Her name might not be in Who’s Who Among African Americans, or have household recognition like Madam C.J. Walker, but Ida Hagan broke barriers not only for her race, but her gender. From a young age, Hagan bore the burden of being the only Black person in the room. Perhaps this garnered the tenacity required of her in 1904, when her appointment as deputy postmaster of the post office in Ferdinand, Indiana drew intense local resistance and national attention. This would only be the first stop on her professional journey, and she would go on to become a pharmacist and labor union organizer.
Born May 24, 1888, Ida Priscilla Hagan grew up in the Pinkston Settlement, a free Black settlement west of Ferdinand. It was founded in the mid-1800s by her great-grandfather, Emanuel Pinkston Sr. In 1897, the Huntingburgh Argus wrote that “There are 5694 white children in the district schools of Dubois County and our little colored girl whose name is Ida Hagan. Ida is eight years of age and is a pet pupil in District No. 4 in Ferdinand Township.” She graduated with honors from the Gehlhausen School in Ferdinand Township in 1902, with the Huntingburgh Independent claiming that she was “the first colored pupil in Dubois county [sic] to graduate from the district schools in this county.” Hagan was also reportedly the first Black resident in the county to attend a public high school, Huntingburg High School.
Pinkston Settlement Cemetery, tombstone with American flag is Ida Hagan’s grandfather, Ben Hagan, Sr. Photo courtesy of the author.
Her life would change when she met Swiss-born Ferdinand physician, Dr. Alois Wollenmann. After his wife, Fidelia, died during childbirth, he hired Hagan to help care for his two sons and assist in his drug store, the Adler Apothak. The store also served as the town’s post office, of which Dr. Wollenmann was postmaster. Hagan remained with the Wollenmann family during the week, and on the weekend she would return to the Pinkston Settlement. In 1904, at age 16, he appointed Hagan deputy postmaster.
It was unclear to residents and newspaper editors around the state why Dr. Wollenmann appointed a Black girl, despite receiving job applications from white girls. Threats were made to burn the doctor in effigy and boycott his office, but the doctor did not seem alarmed and showed no inclination to yield to the “unwarranted prejudices” of critics. The English News on August 19, 1904 noted of the appointment “The patrons of the office are much incensed at the appointment of a colored person for assistant, and especially since the lady was not even a resident of the town.”
The Logansport Daily Reporter noted of Hagan:
In an interview she said that people were glad to see her working in their houses and she cannot see why they object to her working as a deputy in the post office. She said that if she had known her appointment would have the storm that it has, she would not have accepted, but that now she will hold on to it, and the doctor will keep her, she does not propose to be driven out if she can help it.
Nevertheless, Hagan withstood the pressure and excelled at her job, endearing herself to the community with her efficiency, kindness (especially for the infirm and elderly), and ability to speak the Low German spoken by many of the locals.
Dr. Alois Wollenmann in his office, Ferdinand News, September 26, 1891, accessed Newspapers.com.
While working at the store, and under Dr. Wollenmann’s tutelage, Hagan took a home study course in pharmacy offered by Winona Technical Institute, the precursor to Butler University. She received her Indiana pharmacy license in 1909. She was just 20 years old, an accomplishment for anyone that young, let alone a Black woman. According to John Clark (Assistant Professor at the College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida), Keenan Sala (Indiana State Archivist), and Dr. Gregory Bond (Assistant Director of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy), Hagan became the first known licensed female Black pharmacist in the state and likely the youngest in the nation.
Hagan could certainly be described as a trailblazer in the field of pharmacy, joining Harriet Marble, Julia Pearl Hughes, and Anna Louise James as some of the first Black women in pharmaceuticals. These young women were privileged and attended schools like Howard University, Meharry Pharmaceutical College, Brooklyn College, among other notable universities. Hagan, however, took home study courses while working at the drug store and post office, and caring for Dr. Wollenmann’s children.
On October 17, 1903, tragedy struck when Dr. Wollenmann fell ill with tuberculosis. In an attempt to heal, he temporarily left his sons in Hagan’s care and returned to his native Switzerland to recuperate and visit with his sister. In his absence, he reappointed Hagan deputy postmaster to manage duties. However, just weeks after his return to Ferdinand, he passed away at the age of 48. Upon his untimely death, Hagan became acting postmaster, one of the first Black women in Indiana to hold this position. The Indianapolis Recorder noted on July 27. 1912 “Ida’s honesty and integrity has won the respect and confidence of the community in which she lives and the position tendered her is a tribute paid not only to Miss Hagan, but to the race.”
Hagan held the position until she resigned weeks later, possibly stemming from her impending marriage to Alfred Roberts, a typesetter for the Indianapolis Recorder. Ida joined Alfred in the capital city, where she began her new life as a pharmacist at the Eureka Drug Store on West Street.
In 1915, Ida Hagan Roberts moved to Gary, accepting a position as a pharmacist for Dr. Arthur Adams who had just opened The Adams Pharmacy. The Recorder published an article about the new store, stating:
This is a pleasing, and remarkable Race Enterprise, in which the colored citizens of Gary, should be very proud of indeed, and not only the citizens of Gary, but those citizens of Chicago who visit Gary frequently and who have been segregated by white people in seeking a place for refreshments, and which you and your friends are always welcome. . . . Dr. Arthur is a well-known citizen in not only Gary, but through the state, and is worthy of the support and confidence of every race loving Negro.
Ida Hagan, photo sent to author’s mother, Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher.
In 1925, Ida filed for divorced from Alfred Roberts, and on September 29, 1926, she married Sidney Whitaker, a railroad porter working for the Pullman Company, and moved to Detroit. He is likely the reason she became involved with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), founded in 1925 by the elder statesman of the Civil Rights Movement, A. Philip Randolph. BSCP was the first predominantly-Black labor union, composed of highly-educated porters and maids hired by George Pullman to work on his sleeping cars. Pullman workers were expected to work long shifts for low pay and in poor working conditions, especially compared to white workers. The BSCP challenged these inequities.
Six weeks after the union was founded, wives and relatives of porters formed the BSCP Ladies Auxiliary. These women became labor conscious activists, demanding consumer, and workers’ rights. They were credited with helping to make the BSCP the first successful national Black trade union in the nation. Ida served as president of the Detroit Division of the Ladies Auxiliary of the BSCP, which generated financial support and advocated for public policy measures, such as grade labeling of canned food products. She was involved in the Auxiliary until the 1950s, when the rise in ownership of private automobiles, improved air transportation, and construction of interstates minimized the need for railroads.
Ladies Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters of Detroit 11th anniversary gathering, courtesy of the Detroit Tribune, May 27, 1956.
At the age of 76, Ida continued to lobby for equal rights. John Dotson, Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Detroit Free Press, reported on March 10, 1965, that she joined 10,000 protesters in Detroit, marching in solidarity with those in Selma, Alabama agitating for Black voting rights. She summoned her BSCP Auxiliary friends to join her in the local march, telling the paper “’I just hope and pray that this is an awakening for those who don’t know what we’re up against.’” Ida Whitaker joined college students, who cut class to attend the orderly march. The paper summarized:
Detroit’s [march] wasn’t like the ‘glorious day’ of the March on Washington, but you got the feeling that this one meant more.’ Ida remained active in civil rights, religious and civic causes the remainder of her life. She saw results from her hard work and was quoted as saying, ‘It’s better to wear out than to rust out.’
Ida Hagan (left), courtesy of Ferdinand News; Ben Hagan, Jr. & Larkin Pinkston, courtesy of Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher.
Ida (Hagan) Whitaker died on February 8, 1978, and was buried alongside her husband, Sidney, at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit. The Detroit Public Library was unable to locate obituaries for either of them. After an intense search for an obituary in all available Detroit newspapers, and with the help of many different sources, it is questionable that their obituary was ever published. The Michigan Death Records provide only the date of her death. She was childless, her brother never had children and he preceded her in death, so no one was left to tell her story.
No one, that is, but us.
On Saturday, May 31, 2025, the State of Indiana will honor Ida Hagan Whitaker with a Historical Marker, to be installed in Ferdinand, at the former site of Dr. Wollenmann’s Adler Apothak and the Ferdinand’s Post Office.
Sources Used:
Databases
Ancestry.com
Hoosier State Chronicles
Newspapers.com
Experts/Advisors:
Dr. Gregory Bond, National Institute on History of Pharmacy
Dr. John Clark, University of South Florida, Pharmacy
Rosemary Stewart
Eric Uebelhor
Newspapers Detroit Free Press Detroit News Detroit Tribune English Times Ferdinand News Indianapolis Recorder Jasper Herald Logansport Pharos
Organizations
Christ the King Catholic Church, Detroit
Detroit Catholic Archdiocese
James Cole Funeral Home
Michigan Dept. of Licensing & Regulatory Affairs
St. Benedict Catholic Church, Detroit
St. Frances D’Assisi, Detroit
St. Rita’s Catholic Church. Indianapolis
Repositories
Butler University
Detroit Public Library (Burton Historical Collection)
Dubois County Museum
Indiana Historical Society
Indiana State Archives & Records Administration
Indiana State Library
Indiana University Indianapolis University Library
Jasper–Dubois County Public Library
Lake County Public Library
Michigan State Archives
Michigan State Library
Plainfield-Guilford Township Public Library
Secondary
Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998)
Gary Alan Fine, “The Pinkston Settlement: An Historical and Social Psychological Investigation of the Contact Hypothesis,” Phylon 40, no. 3 (3rd Quarter, 1979): 229-242, accessed JSTOR.org
Misc.
Imelda (Uebelhor) Becher’s Scrapbook
Indiana Bd. of Pharmacy
Michigan Bd. of Pharmacy
Michigan Chronicles
Michigan Death Records
Midwest Druggist
Pamphlet, “Miss Virginia Brooks: 20th Century Joan of Arc,” 1913, Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department, Iowa City, accessed Wikipedia.
“West Hammond has been electrified of late by what a woman—a woman of intelligence, of action and indomitable courage—can accomplish.”
-Munster Times, 1911
The woman described by the Times was one Virginia Brooks, also dubbed “Joan of Arc” of the burgeoning village of West Hammond. She was determined to end the mistreatment of vulnerable residents and expel corrupt politicians from West Hammond (now Calumet City)—an Illinois town that overlapped into Indiana. Brooks did this by delivering speeches in barrooms, confronting law enforcement officials, and founding her own publication. After realizing the limitations of protests and the press, Brooks embraced the Women’s Suffrage Movement as means of change, leading the charge alongside suffragists like Ida B. Wells.
Brooks was in her early 20s and studying music in Chicago when she received a notification that drew her to West Hammond. According to the Indianapolis News, upon her father’s death, she and her mother, Flora, inherited property in the village. Alerted to $20,000 worth of special assessments against it, they made a trip to the area to investigate. Virginia was stunned by the dilapidated condition of the village and prevalence of casinos and barrooms. Thus, began her reform work.
In early 1911, West Hammond was on the precipice of becoming a city, pending a special municipal election. However, Brooks, with the help of her mother, mounted a campaign to maintain its status as a village. Should the area become a city, vice would essentially be institutionalized and corruption amplified. Preventing this would be quite the feat, as the Times wrote, “The political machine was dead against” the women and their allies.
Brooks gathered locals at Mika’s Hall to discuss the upcoming election. She and organizer August Kamradt spoke to the primarily Polish audience about how city leaders used taxpayers’ money for their own gain, leaving sewers and sidewalks crumbling. Brooks’s sentiments were extremely well-received, and she persuaded attendees to sign a petition asking the State Attorney of Cook County to investigate public officials’ use of tax money.
West Hammond’s 4,000 residents, many of whom were European immigrants, seemingly had little choice but to pay constantly-increasing rent and “special assessments,” which impoverished them further. Despite this, the Huntington Herald noted that male villagers were fairly apathetic until “this young girl. . . . Virginia Brooks has set in motion the levers that work mighty changes.” As the election approached, she spoke at barrooms late into the night, promising that if local efforts failed, she would “appeal to the president and the White House. And if that, too, is useless, she will take the law in her own hands.”
Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1911, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
Brooks’s radical strategies elicited death threats. She laughed these off, although she did appreciate the young men who “formed a bodyguard” around her. On election day, she appealed to voters until the moment they stepped into the voting booth, which was monitored by two deputies Brooks had summoned to prevent fraud.
Despite the valiant fight, Brooks’s faction lost the election, and voters opted for city government by a vote of 227-196. In a scene seemingly plucked from a movie, just as victors celebrated into the night with a bonfire and parade, detectives from the State’s Attorney’s office infiltrated West Hammond. Brooks’s petition had born fruit. The Chicago Tribune reported that the detectives served subpoenas to “keepers of alleged disorderly houses and places where slot machines were found.” Opponents retaliated with more death threats and libel suits. Brooks was far from alone in her convictions, however. One “Taxpayer of West Hammond” wrote to the Hammond Times that “If ‘Virginia is crazy,’ the rest of us should ‘get the bug’ and help to clean things up.”
Following the election, Brooks leveraged another tool in her fight—the media. She established a semi-weekly publication called the Searchlight. Brooks told the Chicago Tribune that she would only publish articles that were backed by evidence, with the goal to “fight the grafters primarily and promote the interests of the working people who make up the bulk of the population.”
The Inter Ocean (Chicago), April 6, 1911, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
In addition to leveraging the press, Brooks engaged in physical confrontation as a means to effect change. In March of 1911, she and her “broom brigade,” composed of about twenty women, halted a paving project at One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Street. With municipal contract in hand, Brooks and her squadron—equipped with mops, rolling pins, and brooms—sat on piles of bricks, refusing to move for hours. They sat in protest of the city’s decision to hire laborers to install “graft bought” bricks of poor quality five inches too low. Not only that, but the city charged tax payers an exorbitant amount to do so. When workers’ attempts to appeal to the women failed, they summoned the police. Local newspapers reported, perhaps somewhat sensationally, that a fight for the ages ensued. The Indianapolis News relayed:
When the women refused to leave, the police tried to drive them off with clubs, and a hand-to-hand conflict followed. Several of the women were put out of the battle with slight injuries and their male supporters, who came to their aid when the police attacked, were badly beaten.
