Aliff Henley’s gravestone in the Rush Cemetery, courtesy Howard County Historical Society.
A version of this post was published in the Indiana Historical Society’s Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 34, no. 4 (Fall 2022).
On the first Monday in November 1801, a landowner named Edward Fentriss entered the courthouse in Randolph County, North Carolina, with a petition of manumission.[1] Edward represented his brother George, who owned two people—Aliff Henley, originally from Virginia, who had been enslaved by the Fentriss family since at least 1779, and her child, Case.[2] When the petition was approved by the “worshipfull County Court of Randolph,” Henley and her son were free from the shackles of slavery.[3]
Henley’s story as a newly-free person of color, was destined to reach well beyond its Upper South origins. Indeed, her life now touches hearts and minds in an area far removed from North Carolina. Because on another November morning, forty-three years and 500 miles from bondage, Henley was first in line at the state land office in Delphi, Indiana. There, she paid $280 cash money “in full” for 80 acres in Section 12 of Township 24 North, Range 2 East.[4] On November 11, 1844, with someone helping her enter her name in the Miami Reserve tract book for Canal Lands, Aliff Henley, a woman from North Carolina who endured slavery and could not read or write, became the first known Black American to buy land in Howard County, Indiana.[5] Based on enslavement records and census schedules, it is likely she was born around 1760 in Virginia, making her about 80 when she bought her land.
Tracing Henley’s remarkable journey shows she was still in Randolph County, North Carolina in the 1830 census. But this was a period of migration and by mid-decade she had reached Indiana. Her daughter, Lucinda, married David Rush, another North Carolina native, on June 29, 1837, in Rush County.[6] They continued west and by 1840 were living on Indianapolis’s west side.
In the 1830s and ’40s, Indiana was selling land taken from Native American tribes by treaty to help subsidize the Wabash and Erie Canal. Statewide newspapers published details about available land tracts in the Great Miami Reserve as part of these Canal Land sales.[7] Sometime in 1844 the Rush and Henley families gathered their belongings and headed north to the Miami Reserve.
Part of Indiana State Patent for Aliff Henley, dated February 11, 1845.
Their arrival resulted in the first of two Black settlements in northwestern Howard County (originally Richardville County, but renamed Howard in 1846). The Bassett and Rush settlements lasted from approximately 1845 to around 1920.[8] The former, centrally located in Ervin Township, is better known. But the earlier and first settlement developed about four miles to the east of Bassett, right on the boundary line (600 County Road West) between Ervin and Clay Townships. Kokomo, the county seat, lay some six miles to the southeast. A brief published history notes the settlement was named for Reverend Rush, described as a “devout and spiritual man, well-versed in the Bible, though entirely unable to read or write.”[9]
According to archival records, Rush settlement originated by at least 1845.[10] Reverend Rush was farming here by then because his name appeared as a squatter with about fifty acres in the U.S. government’s 1846 public land survey.[11] Furthermore, as the small settlement grew, he was one of three named individuals on an 1851 deed entrusted to ensure three-quarters of an acre of land in Ervin Township would be used to “Erect or cause to be Built thereon a house or place of Worship,” which would be the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Howard County.[12] The grantor of land was his mother-in-law, adding the AME church to Aliff Henley’s legacy.
Compiled by author.
Following her 1861 death, Henley deeded her farm to her son, Case, and daughter, Lucinda, (Reverend Rush’s wife).[13] The farm and the rest of the eighty acres were eventually sold. The frame building, where families worshipped and schoolchildren studied, is long gone. Only headstones, including hers, in the graveyard remain—symbolizing stories long waiting to be told.
Henley was a woman who survived enslavement and traveled hundreds of miles in perilous times for Black individuals, purchasing 80 acres of land, in full, on November 11, 1844. She shared her land to build a community and to start a church. Henley was born before a revolution and died the year the Civil War started. Her life is a tribute to the enduring human spirit and perseverance spanning an epoch of American history. Henley is a matriarch of Indiana and Howard County. What better symbol to her memory than the decoration on her tombstone—a rose in full bloom.
Further Reading
Anna-Lisa Cox, The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & The Struggle for Equality (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018).
