley, as it “‘is interested in seeing that no Fascist organization or any other group of that type is established in Indiana.'”[41]
Word of Pelley’s presence spread, eliciting a flood of newspaper editorials and even some threats from disapproving Hoosiers. A writer for the Bedford Daily Times stated passionately:
“Hoosiers, notwithstanding, are firm in their belief of freedom of the press. . . . But, if Mr. Losey is supported directly or indirectly by Mr. Pelley, then it is high time that action be taken to rid our state of both! We of Indiana cannot afford to have the good name of our state so besmirched, and it is better that we act early, than late. Borers are not so easily stopped after they have begun their task–they soon work under cover and then, the damage is done.”[42]
Another editorialist wrote to the Richmond Palladium-Item that Indiana, due to its central location, was fast-becoming an “important manufacturing center of military equipment and supplies.”[43] Given this, the writer found it especially “disquieting” that a “notorious American Fascist” had moved his company to the area. One Elwood resident stated in The Call-Leader that “Mr. Pelley’s very presence lends anything but dignity to the situation” and that “As far as Hoosiers generally are concerned, this ‘fountain of Fascism’ can bubble elsewhere.”[44]
“Noblesville Stirred as Silver Shirt Founder Seeks to Locate Plant in City,” Anderson Daily Bulletin, January 4, 1941, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
Losey claimed that the deluge of resistance included a letter “‘threatening to blow the place up and attempting to kidnap his night watchmen.'”[45] Days later he requested that Noblesville police officers investigate individuals who threw a rock through the plant windows in the early morning hours before fleeing in an automobile.[46] Losey increased secrecy around the plant’s efforts and tried to temper concerns by telling the Indianapolis Star that Fellowship Press’s magazine would focus on isolationism. He noted that “‘The object of our publication is to keep America Christian and to keep American boys out of a foreign war.'”[47]
The first issue of Pelley’s new publication, the Weekly Roll Call, confirmed Hoosiers’ skepticism. It included conspiratorial, anti-Semitic cartoons. One depicted Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins ignoring the economic plight of Americans, while providing idyllic homelands for Jewish refugees.[48] Hoosier retailers demonstrated their opposition to such material by refusing to distribute the Roll Call. The Indianapolis Star reported that “Sale of the first issue, placed on the stands late last week, was slight, with ‘plenty of leftover copies.'”[49] Floundering, Losey was let go, and Pelley took full control of Fellowship Press.[50]
Indianapolis News, July 28, 1942, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
He leveraged his press weeks later, seemingly to resurrect the Silver Shirts. In April 1941, North Carolina authorities appealed to Indiana for help in extraditing Pelley, on the grounds of violating the terms of his probation. Pelley printed and circulated 10,000 copies of a letter requesting support from Silver Shirt Legion members, who resided in twenty-two states.[51] Alas, his devoted readership failed to mobilize and ultimately he returned to North Carolina to answer to the charges.
With Pelley’s case pending, an event occurred that would change the course of history. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombarded an American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack prompted President Roosevelt to issue his “Day of Infamy” speech and Congress to declare war on Japan. In an editorial, Pelley wrote solemnly, “It is time for patriotic wisdom, calmness and courage. We must devote ourselves towards winning the war. Let no one capitalize on the war.”[52] He announced the suspension of Roll Call, stating that for the foreseeable future, Fellowship Press would only print biographies and spiritual material. Of the Silver Shirts, he would ensure that they were at the military’s beck and call. The Noblesville Ledger suggested his pandering stemmed from fear that the patriotic fervor would negatively influence his upcoming hearing in North Carolina.
Courtesy of The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals, accessed iapsop.com.
Although Pelley suspended the Roll Call, his press continued publication of The Galilean, marketed as a spiritual magazine. [53] With the U.S. fully entrenched in war, the U.S. Post Office barred its distribution and U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle ordered Pelley’s arrest on the grounds that it violated the Espionage Act of 1917.[54] He was charged with attempting “to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States of America.'” On an April morning in 1942, FBI agents pounded on the door of George B. Fisher, who had previously donated $20,000 to the Silver Shirts. They were correct in their belief that Pelley was laying low at his Darien, Connecticut residence. The Silver Shirt leader arose from bed, was handcuffed, and transported to the Marion County Jail. That same day, his 21-year-old son entered the Army.[55]
As Pelley sat in jail, awaiting friends to transfer bail money—one offered to sell his $27,000 Meridian Street property—he chain smoked and expounded on his philosophies to the police marshal. With characteristic bluster and showmanship, he gladly “posed for photographs, amiably answered most questions and skillfully parried others.”[56] Bail money arrived a few days later and the Indianapolis News reported that he “was neatly dressed and puffing on a pipe when he was brought from his cell.”[57] Pelley reunited with his daughter, Adelaide, at the federal building in Indianapolis, where his sedition trial would take place.[58]
Indianapolis News, July 20, 1942, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
In late July 1942, Pelley and two Fellowship Press associates arrived at the federal court in Indianapolis for the “first major sedition prosecution in America since Pearl Harbor.”[59] They faced several counts, including attempts “to interfere with the operation and success of military and naval forces of the United States and to promote the success of its enemies.”[60] At the time of their trial, these enemies were undertaking the systematic deportation of Jews from Warsaw to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. “Final Solution” architect Heinrich Himmler had recently instructed doctors to conduct medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camps.
As millions experienced unspeakable suffering abroad, Hoosiers were summoned to determine the fate of William Dudley Pelley and his c0-conspirators. The all-male jury hailed from cities around Indiana and belonged to a variety of professions, including engineering, farming, and insurance sales.[61] The trial captivated the nation, as many wondered if the untouchable Pelley would finally experience harsh consequences.
Check back for Part II to learn Pelley’s fate, would ultimately be decided in an Indianapolis courtroom. We’ll also delve into “Soulcraft,” the theology Pelley developed later in life. Based out of Noblesville, Soulcraft Press published works about his new spiritual belief, which incorporated the occult and the extraterrestrial—not unlike the emergent religion of one L. Ron Hubbard.
Notes:
[1] “Pelley Forces Trial Here After His Seizure as Enemy of U. S.,” Indianapolis News, April 4, 1942, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “America’s No. 1 seditionist” quote from “Pelley’s Case May Not Take So Much Time,” Noblesville Ledger, July 30, 1942, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[2] “‘Little Fuehrer’ Moves In,” The Republic (Columbus, IN), December 27, 1940, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[3] Jason Daley, “The Screenwriting Mystic Who Wanted to Be the American Fuhrer,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 3, 2018, accessed smithsonianmag.com.
[4] “William Dudley Pelley,” U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, June 5, 1917, accessed Ancestry Library; William Dudley Pelley, “Idols Mended,” The Red Book Magazine (November 1922): 83-87, accessed Archive.org; William Dudley Pelley, “There Are Still Fairies,” The Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.), July 8, 1923, 2, accessed Archive.org; George C. Shull, “Pelley, Man Who Died for Seven Minutes, Says Pyramid Predicts Career End in ’45,” Indianapolis Star, December 28, 1940, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
[5] William Dudley Pelley, “Seven Minutes in Eternity—the Amazing Experience that Made Me Over,” The American Magazine (March 1929): 7, accessed Archive.org.