After combat and bloodshed, the police left and returned with arrest warrants. Virginia Brooks gladly went to jail, hoping her arrest would engender more support for the cause. She was correct, as the Hammond Times reported that the following day, “broad shouldered, firm mouthed women” returned to the work site and resumed the stand-in.
The intensity of the fight carried over to Brooks’s April 3rd trial, for which she was charged with disturbing the peace. According to the Times, the courtroom floors and walls were lined with observers, many of whom were women who “shoved and crowded among the men” to take in every word. Officer John Okraj testified that Brooks had struck him in the face after being placed under arrest. The Times reported that Brooks, “an excellent witness in her own behalf,” testified that Officer Okraj likely didn’t know his own strength, and that he hurt her when he forcefully grabbed her neck. Her response was “but a primitive action, an instinctive motion, which anyone would make when attacked from the rear.”
Ultimately, the jury found Brooks guilty, but she was fined only $1. Just as jurors convicted her, she received word that State Attorney Wayman pledged to investigate graft charges in the village. This investigation likely spurred the indictment of City Clerk Martin Finneran in May. He was charged with collecting and depositing taxes from the Michigan Central Railroad into his personal account one week after he was dismissed from the office of West Hammond village collector. And, just a few months after Brooks’s trial, her battle against exploitation and “exorbitant special assessments” paid off. The Hammond Times reported that a county circuit court judge ruled in her favor regarding the work at One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth, resulting in a 30% reduction “of the original cost and an extra assessment of about $5,000.”
Pamphlet, “Miss Virginia Brooks: 20th Century Joan of Arc,” 1913, Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department, Iowa City, accessed Wikipedia.
Overjoyed taxpayers organized a band concert in celebration. Her widely-publicized achievements attracted love interests and generated about fifty marriage proposals, according to the Chicago Tribune. She responded “‘I wouldn’t marry the best man alive'” because “politics comes before love with me.”
Instead, Brooks focused on ousting the old village leadership to ensure that the newly-dubbed city would be managed by reputable councilors. According to the Evansville Press, in August 1911, she threatened the village council president that if he refused to convene a municipal election she would “expose the whole outfit.” The paper reported tellingly that immediately after her threat, the “president announced that he was sick and would have to go to the hospital for a couple of months.”
While awaiting word of a municipal election, Brooks led the charge in another election. She convened a mass meeting at Mika’s to persuade residents to vote against a new proposal by the village board. It would tax residents to build a private power line, which would solely benefit the Interstate Electrical Company. Despite being issued “mutilated ballots,” indignant voters managed to defeat the board’s proposal. The Indianapolis News noted that Brooks hired carriages to take voters to the polls, resulting in the “biggest vote ever known in the city’s history.” In fact, local papers suggested that such a resounding defeat could result in her nomination for mayor of West Hammond.
The Times (Munster, IN), April 2, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
Realizing that this could never be achieved without the female vote, Brooks embraced the women’s suffrage movement, which she had previously dismissed as unnecessary. Mass meetings and protests could only go so far without women’s voting rights. In the spring of 1912, she infiltrated Chicago restaurants to lay out the urgent need for enfranchisement. The Munster Times noted “instead of waiting until her audience came to her she took her speech to the places where sufficient numbers of persons were gathered to make audiences for her.” Her speeches were met with resounding applause from diners.
Immediately after this brief crusade, organizers asked Brooks to speak at the Indiana’s Women’s Franchise League annual convention in Indianapolis. Of the prominent Hoosier suffrage leaders, like Dr. Amelia Keller and Grace Julian Clarke, the Indianapolis News reported that Brooks “easily attracted the most attention at the convention.” She described for her fellow suffragists how she had mobilized for reform, gripping them with the story of hand-to-hand combat in West Hammond. However, she had recently embraced a strategy more familiar to audience members—many of whom were upper-middleclass women— lobbying state senators. Brooks told convention-goers, “The women need the ballot, and the country needs women voters . . . We don’t want to mix in the dirty politics of the men, but we do want to work with them to make things better.”
Dr. Hannah Graham, president of Indiana’s other major suffrage organization, the Equal Suffrage Association (ESA), invited Brooks to speak at an ESA meeting, along with union leader Frank Hayes, Indianapolis Mayor Lew Shank, and prominent Black attorney F.B. Ransom. Perhaps this meeting of the minds and exchange of ideas inspired Brooks to pursue law. According to the Indianapolis Star, Brooks told Dr. Graham, “I have property, and in my fights against corrupt politicians a knowledge of law certainly would help me.” Dr. Graham revealed that she was currently studying at the Indiana Law School and suggested the two drive there that very day. Brooks took her up on the suggestion and met with faculty, telling them she wanted to study law to aid the “poor Polish people in West Hammond.” She became the third woman to enroll in the junior class.
Brooks’s experience mobilizing at the local and state level served her well at the famed National American Woman Suffrage Association parade in Washington, D.C. She joined thousands of women from across the country on March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Hoping to draw widespread attention to the need for enfranchisement, the women paraded throughout the nation’s capital, some in costume and others hoisting banners.
Virginia Brooks and Ida B. Wells at the 1913 National American Woman Suffrage Association parade, courtesy of Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1913, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
Brooks and Belle Squires led the Illinois delegation. According to Ron Grossman’s 2020 Chicago Tribune article, organizers ordered Brooks’s friend and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells to march at the back of the parade with the other Black suffragists. Rather than concede, Wells opted to sit out altogether, despite Brooks’s insistence that they march together. At the last minute, Wells ran towards Squires and Brooks, and the three women flanked the head of the delegation. Despite violence perpetrated against some of the marchers, the 1913 parade catalyzed public support for women’s suffrage and reinvigorated the movement.
The parade may have been the zenith of Brooks’s activism. Just one month later—despite her earlier pronouncements about marriage—she wed Chicago Tribune photographer Charles Washburne and the couple relocated to Chicago. Brooks said of West Hammond, “‘The fight is over there, and I guess we have won. We are going to settle down.'” She went on to write for the Tribune, volunteer at the Hull House, and lecture at chautauquas. She drew upon her experiences to author books about social issues like My Battle With Vice and The Little Lost Sister. Around 1918, Virginia relocated to Portland, Oregon with her mother and son, Brooks. After months of illness, she passed away at the age of 42, just a few months before the stock market crash. She likely would have agitated relentlessly for relief like Hoosier reformer Theodore Luesse did during the Great Depression. Despite a life cut short, Brooks demanded accountability and fearlessly effected change in The Region.
Sources:
“The Right Sort of Courage,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 5, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Villagers Swarm to Gathering,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 26, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks, West Hammond’s Joan of Arc,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 28, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Death Threats Against Girl,” Fort Wayne News, January 31, 1911, 10, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl is Defeated in Reform Fight,” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1911, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Village is to Become City in May,” The Times (Hammond, IN), February 1, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Sued by City Officials,” News-Democrat (Paducah, KY), February 4, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Editorial by “A Taxpayer of West Hammond,” “Ought to Clean Up,” The Times (Hammond, IN), February 6, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks Starts as Editor to Rid Her Town of Election Frauds,” Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, February 13, 1911, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“One Girl’s Sunday Fight to Clean Up ‘The Rottenest Town in the Country,'” Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 5, 1911, 47, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl Routs Paving Gang,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1911, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Riot in Village; Girl is Jailed,” The Times (Hammond, IN), March 25, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Girl Leader of Mob Thrown in Jail After Day of Bloodshed,” Inter Ocean (Chicago), March 26, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Comedy Injected in Trial,” The Times (Hammond, IN), April 4, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks is Fined by Jury,” Chicago Tribune, April 6, 1911, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
United Press, “Village Joan of Arc After the Grafters,” Evansville Press, August 16, 1911, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Brooks Still Active,” South Bend Tribune, May 25, 1911, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks Wins Another Battle,” The Times (Hammond, IN), July 11, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks vs. Woman Suffrage,” The Times (Hammond, IN), August 14, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
“New War Stirs West Hammond,” Chicago Tribune, August 14, 1911, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Mass Meeting Across the Line,” The Times (Hammond, IN), November 1, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Bond Issue in Fought,” The Times (Hammond, IN), November 7, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Virginia Books Wins Fight Against Bonds,” Indianapolis News, November 8, 1911, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks of Hammond,” Indianapolis Star, November 15, 1911, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Settlement was Nicely Remembered,” The Times (Munster, IN), January 5, 1912, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Virginia Brooks Campaigning,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 10, 1912, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Suffrage ‘Joan of Arc’ Speaking to Restaurant Guests,” The Times (Munster, IN), April 2, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
“New Constitution Desired by Women,” Indianapolis News, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
Betty Blythe, “Miss Brooks, Suffrage ‘Joan of Arc,’ Tells How She Rules West Hammond,” Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1912, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Graft is Scored by Miss Brooks in Ballot Plea,” Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Women Ignored by ‘Constitution,'” South Bend Tribune, April 4, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Man Thrown into Ditch,” Indianapolis News, April 23, 1912, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Warm Supporter Cause of Suffrage,” Indianapolis News, April 24, 1912, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Miss Brooks Plans to Study Law Here,” Indianapolis Star, April 25, 1912, 10, accessed Newspapers.com.
Chicago Daily Tribune, March 5, 1913, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
Virginia Brooks, My Battles with Vice (Macaulay Co., 1915), accessed Archive.org.
“Mrs. Virginia Washburne, Writer, Lecturer, is Dead,” Oregon Daily Journal, July 15, 1929, 7, accessed Newspapers.com.
“Prominent Woman Dies,” The Oregonian, July 18, 1929, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
Ron Grossman, “Flashback: Fighting for the Vote and Against Vice: Virginia Brooks was the Chicago Area’s Own ‘Joan of Arc,'” Chicago Tribune, August 21, 2020, accessed chicagotribune.com.
“Former ‘Bad’ Town Now an Ideal Spot,” Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.
During the Progressive Era, Black women were often excluded from both white reform initiatives and male-dominated Black organizations. In response, Black women across the nation formed local clubs that allowed them to exercise agency and agitate for reform. The club movement was especially popular in Indianapolis. Editor Nina Mjagkij found that, “Between 1880 and 1920, Indianapolis’s black club women created more than five hundred clubs that addressed a wide range of social issues and laid the foundation for political activism.”[1] These clubs comprised educated upper-middle class women who sought to address problems such as urbanization, racial and gender barriers, education, and public health.[2]
Educator and reformer Ada B. Harris led the Black women’s club movement in Norwood, a historic neighborhood located in Southeast Indianapolis. The previous Untold Indiana Blog commemorated Harris’ decades-long career as an educator at Harriett Beecher Stowe School No. 64, one of the only public schools for Black children in Indianapolis. It also discussed her tireless work to fundraise and build communal spaces in the segregated city. This second blog will examine her leadership in the Black women’s club movement and how it related to the national Black Progressive movement.
Black Civic Involvement & Women’s Suffrage
Harris dedicated much of her time advocating for Black women’s suffrage and participating in civic projects. In 1894, Harris helped establish the Corinthian Baptist Church’s Women’s Club, which later became the Woman’s Civic Club. With over 300 members, the club encouraged Black women’s participation in politics by offering education about voting, hosting political discourse, and inviting prominent speakers to Norwood.[3] In 1904, they hosted prominent reformer May Wright Sewall at the A.M.E. Chapel for a fundraising event.[4] Harris herself often spoke to club members, discussing the ideology of major civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Dubois. The Woman’s Civic Club often collaborated with other clubs and organizations in Indianapolis, including the church’s Men’s Civic Club, the Good Citizens League, and the Flanner Guild.
In 1917, Harris volunteered to help register women for the Indianapolis Woman’s Franchise Leagues’ upcoming constitutional convention.[5] The League was one of the leading suffragist groups in the city and instrumental in organizing public rallies such as a statewide automobile tour in 1912 and marching to the statehouse in 1913.
Women won the right to vote in 1920 and Harris soon mobilized to educate Black women on political matters and encourage them to vote. In 1925, Harris held a “nonpartisan citizenship school,” at the YWCA on North West and Twelfth Street to “inform the women on the principles of the leading political parties and the issues of the campaign.” The Indianapolis News reported that over 100 Black women attended.[6] She also served on a women’s political committee which helped involve women in local politics. Throughout her career, she also spoke at various associations and organizations on how to register and vote, even becoming a public notary and holding “voting parties” in Norwood.[7]
Harris’s ideas of civic duty and virtue did not end at the ballot box. During World War I, Harris founded the Franchise Economy Club, which coincided with the national rationing movement. Members learned homespun canning techniques for a myriad of vegetables, including “green grapes, rhubarb, beans, peas and greens.”[8] Harris was so dedicated to the conservation of foodstuffs on the homefront that she traveled to West Lafayette to attend Purdue University’s conservation school in 1918. Notably, she was the only Black student to enroll in this course.[9] Learning cutting edge-methods for canning and food preservation, Harris would return to Norwood and disseminate this information to the public through local classes. She even converted an old building into a modern kitchen to aid her teaching.[10] These many activities demonstrate Harris’s deep commitment to both obtaining the vote and Black political participation.
“Norwood Cooking Class,” Indianapolis Star, August 4, 1918, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
Women’s Improvement Club & Health Initiatives
While Harris was involved in numerous clubs and organizations, perhaps her most important work stemmed from her leadership of the Women’s Improvement Club (WIC). Founded by Lillian Thomas Fox in 1904 as an exclusive literary club for upper-middle-class Black women, the members soon decided to pursue philanthropic ventures. At the time the local hospital refused to open a tuberculosis ward for Black patients, leaving a devastating gap in Black healthcare.[11] Additionally, Norwood struggled with underdeveloped infrastructure and poor sanitation, increasing the risk of disease for its residents.[12] WIC decided to open a fresh-air camp where Black tuberculosis patients could rest and receive care.