Gilbert Porter, “Howard County’s African American Pioneers,” Kokomo Perspective, February 10, 2021, B3, Kokomo-Howard County Public Library, accessed Howard County Indiana Memory Project.
Stephen Vincent, Southern Seed. Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
Notes:
[1] Record of Slaves and Free Persons, N.C. Archives. File Number: C.R. 081.928. 1 through 6 (#) in The Genealogical Journal 12, no. 38 (The Randolph County Genealogical Society Of The Randolph County Historical Society, Spring 1988): 38.
[2] Edna Hawkins-Hendricks, Black History: Our Heritage Princess Anne County, Virginia Beech, Virginia (self-published, 1998), p. 24, accessed Archive.org.
[4] Aliff Hendley [sic], Certificate #1416, Nov. 11, 1844. Wabash Canal Lands, Register of the Sale of. Oct. 1, 1842 to June 30, 1847. No. 26. Winamac District, Tract Book, Miami Reserve.
[5] Canal Land Patents, Accession #1957006, State Land Office Collection, Indiana State Archives.
[6] Indiana Marriages, 1811-2007, David Rush and Lucinda Henley, 29 Jun 1837; citing Rush, Indiana, United States, Marriage Registration, Indiana Commission on Public Records.
[7] “Sale of Canal Lands,” Logansport Telegraph, September 14, 1844, 2; Indiana State Journal, September 28, 1844, 4.
[8] Early Black Settlements by County, Indiana Historical Society, accessed indianahistory.org.
[9] Rush or Upper Colored Settlement Cemetery Record, Logansport, Indiana. August 18, 1947, L’Anguille Valley Historical & Memorial Association.
[10] “Rush,” Kokomo Gazette Tribune, August 17, 1886, 1.
[11] Field Notes for the Public Land Survey Township Plats, 1789-1946. Record Group 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management, 1685-2006, accessed Howard County Indiana Memory Project.
[12] Hendley [sic] to Rush & other trustees, Jan. 14, 1851. Deed Book C. Howard County, Indiana. May 1846-Jan. 1856. Pages 374-376.
[13] Aliff Henley’s Will, Sept. 2, 1861. Indiana Wills and Probate Records, 1798-1999. Howard – Will Records. Vols. A and 2.1845-1862. Pages 165-168.
[14] Combination Atlas Map of Howard County, Indiana: Compiled, Drawn and Published from Personal Examinations and Surveys, 1877 (Knightstown, IN: Bookmark, 1976), p. 24-25, Historic Indiana Atlases, accessed Indianapolis Public Library.
The Indiana Historical Bureau would not be what it is today without the vision and leadership of Director Pamela J. Bennett. Known to us simply as Pam, she passed away earlier this year, prompting us to remember the profound impact she had on the field of history. Colleagues and friends lauded Pam as a take-charge person, who was a strong collaborator and an excellent writer and editor. During her decades at IHB, she prioritized accessibility and transparency, high quality research, and telling the story of all Hoosiers. She modeled what a public servant truly should be. She also broke the glass ceiling for female leaders in the field and was a devoted mentor to a generation of scholars, ourselves included. In our work at the Bureau, we do our best to carry on Pam’s legacy by meeting Hoosiers where they are and communicating the relevance of history.
Although synonymous with Indiana history, Pam was born in Baltimore on July 3, 1943. She graduated from Gettysburg College in 1965 with an A.B. in Chemistry. After falling in love with British novels, Pam attended Indiana University–Bloomington and completed an A.M. in English Literature. At IU, she served as Assistant Editor of theIndiana Magazine of History and several other history journals and projects.
Pam’s first role at the Indiana Historical Bureau was that of editor when she joined the agency in July 1973. She began her long tenure as director just three years later, when IHB separated from the Indiana Historical Society. As director, she actively worked to safeguard Indiana’s historical records. Her strong belief in the power of knowing history as the basis for thoughtful citizenship led her to provide students and adults with access to Indiana’s history and culture through a variety of educational materials and programs. These included workshops for historical groups and educators on such topics as public relations, the role of the local historical society, and classroom resources.