[6] Daley, “The Screenwriting Mystic Who Wanted to Be the American Fuhrer.”
[7] Jon Elliston, “Asheville’s Fascist: William Dudley Pelley’s Obscure But Infamous Silver Shirt Movement Lives on in His Paper Trail,” WNC Magazine (January/February 2018), accessed wncmagazine.com.
[8] Elliston, “Asheville’s Fascist.”
[9] “Charge Breaking of Blue Sky Law,” News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), August 22, 1934, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
[10] Silver Shirt Enrollment Application, 1930s, William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America Collection, S1050, Rare Books & Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library.
[11] “Pelley, Summerville Convicted by Court,” News and Record (Greensboro, NC), January 23, 1935, 4, accessed Newspapers.com; “W. D. Pelley is Declared Guilty,” News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), January 23, 1935, 2, accessed Newspapers.com; “Silver Shirt Duo Sentenced Today,” Salisbury Post (North Carolina), February 18, 1935, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[12] “Pelley for President: Silver Shirt Man to Run,” The Sentinel (Winston-Salem, NC), September 10, 1935, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; “Pelley Sees ‘Theocratic State’ in U.S.,” Asheville Times (North Carolina), January 25, 1936, 10, accessed Newspapers.com; Elliston, “Asheville’s Fascist.”
[13] “Anti-Semitic Silver Shirt Handbook Flays New Deal, Urges Axis, U.S. Unity,” Indianapolis Star, December 29, 1940, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[14] George C. Shull, “Pelley, Man Who Died for Seven Minutes, Says Pyramid Predicts Career End in ’45,” Indianapolis Star, December 28, 1940, 2, accessed Newspapers.com; Quote from “Jury Hears of Pelley ‘Oracle,'” Indianapolis News, July 29, 1942, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[15] Daley, “The Screenwriting Mystic Who Wanted to Be the American Fuhrer.”
[16] “Guard Captain Testifies Before Dies Committee,” Star Press (Muncie, IN), April 5, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Hoosier Tells of Silver Shirt Plot,” Indianapolis News, April 5, 1940, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
[17] “Guard Captain Testifies Before Dies Committee,” Star Press (Muncie, IN), April 5, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[18] “UnAmerican Troublemakers,” Bremen Enquirer (Indiana), March 7, 1940, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
[20] “Head of Silver Shirts Misused Assets of Publishing Firm, Dies Probers Told,” Reading News (Pennsylvania), August 29, 1939, 16, accessed Newspapers.com.
[21] “Pelley is Accused of Disseminating Nazi Propaganda,” Nashville Banner (Tennessee), October 3, 1939, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
[22] “Committee Tries to Subpoena Head of Silver Shirts,” Evening Courier (Camden, NJ), August 24, 1939, 2, accessed Newspapers.com; “Pelly [sic] is Cited to State Court,” Rocky Mount Telegram (North Carolina), October 19, 1939, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[23] “Pelly [sic] is Cited to State Court,” Rocky Mount Telegram (North Carolina), October 19, 1939, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[24] “Pelly [sic] is Cited to State Court,” Rocky Mount Telegram (North Carolina), October 19, 1939, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Tax Collector Receives Check for Pelley Taxes,” Asheville Citizen Times, November 4, 1939, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Behind the Scenes in Washington,” Lancaster Eagle-Gazette (Ohio), December 8, 1939, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
[25] “Winchell Says W.D. Pelley is in N. Y. Town,” Asheville Citizen-Times, February 5, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; Walter Winchell, “Broadway,” Evansville Courier, February 14, 1940, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
[26] “Pelley Surrenders to Dies Body; Ask He Be Held for Court Here,” Asheville Times, February 6, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[27] Richard L. Turner, “Pelley Angers Dies Probers; Tells Income,” Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN), February 8, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[28] “Silver Shirts Get $240,000 from Friends,” The Times (Munster, IN), February 9, 1940, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
[29] “Pelley Nabbed for Violation of Probation,” Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN), February 11, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Silver Shirt Leader Gains Jail Release,” Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), February 12, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[30] “Silver Shirt Linked with Army Group,” Vidette-Messenger of Porter County (Valparaiso, IN), April 2, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[31] “Furniture En Route,” Indianapolis News, December 20, 1940, 25, accessed Newspapers.com; “Rumors that Stephenson to Get Pardon,” Noblesville Ledger, December 20, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[32] “Rumors that Stephenson to Get Pardon,” Noblesville Ledger, December 20, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[34] “Silver Shirts Leader Mentioned in Noblesville Magazine Mystery,” Indianapolis Star, December 20, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[35] “Pelley Denis Any ‘Mystery,'” Indianapolis News, December 25, 1940, 18, accessed Newspapers.com.
[36] “Noblesville Firm to Publish Books,” Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN), December 27, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Dies Committee Watches Pelley,” Indianapolis Star, December 28, 1940, 2, accessed Newspapers.com; “Committee Sends Man to Open Inquiry,” Noblesville Ledger, December 31, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[37] “Pelley Denies Contact with Stephenson,” Indianapolis News, December 27, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[38] Donovan A. Turk, “Losey, Pelley Await Dies Quiz; Hold ‘Christian Crusade’ is Object,” Indianapolis Star, December 28, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[39] Edward L. Throm, “Says Indiana Has No Place for Disloyal,” Indianapolis Star, December 28, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[40] Daniel M. Kidney, “Dies Aide Says Pelley Tried to Buy Hoosier Newspaper,” Evansville Press, December 31, 1940, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[41] “Legion Watches Publishing Firm,” Indianapolis Star, December 30, 1940, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
Dr. George Buckner, Gift of Zachariah Buckner (Son of George Washington Buckner), 1965.136.0000, Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, accessed emuseum.org.
Lauana Creel approached the porch and rang the doorbell of a prominent Evansville citizen she had arranged to interview. The WPA’s Federal Writer’s Project had tasked her with interviewing formerly enslaved Americans in order to document their experiences and perspectives. On this particular day, Dr. George Buckner would be the subject of a series of interviews.
Creel learned that George Washington Buckner was born into slavery on a small farm in Greensburg, Kentucky around 1853. He lived in a single-room cabin with his mother, step-father, and many siblings. In poor health and lacking surgical or medical assistance, his mother became bed-ridden. Given these circumstances, the trajectory of his life was seemingly implausible. From obtaining higher education, to becoming a physician and political activist, to building up his own community, Dr. Buckner exemplified what was possible despite being born into that “peculiar institution.” The Evansville Press aptly noted that he experienced “a world which offered few opportunities for men of his race. He overcame these severe handicaps and his influence for the improvement of the lot of all Negroes has been powerful.”
