African Americans°®¶¹app™ presence in Indiana has been documented to the mid-1700s by St. Francis Xaiver Church in Knox County. Births, deaths, baptisms and marriages of both free and enslaved African Americans are included.
Before the Civil War, there were nearly 100 Black settlements throughout the state, and evidence remains today of schools, churches and cemeteries. Yet little is known about these communities, the people who lived there, and the contributions they made to Indiana and the nation.
During the Great Migration, African Americans owned and operated numerous businesses statewide that became critical in providing goods, services and jobs for the Black communities to which thousands migrated from the South. Many of these sites have been demolished because of urban renewal or to make way for interstate and institutional development. Evidence at most sites has been erased, buried beneath cement and asphalt.
Displacement is wiping out Black history nationwide. Indiana is no exception.
Indiana Landmarks, the largest private statewide preservation organization in the country, created the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program in 2022 with funding by the Lilly Endowment, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Robin and Charlitta Winston.
Today, the program works statewide to tell the full story of Hoosier history by uncovering, documenting, restoring, and preserving Black history and heritage.
In Gary, the program is working to find an adaptive reuse for that city°®¶¹app™s shuttered Roosevelt High School, one of three high schools built in Indiana for the African American community during the 1920s and 1930s, a period when Hoosier schools were segregated.
The other two are Evansville°®¶¹app™s Lincoln High School (which became an elementary school) and Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis.
In Marion, Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program has worked to save and restore First Friends Church, which was sold to a small Black church in the early 1990s but nearly became a victim of demolition by neglect.
The program helped secure funding for a new roof and repairs to several broken windows at the church, which was designed by one of the state°®¶¹app™s first Black architects, Samuel Plato. The church is also being considered for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
In Fort Wayne, the program helped form a local preservation organization now working to identify, preserve and honor Black heritage sites in Allen County. The group surveyed and documented Southern Heights, a Black housing development on Fort Wayne°®¶¹app™s southeast side built by Roosevelt Barnes, a Black developer. His mission was to provide housing to African Americans during a time when they could not purchase homes in Fort Wayne because of discrimination.
The Fort Wayne Black heritage program director Roberta Ridley and her team are also identifying important Black history and heritage sites for a web-based tour, and the group is working on a National Register nomination for the original site of Turner Chapel AME Church.
The group is also raising awareness of a home designed by Paul Revere Williams, a Black architect who also designed numerous homes for members of the Hollywood elite, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Barbara Stanwyck and Lon Chaney. The Williams-designed house in Fort Wayne is believed to be his only design in the state.
Nationally, fewer than 2% of those working in the preservation field are people of color. A strategy of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program is building capacity for doing this work by launching an intern program and providing scholarships to African American college students pursuing this field.
The program is also creating Black heritage preservation groups statewide. Fort Wayne°®¶¹app™s group is one of the 10 that are now doing this work, paired with existing preservationists who share knowledge.
The Black Heritage Preservation Program holds training sessions, teaching people how to research and document Black heritage sites and their own genealogy.
The groups also learn how to apply for historic designation and markers.
The program also collects oral histories among Black elders statewide. The interviews will become a part of the Indiana Landmarks Black Oral History Collection, which will live on the Indiana State Library Indiana Memory collections platform. The collection will be publicly available next spring.
The Black Heritage Preservation Program has provided $500,000 in grants to more than 50 organizations statewide working to preserve Black heritage sites and history.
Even with this growing capacity, more resources are needed. There is no time to waste. Daily, a historic site is being lost. An elder is dying, taking knowledge of Black history with them.
If you are interested in becoming an ally in our race to save Hoosier Black history and heritage, you can help by donating to the program (indianalandmarks.org/join-give/donate/), supporting the work of the Fort Wayne organization, and spreading the news that Indiana values Black history.
Eunice Trotter is director of the Black Heritage Preservation Program with Indiana Landmarks.