The Republic (Columbus, IN), December 20, 1978, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
One of Pam’s first major initiatives as IHB director was the restoration and exhibition of the governors’ portrait collection. Many portraits had fallen into disrepair and required significant funding to restore. In typical Pam fashion, she thought outside of the box to get the job done. According to a 1979 Evansville Courier article, Pam believed that “‘historical mementos ought to fund something historic.'”[1] So, she made sets of commemorative medallions that had been collecting dust in the Bureau available for purchase. They had been minted in 1916—in celebration of the state’s centennial—and 1966, the date of the state’s 150th anniversary. This strategy proved successful, and IHB began the process of restoring the paintings with an eye toward extending the collection as a cultural, historical, and educational tool.
Pam, courtesy “Coin Sale May Fund Restoration of Portraits,” Indianapolis Star, May 13, 1979, 51, accessed Newspapers.com.
Before the connectivity of the internet, Pam worked to disseminate history to all corners of the state through various programs. In 1981, she reestablished the Indiana County Historian program, in conjunction with the Indiana Historical Society, to “improve the historical communication network in the state.”[2] Each appointed historian served as a clearinghouse of sorts, becoming experts in their county’s historical resources in order to field residents’ in-depth questions.
Jeannette Rooney, Assistant Director of Local History Services for IHS, recalled that Pam:
played a crucial role in evolving it into the productive and thriving program that today supports local history across the state. When I began working in IHS Local History Services, I had the pleasure of working with Pam through the County Historian Program, and she was a wonderful mentor as I learned all the aspects of coordinating this fantastic group of volunteer historians. Over the seven years we worked together, I knew I could always count on her to know what was going on around Indiana. She was so supportive of local history efforts and the work of county historians – she truly loved the work of history, and she has left quite a legacy! She will be missed.
The program continues to fulfill Pam’s mission to “move local historical information to every Hoosier’s fingertips.”[3]
Pam was a driving force behind another statewide program: National History Day. She coordinated NHD since 1980, when the Indiana program was still in its fledgling state. Under her direction, Indiana became one of the model state programs in the network. National History Day awards outstanding history projects among 6th-12th graders through its annual competition. In describing the value of History Day, Pam wrote in 1989 that it is a “strong reminder to those of us concerned with both the past and the future that we have a responsibility to provide these students with the skills, content and context necessary to make studied and thoughtful decisions in the twenty-first century.”[4] Describing the annual awards ceremony, Pam proclaimed “It is a delightful experience to hear 1200 Hoosiers cheering about something other than basketball.” In addition to overseeing Indiana’s program for over twenty years, she served on the board of U.S. National History Day.
REACH bus site visits, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Box 7, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
In her work to make history accessible to Hoosiers around the state, Pam and the Bureau—in collaboration with the Indiana Arts Commission and Indiana State Museum—spearheaded the innovated REACH bus program. The bus operated as a mobile museum, visiting remote school corporations in the 1980s. Children hopped on the rainbow colored bus, where they learned about natural history by examining stalagmites and viewed original oil paintings by Hoosier artists such as T.C. Steele. REACH encouraged teachers to incorporate the arts and inter-disciplinary learning into curricula.[5]
The popularity of the program is reflected in letters, including that sent by Monrovia PTO President Mary Ann Henderson who stated, “Since we are a small country school our teaching resources are limited, but when we are able to obtain a program such as yours it not only enhances the education of our students it benefits our teachers, parents and community!”[6] Similarly, State Senator Steven R. John wrote, after viewing the bus at the State House and General Assembly, “I saw how it provides the citizens of Indiana, adult and student alike, with an experience in the arts and history that cannot be duplicated.”[7] The program was recognized by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Alliance for Arts in Washington, D.C. Arts Dialogue-Australia also invited organizers to its conference.[8]
Alongside these outreach projects, Pam oversaw internal programming. Among the most important was the State Historical Marker Program. Markers serve as tangible reminders of the state’s rich and diverse history and help return stories to the landscape. While the program has historically been a public-driven initiative, Pam fostered a sense of collaboration and community ownership over markers. Because of the network she helped forge, the Bureau has been able to install over 750 markers across the state, commemorating topics ranging from STEM to sports.