A one floor, wooden slave cabin near Lexington, which would be similar to the one George Buckner spent most of his childhood in. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center, accessed uky.edu.
During his childhood, George was “presented” to his master’s son, “Mars” Dickie Buckner. Despite being roughly the same age, George was required to do whatever Mars requested, like polishing his boots and putting away his toys. Although his “master,” Mars also served as a playmate and companion of George, who later described their relationship as sympathetic and loving. Unfortunately, George’s only playmate passed away from illness. Mars’s death caused George Buckner great sadness. He claimed to have seen Mars’s ghost one night, pressed against the window of the room in which he died. The death of Mars affected George deeply, and drove him to become a physician.
Compounding his loneliness, Buckner’s sister was sold to another family when the master’s daughter got married. Buckner told Creel, “It always filled us with sorrow when we were separated either by circumstances of marriage or death. Although we were not properly housed, properly nourished nor properly clothed we loved each other and loved our cabin homes and were unhappy when compelled to part.”
While Buckner experienced personal tragedy, the nation had also plunged into crisis. Several of Buckner’s uncles fled North to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War. In his interview, Buckner talked about the night they decided to escape enslavement and join the war effort, stating:
I had heard my parents talk of the war but it did not seem real to me until one night when mother came to the pallet where we slept and called to us ‘Get up and tell our uncles good-bye.’ Then four startled little children arose. Mother was standing in the room with a candle or a sort of torch made from grease drippings and old pieces of cloth . . . and there stood her four brothers, Jacob, John, Bill, and Isaac all with the light of adventure shining upon their mulatto countenances. They were starting away to fight for their liberties and we were greatly impressed.
Ultimately, Jacob was too old to serve and Isaac too young, but George’s two other uncles were accepted into the Army. According to the WPA interview, one was killed in battle and the other fought and returned home unwounded. Black individuals like George’s uncles, helped end the war and the institution of slavery.
When the war ended, George was not yet a teenager and struggled to survive. He taught himself to read with a spelling book, and his literacy became a valuable skill. In 1867, he furthered his education by taking courses through the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency created immediately after emancipation to help Black individuals get jobs, learn basic skills like reading and writing, and help them understand their rights. He began working for the Bureau in Greensburg, Kentucky, teaching other young, formerly-enslaved individuals to read and write. Buckner told Creel that he boarded with a family in a cramped cabin, sleeping in a “dark uncomfortable loft where a comfort and a straw bed.”
Freedmen’s School in New Bern, North Carolina, collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, accessed nmaahc.si.edu.
Buckner furthered his education after moving to Indianapolis, where he encountered Robert Bruce Bagby, principal of the only Black school in the city. Buckner said Bagby was the “first educated Negro he had ever met.” Bagby himself was born into slavery in Virginia, and his parents purchased their family’s freedom in 1857. He then earned a college degree and joined Indiana’s only Black regiment during the Civil War. After studying at Bagner’s school, Buckner made ends meet by working at restaurants and hotels as a “house boy,” or domestic servant. After earning enough money working menial jobs, Buckner went on to study at the Terre Haute Normal School (later Indiana State University), graduating in 1871.
He went on to teach Black students at Vincennes University. While he was earnest about advancing his educational career, another part of him longed to do something else. He wanted to provide essential medical care, motivated by the loss he experienced in his own life. He recalled:
I was interested in the young people and anxious for their advancement but the suffering endured by my invalid mother, who had passed into the great beyond, and the memory of little Master Dickie’s lingering illness and untimely death would not desert my consciousness. I determined to take up the study of medical practice and surgery which I did.
Image of Terre Haute Normal School, courtesy of William Elmer Henry, Legislative and State Manual of Indiana for 1903 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, State Printer, 1903), p. 324, accessed Internet Archive.
In 1890, Buckner earned his M.D. from the Indiana Eclectic Medical College in Indianapolis (which became part of Indiana State University). Dr. Buckner practiced medicine in the city for a year, cultivating a positive reputation among the Black community. He transferred his practice to Evansville, where he spent the rest of his life. This likely made him the first licensed Black doctor to practice in the city. Buckner’s role as a physician was crucial, since Black patients could only be treated by Black doctors, many of whom lacked the same resources as white practitioners. According to a UCLA study, Black men comprised only four percent of all doctors and physicians in the U.S. during the time Buckner practiced. He was a vital member of the Black community, someone who they literally could not have lived without.
He also aided his community in other ways. Understanding the importance of education through his own experiences, Buckner dedicated himself to helping other young people get an education. He helped establish the Cherry Street YMCA to give Black children a place to play and learn. He was also the principal of the Independence Colored School, putting his educational background to good use. Buckner served as a trustee at the local Alexander Chapel AME church. He enlisted the help of hundreds of Black residents in the Colored Akin Club in preparation for a local municipal election.
While Evansville provided a change of pace for Buckner, from the hustle and bustle of Indianapolis, there he encountered not only casual racism, but threats against his life, for some of his political views. Buckner was an ardent Democrat, which made him a minority in the Black community. In a local Democratic newspaper, he wrote a column called “Colored Folks” and became well known for his outspoken views. He staunchly supported Woodrow Wilson and, later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A contentious issue that he fought against during his time was vote-buying, a process whereby a local political machine used intimidation or bribery to sway voters to their side. Black Americans were often a target for their perceived desperation. According to Bucker’s interview, he viewed vote-buying as a serious roadblock for self-determination and encouraged them not to be persuaded by bad actors, stating:
The negro youths are especially subject to propaganda of the four-flusher [fraud; huckster] for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened to the light.
Buckner’s Democratic leanings were not always looked on kindly, as he describes having to hire a bodyguard to keep him and his family from harm. He told Creel that he brought security to professional and social events to:
prevent meeting physical violence to myself or family when political factions were virtually at war within the area of Evansville. The influence of political captains had brought about the dreadful condition and ignorant Negroes responded to their political graft, without realizing who had befriended them in need.
Despite criticism and threats, his bravery and moral conviction also opened new avenues for advancement. He caught the attention of several prominent Democrats in Indiana, including John W. Boehne, with whom he would develop a friendship. Boehne was a Congressman and Mayor of Evansville from 1905 to 1908. This connection helped further Buckner’s burgeoning political career.
Dr. George Buckner, courtesy of Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division.
In 1913, the Wilson Administration tasked U.S. Senators from Indiana with selecting the Minister to Liberia. According to the Indianapolis Star, Dr. Buckner was appointed because he “stands high among members of his race, while his Democracy is vouched for as the right brand by the Democratic leaders of the Indiana ‘pocket.’” The paper noted that the “number of negroes who would be willing to fight and die for the Democratic party” was notably small. In fact, former Rep. John W. Boehne, who endorsed Buckner for the appointment, stated that Buckner was loyal to the party “’at times when it almost cost a negro his life to be a Democrat.’”