Already familiar with grassroots organizing and fundraising, Harris was instrumental in establishing the Oak Hill Camp. Meeting minutes show that she co-led the club committee responsible for establishing Oak Hill, and scoped out possible locations for the camp herself. In addition, she headed fundraising and organizational efforts to buy supplies for the camp and solicit Black physicians and nurses to care for patients.[13]
Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
The Oak Hill Tuberculosis Camp opened in spring of 1905 and treated six patients. According to club member Lee Johnson, “the setting was very beautiful for the patients, located on a high hill with grand oak trees spreading their shady boughs over a tiny stream that trickled at the base.”[14] The Indianapolis News noted that Oak Hill was one of the only healthcare resources for Black Tuberculosis patients in Indianapolis. The camp soon had a waiting list of patients.[15] Until its closure in 1916, Oak Hill was annually organized, sponsored, and funded by the philanthropy of WIC. Running on a shoestring budget of charity funds, WIC solicited volunteers to help operate the camp and many Black physicians and nurses donated their personal time.
Club women also went beyond the camp, launching city-wide educational campaigns and facilitating trainings for Black nurses otherwise barred from white training programs to treat tuberculosis patients. They also attempted to lobby the City Hospital to build a cottage for Black patients, but these efforts proved unsuccessful.[16]
In 1916, the camp was closed but WIC continued its work aiding tuberculosis patients. They loaned tents to the homes of patients, assisted them in finding other healthcare services, and provided transportation for many. They also continued facilitating nurse training programs and bought an official club cottage at 535 Agnes Street in 1922. The club would continue its various tuberculosis initiatives until the 1960s, when medical advances reduced the threat of tuberculosis.[17] As a founding member of the club and a major force for the camps’ organization and fundraising, Harris helped address a major and tragic gap in Black healthcare.
Oak Hill Tuberculosis Camp, 1905, photograph, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.
Conclusion
Harris exemplifies the Black Progressive club woman movement in her devotion to the period’s philosophy of Black self-help and improvement through local, grassroots organization. Originally excluded from Progressive reform, Black club women across the nation such as Harris were able to claim the Progressive philosophy for their own communities and causes, namely that of suffrage and racial inequality. In doing so, Harris and other women emboldened their local communities to be active agents for change.
By advocating for public education, encouraging Black women’s political participation, and helping to provide health care to TB patients, Harris enhanced the living standards of Norwood. Her work also empowered Black citizens to agitate for their own welfare, paving the way for the future Civil Rights Movement. In short, Black reform went beyond simply improving local communities and, by upholding standards of excellence, these reformers made a compelling argument that they too deserved a proverbial seat at America’s dinner table. They sought an equal chance. When asked about her work in Norwood, Harris stated,
“My field has been small in Norwood, but it has been plenty large enough for my abilities. At least I shall have spent my life for my race.” – Ada B. Harris[18]
When historians and current residents recount Norwood’s storied history, they ought to recognize one of their best reformers and advocates in Ada B. Harris.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Kisha Tandy, curator at the Indiana State Museum, for spearheading the marker application for Ada B. Harris and conducting the initial research into Harris’s life and legacy.
For Further Reading
Ferguson Rae, Earline. “The Woman’s Improvement Club of Indianapolis: Black Women Pioneers in Tuberculosis Work, 1903-1938.” Indiana Magazine of History 84, no. 3 (September 1998): 273-261.
[3] Description of mock political debate given by women, Indianapolis News, October 27, 1892, 2, accessed newspapers.com; Announcement of Harris giving a speech at Corinthian Baptist Church, Indianapolis News, October 8, 1900, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; “Woman’s Club Notes,” Indianapolis Recorder, August 10, 1907, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] “In Colored Circles,” Indianapolis News, April 25, 1904, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
[5] “Registration Week for Women of the City,” Indianapolis News, June 23, 1917, 18, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[6] “Organizing Voting School,” Indianapolis News, September 18, 1920, 19, accessed Newspapers.com; “Citizenship School Held,” Indianapolis News, October 2, 1920, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] “Registration Week for Women of the City,” Indianapolis News, June 23, 1917, 18, accessed Newspapers.com; Kisha B. Tandy, “Ada Harris: Civic Leader, Educator, and Entrepreneur,” accessed Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, May 2023, https://indyencyclopedia.org/ada-harris/.
[8] “Norwood Has an Economy Club,” Indianapolis Star, July 29, 1917, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[9] Article on Harris attending Purdue University for women’s conservation school, Indianapolis News, July 6, 1918, p. 9, accessed via Newspapers.com
[10] Article on Franchise Economy Club, Indianapolis News, January 19, 1918, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; article on Harris attending Purdue University for women’s conservation school, Indianapolis News, July 6, 1918, 9, accessed Newspapers.com; “Norwood Cooking Class,” Indianapolis Star, August 4, 1918, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.
[11] Earline Rae Ferguson, “The Woman’s Improvement Club of Indianapolis: Black Women Pioneers in Tuberculosis Work, 1903-1938,” Indiana Magazine of History 84, no. 3 (September 1988): 237-261.
[12] “Bad Condition at Norwood,” Indianapolis Journal, September 30, 1903, 10, accessed Newspapers.com; “Measles at Norwood,” Indianapolis News, December 17, 1903, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.
[13] Women’s Improvement Club Minute Books, 1919-1911, Women’s Improvement Club Collection, 1909-1965, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana; Women’s Improvement Club Minute Books, 1916-1918, Women’s Improvement Club Collection, 1909-1965, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana.
[14] Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[15] “For Tuberculosis Sufferers,” Indianapolis News, August 4, 1911, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
[16] Ferguson, “The Women’s Improvement Club,” 254.
[17] Lee A. Johnson, “Woman’s Improvement Club Rounds Out Thirty Years of Philanthropic service in Valiant Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Indianapolis Recorder, April 7, 1934, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[18] “Former ‘Bad’ Town Now an Ideal Spot,” Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.
Ada Harris, courtesy of The Drift 1925 (Indianapolis, Indiana: 1925), Butler Yearbooks, p. 62, accessed Digital Commons @ Butler University.
“My greatest ambition is for my race. I want to see my people succeed. I want to see them have an equal chance.”
– Ada B. Harris[1]
In the late 1800s and early 1900s the neighborhood of Norwood, which lay Southeast of downtown Indianapolis, was one of the most vibrant Black communities in the area. Originating during the Civil War, the 28th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) drilled a Camp Freemont near present-day Norwood, and, at the end of the war, many returned to the area and set down roots. The neighborhood was bolstered by the Great Migration during which Black Americans moved North to seek better economic opportunities and flee from Southern racial violence and discrimination.[2]
Living in a highly segregated society, the Norwood community struggled with poor infrastructure, poverty, and subpar sanitation during its early years. However, by 1909, something had changed within Norwood. The Indianapolis Star wrote, “A few years ago. . . Norwood was a moral blot on the map of Marion County. . .Today Norwood is a placid collection of homes. The stranger is accorded courtesy, and lawbreaking is almost unknown.” The article continued by discussing the infrastructure improvements noting, “Where a few years ago the settlement had no place for amusement, the town now boasts of a Boys’ Clubhouse, a dancing pavilion, run for the club’s benefit, and a little park with seats, grass and flowers.” When the newspaper talked with residents about the improvements and its origins, they found that, “with the same sureness that all roads lead to Rome, each circumstance goes directly to one source— Miss Ada Harris.”[3]
Reformer and educator Ada B. Harris embraced the Progressive Era philosophy of improvement and applied it to her community, championing a myriad of causes. An accomplished woman, Harris’s list of achievements is long enough to merit two blog posts examining her work as both an educator and progressive reformer. This post explores Harris’s decades-long career as a teacher and principal at Norwood’s Harriett Beecher Stowe School and her efforts to establish communal spaces and amenities for the Norwood neighborhood. In doing so, she boldly challenged local racial prejudice and elevated the welfare of Black Hoosiers in the segregated city.
Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry at Fort Lincoln, District of Columbia, ca. 1863, photographed by William Morris Smith, Prints and Photographs Division, accessed Library of Congress.
Harris was born on August 15, 1866, in Campbell, Kentucky to Robert Harris and Hannah Tolliver. She moved with her mother to Indianapolis as a child and graduated from Indianapolis High School (later renamed Shortridge High School) in 1888.[4] Upon graduation, Harris began teaching at School No. 5 in Norwood. At the time, School No. 5 was one-room schoolhouse that operated independently from the Indianapolis Public School System (IPS). It was one of the few schools that hired Black teachers and taught Black children in the segregated city. Harris stepped into a leadership position early on and was officially appointed principal by 1903, the same year the community decided to rename the school Harriett Beecher Stowe School No. 5 after the abolitionist.[5]
“Norwood Colored School Named for Harriett Beecher Stowe,” Indianapolis News, September 7, 1902, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.
Under Harris’s leadership, the school grew exponentially. In 1896, Harriett Beecher Stowed enrolled approximately 53 students. By 1903, enrollment was listed at over 150 pupils. Education was a core priority for the Norwood community. Ada B. Harris and other Indianapolis residents were inspired by author and activist W. E. B. Du Bois’s ideology. He argued that education, economic independence, and political activism were key to achieving full civil rights for the Black community. This philosophy turned educational settings such as School No. 5 into one of the central battlegrounds for the blooming Civil Rights Movement and struggle for equality in Reconstruction America.
The Indianapolis News described Harris as “a thorough teacher, loved and honored by every child of her school.”[6] Harris endeavored to provide students with a quality education and instill a sense of social responsibility in them. She hosted annual Thanksgiving dinners for the students, which “consisted of turkey, cranberry sauce, scalloped oysters, vegetables, pumpkin pie, ice cream, and cake.”[7] She also introduced sewing classes, organized and directed the school plays, and founded a parent’s club to involve them in their child’s education.[8] Steeped in the ideals of civic virtue, Harris attempted to instill those same morals into her students. In March of 1913, she and twenty of her students visited the county treasurer and filed their parents’ taxes. She emphasized that it was every citizen’s obligation to pay taxes and impressed a feeling of responsibility in the children.[9] Surely, the parents appreciated the field trip as well that year.
In 1912, Norwood was annexed by Indianapolis and the school incorporated into the Indianapolis Public School system.[10] School No. 5 became IPS No. 64, and Harris remained principal until her resignation in 1924.[11] In addition to teaching at No. 64, Harris also served as a vocational instructor for Emmerich Manual Training High School in 1921.[12] After resigning from School No. 64, Harris attended Butler College at the age of 60 and earned a college degree to “prepare herself for the more recent demands of the city schools.” Harris then accepted a teaching position at Rockville High School, but unfortunately suffered from a series of strokes and spent limited time at Rockville before passing away on September 9, 1927.[13] Throughout her career, Norwood residents praised her dedication to its students, and she consistently went above and beyond to provide them with not only a quality education but prepare them for their adult lives.
Perhaps one of Harris’s most impactful endeavors was establishing and leading the Boys’ Lookout Club. Established in 1904, the club’s objective was “the upbuilding of character and the general improvement of their [the boys] social condition.” Harris achieved this through teaching different skills related to social responsibility and civic virtue such as “good deportment in the home and public places, [and] kindness to animals and kindred subjects.”[14] The Boys’ Club met twice a month after school and early on they began fundraising to purchase land for a public gymnasium, reading room, and park for the community. A brilliant grassroots organizer, Harris led club efforts to solicit subscriptions for the land from Norwood residents. Her efforts proved wildly successful. In less than a year, the club bought land on Prospect Street for $2,000 to serve as the official Boys’ Club grounds. The property had a four-room farmhouse, a small brick building, and a barn, which was transformed into the Boys’ Club Pavilion. The club worked to transform the space, and it soon opened as a public park and picnic grounds for Norwood.[15] In an area with poor infrastructure and investment, the Boys’ Club grounds served as a key communal space for residents to relax, hold events, and socialize with one another.
“Boys’ Club of Norwood Plans Better Club House,” Indianapolis Star, June 16, 1909, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
Harris and the Boy’s Club soon set their sights on building a gymnasium. In August of 1907, the club organized a four-night carnival to fundraise for the gymnasium. In 1909, while reporting on the Boys’ Club, the Indianapolis Star wrote that “Miss Harris has so carefully handled the business affairs of the club in the past that she has already received promises of the support of many of the leading colored men and women of Indianapolis,” for the gymnasium. The gymnasium was successfully opened by 1910.[16] Harris’s ability to fundraise and organize for both the gym and club grounds demonstrates her strong leadership skills and influence. A grassroots endeavor, these efforts also show Norwood residents’ strong resolve to transform the area, which had received limited investment and infrastructure amid segregation, into a vibrant community. This community-driven mindset is still present in Norwood today through groups such as the Norwood Neighborhood Association which has advocated against the gentrification of the area.
In 1911, Harris organized a children’s library association to fundraise for a community library on the Boys’ Club grounds.[17] According to the Indianapolis News, this was in response to the Norwood school library burning down two years prior. Harris personally started the book collection for the library and began soliciting book donations. The library was opened officially in September of 1912 and the Indianapolis Star heralded it as the “first colored library in Indianapolis.”[18] The library opened with a collection of 1,000 books and opened professional opportunities for Black residents including Willa Resnover, who served as Norwood’s first librarian.[19] Ultimately, Harris’s leadership and exceptional fundraising abilities mobilized the Norwood neighborhood to invest in their community and, in response to segregation, create their own communal spaces to socialize, relax, and connect with one another.
Even after Harris’s death in 1927, the fruits of her grassroots organization and educational leadership have continued into modern day. Harriett Beecher Stowe School No. 64 operated and served the Norwood neighborhood for over a century, closing in 2009. Pride Park stands on the former property of the Boys’ Lookout Club and, in 2024, will be receiving new playground equipment. Modern-day Norwood residents take pride in the neighborhood’s roots and seek to honor its legacy by fostering the community’s tight-knit bonds and spearheading efforts to preserve its rich history. Many residents, such as Madonna Shaffner, can still trace their roots back to the 28th Indiana Infantry. Others have advocated for the establishment of “an intergenerational heritage center that would both honor Norwood’s past and provide a high-quality venue for community strengthening services and programming.” In many ways, the current residents echo and continue Harris’ legacy, seeking to continually improve Norwood’s housing, infrastructure, public services, and public education. Much of the community’s vibrancy and qualities can be attributed to a single dedicated teacher.
