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Indiana History
The following is a selection of Lilly Library and Ramsay Archives materials related to the research of Black communities, people, sites, and history in the State of Indiana. The majority of these materials are available to check out. Some sources are available online, and some include links and additional context for some items.
***This page is a work in progress and will be added to and adapted over the 2023 spring and summer semesters. With questions, edits, and/or additions, please email Evan Miller at millere@wabash.edu.***
Reference Books
Peopling Indiana by Call Number: F535.A1 P46 1996Publication Date: 1996This encyclopedic source includes chapters on many racial demographic groups in the State of Indiana. The source includes contributions from several academic and history professionals. The chapter on African Americans in Indiana was written by Emma Lou Thornbrough, a Butler University Professor of History and early researcher of and collaborator with Black communities in Indiana.
Hoosier Faiths by Call Number: BR555.I6 R83 1995Publication Date: 1996Covering all of the major denominations and religious groups from historical Indiana, this resource includes descriptive narratives providing information on prominent individuals, churches, and governmental bodies and their influence and growth (and disappearance) in the State. Chapters include Black Methodists, African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Black Baptists, and Ethnic Catholics (of which Crawfordsville had a Black Baptist Church and still has an AME Church).
The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis by Call Number: F534.I357 E63Publication Date: 1994While containing only reference articles and biographical entries of people, places, and things connected to Indianapolis, it is a great source for seeing the development of the State through the lens of its largest city. (Also, it's a small world, and there are connections everywhere--even Wabash ones.) Now the Encyclopedia is updated and available online at INDYENCYCLOPEDIA.ORG
Notable Black American Women by Call Number: E185.96 .N68 1992Publication Date: 2002This reference resource contains 425 entries on significant African American women across the country. Some Indiana individuals are included (e.g. Madame C. J. Walker).
Nonfiction
Lynching in the Heartland by
"A harrowing yet poignant examination of a famous lynching that considers America's ongoing struggles with race, equality, and justice."
Call Number: F534.M34 M33 2001Publication Date: 2001
The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority by
"Presenting the history of African Americans in a northern state from their first arrival in the eighteenth century, this study covers their developing legal and economic status, efforts against white racism, and the founding of distinctive African American institutions: fraternal, social, and charitable organizations, churches, and schools."
Call Number: E185.93.I4 T48 1993Publication Date: 1993
Polite Protest: the political economy of race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970 by
"This history of the Black community of Indianapolis in the 20th century focuses on methods of political action--protracted negotiations, interracial coalitions, petition, and legal challenge--employed to secure their civil rights. These methods of "polite protest" set Indianapolis apart from many Northern cities. Richard B. Pierce looks at how the Black community worked to alter the political and social culture of Indianapolis. As local leaders became concerned with the city's image, Black leaders found it possible to achieve gains by working with whites inside the existing power structure, while continuing to press for further reform and advancement. Pierce describes how Indianapolis differed from its Northern cousins such as Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit. Here, the city's people, Black and white, created their own patterns and platforms of racial relations in the public and cultural spheres."
Call Number: F534.I39 N43 2005Publication Date: 2005
This far by faith: Black Hoosier heritage by Call Number: Ramsay Archives E185.93 .I4T5 1982Publication Date: 1982
Popular Nonfiction
The Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing contains numerous issues covering topics across several towns, cities, and counties across the United States. (There is one publication with images from Crawfordsville, Indiana.) The following is a selection from the series about African American sites and communities in Indiana.
African-Americans in Allen County, Fort Wayne, Indiana by
The history and contributions of African Americans in northeast Indiana have been largely overlooked. This new publication, African Americans in Fort Wayne: The First 200 Years, does not claim to be a definitive history of the topic. It does, however, recognize and honor the pioneers who have made the African-American community in Fort Wayne what it is today. Through diary excerpts, oral histories, and studies of social organizations, religion, and community, a rich, 200-year heritage is vividly depicted. The story begins in 1794, when evidence points to the first black inhabitant of Fort Wayne. The first known, free black in the area was identified in 1809. During the early part of the 1800s, Indiana state funds partially financed a movement to send Indiana blacks to Liberia. Few left, and those who remained worked diligently to make Fort Wayne their own. The fruits of their labor can be partially seen in the development of the first black church, Turner Chapel A.M.E., which was started in 1849 and has been a pillar of the community since its completion. A migration of African Americans from the south, due to industrialization, greatly increased the population from 1913 through 1927, and new churches, organizations, and opportunities were developed. Today, the black community in Fort Wayne is rightfully proud of its extensive past.
Call Number: F534.F7 M647 2000Publication Date: 2000
Madam Walker Theatre Center by
As they watched construction of the block-long flatiron building brick by brick throughout 1927, African American residents of Indianapolis could scarcely contain their pride. This new headquarters of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, with its terra-cotta trimmed facade, was to be more than corporate offices and a factory for what then was one of America's most successful black businesses. In fact, it was designed as "a city within a city," with an African Art Deco theater, ballroom, restaurant, drugstore, beauty salon, beauty school, and medical offices. Generations of African American families met for Sunday dinner at the Coffee Pot, enjoyed first-run movies and live performances in the Walker Theatre, and hosted dances in the Casino. Today, this National Historic Landmark is an arts center anchoring the Indiana Avenue Cultural District.
Call Number: PN2277.I52 M333 2012Publication Date: 2013
Historic Sites and National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places documents sites, structures, and neighborhoods that have been submitted and officially approved by the National Park Service. Before the Internet, the Register was available via printed publication; now all current entries and applications--which include detailed physical descriptions, statements of significance, and historical summaries--are available via the National Register of Historic Places website (or check out this interactive map for accessing the National Register database).