The Star reported a few months later that “Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo is hearing echoes of a political insurrection among Indiana negroes over the appointment” of Buckner, whom they felt was “not entitled” to “this big job.” Other Black residents cheered the announcement, throwing a reception to celebrate Dr. Buckner’s breaking of racial barriers, regardless of political affiliation. His appointment occurred, fittingly, just days before Evansville’s Emancipation Day celebration, at which the “newly appointed United State Minister to Liberia” spoke.
In the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society sought to establish a colony, Liberia, in Africa in which thousands of freed Black individuals could establish a community.* By the time Dr. Buckner arrived in Liberia, it was known as “the negro republic.” The Tacoma Daily News described it as “the only country in the world that is owned and governed by negroes.” To say Black Americans thrived in Liberia would be inaccurate. According to the Daily News, the Afro-American League of Evansville submitted a petition to U.S. Congress, alerting legislators to challenging conditions, which included the climate, predatory animals, diseases, resistance from natives resulted in hardship, and even death. Additionally, Liberia was caught in the crosshairs of international conflict that would culminate in World War I.
In its petition, the Afro-American League noted that Liberia was situated between “the British and the French possessions, which are continuously encroaching upon her territory.” War exacerbated the conditions in Liberia, especially as “merchant vessels have ceased to appear upon the coast of Liberia, where our own people in the dark continent are struggling for existence and where this war is causing untold numbers to perish.” The League appealed to Congress, asking that “the European and American capitalists be prohibited, if possible, from plunging Liberia into the yawning abyss they have apparently created for her.”
George Buckner’s son showing off a gift his father received in Liberia. “The King’s Chair” is hand-carved and is meant to symbolize honor. “Gifts to a Slave Turned Diplomat Given to Museum by His Son,” Evansville Press, May 10, 1965, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
It was this backdrop from which Dr. Buckner began his diplomatic career. Many foreign actors were trying to change Liberia’s nominally “neutral” stance on the war. The Evansville Courier reported that although Buckner did not witness war actions, “he saw evidences of war all along the trip. On the west coast of Africa he saw the remains of a wrecked German cruiser, sunk early in the war, and at Gibraltar he saw the British battleship Inflexible, which was damaged in the engagements in the Dardanelles.” Buckner tried to maintain an independent attitude, difficult, considering his inexperience with diplomacy.
He was frustrated with the rampant corruption and gerrymandering of the political system, which exacerbated dysfunction and unrest. This was something that past ministers to Liberia also noted. Dr. Buckner also suffered from two attacks of African Fever. He resigned from the post prematurely in 1915. Despite some hardships, he told Creel that he “cherishes the experiences gained while abroad.” According to one newspaper, Buckner told a friend privately, “I had rather make less money and remain where I can give my children a father’s advice.” Buckner had four children and clearly prioritized raising them over his diplomatic post. This was quite the sacrifice to make, considering his post granted him a salary of $5,000 (about $154,619 today). The EvansvillePress praised his work as a diplomat, noting his “honesty and integrity are unassailable.” Similarly, the Pennsylvania Altoona Tribune marveled that although born into slavery, “Today he is a physician with a splendid practice and a diplomat chosen by the administration to look out for its interests in the African country most identified with the negro race in the United States.”
Buckner’s children at the opening of The Buckner Tower senior citizens apartment complex, courtesy of Evansville Press, January 27, 1969, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
After resigning from the post, the Evansville Courier reported that Dr. Buckner served as a member of a medical board that “examined Negro registrants during World War I.” He continued his work as an Evansville physician, working fulltime into his 80s. Buckner died in 1943 and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery. The City of Evansville, which had at times been hostile to him, helped cement his legacy by dedicating a public housing project for the elderly in his name. The building was located at the former site of the Buckner family home. In 2022, his alma mater, Indiana State University, named him a Distinguished Alumni Honoree. He is remembered as an influential and accomplished Black man at a time when people of color were treated with overt discrimination. He told interviewer Lauana Creel “Yes, the road has been long. Memory brings me back to those days.” But, despite the hardships he faced throughout his life, Dr. Buckner cherished his freedom and maintained, “Why should not the negroes be exalted and happy?”
Sources:
Much of the information regarding Buckner’s life come from his interviews with Lauana Creel. It was through her work with the Federal Writer’s Project that firsthand accounts of Buckner’s life are available.
“George W. Buckner,” 1880 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.
William Elmer Henry, Legislative and State Manual of Indiana for 1903 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, State Printer, 1903), p. 324, accessed Internet Archive.
Louis Ludlow, “Indiana Negro Selected for Liberian Post,” Indianapolis Star, June 29, 1913, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Intends to Lash Capitalist and Labor Lobbies,” Indianapolis Star, September 17, 1913, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Receives Instructions: New United States Minister to Liberia,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), September 20, 1913, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), September 23, 1913, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
“An Honor to the Colored People,” Evansville Courier and Press, October 10, 1913, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“George W. Buckner, Minister Resident and Consul General to Liberia,” Altoona Tribune (Pennsylvania), January 2, 1914, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“A Letter from Liberia,” Evansville Courier, June 6, 1914, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Will Liberia Survive?,” Tacoma Daily News (Washington), March 2, 1915, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
Louis Ludlow, “Negro Republic is Bumping the Rocks,” Fort Wayne News, March 5, 1915, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Glad to See the Good Old U.S.,” Evansville Courier, June 6, 1915, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Dr. Buckner May Resign,” Indianapolis News, June 15, 1915, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
“George Buckner Sr.,” 1920 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.
Interview with George Buckner, conducted by Lauana Creel, Ex-Slave Stories, District #5, Vanderburgh County, “A Slave, Ambassador and City Doctor,” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, vol. 5, Indiana, Arnold-Woodson, 1936-1938, Federal Writer’s Project, United States Works Projects Administration, accessed Library of Congress.
“George W. Buckner,” 1940 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.
“Dr. G. W. Buckner, Former Minister to Liberia, Dies,” Evansville Press, February 18, 1943, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Dr. Buckner,” Evansville Press, February 19, 1943, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Gifts to a Slave Turned Diplomat Given to Museum by His Son,” Evansville Press, May 10, 1965, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
Kathie Meredith, “New Building for Elderly to Get Name of Slave-Born Envoy-Doctor,” Evansville Press, May 9, 1968, 29, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Dr. Buckner Gifts Shown at Museum,” Evansville Press, August 17, 1968, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
Evansville Press, January 27, 1969, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
Edna Folz, “Dr. Buckner, a Dynamic Revolutionary,” Evansville Press, February 14, 1972, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, 1979).
“Evansville Doctor Was a Democrat during Unpopular Era,” Evansville Press, June 5, 1987, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
Darrel E. Bigham, We Ask Only a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), accessed Scholarworks.
“Dr. George Washington Buckner,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 31, 1990, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
Roberta Heiman, “An Evansville Ambassador,” Evansville Courier and Press, February 22, 1998, 46, accessed Newspapers.com.