Part II examines Harris’s work as a progressive reformer beyond the classroom. It explores her work establishing a fresh-air tuberculosis camp, championing Black women’s suffrage, and patriotic homefront work during World War I. Stay tuned!
Notes:
[1] Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 33, accessed Newspapers.com.
[3] “Former ‘Bad’ Town Now an Ideal Spot,” Indianapolis Star, August 1, 1909, 25, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] “High School Commencement,” Indianapolis Journal, February 4, 1888, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[5] “Dedicate a Flagpole,” Indianapolis Star, September 8, 1903, 10, accessed Newspapers.com; “Harriet Beecher Stowe: Flagpole Raised with Ceremony at Norwood School,” Indianapolis Recorder, September 12, 1903, 1, accessed Newspapers.com; A Historical Sketch of School No. 64, 1953, Indianapolis Public Schools Digital Collection, accessed Indianapolis Public Library; History of Harriet Beecher Stowe School 64, 1969, Indianapolis Public Schools Digital Collection, accessed Indianapolis Public Library.
[6] “The Norwood School Trouble,” Indianapolis News, January 16, 1899, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
[7] “Dinner Served at School,” Indianapolis News, November 26, 1903, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.
[8] Indianapolis News, April 3, 1909, 5, accessed Newspapers.com; “Pupils appear in Play,” Indianapolis Star, June 9,1902, 14, accessed Newspapers.com; “Present One-Act Playlet,” Indianapolis Star, June 11, 1910, 14, accessed Newspapers.com; “A Successful Entertainment,” The Freeman, April 2, 1898, 8, accessed Google Newspapers.
[9] “To Pay Parent’s Taxes,” Indianapolis News, March 8, 1913, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[10] “Norwood School Now Public School No. 64,” Indianapolis Recorder, October 12, 1912, 2, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
[11] “Resignations,” Indianapolis Star, June 18, 1924, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.
[12] “Instructors Appointed,” Indianapolis Star, September 28, 1921, 15, accessed Newspapers.com.
[13] “Former Teacher is Dead,” Indianapolis News, September 17, 1927, 39, accessed Newspapers.com.
[14] “Boys’ Club at Norwood,” Indianapolis News, May 21, 1904, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
[15] “Building for Norwood Youth,” Indianapolis News, June 23, 1906, 8, accessed Newspapers.com; “Gymnasium for the Norwood Youth,” The Freeman, July 7, 1906, 4, accessed Google Newspapers; “Negroes may Have Club,” Indianapolis Star, July 22, 1906, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.
[16] Advertisement for a Boys’ Club Carnival, Indianapolis News, August 10, 1907, 11, accessed Newspapers.com; “Boys’ Club of Norwood Plans Better Club House,” Indianapolis Star, June 16, 1909, 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
[17] “For Library at Norwood,” Indianapolis News, April 24, 1911, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.
[18] “City’s First Colored Library is Dedicated,” Indianapolis Star, September 23, 1912,12, accessed Newspapers.com.
[19] “Norwood Library,” Indianapolis Recorder, May 6, 1911, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Norwood has a Library,” The Freeman, September 21, 1912, 8, accessed Google Newspapers.
Dr. Alois Wollenmann in his office, Ferdinand News, September 26, 1891, Newspapers.com
In the latter days of the summer of 1904, the decision of a local doctor and postmaster caused an uproar in Ferdinand, Indiana and even caught attention across the country. “People in the vicinity of Ferdinand do not like the action of the postmaster and are loud in condemning him,” wrote the Evansville Courier. The Fort Wayne Sentinel noted that “threats have been made to burn the doctor in effigy and boycott his office.” The Paris, Kentucky-based Bourbon News wrote that a “storm is raging among the white people” of Ferdinand after the appointment. The Nebraska City, Nebraska Daily Tribune noted that the public were “excited over” the decision.
What could have caused all this furor? Dr. Alois Wollenmann, pharmacist and postmaster of Ferdinand appointed 16-year-old Ida P. Hagan to the position of deputy postmaster. While her age might have been controversial enough, there was one particular detail about Hagan which might have been more important: she was a Black woman. Wollenmann, a Republican in an almost exclusively Democratic area, with mostly Democratic public officials, made the bold and courageous decision to appoint a Black young woman to be his assistant, at a time when racial terror lynchings were regular occurrences and Jim Crow was bifurcating the country. He stuck by his decision, saying that it was “his own business” whom he appointed as his assistant and she would “remain as assistant as long as he is postmaster in Ferdinand.”
Evansville Courier and Press, August 11, 1904, Newspapers.com
This decision represented the character of Alois Wollenmann, a Swiss immigrant who chose Ferdinand as his home and, through Hagan’s appointment, moved said home in the direction of racial equality. A skilled and versatile physician, Wollenmann routinely published articles on a wide array of topics, many on improving the lives of children. He served as Ferdinand’s dedicated postmaster for nearly fifteen years, winning the trust and support of the community. Wollenmann’s contributions to Ferdinand stand as examples of courage and commitment to community that still resonate with his adopted home.
Within a few years, Wollenmann received his state medical license and started providing medical services, including for impoverished residents, in Dubois County, where he was also a member of its medical society.[i] Wollenmann also provided the county with guidance on inquests for the mentally ill. In 1903, he assisted another doctor in deeming a young woman insane, fulfilling requirements for her transfer to the asylum in Evansville. He also provided life-saving care to accident victims like Victor Greve. An employee of the Pitts Lumber Company in Ferdinand, Greve “fell from a log wagon and in falling tore open his abdomen so badly that the viscera protruded.” Dr. Wollenmann and another doctor “were called at once and it is believed that he will fully recover before many days.”[ii] Another example of life-saving care from Wollenmann came in 1909, when Gerhard Hoefels, ravenously hungry, swallowed “a chunk of meat” and “nearly choked to death when Dr. Wollenman [sic] arrived and relived him of his suffering.” From assisting the mentally ill to saving people from asphyxiation, Dr. Alois Wollenmann always lent a helping hand.
When he wasn’t practicing medicine, Dr. Wollenmann wrote about it extensively. Numerous articles by him appeared in both English and German language journals, showcasing his wide talents as a physician. His 1895 contributions to Der praktische Arzt (The General Practitioner) included treating childhood insomnia and “atonic dyspepsia,” or gastrointestinal issues. In the January, 1897 issue of Leonard’s Illustrated Medical Journal, Wollenmann provided a medicinal prescription for combatting “acute bronchitis with protracted and putrid expectoration.” He published advice to young women with irregular menstrual cycles in a 1902 issue of the Medical and Surgical Monitor. A passage from one of his articles in the General Practitioner summed up his medical philosophy: “We cannot base our therapeutic intervention on a rigid pattern;” he wrote, “at every turn nature presents us with riddles, places obstacles in our path that we must try to solve and overcome with ingenuity.” With each publication, he stressed the need for physicians to tailor their approach to the specific disease or ailment as much as possible.
Wollenmann’s treatment of acute bronchitis, 1892, Google Books
While Dr. Wollenmann was deeply respected in the community for his medical work, he nevertheless experienced the brunt of controversy in 1900 (something he would experience again with his appointment of Hagan in 1904). That summer, he found himself in the middle of lawsuit, accused of “assault and battery upon Mrs. Mary Bornwasser.” According to the Huntingburgh Independent, Bornwasser visited Wollenmann’s drugstore and post office to pay some past-due postage when Dr. Wollenmann “accused her with having taken a bottle of cologne from the store the day before.” A “war of words” began between the two and Wollenmann “ejected her from the building.” The case dragged on for weeks, largely the result of a juror getting sick and the jury subsequently not agreeing on their decision; seven agreed to acquit Dr. Wollenmann and five agreed to convict him. Eventually, the case was thrown out by the presiding judge. This must have been a stressful time for Wollenmann, whose reputation was slightly tarnished by the whole affair.
From his pharmacy and post office duties to the medical services he provided to county government, Dr. Wollenmann fully adopted Ferdinand as his community, and this became more evident when he decided to build his family a new home. In the summer of 1902, the Huntingburgh Independent reported that “Dr. A. G. Wollenmann is tearing down his old dwelling house preparatory to building a handsome two-story frame in its place. It will be of the Swiss style.” In particular, it was in the Swiss chalet style and seen as “an ornament to our town and speaks well for the Doctor’s good judgement” by the local press.[iv]
All seemed well for Alois Wollenmann as he and his family entered 1903, but tragedy would upend their happiness and change the doctor forever. In October of that year, his wife Fidelia died after giving birth to their third child, a girl named Mary Margaret, who also died shortly thereafter. He would never remarry. The grief that he experienced must have been excruciating. While this horrific chapter in his life could have broken him, Wollenmann stayed resilient and continued to serve his chosen community. It also led to his hiring of a young woman who would leave a comparable impact on Ferdinand.
Ida P. Hagan, Ferdinand News, September 26, 1991, Newspapers.com
Ida P. Hagan, a young resident of Pinkston settlement, a Black community west of Ferdinand, started working for Dr. Wollenmann after the death of his wife, attending to his children and home. A bright and hard-working young woman, Hagan showed professional potential that Dr. Wollenmann quickly discovered, hiring her to work in his pharmacy and post office. As Pat Backer later wrote in the Ferdinand News, “It was about this time [the death of Mrs. Wollenmann] that Dr. Wollenmann first asked Ida Hagen [sic] and a Pinkston woman to help him out” and “they would stay the week in Ferdinand helping him, and on weekends they would return to the Freedom Settlement.” With the death of Fidelia, the pharmacy and post office required a new assistant, which Wollenmann offered to Hagan in August of 1904.
Much of the newspaper coverage of Hagan’s appointment was negative, mostly towards Dr. Wollenmann, and not Hagan herself. While the Fort Wayne Sentinel complimented Hagan as a “exceptionally good looking and intelligent young woman,” they nevertheless noted that some of the Ferdinand public “are demanding the doctor’s resignation as postmaster and declare that they will not have him as physician in their homes.” The most unnerving example comes from the Jasper Herald, which published a racist poem that mocked her appointment. An interview with Hagan appeared in the Jasper Weekly Courier, where she said “that people were glad to see her working in their homes and she cannot see why they object to her working as deputy in a post office.” Despite facing the prospect of a recall, Dr. Wollenmann kept Hagan as his deputy, the negative publicity died down over time, and he was reappointed postmaster in 1906, serving in the role until his death.
Obituary for Fidelia Wollenmann, Huntingburgh Independent, October 17, 1903, Newspapers.com
Dr. Wollenmann, believing in Hagan as a young woman with promise, took her on as a mentor. He started to train her in more than just the duties of the post office; he also educated her in medicine, encouraging her to complete a pharmacy home-study course from Winona Technical Institute, which in 1909 was “the largest school of its kind in Indiana in point of students enrolled, and it [was] the seventh largest in the United States,” according to the Scottsboro Chronicle. In her application for a state pharmacist’s license, Dr. Wollenmann submitted a letter attached to a “Certificate of Good Moral Character,” in which he wrote, “Ida P. Hagan is well prepared and qualified to pass the examination for registered pharmacist. Her character is strictly moral in every respect.” Hagan received her Indiana pharmacy license on January 13, 1909, making her one of the first known-licensed Black female pharmacists in Indiana. She subsequently resigned from her role as deputy postmaster and worked in pharmacies in Indianapolis, Gary, and somewhere in Henry County (the exact city is unknown). Wollenmann’s support of Hagan underscores his own commitment to his community and its diverse people.
The good doctor may have saved many lives, but it was ultimately his own that he couldn’t save. While his health problems likely started around 1906, when it was reported that “Dr. A. G. Wollenmann, who has been sick for several weeks, is on the road to recovery,” they likely escalated when he contracted tuberculosis in 1909, a virtual death sentence in early 20th century America (a vaccine wouldn’t be tested until 1921). As a medical professional, there’s a possibility that he contracted tuberculosis while attending to numerous patients.
Unfortunately, his condition deteriorated over the following months. Confined to a bed for the last three weeks of his life, “he was aware of the fact that he had not much longer to live and patiently awaited the hour that his Master would call him,” the FerdinandNews wrote. Despite all his medical knowledge, Dr. Alois Wollenmann died on June 20, 1912 at the age of 48, from complications of tuberculosis. As the Argus would write, “the dignified manner in which he consciously passed to the great beyond was a striking example.” His funeral was attended by numerous members of the Ferdinand and St. Meinrad communities, including colleagues, friends, and family. He was buried in St. Ferdinand Catholic Cemetery.
“No field of human activity offers so much variety, so much encouragement to reflection, comparison and independent action, as medical practice,” Alois Wollenmann wrote in his 1895 article, “About Insomnia in Children.” ‘Variety.’ ‘Independent action.’ ‘Encouragement to reflection.’ These phrases describe who Wollenmann was, not just as a physician but as a human being. In his time in Ferdinand, he was a doctor, postmaster, and local Republican party activist—quite a variety of roles. His independent action to appoint Ida Hagan as deputy postmaster took a level of fortitude that many lacked in his era. His wide array of medical knowledge no doubt came from years of quiet and deliberate reflection. In all of these traits, Dr. Alois Wollenman embodied a man dedicated to his craft and to his community, in ways still felt today.
Portrait of Alois Wollenmann, Ferdinand Historical Society
[ii] It is unclear if he actually recovered. A 1920 Census record lists a “Victor F. Grieve” who is around the right age, but it’s too little to be conclusive.
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.
San Francisco Call and Post, October 29, 1910. Newspapers.com.
On a “fair, warmer” fall day in Philadelphia, a friendly competition on the city streets occurred. The test would determine whether a “40 horse power gasoline” car or a “runabout” electric car would perform better in the congested thoroughfares of the City of Brotherly Love. Behind the wheel of the gas-powered car sat “Tod” Middleton, described by newspapers as an “expert” driver, “thoroughly familiar with Philadelphia streets.” The electric vehicle’s driver was an “enthusiastic” booster of electric cars, who wanted to prove that they could take on tasks typically associated with gas-powered automobiles.