Pam’s expertise was highly sought after and she earned a seat at many important tables. She served on the boards of several organizations, including the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), serving as Vice President from 1988-1989 and President from 1990-1992. Through AASLH, she worked to provide professional development and recognition to state and local historical agencies throughout the country. Pam also advised on state and national historical celebrations, including the U.S. Constitution Bicentennial, Lincoln Bicentennial, Indiana Quarter design, and the American Revolution Bicentennial.
(L to R): Former Indiana Historical Society Director John Herbst, Governor Otis Bowen, Governor Edgar Whitcomb, and Pam at an event celebrating The Governors of Indiana book.
Pam received numerous professional accolades for her prolific work. In 1989, she was the recipient of the Indiana Council for Social Studies’ Citizens Award for outstanding contributions to social studies. In 2010, the Marion County Historical Society presented Pam with the Fadely History Award for “outstanding effort” to promote history in Indianapolis and Marion County. The Indiana Historical Society presented Pam with the 2011 Eli Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award for “extraordinary contributions over an extended period of time to the field of Indiana History.” The Bureau has honored her legacy by naming the Bennett-Tinsley Award for Undergraduate History Research and Writing after her and plans to dedicate our new marker center in her honor.
There are not enough awards to signify Pam’s impact. Perhaps the words of colleagues will help. President of Indiana Landmarks Marsh Davis remembers her as “a stalwart presence who commanded respect as one of the bastions of Indiana history.” Jeannie Regan-Dinius, who worked closely with Pam over the course of 20+ years in her role at the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, told us:
She made me a better historian, challenging me to improve my skills and writing. Her guidance was always fair, honest, and caring. Her work at the statewide level was an inspiration for women working in the history field to see that we could be in charge, provide quality work, and be supportive of other historians.
IHB staff at Pam’s (center) 2015 retirement party.
Colleagues had a chance to tell Pam how much she meant to them in person at her 2015 retirement party. Commemorating Indiana’s bicentennial the following year without her leadership was strange. However, it gave us an opportunity to practice history in a way that reflected her stalwart, collaborative nature.
Pam would probably want to be remembered as a facilitator. Former IHB historian Jill Weiss Simins reflected “I think Pam especially got joy out of connecting people with opportunities. She encouraged us to do more than just what the job required and built a team of young historians dedicated to trying to meet challenges.” In her decades at the Bureau, Pam helped forge a nexus between K-12 schools, citizen historians, universities, humanities organizations, and residents across the state. She cultivated a reputation that has made the Bureau a respected partner, valued resource, and the “go-to” agency for questions about Indiana history from partners, educators, and the public.
From our little corner of the Indiana State Library, we continue to think broadly, ambitiously about how to connect with Hoosiers and to ask big questions, like “how does history inform identity?” While we grieve our fearless leader, we will, as Pam was fond of saying, “Carry on!” as devoted public servants and stewards of Indiana’s stories.
Sources:
[1] “Memento Sale to Buy Back ‘A Bit of this History,'” Evansville Courier, May 14, 1979, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.
[3] “History Aides Sought on County Basis,” South Bend Tribune, December 16, 1980, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.
[4] Letter, Pamela J. Bennett, Indiana Historical Bureau, to Roy Shoemaker, Indiana Historical Society, December 5, 1989, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[5] Elizabeth Jacobson, “Bus Brings Art, Past to Noblesville School,” Noblesville Ledger, September 30, 1987, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.
[6] Letter, Mary Ann Henderson, President of Monrovia PTO, to Celia Yohman, Coordinator, Reach Bus Program, June 13, 1987, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[7] Letter, Steven R. Johnson, State Senator, to Mary L. Snyder, Chairperson, Reach Bus Committee, August 1988, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
[8] “Long Range Plans: REACH: Resources Educating in the Arts, Culture, and History,” p. 1, courtesy of Indiana Historical Bureau Collection, Policy Files-Appointing Authorities, Deputies, and Division Directors, 1908, Indiana Archives and Records Administration.
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 Bazaar.
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.”