Enrique Rivero, “Proportion of Black Physicians in U.S. Has Changed Little in 120 Years, UCLA Research Finds,” UCLA Newsroom, April 19, 2021, accessed UCLA Newsroom.
The following post contributes to an IHB blog series celebrating the upcoming presentation by New York Times editor Amisha Padnani on her Overlooked project. Overlooked tells the stories of remarkable women and people of color whose deaths were never reported by the New York Times in its 168-year history.
Learn more and register to attend Padnani’s presentation for free as part of the October 5, 2024 Hoosier Women at Work History Conference.
Emma Molloy was not your average reformer. Her advocacy of women’s suffrage, women in the workplace, temperance, and prison reform was so radical that women’s and reform groups ostracized her. Nevertheless, she continued to write and speak prolifically in the 1870s and 80s, engendering a reputation as “one of the most effective woman orators of the west.”[1]
Born in South Bend in 1839, Molloy’s childhood was a lonely one. Her mother died when she was just eleven, forcing her to live in boarding homes. She found solace in writing and won awards for submissions in local newspapers as a teenager. Around that time, she married a printer, and the couple traveled the country, working various jobs. However, her husband’s alcoholism cost them employment, breeding resentment that he took out on his wife. After his untimely death due to the disease, Molloy committed herself to lobbying for temperance and protecting Indiana divorce laws.
Her second marriage was a happier one, and led to professional and personal fulfillment. She became the business partner of her husband, Edward, helping edit and print the South Bend National Union. Molloy’s editorial influence created a more nuanced publication, as her personal anecdotes and heartfelt obituaries balanced Edward’s political and economic reporting. In addition to writing and managing the household, she undertook business aspects of the publication, which included collecting payment and soliciting advertisements—earning praise from Harper’s Bazar.
The ambitious Molloys moved to Elkhart, where they co-founded the Observer in 1872. Emma came fully into her own in the city, growing into a prolific political reformer and public speaker. In her editorials, she encouraged women’s independence and entry into the workplace, writing “woman’s true sphere is in any latitude of occupation that she is capable of.” She wrote:
I am told that women are not as thorough on details as men are. Well, let a woman educated as a reporter, walk beside the male reporter, and she will see twice as much in a walk down the street as he will, and can draw just as largely upon her imagination too in reporting it. . . . As for the girls employed in our office, I find them as efficient as men , and much more reliable, for they never get on a spree.[2]
Molloy refused to downplay her contributions. In an address for the Women in Country Journalism Congress, she described the:
. . . many days and nights of persistent toil at the case, in the editorial chair, and sometimes at the press. To help out I have set type all night after working at other branches of the business all day, and I am certain my husband, capable and industrious as he is, would not have been where he is to-day without my aid.[3]
Molloy also used her publications to advocate for women’s right to divorce and the need to abolish “legal marital slavery” through legislation. This, along with temperance, would reduce wives’ financial hardship and abuse. She had been one of these wives herself, after all.
Realizing the ballot was necessary to effect this change, she advocated for women’s suffrage. Her fiery speeches and emphasis on women’s involvement in politics set her apart from other suffragists and temperance leaders at the time. According to the Ribbon Worker, she first demonstrated her “oratorical gifts” in Elkhart, which soon garnered here invitations to speak in various Indiana cities and eventually across the country and abroad. The Rochester Union Spy described one of her lectures as a “feast of reason,” adding:
We were ourself surprised at the breadth of her views, and the profundity of her reasoning. It must be conceded that intellect, as well as virtue, has no sex, and that women who try can reason just as closely and as logically as their brethren.
Similarly, the South Bend Tribune wrote “By reason of her native eloquence and the force of her arguments she attracted large audiences wherever she went.” Molloy not only delivered passionate speeches and editorials, but went door to door, canvassing neighbors for the cause of temperance. This resulted in one Elkhart bar owner throwing eggs at her.
Biographer Martha Pickrell noted that some newspaper editors and WCTU members found Molloy’s strategies and emphasis on women’s political involvement too extreme. In 1877, Molloy wrote to the Woman’s Journal that she had been ousted from local temperance efforts, noting “in my own State, the greater portion of the women of the Union regarded me as ‘dangerous to their work.’” She added that:
God made me so radical and . . . so adverse to suffering that when I see a way to avoid it, for myself or anyone else, I cannot help making a suggestion as to the means, even though it may be shocking to conservative ears.
Perhaps feeling ostracized, she pivoted to prison reform and evangelical preaching. Because of her experiences with those suffering from addiction, she viewed prisoners as humans, worthy of humane conditions and a second shot at life after incarceration. In the late 1870s, Molloy visited Indiana prisons and lobbied for better conditions, such as proper ventilation. She served as a maternal figure for those incarcerated and often encouraged them through correspondence. She wrote “Too often he finds himself thrown upon the world homeless, friendless, illy educated to grapple the with the world. It is very hard for an ex-convict to get employment.” In her efforts to reduce recidivism and help with rehabilitation, Molloy worked with Quakers and WTCU members to establish the Ex-Convicts’ Aid Society, with the goal to create halfway houses in northern and southern Indiana for released prisoners.
Emma Molloy marker dedication in Elkhart, September 4, 2024, courtesy of author.
In her final years, Molloy moved to the West Coast and undertook the cause nearest to her heart—preaching Christianity. She once again leveraged her public speaking skills, but this time from a church pulpit. Although she could not officially be ordained, she essentially served as a preacher and helped build up struggling churches in smaller towns.
Molloy died in 1907. Her death garnered scant obituaries and one published in her native South Bend misspelled her name. We hope that this Indiana Overlooked profile helps restore the agency and legacy of a woman so ahead of her time. Suffering had not made her bitter, but empathetic, and ready to take up the sword to prevent the suffering of others. For this, she should not only be remembered, but emulated.
[1] “Well Known Woman Gone,” South Bend Tribune, May 15, 1907, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
[2] Emma Molloy, Woman’s Congress Address in Chicago, October 1974 in Martha Pickrell, “A Woman in Country Journalism,” Traces of Indiana and Midwest History 12, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 27, accessed Indiana Historical Society.
[3] Emma Molloy, Address on Women in Country Journalism, Woman’s Congress, Chicago, Illinois, October 15-17, 1874, published in Woman’s Journal (November 28, 1874) in Pickrell, p. 93.
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.
Content Note: This video reproduces a panel of art depicting the Ku Klux Klan. It appears at 10:55 in the video and continues to 11:55. Viewer discretion is advised.
Thomas Hart Benton, one of America’s premier artists during the twentieth century, painted series of murals about Indiana for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. A controversial collection of artworks, the Indiana Murals engaged viewers in a dialogue about Indiana’s complex history—a dialogue that continues to this day. The murals stayed in storage of the Indiana State Fairgrounds until someone believed they deserved a new home. That someone was Herman B Wells, the newly elected president of Indiana University.
Music: “Fresno Alley” by Josh Lippi & The Overtimers, “Lazy Boy Blues” by Unicorn Heads, “Progressive Moments” by Ugonna Onyekwe, “Creeping Spiders” by Nat Keefe & BeatMower, and “Plenty Step” by Freedom Trail Studio
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.”