The rules of the competition were simple: each driver had to make twenty-five trips within Philadelphia’s shopping district, parking and shutting off their car each time they reached a destination. They would then restart their vehicle and travel to the next place on their itinerary. Some of the stops included “department stores, theaters, railroad stations” as well as “hair-dressers, and candy stores.” Whoever completed all their trips the fastest was the winner.
Curiously, this race didn’t happen last week or even last year, and the electric car wasn’t a Tesla or Rivian. It was a Studebaker, the South Bend-based company, and the year was 1908. And the driver of the electric car? Her name was Laure Duval, and she worked as a salesperson at the Studebaker Brothers Company of New York. She wanted to prove the durability, reliability, and efficiency of Studebaker’s electric vehicles. (Efficiency was especially important; since the gasoline car needed to be hand-cranked every time it was started, and the electric car didn’t, this key design component proved instrumental in the 10-minute lead the electric car achieved.) Her race with Tod Middleton received coverage by newspapers all over the country, from Kansas City to San Francisco.
Studebaker’s electric cars became a mainstay of the company during the early years of the 20th century, providing vehicles for personal use as well as transport. They were also marketed in a unique way. Studebaker focused on city businessmen, and especially society women, as the premier customers for electric cars, hence the 1908 Philadelphia car competition. While gas-powered cars became the company’s focus by 1912, Studebaker’s innovative designs and skillful presentation nevertheless made their electric cars more than a mere fad. They showed the country that electric cars could be made cost-effectively and provide customers with a reliable, affordable means of personal transportation.
By 1897, Studebaker was “building and experimenting with a ‘horseless vehicle’,” according to company minutes. The Centralia Enterprise and Tribunepublished an article in their July 10, 1897 issue on a meeting of “forty-five Studebaker service men of the New York Metropolitan area . . . for a clinical demonstration and discussion on modern techniques in automobile repairs.” Studebaker employees, from district managers to branch service representatives, actively discussed how the company would build a car for commercial sale.
The company got closer to their vision by 1901, with help from two of America’s most visionary inventors. The South Bend Tribune reported that none other than Thomas A. Edison, the man behind the lightbulb and the motion picture camera, designed the battery for one of Studebaker’s two prototype automobile designs. “Mr. Edison has promised the Studebakers that they will have one of the first batteries for vehicle purposes,” the Tribune elaborated. The other vehicle prototype was developed with the assistance of Hiram P. Maxim of Westinghouse, Edison’s bitter corporate rival (and Nikola Tesla’s financial backer) in the legendary “electric current wars” of the 1890s. In the end, Westinghouse came out the victor in the “mini” electric current war, producing a battery that would “run the [electric] wagon fifty miles with a fifteen hundred pound load and two men without charging,” according to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in the fall of 1901.
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, November 18, 1901. Newspapers.com.
On November 16, 1901, Studebaker successfully tested its first electric automobile. The Marshall County Independent provided more detail on its specifications: “The vehicle carries under the middle of the bed an electric storage battery sufficient for a 50 mile run on good roads, and is geared for an average speed of 11 miles an hour.” The article also noted that Studebaker intended to test their electric car in the streets of Chicago, seven years before Laure Duval’s legendary test in Philadelphia.
Studebaker’s electric cars and trucks were quickly put into production and the company sold twenty by 1902. Studebaker executive Albert Russell Erskine, in his company history, wrote that “the first electric runabout was sold [on] February 12, 1902, to F. W. Blees of Macon, [Missouri].” Now part of this is true. F. W. Blees did, in fact, purchase a Studebaker electric runabout, but the date for his purchase is likely closer to October of 1902, according to a newspaper account in the Macon Times-Democrat. Colonel Blees, a onetime prospective candidate for Georgia Governor, ran a successful carriage business. He purchased the electric runabout while attending the Texas State Fair in Dallas, and according to the Houston Post, the state fair ran from September 27 to October 12, 1902. Blee’s purchase had to occur in this window of time and not in February, as Erskine recounted. Colonel Blees likely used his Studebaker electric car for at least ten years, driving it to “Studebaker Day” at the Georgia State Fair in 1912, as noted by the San Francisco Examiner.
With a Westinghouse motor, an Exide battery, and a body built by Studebaker, described by one advertisement as a “combination that speaks for itself,” the company’s electric runabouts sold for $975 in 1903 ($34,604.97 in 2024 dollars). While the price tag limited the car’s marketability to mostly middle- and upper-class Americans, Studebaker managed to sell them effectively. The company showed off its electric vehicle as a part of its 3,000 square foot exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis Fair, which the South Bend Tribune described as “one of the finest to be seen at the exposition. It is simple in construction, safe, easy to operate, and free from vibration and noise.” This exhibit proved successful, since the Washington Post reported in 1905 that, “the well-known Studebaker electric. . . is meeting with a steady sale, and there will be considerable number of them in evidence on the streets in Washington this season.”
Studebaker’s marketing went beyond public exhibits; it also developed flashy newspaper advertisements to attract customers from two urban demographics: city businessmen and society women. As a 1908 ad in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle attested, “For the woman shopping, or for the business man [sic] to make hurried trips about town, it is the ideal and only vehicle.” As one prime example, John Mohler Studebaker, one of the original Studebaker brothers, can be seen in photographs driving the electric car. The Los Angeles Herald even printed a story about him escorting Wu Ting Fang, a government minister from China, in a Studebaker electric during the foreign leader’s trip to the United States. “Although the trip was a dizzy one,” the Herald wrote, “President Studebaker’s perfect control of the car seemed to inspire Minister Wu with confidence and enjoyed the very unusual trip.”
Urban professionals especially took to the Studebaker electric, enticed by ads displaying the ‘gentleman about town’ completing his social calls and articles attesting to its popularity with such men, as Chicago’s Inter Ocean reported. Dr. Jacob Frank, a physician who lived at 49 Pine Grove Avenue, “purchased a new Studebaker electric Victoria last week and uses it daily in calling on his patients,” the Inter Ocean wrote in 1908. Dr. Frank also provided a testimonial to the paper, saying, “I drove a gasoline car for the last two years . . . but for men of my profession it does not compare with the electric for city work. My new Victoria is no trouble whatever and I would not exchange it under any conditions for a gasoline car for around town work.” As a physician who made house calls, the easier starting process for the electric likely shortened time to get to patients and made trips from house to house a smoother experience, as it did for Laure Duval in her legendary race on the streets of Philadelphia.
Alameda Evening Times-Star and Daily Argus, September 28, 1910. Newspapers.com.
By 1907, the marketing to women, especially society women, become supercharged. The company ran ads proclaiming that “the woman whose social duties require the constant use of a carriage will appreciate that advantage of a Studebaker Electric.” That same year, a photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle showcased a Studebaker electric with none other than actress Trixie Friganza in the driver’s seat. A mainstay of stage and screen for decades, Friganza was also a suffragist and attended rallies in support of women’s rights. That Friganza was willing to be photographed driving a Studebaker electric car spoke to its popularity among successful women, something the company continually leaned into.
According to the city’s Press newspaper in 1910, “a notable number of ladies of Pittsburg’s elite have visited this [Studebaker] exhibition and their expressions of approval and delight are particularly gratifying to the company’s executives.” The Press elaborated on this theme with a society woman’s remarks. “There is an elegance of appearance in the Studebaker electric that easily distinguishes it from all other electric pleasure cars,” she said. Idahoan society women agreed. As the Boise-based Statesman noted, “Mrs. Scott Anderson set the pace with her new Studebaker electric and Mrs. O. P. Johnson has ordered a fine Studebaker electric coupe costing $2500. Mrs. Hall followed suit by ordering a Studebaker electric phaeton.” Additionally, owners could charge their cars at home and travel distances well over fifty miles away. All across the country, from Studebaker’s homebase in Indiana to the sunny coasts of California, the Studebaker electric’s brand became synonymous with simplicity, elegance, and cleanliness.
The brand cultivated a reputation for reliability and performance. Numerous newspaper articles documented many interesting experiments with Studebaker electric vehicles. For instance, traveling on rural routes was a concern with potential customers, as Studebaker often marketed its electric vehicles as city transportation. David Clem, a mail carrier in South Bend, tested a Studebaker electric on his rural mail route, with it performing quite well. As the South Bend Tribune reported on July 20, 1907, “the time generally consumed in making the round by Mr. Clem is eight hours, but the auto left the local office at seven in the morning and after completing the trip and delivering the mail, reached the office again at 10 o’clock, consuming only three hours.” Cutting five hours off a rural mail route was pretty impressive, which Mr. Clem likely appreciated. A series of tests in 1908 displayed a Model 22 Studebaker electric runabout expertly traveling from Kansas City, Missouri to Ottawa, Kansas, “in spite of the fact that the roads were very rough in places and a number of steep hills proved to be a severe test for some of the contestants,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote. Drivers also received a helping hand from local farmers, “who turned out in force with scrapers and spades and did their best to get the roads in good condition for the tests.”
Studebaker also manufactured electric trucks and delivery wagons, with prominent companies such as American Express and Gimbel Brothers using them consistently. The U.S. Census Bureau also purchased “a 1,500-pound Studebaker electric. . . for hauling mail, supplies, and publications,” according to a 1912 issue of San Francisco Examiner. The paper noted that “the machine has been in service practically a year and has given perfect satisfaction.” Likely the most newsworthy cargo a Studebaker electric truck ever carried was Tillie, an injured elephant from the Robinson Brothers’ circus, who was transported to a veterinarian in South Bend (the circus’s latest stop) by a truck converted into an ambulance. The Oshkosh, Wisconsin-based Northwestern published a striking photograph of Tillie, with a bandaged left front leg, standing aloft an electric truck with “Studebaker Bros. Mfg. Co.” on the side. From transporting letters and telegraphs to industrial machinery and even elephants, Studebaker electric trucks and wagons played a vital role in those early years of the twentieth century.
Furthermore, the history of automobiles indicated a significant shift towards gasoline-powered vehicles and “electric vehicles were pretty much irrelevant by the mid-1930s and would remain so for decades,” according to automotive historian Kevin A. Wilson. Significant technical challenges stalled the wider adoption of electrics, as many early vehicles were slower overall than gasoline-powered cars. “The relatively poor energy density of affordable batteries, however, kept electrics in the shade,” Wilson noted, and “advances in electric propulsion came slowly while limitations of speed and range came to look even greater in the world as it was remade by the gasoline automobile and consumers grew accustomed to long-distance highway travel at increasing velocities.”
Today, this has all changed. With the success of companies like Tesla, Rivian, and BYD, electric vehicles genuinely compete for both customers and road space, since they are just as fast, reliable, and elegant as any gas-powered vehicle. In a sense, the pioneering spirit of Studebaker and many other companies lives on in these new manifestations of electric cars.
For roughly a decade, Studebaker stood at the forefront of an electric vehicle revolution that provided affordable, durable, and reliable cars to the public. The company constantly sought to improve its vehicles through rigorous testing and innovative technological advancements, such as home charging and extended trip times. Studebaker also marketed their cars to a wide swath of consumers, from the city businessman to the society woman. And behind it all was a company based in South Bend, Indiana, that would go on to make gasoline-powered cars for decades until its dissolution in 1966.
One senses that John Mohler Studebaker, one of the original brothers who built the company from the ground up, would be pleased to see electric cars having a dramatic resurgence. Who knows? Maybe he would’ve been photographed driving a Cybertruck if he was around today. Now that would’ve been something for the newspapers.
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.”
Edwina Whitlock, circa 1940s, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 320, accessed Internet Archive.
Gary American editor Edwina H. Whitlock wrote in the California Eagle in 1961, “I might perhaps be forgiven for posing as a political authority, but those who know Indiana must acknowledge that basketball and politics are monkeys on the backs of every Hoosier.”[1] The life of Edwina Whitlock, the first and only female editor of the Gary American, is a story that evokes critical insights into the most influential periods in Black history and showcases Black women’s dedication to the long Civil Rights Movement. Whitlock illuminated the rise of the “Black bourgeoisie” and their advocacy for equal rights between the 1920s and into the 1980s, herself having grown up among the small community of Black elites in Charleston, South Carolina. She witnessed the vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance through her adopted father, strove to emulate W.E.B. DuBois’s ideals regarding Black excellence, and utilized her class privilege to advocate for civil rights and equality through journalism and activism.
The Early Life of Edwina (Harleston) Whitlock
The Black side of the Harleston family held deep roots within the American South, which defined early on by issues of race and class. Edwina Harleston Whitlock’s ancestors were enslaved. Her maternal great-grandmother Kate Wilson lived in bondage and bore eight of the plantation owner’s children. Harleston never married, and upon his death in 1835, the mixed-race Harleston children, who were denied their inheritance, were pushed back into Black society, and refused inheritance from white relatives. Despite these circumstances, the Harleston’s blossomed in the Jim Crow South, utilizing their status as “mixed-race” in order to toe the line of segregation to make a name for themselves.[2] Together, the family integrated into the small, middle-class population of Black Elites in Charleston, South Carolina.
Gussie Harleston in 1924, photographed by her adoptive mother Elise Forrest Harleston, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 318, accessed Internet Archive.
Originally named Gussie Harleston, Edwina was born in Charleston on September 28, 1916, to Kate Wilson’s grandson, Robert O. Harleston and his wife, Marie Forrest. When she was just two and half years old, Edwina and her sister Slyvia were sent to live with their uncle, Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston, after their parent’s contracted tuberculosis.[3] However, after the passing of both their parents, the girls were adopted by Teddy and Elise so they could raise them as their own. Teddy Harleston proved to be an inspiring innovator to the girls. As a young boy at the Avery Normal Institute, Teddy developed an interest in painting portraiture and scenes associated with Southern Black culture, which would define his career for the remainder of his life. He went on to attend Atlanta University, where he studied under Black sociologist and activist W.E.B Du Bois.[4] Du Bois and Harleston became life-long friends, and he encouraged Teddy to use his elite social standing to precipitate equality.