Over the years, not as many Black historical sites and structures--as well as buildings and grounds associated with many different communities of color--have been nominated or approved for inclusion on the National Register; therefore, the list is not a comprehensive source. The National Park Service has been working to increase representation on the National Register and currently seeks properties that reflect African American heritage. State and local organizations are also working to educate and advocate for more nominations, such as the efforts of Indiana Landmarks' Black Heritage Preservation Program.
The National Register of Historic Places, 1976 by Call Number: Compact Shelving E159 .N343Publication Date: 1976
In the 1980s, the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana (now Indiana Landmarks) and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (specifically the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology) conducted a thorough inventory of historic sites and structures on a county-level throughout the State of Indiana. These inventories were published to primarily provide documentation of the physical landscape and buildings across the state in order to identify properties that could quality for the National Register (this does not mean that the properties that were identified still stand or were ever nominated for the National Register).
Many of these published county-level historical site and structure inventories are available via a digital collection at IUPUI.The Lilly Library holds the majority of the series.
Montgomery County, Interim Report: Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory by Call Number: F532.M75 M58 1986Publication Date: 1986
Historical Fiction
Black in Indiana by
"Life for Blacks in Southern Indiana in the 1820s could be brutal, but Mary Bateman Clark's victorious lawsuit helped advance change. This book is a must-read which looks beyond typical stories about slavery. Book includes genealogical information about numerous African American families in Knox County, Indiana before 1820."
Call Number: E185.93.I4 B7 2020Publication Date: 2020
Say I'm Dead by
"Say I'm Dead is the true story of family secrets, separation, courage, and trans-formation through five generations of interracial relationships. Fearful of prison time-or lynching-for violating Indiana's antimiscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's black father and white mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo, New York. When Johnson was born, social norms and her government-issued birth certificate said she was Negro, nullifying her mother's white blood in her identity. Later, as a Harvard-educated business executive feeling too far from her black roots, she searched her father's black genealogy. But in the process, Johnson suddenly realized that her mother's whole white family was-and always had been-missing. When she began to pry, her mother's 36-year-old secret spilled out. Her mother had simply vanished from Indiana, evading an FBI and police search that had ended with the conclusion that she had been the victim of foul play."
Call Number: E185.97.J67 J64 2020Publication Date: 2020
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad and the Antislavery Movement in Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana by Call Number: E450 .Q55 2001Publication Date: 2001
Underground Railroad Research in Select Indiana Counties by Call Number: E450 .U5 2003Publication Date: 2003
Abolitionists on the Underground Railroad: Legends from Montgomery County, Indiana by
This book is a collection of personal vignettes, a mystery detective novel that turns oral legend into history. Montgomery County, Indiana's history of the Underground Railroad focuses on the people involved. Documentation recounts few feats of derring-do and midnight runs through the woods in our county's past. While this book does have a few escape stories, both successful and unsuccessful, it tells more about the lives and backgrounds of the people who made the choice to help those seeking freedom and those who made their homes here after leaving lives of oppression. What is included within these pages is a story about people who, by choice, were bound together by a common purpose. Montgomery County, Indiana holds a special place on the Western spur of Indiana's Underground Railroad. Indiana's landscape provided all the natural formations that allowed runaways traversing the state to conceal themselves and to follow nature's signs northward. Montgomery County boasted existing footpaths, flat terrains, Sugar Creek that ran northeast to southwest, tree hollows, caves, forests, thickets, geese flying north, moss growing thicker on the north side of the trees, rising and setting of the sun, and, of course, the most notable of nature's gifts, the North Star. Abolitionists/Activists smuggled escapees in boats, carriages, stagecoaches, railroad cars, false bottom wagons, and skiffs while they hid them in barns, haystacks, corn cribs, drainpipes, barrels, trunks, old furniture, coffins, and overturned canoes. Slave songs and spirituals often gave directions, coded messages, and helpful suggestions for those preparing to or travelling on the Underground Railroad. Indiana's Underground Railroad western spur came up through places like Leavenworth, Lawrenceburg, New Albany, and Evansville. Depending on circumstances (patrollers, bounty hunters, weather), conductors routed runaways northward through Vincennes, Terre Haute, Bloomingdale, Alamo, Yountsville, Crawfordsville, Garfield, Darlington, Michigan, and eventually to Canada. However, these inner workings of our western route have remained shrouded in mystery. Historians have suggested many reasons for this. Those who did settle here brought their secret tactics from the East Coast knowing how to conceal their movements. Local conductors had a greater fear for their own protection and the safety of their families. The Western side of the state was sparsely settled until later in the state's history. In 1824, Crawfordsville found itself isolated being the only town between Terre Haute and Fort Wayne. Conductors hid or destroyed journals, or chose never to keep them. The total number aided to freedom, or where they stayed during their journey through this area of the state will never be known. Specific details about how the Underground Railroad organization began in Montgomery County have been lost to time. Because very few specific written records exist, some historians have classified all local stories as Montgomery County legends. But like all legends, the stories had facts at the core. While historians assumed the traffic was never very heavy since more legends haven't been told, it may have instead been a matter of self-preservation with carefully guarded secrets. The only real concrete remnants of these legends include verified homes such as Crawfordsville's Speed Cabin, Alamo's Hiram Powell home, and Yountsville's Abijah O'Neall home, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Crawfordsville's Northend, and some letters preserved by descendants.
Call Number: F532.M75 H8 2017Publication Date: 2017
301 W. Wabash Avenue
Crawfordsville, IN 47933
(765) 361-6100
Crawfordsville, IN 47933
(765) 361-6100