This article was originally published, in revised form, on June 20, 2019 at the Hoosier State Chronicles blog.
United States immigration laws reflect a long history of debate over who should be included and excluded in differing visions of American identity. In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act or the Immigration Act of 1924, “a measure which was a legislative expression of the xenophobia, particularly towards eastern and southern European immigrants, that swept America in the decade of the 1920s.”[1] This legislation drastically limited immigration to the United States through a quota system that targeted specific groups for exclusion. While the annual quota for German immigrants was set at over 51,000 people, the quota for Syrian immigrants, for example, was 100 people.[2] Thus, U.S. policy officially distinguished between races and backgrounds of people included or excluded as future Americans. The Ku Klux Klan was crucial to the passage of this legislation, which had dire consequences for those seeking asylum in the U.S. over the following decades in which the quota system remained in place.
In the 1920s, the Klan spread across the United States and especially thrived in Indiana. Historian James Madison explains that the Klan was especially successful at recruiting Hoosiers. As many as one in four white Protestant men born in the state were Klan members by one estimate. And some of these men were in positions of political power. In considering past debates over immigration, it’s worth re-examining the Klan’s stance on the subject. Why? Because the Klan of the 1920s was an influential mainstream movement. And those Hoosiers who put on robes and lit up the night with their fiery crosses were representative of the feelings of much of the population of the state.[3]
The first Klan, which emerged after the Civil War was a Southern terrorist organization led by former Confederate soldiers aimed at suppressing African Americans with intimidation and violence. The Klan that reemerged in the 1920s purposefully evoked the imagery of the Reconstruction Era Klan to instill fear in its “enemies,” but was much different. It was not a band of rogue vigilantes, but a nationwide organization composed of average white, Protestant Americans. It included farmers, bankers, railroad workers, suffragists, ministers, mayors, and governors. The second Klan also largely abandoned violence for civic action. They dressed their anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, antisemitic message in patriotism and Christian righteousness. Wearing their white robes and masks, they held picnics and parades, attended church and funerals. For many white Protestant Americans, the Ku Klux Klan was a respectable pastime for the whole family. [4]
Because the Klan published their newspaper, the Fiery Cross, for several years in Indianapolis, we know a lot about who joined, what exactly they believed and feared about immigration and race, and what they did to prevent people from certain countries from becoming Americans. The Fiery Cross served both as an official mouthpiece of the national organization and as a source for local Klan news. The Indiana State Library also has a large collection of Klan documents. In conversation, these sources paint a clear picture of Klan beliefs and influence on both Indiana and national policy.
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Kloran, 1916, United Klans of America Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library. Also accessible digitally at Archive.org.
In an early KKK handbook, called the Kloran, the national organization suggested ten questions that must be answered satisfactorily before “naturalizing” a new member. Most of them asked about the potential member’s allegiance to the U.S. government and Christian principles with questions such as:
Do you esteem the United States of America and its institutions above any other government, civil, political or ecclesiastical, in the whole world?
The “ecclesiastical” reference in this question is to the Roman Catholic Church. The Klan claimed that Catholic immigrants to the U.S. served the Pope who headed a conspiracy to undermine American values. Thus they were not loyal American citizens. This anti-Catholic sentiment and rhetoric was especially strong in the Midwestern Klan, as seen in the pages of the Fiery Cross. However, not all of the membership questions veiled their hateful message. One question asked potential members bluntly:
Do you believe in and will you faithfully strive for the eternal maintenance of white supremacy?
In their minds, the white supremacy the Klan valued so dearly was presently under attack. Like the earlier Reconstruction Klan, the 1920s Klan viewed African Americans as members of an inferior race. In Indiana, members worried about the mixing of white and black races, especially as young Hoosiers gained access to cars, jazz clubs, and Hollywood movies. [5] In 1922, the Fiery Crossblamed jazz for “inflaming the animal passions of romance-seeking youth.” And in 1924, the newspaper declared, “At this time the whole civilized structure is being threatened by the mixing of the white and black races.” It continued:
It is God’s purpose that the white man should preserve purity of blood and white supremacy in this country. Those who would have it otherwise or show leniency toward the mixing of white and colored races do not deserve the respect of anyone, much less of those who are trying to preserve American institutions, ideals and principles. A mongrel race and a mongrel civilization mean decay and ruin.
Thus, throughout Klan literature, any reference to Christian virtue or Protestant values, should be understood as being imbued with white supremacy. The Klan believed that God valued people of Anglo-Saxon, German, and Scandinavian decent more than people of other backgrounds. And they believed that it was their sacred duty to protect white domination of the U.S. For the Midwestern Klan, the main obstacle to this goal was not African Americans. Many Indiana towns had small numbers of Black residents, and there were plenty of institutionalized practices and laws in place by the 1920s to suppress African Americans. The Klan helped to keep these as standard practice. However, they saw immigrants, mainly Catholics but also Jews, as the main threat to a white, Protestant America. [6]
Fiery Cross, September 21, 1923, 1, Hoosier State Chronicles.
D. C. Stephenson, the recently appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, clearly laid out the organization’s stance on immigration in a September 1923 speech to Hoosier coal miners. The Fiery Cross printed Stephenson’s address in its entirety under the headline “Immigration is Periling America.” First, he distinguished between “old” and “new” immigrants. The old immigrants were the Anglo-Saxon, German, and Scandinavian “progenitors of the Republic of America” who brought their strong work ethic and “social, moral, and civic ideals” to the new land. Omitting any mention of native peoples or the contributions of the many other immigrant groups who helped found the United States, Stephenson continued to provide the history of an imagined past created solely by and for white people.
William Arthur Swift, “Ku Klux Klan Gathering of Muncie Klan No. 4,” photograph, 1922, W. A. Swift Photographs Collection, Ball State University Libraries, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/swift/id/700
Second, Stephenson plainly identified the enemy of white Protestant America as the “new” immigrants who were arriving in “greater in numbers” than the “old” immigrants. These “new” immigrants were “from the races of southern and eastern Europe.”
Third, he cited the various ways that the “new immigrant has been shown to be much inferior to the older type and to the native American stock.” By “native American,” Stephenson meant white European people who immigrated in previous generations, not the native Indian peoples who originally called North America home. Using examples based in the (later discredited) pseudo-science of eugenics, Stephenson furthered his argument about the inherent inferiority of the “new” immigrants.[7] Eugenicists assumed that some traits like mental illness or poverty could be prevented by limiting reproduction of people demonstrating such traits in order to breed a better race of humans.[8]
For Klan leaders, however, the language of eugenics gave them “scientific facts” to present as evidence for the need for blocking immigration. In his speech, Stephenson presented reports from eugenicists claiming that the “new” immigrants were less intelligent and more prone to mental disorders and criminal tendencies. Stephenson cited a report by influential eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, who was essential in shaping both eugenics legislation and immigration restriction. [9] Stephenson used Laughlin’s “elaborate statistics” throughout his speech, claiming:
In reference to feeblemindedness, insanity, crime, epilepsy, tuberculosis and deformity, the older immigrant stocks are vastly sounder than the recent.
and
The countries which ran lowest in crime are those which have contributed most to the elementary foundation of the population of the United States – such as Great Britain, Scandinavia, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands . . . Those immigrant groups that run high in crime are from the countries of southern and eastern Europe’
The conclusion he intended his listeners to draw from such reports was that these people must be excluded from the country. Stephenson stated:
My friends, the significance of authoritative statements like these can hardly be overestimated. Unrestricted immigration would appear to result in a gradual contraction of our native American stock.