Du Bois’s influence permeated the Harleston family. Later in adulthood, Edwina Harleston describes that the family reared their children according to Du Bois’s theory of the “talented tenth,” a concept that emphasized the necessity of higher education to develop the leadership skills among the “most able 10 percent of Black Americans.”[5] They also instilled a work ethic in their children, reflecting Booker T. Washington’s theory that “African-Americans must concentrate on educating themselves, learning useful trades, and investing in their own business.”[6] She contributed her success to these two ideologies, and what ultimately led to Harleston’s academic drive and early involvement in journalism and newspapers.
The Herald Sun, November 4, 2001, accessed Newspapers.com.
As a young girl, Gussie’s uncle, Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins, ensured that she was always working in some capacity at the orphanage that he ran in Charleston with his wife, Eloise “Ella” Harleston. She recalls that she had a choice: work on the orphanage farm and dig sweet potatoes, or work on the orphanage’s newsletter, The Messenger. She wrote local updates, which spearheaded her interest in journalism.[7] Harleston began calling up different people and groups– churches, community leaders, and businessmen – to ask them questions about their daily activities so she could write up reports regarding what was going on around town. Tragedy struck in 1931, when Edwin “Teddy” Harleston passed away at the young age of forty-nine.[8] To honor these men, fifteen-year-old Gussie Harleston changed her first name to Edwina.
As a high school student, Edwina Harleston remained a veteran writer for The Messenger.[9] During the height of the Great Depression, Harleston’s familial wealth offered her the rare opportunity to attend a university. In 1934, she went on to attend Talladega College, an HBCU, where nearly “all of the students came from light-skinned African American families in urban centers.”[10] Historian Joy Ann Williamson-Lott explained that, for many Black Americans at this time, advanced study at Black institutions remained rare. However, these environments provided a rich opportunity for Black scholars to educate themselves. Edwina was a part of an emerging generation of educated Black Americans, dubbed “The New Negro,” which celebrated Black history, life, and culture through educational advancement.[11] She majored in English literature, taking classes in Chaucer and Shakespeare, while becoming president of her sorority Delta Sigma Theta. She maintained an active social life in school, even forming a secret society with other young women called Sacred Order of Ancient Pigs (SOAP), where the members got together on slow school nights to
gossip.[12]
F.B. Ransom Family Portrait, circa 1935. A’Lelia is on the far left, standing next to her father, accessed Indiana Historical Society.
It was through this group that Harleston met A’Lelia Ransom, daughter of Indianapolis lawyer Freeman Briley Ransom (better known as F.B.).[13] Ransom’s father served as legal counsel to Madame C. J. Walker and her company. A’Lelia and Edwina became great friends, making their own secret club called “Ain’t-Got-Nothing Club.” Every week, A’Lelia’s father would send the girls newspaper clippings from Indianapolis, along with a dollar or two, and they would read the news and spend A’Lelia’s allowance.[14] A’Lelia Ransom would later become the last president of Walker Manufacturing in 1953.[15]
Harleston graduated from Talladega in 1939 and upon her mother’s suggestion applied to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. By the fall of 1940, after spending her whole life in the South, she moved to Chicago to attend graduate school, working towards a master’s degree in journalism. Harleston reveals that this was her first time encountering real racism:
In Charleston, I had been sheltered from it, because the white world and the black world were parallel, never touching. Then I got to Northwestern, the so-called great Methodist Institution. Two things happened that surprised me. The star football player, who was black, was meeting the requirements of his major, but he was not allowed to swim in the university pool. . . . There was also the policy of this supposedly religious university that prevented black students from living in the dormitories on campus. . . . Once I was studying for finals with a friend who wasn’t black. I was invited to her dorm room, but at midnight was told by the matron I had to leave because I was colored. I was frightened and furious and had to stumble back across the railroad tracks to my room at the minister’s house.[16]
Northern racism became a constant obstacle and prominent topic of discussion in her work as a female journalist.
While working towards her master’s degree, Harleston worked as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Defender and the Negro Digest. Her experience in writing for newspapers would play a critical role in the next seventeen years of her life. After meeting Henry Oliver Whitlock at Northwestern, the couple married in April of 1945 and Whitlock found herself moving to the booming, deeply segregated City of Gary, Indiana. A year earlier, Henry had taken over operations of his father’s newspaper, the Gary American – one of the largest Black newspapers in Northwest Indiana. By 1947, Edwina Whitlock would appear on the masthead as Lead Editor as the couple oversaw the dissemination of the publication.
The Gary American: Northwest Indiana’s Early Guardian of Northern Equality
Map of Gary, Indiana in 1929, Map Collection, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, accessed Indiana Memory.
Forty-five minutes from the southside of Chicago and situated next the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan, the United States Steel Company built Gary’s foundations in 1906. Other businesses followed suit. Between 1910 and 1920, Gary’s population jumped from 16,802 to over 55,000.[17] Gary garnered attention, earning the nickname the “Magic City,” as Eastern and Southern Europeans flocked to the area for industrial jobs. However, World War I largely disrupted European migration, and steel companies turned to the Southern portion of the U.S. for labor. The resulting Great Migration drew Black Southerners to Gary’s mills, where they were paid disproportionately low wages.[18]
The influx of Black residents in Gary did not go unnoticed by whites, especially those returning home from World War I to find their jobs had been “taken over” by Black Southerners. In fact, 1920s Indiana was a hotbed for Ku Klux Klan activity, with approximately 300,000 members.[19] Valparaiso, Indiana – only 30 minutes from Gary – became a center for Klan activity in the Northwest region, with the Klan nearly purchasing Valparaiso University (then Valparaiso College). Racism and terror within the region, coupled with the growing Black population, culminated in the creation of the Gary’s own Black newspaper. The publication would disseminate Black news and highlight instances of inequality that did not appear in mainstream publications. In 1927, Arthur B. Whitlock, David E. Taylor, and Chauncey Townsend headed the formation of the Gary American Publishing Company. On November 10, 1927, the Gary Colored American began as a weekly African American paper, publishing its first issue with Townsend as editor and Whitlock as manager.
Postcard Roosevelt High School, Gary, Indiana, circa 1949, accessed the Indiana Album.
In its first year of publication, the Gary Colored American led reports on the 1927 Emerson School walkout, when white students and parents protested the integration of six Black students into the school. As a result, the school board decided to reinforce existing de facto segregation, transferring the children out of Emerson, and agreeing to build Roosevelt High School, an all-Black school in the Midtown neighborhood. Gary’s Black population remained divided on this issue, with some advocating for total desegregation and others celebrating the decision to create a new school. The Gary Colored American advocated for the construction of Roosevelt High School to serve Gary’s African American children, citing it as an achievement for Black excellence. [20]
In 1928, the Gary Colored American changed its name to the Gary American, quickly becoming one the city’s most prominent Black newspapers, paving the way for publications like the Gary Crusader. While initial circulation numbers are unavailable, in 1928, the GaryAmerican claimed a readership of nearly 2,000 readers. In 1929, its masthead asserted that the GaryAmerican was an “independent paper” devoted to Black interests in Northern Indiana.[21] The paper columns reflected the upsurge of white supremacy in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in Jim Crow terrorism that plagued Black communities across the U.S. In 1934, the front page of the GaryAmerican showcased an extensive article about the NAACP’s report that approximately 28 known lynchings occurred the previous year in the U.S. This marked nearly a 200% increase in white terror from 1932 to 1933.[22] By the end of that year, the Gary American published a message to readers, stating, “the Negroes of Gary can look only to The Gary American, their own and only newspaper, for all the news primarily of interest to them and concerning their activities,” claiming that they were the servant of Gary’s Negroes during this tumultuous time period.[23]
Editor Arthur Whitlock left the company in 1938 and attorney F. Louis Sperling was elected editor and acting manager. His legal influence filtered through the Gary American as a plethora of articles featured race and legal rulings within in the U.S. criminal justice system. The Gary American drew attention to a Richmond Times-dispatch editorial in 1937 about the federal Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937:
Now that the rest of the week is apparently available for debating the anti-lynching bill, is it too much to hope that the Southern senators will discuss this measure on its merits, instead of consuming days in flamboyant and bombastic posturing, in apostrophies to the fair name of Southern womanhood, in hysterical outbursts concerning the future of Southern civilization? [24]
The bill passed in the House of Representatives, but was held up in the Senate during a filibuster, where First Lady Elanor Roosevelt sat in the Senate Gallery to silently protest those participating in the blockade. Ultimately, the Anti-Lynching Bill failed to pass in the Senate, despite the Gallup poll revealing that nearly three in four Americans (72%) supported anti-lynching legislations and called for it to become a federal crime.[25]
Additionally, in 1938, Editor Sperling released an open letter to Indiana Governor M. Clifford Townsend on the front page of the paper to draw his attention to corruption that was happening within the city. Sperling claimed that a public official, who was responsible for distributing “hundreds of thousands of dollars of the taxpayers’ money” to majority Black families receiving government assistance, was withholding funds to coerce them to vote for her candidate for mayor, Dr. Robert Doty, and for her trustee candidate, P. D. Wells. Sperling wrote, “and what is much worse, [she] has entered into a deliberate campaign to intimidate both colored and white voters of this city who are already on relief rolls, telling them that they will have to support her ‘program’ or be they will be cut off relief rolls.”[26]
Champion of Local Activism and the Civil Rights Movement
Henry O. Whitlock and Edwina Whitlock, with their son Henry Whitlock Jr., posing next to the 1949 Christmas Release of the Gary American, found in Edward Ball’s The Sweet Hell Inside, p. 322, accessed Internet Archive.
In the following decade, the Whitlock’s returned to the Gary American. Arthur’s son, Henry O. Whitlock, became manager in 1944 and his wife, Edwina, becoming editor in 1947. She was a mother and teacher at Froebel High School by day and a journalist by night. The family thrived under the post-war conditions that encouraged a growing middle-class, so much so that they hired a live-in nanny for their children and bought a vacation home in South Haven, Michigan.[27] She saw herself a part of the elusive “Black Bourgeoisie,” which highlighted the white American ideals – Black men worked professional jobs, while the women kept the home with the children. Along with running the Gary American, Henry Whitlock worked as an investigator in the Lake County prosecutor’s office.[28] Following in her adoptive father’s footsteps, Edwina exceeded the realities of Black life, promoting the middle-class lifestyle that many Black Americans lacked, because they did not share her fair skin or generational wealth. But the Gary American gave her unlimited access to disseminate her own ideas about family, Black excellence, and how in Gary’s Black community could fight for self-determination.
During the burgeoning Civil Rights Era, the GaryAmerican focused on issues like discriminatory education funding, the creation of Gary’s first Black Taxicab Company, and the local boycott against Kroger Stores for refusing to hire minority employees.[29] Whitlock published her own column, First Person Singular, for many years. Her editorial topics varied, ranging from marriage and childrearing issues to discussions of race and education. One editorial, appearing in October of 1948, discussed her husband’s opinion that “women dress for other women.” She challenged her readers to question their own partners on the matter to determine if purchasing clothing was self-indulgent as society moved away from the wartime economy and the rationing system.[30] Another editorial, appearing in 1946, was simpler and to the point, “No brains, no hearts – is it any wonder that the Ku Kluxers are also stooges? Right now, they’re stooges for a few racketeers who are clipping them for ten spots or so for the privilege of going around with pillowcases on their heads.”[31] She tackled both the complexities of womanhood and race, offering an intersectional lens to the history of the growing Black population in Gary.
Following World War II, more Black Americans moved to the city, and as a result, they were forced into the central, downtown district, but the city’s boarders grew too slowly to keep up with the expanding population. Rents increased as investments in building repairs dropped, and landlords became virtually unresponsive to Black tenants. By 1940, the U.S. Census reported that only thirty percent of Black families lived in one-family homes, and the remainder lived in apartment houses or small homes converted into apartments, with multiple families living under one unit.[32] Additionally, the Gary Housing Authority – despite its role in maintaining segregated neighborhoods – reported that in 1950, 11,582 families were living in substandard homes or slums, approximately 1,000 more than existed ten years prior to the GHA organizing.[33]
In 1949, she gave birth to the first of four children, whom she raised during her editorial career. That summer, Whitlock addressed her concerns about congestion of the Central District and the strains it imposed on families via poor living conditions and warned about the urge to fall into consumerism rather than focusing on the preservation of the natural world. Her solution was simple – Whitlock proposed an eight-day living week and a thirty-hour work week. She suggested supermarkets offer prepared meals so breadwinners could save money on groceries and utilize the funds for the necessities, like owning a home. Whitlock saw the value in equal payment for all laborers, Black or white, and advocated for the spreading of wealth to relieve the crowded living quarters of the Gary’s Central District. These statements were made during the height of the McCarthy-era, in which rampant persecution of left-wing individuals took center stage of the American political scene. Whitlock did not care. “I sound like a Communist, you say? Well, if Communism means subscribing to a theory that every man’s labor is worth as much as every other man’s,” Whitlock wrote, “having the conviction that the color of a man’s skin should be no deterrent in selecting a place to live – then, come on Revolution. H. O., hand me your shotgun.”[34]
Towards the end of the 1950s, white residents fled to suburban areas like Merrillville due to the city’s increased Black population. Middle-class white families moved away from Gary’s downtown metropolitan center, depleting it of a tax base which thrusted Gary into a state of decline. Black residents, however, were barred from following suit. Once again, housing was featured prominently in Whitlock’s editorials. In 1959, Whitlock discusses her opinions on housing, and the refusal of banks to provide loans to Black locals. Edwina wrote:
Chatted a while today with one of the leading mortgage brokers and I suggested that he and his cohorts could clean up this whole mess with one broad sweep. Instead of refusing to lend money to Negroes who seek better accommodations for themselves by moving to late fringe areas, they should refuse to loan money to the whites who try to run away. If a white family has decent housing in a decent community and the broker suspects that they’re trying to run away from their colored neighbors just let the family do their own financing.[35]
As Edwina pointed out, Black residents struggled to secure access to well-built homes and a welcoming community. However, segregated housing projects were not new – the development could be seen in Gary during the 1930s, and the Gary Housing Authority, established in 1939, continued to segregate residents by placing Black families in the central district, and white families outside of the downtown area.