Fourth, Stephenson claimed that English, German, and Scandinavian “old immigrants” spread out across the country, establishing farming communities. On the other hand, the “new” immigrants settled only in already congested cities and refused to assimilate. And finally, Stephenson claimed, in these cities, the immigrant was to blame for a decreased standard of living and reduction in wages. He continued:
There is no assimilation to American standards and ideals, in the case of the great majority of the newer immigrants. Masses of human beings of inferior races, ignorant of all the ideals which Americans hold dear, are poured into our factories as so much raw material – and they are not ‘digested.’ The new immigrant comes here as a foreigner and he remains a foreigner – a citizen of a lower class, who, just as the negro, is a constant menace to the standards of civilization which Americans hold dear.
The solution was clear. The powerful Klan, with its millions of members, demanded in 1923 that “the next Congress must adopt a permanent immigration law.” Stephenson concluded his speech to the Indiana coal miners:
So the unchecked importation now of hordes of southern Europeans will bring its inevitable harvest in fearfully deteriorating the character of the American nation of the future. The immigration policy which we adopt today will not produce its vital effects at once; these will come a generation or two later, and the American citizenship, American standards of living and American qualities of manhood and womanhood of that time will be largely dependent upon the character of the racial stock that today we permit to become the percentage of the nation.
William Arthur Swift, “Ku Klux Klan Women’s Auxiliary Rally in New Castle, Indiana,” photograph, 1923, W. A. Swift Photographs Collection, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/swift/id/622.
Hoosier Klan members were on board with this message, despite the fact that Indiana’s own immigration history proved the racist claims false at every turn. For example, Jews like John Jacob Hays, an Indiana agent for the U.S. government, were among the first of European descent to settle in the Northwest Territory. Jewish Hoosier Samuel Judah settled in Vincennes in 1818 began the first of his five terms in the state legislature in 1827.[10] Black Hoosiers were also among the first to clear and farm Indiana land in communities across the state, building thriving communities like Roberts Settlement by the 1830s.[11] Catholic immigrants to Indiana like Saint Theodora Guerin in 1840 braved the wilderness and prejudice to establish schools and orphanages.[12] And at the same time the Fiery Cross claimed that immigrants were responsible for draining the economy, Terre Haute newspapers praised the Syrian immigrants to their community on the Wabash River for stimulating the local economy.[13] The examples of immigrant contributions to the Hoosier state are endless. But despite the local lessons to be learned, many Hoosiers held on to their prejudices. And the Indiana Klan gave them an outlet.
William Arthur Swift, “Ku Klux Klan Initiation and Cross Burning,” photograph, 1922, W. A. Swift Photographic Collection, Ball State University and Special Collections, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/swift/id/724
How do we know that the average Hoosier who joined the Klan, actually supported this message of white supremacy? One way Indiana Klan members made their support public and highly visible was through large and elaborate parades. In September 1923, the Fiery Crossreported that between 1,200 and 1,500 Klansmen marched in a “huge parade” through the main streets of Terre Haute. They were led by the Terre Haute No. 7 Klan band. Signs on floats read “Uphold the Constitution” and “America First.” Local police helped handle traffic and a traction company provided “special cars” to transport Klansmen and women to “the Klan grounds, north of the city.” Here there were speakers and new member initiation ceremonies for “several hundred candidates.” While these new Hoosier Klan members took their oaths of allegiance, “a fiery cross was lighted.”
In July 1923, the Fiery Cross reported on a huge Ku Klux Klan gathering in Kokomo. The city hosted “a throng in excess of any ever before entertained by an Indiana city, not excepting Indianapolis on Speedway day,” with Klan members coming from surrounding states as well. At this meeting Klan leaders announced “the establishment of a stated organization for the Hoosiers” and “charters granted to each and ever county in Indiana” for local Klan “klaverns.” The Fiery Cross continued:
Americanism has engulfed the Hoosier state and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana has been as a tidal wave.
In October 1923, the Fiery Crossclaimed 10,000 people turned out for a Klan parade in Bloomington organized by the Monroe County Klan and the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. In November, Klan members held a similar event in Fort Wayne. And the Fiery Crossestimated that 100,000 would attend the night parade of Klansmen in May 1924 in Indianapolis, marching from the State Fairgrounds, to Monument Circle, led by Klan bands and drum corp.
Fiery Cross, June 27, 1924, 5, Hoosier State Chronicles.
The Klan grew their membership in other ways too. Donning robes and masks, they marched into churches and made donations to grateful ministers. They held picnics and social events. They showed Klan propaganda movies.[14] Klan bands recorded albums and Indianapolis even had a KKK record store, the American Record Shop. Members advocated for prohibition of alcohol and supported prayer in school, issues that especially interested women. Thus, the number of women’s Klan groups increased across the state as well.
Fiery Cross, September 21, 1923, 2, Hoosier State Chronicles.
Not all Klan members hid behind costumes. Many felt comfortable taking off their hoods in pictures or running an ad for their business in the Fiery Cross. While some business owners advertised in order to avoid boycott, others proudly proclaimed that their business was “100 per cent American” or incorporated the letters “KKK” into the ad.
Some mainstream newspapers, such as the Indianapolis Times, were harsh critics of the Klan. But others ran ads for Klan gatherings or speakers on “the principles of 100 per cent Americanism.” Some mainstream newspapers may have even ran more subtle versions of the “100 Per Cent” ads for businesses sympathetic to the Klan that ran regularly in the Fiery Cross.
Greencastle Herald, September 21 [left] and November 17, 1923 [right], Hoosier State Chronicles.These efforts to build membership, influence, and solidarity were successful in Indiana and across much of the country. By 1924, the Klan was a powerful force. They gave white Protestants an organization dedicated to defending the perceived threat to their political and cultural dominance. The more enthusiastic Klansmen used intimidation techniques such as burning crosses on front lawns or stopping cars to search for illegal alcohol.[15] However, they mainly focused their intimidation into written and verbal attacks on immigrants using stereotyping, dehumanizing language, and eugenic pseudo-science. Cloaking their hateful message in patriotism and virtue made it palatable to many.
The Klan’s championing of white supremacist principles had real world consequences. To many Indiana politicians, the people had spoken. The Indiana Republican Party was the most sympathetic, but there were Democratic supporters as well. Most politicians were complicit in their failure to denounce the Klan for fear of losing votes, as opposed to any direct participation in the organization. But the Klan did influence Indiana elections. Stephenson openly revealed that the Klan would distribute sample ballots to members with candidates who were favorable to the organization clearly marked.[16] Several candidates won seats directly because the Klan proclaimed their support. Others sympathetic to the Klan won offices perhaps because the Klan had disseminated so much propaganda that voters did not know what to believe. As the Klan accused opposing candidates of various indiscretions, voters may have become confused and apathetic.[17] Regardless of how it was gained, directly or indirectly, their influence prevailed for some time. In fact, Stephenson released the names of several politicians who were Klansmen themselves, including John L. Duvall, the Mayor of Indianapolis, and Ed Jackson, the Governor of the State of Indiana.
Indiana’s congressmen who neither joined nor denounced the Klan still furthered the organization’s “America first” agenda. For example, as governor, Samuel Ralston proved to be a fairly progressive-minded democrat, advocating for women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and workman’s compensation. When he was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1922, he tried to avoid talking about the Klan altogether. Like most moderate Hoosier politicians Ralston was not a Klan member, but he also he never publicly denounced the organization.[18] However, when the Senate voted on the Immigration Act of 1924, Ralston voted in favor of restriction as did his counterpart James Watson.[19] All of Indiana’s representatives had also voted in favor of the bill.[20] President Calvin Coolidge signed the bill into law May 24, 1924. The President told Congress, “America must be kept American.”[21]
The Immigration Act of 1924 and its quota system remained in effect until 1952. The legislation had dire consequences in the 1930s for the hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution who applied to the United States for immigration visas. Jews were specifically targeted in the legislation as undesirable candidates for refuge and only a handful were admitted. As newspapers reported on the escalating violence and injustices perpetrated by the Nazis, some Americans called for a loosening of the restrictions. However, while the Klan may have disappeared by the 1930s, the nativist and xenophobic attitude of many Americans remained the same as it had been when they wore masks and robes. Fortune magazine took a large poll in 1938 and found that only 5% of Americans wanted to allow “political refugees to come into the United States.”[22] Even a bill requesting a temporary easing of the quotas to rescue child refugees of Nazi terror failed in the Senate. The persecuted Jews of Europe would not find refuge in the United States. Many of those denied entry were murdered in the Holocaust.[23]
With each new shift in demographics throughout American history, certain groups have feared losses of power or wealth. However, those groups who rally around nativism and hate, as powerful as they might grow for a time, lose out to the more powerful vision of America as a leader in justice and democracy. Eventually, eugenics was discounted and its practice outlawed, the quota system overturned, and the Klan was made a laughing stock. Even so, the Klan’s vision of white supremacy and exclusion still simmers beneath the surface of American politics. Vigilant Hoosiers are needed to make sure that never again will we “fear difference and demand a conformity that contradict[s] . . . the state’s best traditions.”[24] According to UCLA’s Re-Imagining Migration project, we live in an age of mass migration and immigration. When we understand that migration is “a shared condition of our past, present, and future” we can “develop the knowledge, empathy and mindsets that sustain inclusive and welcoming communities.”
[1] United States House of Representatives, “Historical Highlights: The Immigration Act of 1924,” History, Art & Archives, https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-Immigration-Act-of-1924/.
[2] American Social History Project at City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University “Who Was Shut Out? Immigration Quotas, 1925-1927,” History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/expansion.html.
[3] James Madison, “Flappers and Klansmen Challenge Traditions: The 1920s,” in Hoosiers (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press and Indiana Historical Society Press, 2014), 234-253; James Madison, “Who’s an American? The Rise and Fall of the Klan in the Midwest,” Plenary Address, Fifth Annual Midwestern History Conference, Grand Valley State University, May 31, 2019. In his 2019 address, Madison clearly stated that the 1920s Klan was a mainstream movement at the center, not margins, of the nation’s history.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7]PBS, “Eugenics Movement Reaches Its Height,” A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh23eu.html.
[8] Indiana Historical Bureau, “1907 Indiana Eugenics Law,” State Historical Marker Text and Notes, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/524.htm. The pseudo-science of eugenics led to mass sterilization in Indiana and elsewhere before it was determined to be a violation of human rights by state and federal courts [
[9] University of Missouri, “Harry Laughlin: Workhorse of the American Eugenics Movement,” Controlling Heredity: The American Eugenics Crusade: 1870-1940, University of Missouri Special Collections and Rare Books, https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/eugenics/laughlin.htm; Andrea Den Hoed, “The Forgotten Lessons of the American Eugenics Movement,” New Yorker, April 27, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-american-eugenics-movement.
Laughlin’s influence was lasting. He later praised Hitler for understanding that the “central mission of all politics is race hygiene.” The Reichstag modeled their eugenics laws after Laughlin’s model and the American eugenicist continued to give support for the Third Reich throughout his life.
[10] American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, “Indiana Jewish History,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/indiana-jewish-history.
[11] Stephen A. Vincent, “History,” Roberts Settlement, http://www.robertssettlement.org/history.html.
[12] Indiana Historical Bureau, “Saint Theodora Guerin,” Indiana State Historical Marker Text and Notes, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4330.htm.
[13] Indiana Historical Bureau, “Little Syria on the Wabash,” Indiana State Historical Marker Text and Notes, https://www.in.gov/history/markers/4404.htm.
[14] Madison, Plenary Address, 2019.
[15] Madison, Hoosiers, 247.
[16] Jill Weiss Simins, “Complicity in Neutrality? Samuel Ralston Denies Klan Affiliation, Hoosier State Chronicles Blog, July 17, 2018, https://blog.history.in.gov/samuel-ralston-denies-klan-affiliation/
[16] Jill Weiss Simins, “History Unfolded Part 7: Child Refugees, Hoosier Resistance,” Hoosier State Chronicles Blog, January 25, 2019, https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/tag/immigration-quotas/.
[17] Madison, Hoosiers, 253.
[18] Simins, “Complicity in Neutrality? 2018.
[19] Senate Vote #126 in 1924 (68th Congress) “To Agree to Report of Conference Committee on H.R. 7995 . . . A Bill to Limit the Immigration of Aliens into the United States, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/68-1/s126.
[20] House Vote #90 in 1924 (68th Congress) “To Agree to the Report of Conference Committee on H.R. 7995, to Limit the Immigration of Aliens into the United States,” https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/68-1/h90.
[21] University of Virginia, “Harding, Coolidge, and Immigration,” July 6, 2016, Miller Center, https://millercenter.org/issues-policy/us-domestic-policy/harding-coolidge-and-immigration.
[22] Jill Weiss Simins, “History Unfolded Part 7: Child Refugees, Hoosier Resistance,” Hoosier State Chronicles Blog, January 25, 2019, https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/tag/we-remember/.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Madison, Hoosiers, 238.
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.