The Gary American also took a vested interest in the desegregation of the city’s parks, particularly Marquette Beach. Federal programs during the Depression years expanded Gary’s Park system and as a result, U.S. Steel provided the city with a lake-front area. The WPA transformed it into a large park, equipped with a beach, picnic area, and a pavilion. Early editorials reveal how Whitlock felt about lack of community beaches, saying: “But to be continually denied even the elementary right to take a dip in Lake Michigan without having to travel 15 miles to do so, strikes me as being a pretty rotten deal.”[36] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the city took it’s time when it came to the construction of the new de-segregated section of the beachfront, and many Black residents grew frustrated. Whitlock offered another revolutionary solution: staging a sit-in picnic right on the whites-only beaches. “Getting a few heads bashed in would only be a small price to pay,” Whitlock urged, “for providing our youngsters with an example of forthright action on the part of real men and women.”[37]
Even after Marquette Beach came to fruition, white beachgoers used harassment and violence to keep the sand segregated. However, forced integration occurred only after an uproar in the late 1950s.[38] In fact, Marquette Beach had been a center of white terrorism against local Black beachgoers, with the Gary American reporting in 1949 that a peaceful protest for integration, known as “Beachhead for Democracy,” turned violent when “white hoodlums” hurled bricks, bats, and pipes against vehicles of those who were attending the protest. Police arrived twenty minutes later, closing the beach to demonstrators, which caused the white attackers to disperse.[39] However, the Gary American reported that the protest fueled KKK activity for the next three nights – with white residents burning crosses on the shores of Marquette beach, attacking the homes of “ring leaders” with rocks, bricks, and firing holes into windows with guns, even leaving notes telling residents to leave town.[40]
The protests led to the desegregation of Marquette Beach Marquette Beach remained a contentious site. In the summer of 1961, the Gary American produced extensive coverage over the beating of 21-year-old Murray W. Richards. On Memorial Day, Richards and three female friends were enjoying their time at the beach, when fifteen to twenty drunk white men approached the group and demanded that Murray and his friends leave the beach. After refusing, they attacked Richards unprovoked, hitting him in the jaw with a beer bottle, bashing his face with a baseball bat, and striking him with 2×4 plank. One of the young ladies was dragged toward the water under the threat that the gang of men would drown her. Richards explained to the American that “he feared they would carry out their threat to kill him if he were to fall down.” It was revealed that Richards saw one policeman, Officer George Stimple, standing by his squad car, watching the attack, but did nothing to stop it, even after being informed of what was happening by a young white girl.
Richards was left with lacerations on both ears and his scalp, fractures in his jaw and skull, and multiple contusions on his face, arms, chest and back which needed stitches.[41] Only one of his attackers was taken into custody and prosecuted. The beating fueled unrest across Gary, with the paper reporting that more than 500 citizens packed the Council Chambers on June 6, protesting the inaction of Officer Stimple. Charles Ross, First Vice President of the NAACP, stated that the police department had consciously and deliberately refused to provide the minimum protect to Gary’s Black citizens.[42] The protest led to an investigation into Officer Stimple, but on July 7, the Gary American reported that, after a five-hour hearing, Stimple was found innocent by the civil service commission on the charges that he failed to aid Murray Richards. Commission secretary Thomas G. Kennedy claimed, “The evidence presented in support of the charges was inconclusive.”[43] A little over a month later, the Gary American reported on another white attack against Black citizens at Marquette.[44]
Exposing and challenging racism in Northwest Indiana became the goal for Whitlock and her husband. In an interview with Edward Ball, an American author who focuses on history and biography, she recalled just how influential the Gary American was when it came to dismantling segregation in her community:
The American was a local paper, and we fought to get black bus drivers in Gary, when there were none. We fought the electric utility to hire black women because they didn’t have any. Henry’s father, who started the paper, was on the board of the Urban League, and tried to get certain jobs in the steel mills opened to Negroes, because not all of them were. All our circle and all our friends belonged to the NAACP and attended annual meetings.[45]
The Gary American never reached the status of the Chicago Defender, which was in production less than an hour away, but its influence within The Region was wholly felt.
Living History
Henry Whitlock died on May 5, 1960, and the Gary American announced his death on May 13, saying “Henry Oliver Whitlock . . . gave his all to the community. He was for modern, efficient government. He was for the complete integration of Negroes into all facets of American life.”[46] Edwina continued to run the Gary American by herself until February of 1961, when she sold the publication to Edward “Doc” James and James T. Harris, Jr. The Gary American continued to operate until the 1990s, and even expanded its publication beyond Gary into East Chicago/Indiana Harbor.[47]
That same year, Whitlock moved south of Los Angeles with her four children on the edge of Watts, a predominately Black neighborhood that had been isolated from white California. The area faced intense poverty and inequality. Whitlock took on a job in public relations at Watts Savings & Loans. But in August of 1965, Whitlock found her family thrusted into turmoil when the Watts Uprising gripped the neighborhood. Stepbrothers Marquette and Ronald Frye were pulled over right outside their house by a white California Highway Patrol officer while driving their mother’s car, where Marquette was arrested after failing a sobriety test. Back up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and a crowd of Black locals formed and watched the arrest unfold, causing one officer to pull his gun out. As a result, Frye’s mother, who witnessed the event unfold outside her house, went to defend her son. All three were arrested, enraging the residents of Watts, who took to the streets to protest police profiling and the conditions of their neighborhood.[48]
Getty Image, courtesy of “Looking Back on the Watts Riots, 55 Years Later: In Photos,” WSLS, accessed https://www.wsls.com/features/2020/08/11/looking-back-on-the-watts-riots-55-years-later-in-photos/.
Between August 11 and 16, Black residents engaged in a massive protest, confronting the LAPD and taking items from local stores to acquire the goods they were often unable to afford due to pay disparities. In the end, the United States dispatched in 14,000 National Guard troops to Watts, forcing protesters back into their homes. The movement took thirty-four lives and led to over 4,000 arrests. For Whitlock, however, the uprising only motivated her get back into the community, and she quit her banking job to train as a social worker. She told biographer Edward Ball, “I studied for the ‘War on Poverty,’ which is what the Lyndon Johnson administration called it. I guess I was one of those advanced soldiers in the war . . . they were idealists, and we all believed in what President Johnson promised about finding jobs for Blacks.”[49] After passing the civil service exam, Whitlock became a social worker, traveling throughout the city into both Black and white neighborhoods to help families less privileged than her. Along with her new career, she continued her work in journalism with articles appearing in publications like the California Eagle.[50]
By the end of Whitlock’s life, encountered her long-lost cousin, white author Edward Ball, that she finally got the opportunity to tell the world about her family’s contributions to Black history.[51] After an extensive interview process, combing through letters and photographs and outlining her family lore, Ball and Edwina worked together to publish The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South in 2001. One year later, Edwina passed away Atlanta, Georgia in November of 2002, at the age of eight-six.[52] Edwina Whitlock’s dedication to highlighting issues of inequality illuminates many of the forgotten Black women at the heart of the long Civil Rights Movement. Through her work as a journalist and her continuous involvement in her community, she utilized her own privilege to promote and sustain equality. The Gary American will soon be digitized and incorporated into the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database and IHB’s own Hoosier State Chronicles, to give historians the chance to uncover Northwest Indiana’s often discounted, but rich Black history and unveil more stories like Edwina Harleston Whitlock’s.
Notes:
[1] Edwina H. Whitlock, “Gary, Ind., Negroes Help Run City Gov’t,” California Eagle, October 19, 1961, accessed Newspapers.com.
[2] William’s and Kate’s son, Edwin G. “Captain” Harleston proved to be an American pioneer, establishing a successful funeral business that allowed his five children to thrive. His son, Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston, became a successful painter and renowned portraitist. Another son ran an orphanage, whose young Black children became musical prodigies in the group Jenkins Orphanage Band.
[3] Robert Harleston and Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston were two of Edwin “Captain” Harleston’s seven children. Captain Harleston was Kate Wilson’s fifth child with white plantation owner, William Harleston. In Charleston, Captain ran a profitable funeral business that serviced the Black community.
[4] E. Rudwick, “W.E.B. Du Bois,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed Brtannica.com.
[5] Edward Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South, New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, 297, accessed Internet Archive.
[6] “Booker T. Washington,” Teach Democracy, accessed crf-usa.org; Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside, 297.
[8] Teddy’s father, Captain Harleston, died in April of 1931, after catching pneumonia. A few days after his father’s funeral, Teddy caught pneumonia as well. Later in her life, Edwina recounted to Edward Ball that the doctor reported that Teddy had a good chance of recovery. However, the grief of losing his father superseded his will to fight the infection. Teddy Harleston passed one month later, on May 10th, 1931; [8] Ball, The Sweet Hell Inside, 286-287, accessed Internet Archive
[9] Edwina was also a singer in the Avery glee club and president of her high school class; Ibid, 298.
[11] Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018), p. 21-22, accessed Google Books.
[15] Douglas Martin, “A’Lelia Nelson, 92, President Of a Black Cosmetics Company,” The New York Times, February 14, 2001, accessed The New York Times; “Mrs. Nelson Heads Madam Walker Firm,” The Indianapolis News, February 10, 1951, accessed Newspapers.com.
[18] Neil Bretten and Raymond A. Mohl, “The Evolution of Racism in an Industrial City, 1906-1940: A Case Study of Gary Indiana,” The Journal of Negro History, 59, no. 1 (Jan 1974): 52, accessed https://doi.org/10.2307/2717140.
[28] “Heart Attack Claims Publisher,” The Times, May 5, 1960, accessed Newspapers.com.
[29] “Pass Up Roosevelt High: Negro School to get No Funds for Facilities,” The Gary American, September 29, 1944; “Negro Taxi-Cab Company in Operation with 3 Cabs, Fleet of Five Cars Expected to be in Service Next Week,” The Gary American, November 23, 1945; “Continue Boycott of Kroger Stores, Attempts to Arbitrate Fail,” The Gary American, October 3, 1958.
[30] Edwina Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, October 8, 1948.
[31] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 26, 1946.
[32] Bretten and Mohl, “The Evolution of Racism,” 59.
[33] Gary Housing Authority, The First Twenty Years: Report of the Gary Housing Authority, 1939-1959, n.d., 14, accessed HathiTrust.
[34] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 1, 1949.
[35] Edwina Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, December 24, 1959.
[36] Whitlock, “First Person Singular,” The Gary American, July 19, 1946.
[38] Gary Housing Authority, The First Twenty Years, 56.
[39] The Gary Post Tribune stated that the demonstration at Marquette Beach seemed “pointless” as there were no legal restrictions against Blacks utilizing the facilities there. This is just one example of the stark differences between white reporting and Black reporting within the city; The Terre Haute Star, August 31, 1949, accessed Newspapers.com.
[40] “Beach Project Leads to Violence: KKK Becomes Active,” The Gary American, September 4, 1949.
[41] “Youth Brutally Beaten at Marquette Beach, Girls Scream for Help as Police Stand By,” The Gary American, June 2, 1961.
[42] “500 Jam-Pack Council; Protest Actions of Police,” The Gary American, June 9, 1961.
[43] “Stimple Found Not Guilty,” The Gary American, July 7, 1961.
[44] “Hoodlums Attack Again At Marquette Park,” The Gary American, August 11, 1961.
[50] “President John Kennedy, Gov. Pat Brown Electrify 600 Attending Links Inc., Affair,” California Eagle, November 23, 1961, accessed Newspapers.com.
[51] Whitlock’s experience as a journalist spurred a desire to document her rich family history. In 1970, after her daughter Sylvia wrote a term paper on Teddy Harleston, Edwina’s interest in genealogy was re-ignited. She spent years going through the large collection of the Harleston family papers, photographs, and letters. While researching, she attended lectures at institutions like Mann-Simons Cottage to talk about her adoptive mother, Elise Forrest Harleston, one of the first Black female photographers in the US. Whitlock’s goal, however, was to publish her family history.
[52] “Whitlock,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 2002, accessed Newspapers.com.
Sometimes when you think back over your old history texts, and remember that the accounts there relate the deeds of men- not women- doesn’t it give you a marvelous feeling to realize that the greatest chapter of history of mankind is being written today, and that you women are going to have your names in the headlines?
-LaVerne Heady, columnist for Republic Aviation News
Reliable, versatile, and fast, the P-47 Thunderbolt is considered one of the most important fighter-bombers in World War II. Manufactured by Republic Aviation Corporation and debuted in 1943, the P-47 served in both the European and Pacific theaters and quickly became the Allied Forces’ main workhorse. By the end of the war, Republic Aviation produced 15,683 Thunderbolts, which performed more than half a million missions, shooting down more Luftwaffe aircrafts than any other Allied fighter. What’s more impressive than its statistics, however, is the pilots’ testimonials on the durability of these planes, which quickly gained a reputation for their ability to deliver a pilot safely home after sustaining otherwise catastrophic amounts of damage.[i] One of the most dramatic examples of the Thunderbolts’ durability occurred in 1945, when the entirety of a P-47s right wing was sheared off during a bombing mission. The pilot returned to base unharmed, and the plane was reportedly repaired and flown for another 50 missions.[ii]
Headshot of Heady, Republic Aviation News, Indiana State Library.
Military history often focuses on aircraft design and the pilots who flew them. However, who built these planes is equally intriguing. Almost half of the manpower behind P-47 production were women. Known as “Raiderettes,” these women served in a wide array of positions at Republic. This piece will examine the lived experiences of the Raiderettes at the Republic plant in Evansville, Indiana and how their hard work, sacrifices, and patriotism contributed to the production of over one-third of the Thunderbolts manufactured during World War II.
ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE: WOMEN’S ROLES AT REPUBLIC AVIATION
Evansville played a major role in the home front effort throughout the war. In total, fifty different Evansville companies received over $580 million in defense contracts. This included Sunbeam, Serval Inc., Chrysler, and the Missouri Valley Bridge & Iron Co. Shipyard, which produced critical defense industry products such as ammunition, tracer rounds, and landing ship tanks. This booming industry nearly tripled Evansville’s manufacturing workforce and revitalized the previously struggling city. [iii] In 1942, Republic and the U.S. War Department announced they would build a second P-47 factory south of the Evansville Regional Airport. The first facility was located in Farmingdale, New Jersey. Construction commenced at a rapid pace and the plant was finished in August of 1943, three months ahead of schedule. However, P-47 construction was already underway before the factory was even finished, with newly hired workers manufacturing parts in garages, rented factory spaces, and other facilities. Evansville’s first P-47 dubbed “The Hoosier Spirit” flew from the plant on September 19, 1942. The Hoosier Spirit marked the first of over 6,000 Thunderbolts manufactured in Evansville during the span of three years.
From the beginning, Republic sought to hire a substantial number of women workers because men were fighting overseas. Republic recruited women through newspaper advertisements and provided free, educational opportunities. Evansville College (now the University of Evansville) partnered with Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Education to offer twenty-two-night classes in engineering, science, mathematics, aircraft drafting, and other industrial skills. Notably, the Evansville Press wrote that, for the night classes, “Women especially are urged to enroll… The War Manpower Commission estimates that at least two million more women must enter war industries this year.”[iv] Soon after night classes began, Evansville College and Purdue began to offer daytime classes as well to fulfill the needs of night shift workers at Republic and other defense companies. E. C. Surat, district manager of the Purdue war training program, told the Evansville Courier and Press that “Women with mathematical training may be placed at once” in factory positions and urged that women seeking a defense industry job “enroll in the qualifying mathematics course.”[v]
The Evansville Mechanic Arts School also recruited women for their industrial classes. Previously, the school designed courses solely for men, but, upon the outbreak of the war, opened to women “without a halt.” The school especially appealed to homemakers and unemployed women to enroll.[vi] In her article, “Diary of a Riveter,” Raiderette Mary Ellen Ward describes the challenges of these types of training courses and adjusting to the “nerve wracking” noise as they learned drilling techniques, how to measure rivets, and built physical strength to rivet for fourteen plus hours a day.[vii] The City of Evansville and the Republic Aviation Corporation recognized early on the integral role women would play in the home front effort and began recruiting them and providing key training and education for them to succeed in manufacturing roles.
Women from the “tri-state” area of Illinois, Kentucky, and Southern Indiana performed a diverse number of roles, including managerial positions, across the Republic plant. Raiderettes could be found working side by side with men in machining parts, welding metal, wiring electrical components, inspecting aircrafts, and transporting supplies. This makes it impossible to describe a singular, definitive experience among the Raiderettes. However, women across the plant embraced their roles, seeing it as a patriotic duty, and exceeded the expectations of the public. The Muncie Evening Press reported that, in some tasks, women workers across the country exceeded men’s production output by 10 percent or more.[viii] Day-to-day life in the plant consisted of 10 to 14-hour shifts across various departments and, for many, included long commutes of up to 80 miles away a day. Beyond production work, women actively participated in work-adjacent roles, leading the charge on key social services for all Republic employees. Given the amount of time spent at both work and Republic-related events, almost all Raiderettes experienced World War II primarily through the lens of their position at the Evansville plant, making it a key experience to analyze in order to better understand the Indiana home front during World War II.
Article showcasing “Who’s Who” among the Raiderettes and their various positions at Republic, January 29, 1943, Republic Aviation News, photo cropped by IHB, accessed via the Indiana State Library.
One Raiderette, Mildred F. Harris, participated in an oral history interview in 2002, providing key insight into the subjective experience of women at Republic. A schoolteacher, Harris entered war work when her husband was drafted in 1943, commuting 55 miles a day, six days a week from her home in Kentucky to work at the Evansville plant. Harris was placed in a supervisory role managing other aircraft inspectors and supervising factory operations. She stated that men respected her and other female inspectors’ position of authority “as long as the inspectors had this army badge on,” and that they recognized the need for women to work in factories as “they couldn’t get enough men to do it.” Despite this, Harris still experienced sexism in the workplace with some of the men calling her nicknames like “Rose,” “Buttercup,” or “Daisy,” despite her position supervising them. Harris largely ignored these nicknames and kept to herself while she performed her job. Like many women, Harris felt a duty to support both her country and male relatives who served in the war, underlining the importance of her position as an aircraft inspector and the pressures of such long days and high stakes. Her experiences also demonstrated that, simply because women now appeared in “male roles,” that sexism and gender roles still pervaded most Raiderettes experiences. [ix]
Harris in 1943, courtesy of Mildred F. Harris, courtesy The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
Women also contributed to the company culture at Republic, actively participating in clubs, the company newspaper, and sports leagues for basketball, softball, bowling, golf, and ping pong. Republic’s clubs competed against other manufacturing companies in Evansville. In addition, women led the charge on hosting social functions like skating nights, formal dances, and even a holiday musical production called “Flying High.” A daycare service was provided for working mothers at the reduced price of 50 cents per week.[x] This proved to be critical as women often found themselves to be “two-job” workers, working at Republic for fourteen hours a day while also continuing to maintain the domestic sphere and raise children, often without the support of their spouse who may have been drafted. Women also formed the “war matrons club,” which catered specifically to older Raiderettes whose sons were serving overseas. This club tracked soldier’s birthdays, wrote to them, and provided a support system for mothers separated from their children due to the war.[xi] While easily overlooked, these services provided necessary social outlets during a period of great change and anxiety in the United States and fostered a strong sense of community for all Republic employees. They also provided workers, many of whom had family members serving overseas, with vital social connections and filled a key gap in societal recreation and relaxation.
Members of the War Matrons Club, June 18, 1943, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.Republic Aviation News. v. 6 n. 3-v. 11 (1944-1945): 3, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
While women were praised for their patriotism and largely welcomed into the plant, gender roles still defined the Raiderettes’ wartime experiences. Often, the work of women was more heavily scrutinized than men’s and feminine traits characterized as a detriment to wartime production. This can be seen in Republic Aviation News through warnings against “super-sensitiveness” in the workplace and constant reminders that a woman must uphold or surpass the standards of the men who worked alongside them.[xii] Additionally, extra emphasis was placed on women’s fashion and social life with an entire column called Strictly Feminine. The column reported on social news, like who danced with whom at the canteen, what women were wearing to social functions, and other, non-work related, news. Women were often expected to meet their position’s expectations and perform social and emotional labor while doing so. Republic Aviation News paints a more nuanced picture than that of the one-dimensional and patriotic “Rosie the Riveter,” who flawlessly steps into a traditionally male position just as a man would. Women’s positions and experiences in home front factories were distinct and laced with gender roles and bias as they were expected to do a “man’s job” but in a traditionally feminine manner.
A major point of friction between women and men in the factory was whether women would continue working after the war concluded or if their jobs ought to be relinquished back to male workers. Inspector Harris, upon reflecting on the closure of the plant, stated “Now, what they [the male factory workers] expected them to do, what they wanted them to do when the war was over, [was] to go back home and wash dishes like they had been doing.”[xiii] This attitude is reflected in the fact that, after the government cancelled their wartime contracts with Republic, women disproportionately lost their jobs compared to male workers.[xiv] While it is debated whether women truly desired to return home or sought to continue working in the factories- likely a mix of both- they unilaterally faced unfair obstacles in remaining in the workforce post-war.
Pictured is restricted radio operator Naomi Johnson, September 3, 1943, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.
Despite the continued presence of gender bias in the factory, Raiderettes pushed against and broke the glass ceiling in various ways. For example, Naomi Johnson was notable for being the first woman restricted radio operator- a position that allows users to utilize advanced aircraft radios to communicate and direct pilots- in the region. Originally from Marion, Kentucky, Johnson moved to Evansville in 1937 and earned her operator license in 1940 from the Federal Communications Commission. Johnson originally tested police radios in cars but, upon the outbreak of the war, transitioned to Republic Aviation. She began working on electrical equipment but, after nine months, was transferred to a radio control board, where she communicated with pilots flying and landing P-47s at the Evansville Regional Airport. Due to her strong interest in and advanced knowledge of aviation, she was made an honorary member of the Civil Air Patrol. When interviewed by Republic Aviation News, Johnson expressed her strong passion for her work, stating, “The thing I like best about radio work is the fact that it’s something you can never learn enough about. You can just keep studying and studying. But I wouldn’t mind being called a book-worm if I could read about radio.”[xv]
Reclamation agent Eunice Hall, January 7, 1944, Republic Aviation News, accessed the Indiana State Library.
Another woman, Eunice Hall of Newburgh, Indiana, became the first “reclamation agent” at the Evansville plant, a new position that encouraged the conservation of factory materials to reduce waste in the various plant divisions. Working with the Utility Shop division, Hall also served as the division’s Safety Council representative. While Republic Aviation News minimized her position by comparing it to a “housekeeping” role, Hall excelled at leadership by defining this new company role and taking the lead on both shop safety and material conservation, a key aspect of the home front’s defense industry economy.[xvi]
Other women broke into aviation and flew P-47s domestically. The Women Airforce Service Pilots, (WASPs) were elite civilian pilots who supported the war effort by ferrying, testing, and transporting planes. Described as “polished” and having perfect uniforms, the WASPs visited the Evansville plant numerous times to transport Thunderbolts to military bases.[xvii] On October 10, 1943, Theresa James and Betty Gillies landed in Evansville to deliver two Thunderbolts and transport two others. Gillies is notable as the first ever woman to fly a P-47 aircraft.[xviii] In 1944, WASPs regularly began transporting P-47s from the Evansville plant, with Republic Aviation News stating that 85 women would participate and, each month, 16 of them would fly to the Evansville plant to ferry completed planes to military bases.[xix] While the activities of the WASPs generated much interest both in the news and amongst factory workers, it is reported that the WASPs largely stayed separated from the rest of the factory and focused on their positions.[xx]
Raiderettes continue to work after the announcement of V-E Day, Republic Aviation News, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
As evidenced by the previous examples, women held diverse roles within Republic Aviation and navigated their new, public-facing roles in a variety of ways. Some women, like those in the War Matrons club or Eunice Hall, embraced social responsibilities at the plant by serving on committees and clubs and embracing a more “traditionally feminine” role at Republic. Meanwhile, others, such as the WASPs or Harris, were more reserved in their roles and attempted to ignore or minimize gender roles and bias. However, the common thread of all of these women is that they collaborated with both male workers and one another, pushing against traditional gender roles to best serve the United States during World War II. Their sacrifices were largely recognized and praised by the public. However, it was also expected that they would revert to traditional roles upon the end of the war which, generally, is what occurred. Despite this, these women successfully navigated a challenging period in American history to provide a vital service on the home front and ought to be remembered for their work.
Republic Aviation News. v. 6 n. 3-v. 11 (1944-1945): 6, accessed Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library Digital Archive.
On August 21, 1945, Republic Aviation announced they would be ending all production at Evansville and the plant was soon listed for sale. Upon its closure, the plant had produced over one-third of all the P-47 Thunderbolts in the world, hired thousands of employees, and infused millions of dollars into the local economy. In addition, the plant had gained national recognition, earning three Army-Navy E awards for “excellence in production.”[xxi] This prestigious award was granted to 5% of all eligible plants and represented the top echelon of home front production.[xxii] The plant’s production was considered so outstanding, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt even visited the plant on April 27, 1943 as part of a 17-day, 20-state tour of America’s defense industry, presenting awards to multiple employees.[xxiii]
Without the thousands of women who worked at the Republic plant, these national honors would not have been achieved. Similarly, the quality and reliability of the P-47, which is world-renowned and contributed to Allied Forces’ air superiority during WWII, would not have been possible without the dedicated hands that constructed the planes at an unprecedented pace. While the lives and roles of the Raiderettes at the Republic factory did not ascribe to the simplified “Rosie the Riveter” archetype, they were critical to the defense effort nonetheless, and ought to be commemorated as both Indiana and national heroes.
[iv] “College to give Classes in War Work,” Evansville Press, September 12, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[v] “Day War Training Classes Planned,” Evansville Courier, October 15, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[vi] “These Doors Never Close: Mechanic Arts School Has Prominent Part in War Work Training Program,” Evansville Courier and Press, July 2, 1942, accessed Newspapers.com.
[vii] Mary Ellen Ward, “Diary of a Riveter,” Republic Aviation News, February 12, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[viii] “Two-Job War Worker: She Does a Man-Sized Job on Production Line Plus ‘Women’s Work’ of Maintaining a Home,” Muncie Evening Press, November 5, 1942, accessed Newspapers.com.
[ix] James Russell Harris, “Rolling Bandages and Building Thunderbolts: A Woman’s Memories of the Kentucky Home Front, 1941-1945,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, (Spring 2002): 167-194, accessed JSTOR.
[x] “New Plan for Child Care Offered: Play Center Fills Need Before and After School,” Republic Aviation News, November 26, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xi] “War Mothers Organized at Republic Plant,” Evansville Press, April 29, 1943, accessed Newspapers.com.
[xii] “A Message from Ellen J. Dilger,” Republic Aviation News 100, no. 2, January 29, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xv] “First Woman Restricted Radio Operator in This Region is Republic’s Naomi Johnson,” Republic Aviation News, September 3, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xvi] “Utility Shop Girl Becomes First Official Reclamation Agent at Indiana Division,” Republic Aviation News, January 7, 1944, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xviii] “First Woman Ever to Fly a Thunderbolt is One of Two Girls Landing Here in P-47s,” Republic Aviation News, October 15, 1943, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xix] “First Squadron of Girl Pilots Here to Fly P-47’s,” Republic Aviation News, August 1, 1944, accessed Indiana State Library.
[xxiii] “Camera Highlights of the President’s Visit to the Indiana Division on Tuesday, April 27,” Republic Aviation News, May 21, 1943, p. 4-5, accessed Indiana State Library; “Roosevelt visits Evansville; Sees P-47 Dive at 500 M.P.H,” Indianapolis News, April 29, 1943, p. 1, accessed Newspapers.com; “Evansville Aircraft Plant Receives Visit of President,” Muncie Evening Press, April 29, 1943, p. 9, accessed Newspapers.com.
