When Ernest Hughes was a teenager in the 50’s in Indianapolis, he couldn’t pick up his food from the front of the restaurant. Some storefronts had a “white only” sign posted.
As a Black kid, he had to go around to the back to get his food instead. Black children weren’t allowed to play with the others at a carnival on 30th Street either. Black people also weren’t allowed to use the restroom at some gas stations.
Because of the color of his skin, it was also hard for Hughes to get a good job. He started off sweeping and cleaning for Allison Transmission, a manufacturing company in Indianapolis. He then became a painter, and later worked for International Harvester and General Motors, where he retired. Since his wife passed away, he’s been living alone.
Hughes told this story in an interview with Olivia Novak, an oral history intern at the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement, who recently graduated from IU with degrees in history and anthropology. The center is partnering with the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program, created in 2022 to uncover and preserve the history of Black people like Hughes across the state.
“Everyone has a story, and the stories tell the history,” said Eunice Trotter, director of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program. “They also give us clues to history that may be buried. … We are confronting erasure every day, and we don't have time to spare. Our elders are dying, and with them often goes those stories, so this work is extremely important. It has generational impact.”
The work that Novak and other interns have done for the past two years involved interviewing hundreds of Black community members about their lives, such as what their childhood and education were like.
At these oral history harvests — community events inviting people to share their stories — Novak also asked people what it was like living during World War II, the Civil Rights Movement and when Jim Crow laws were enacted. They held harvests in Knox County, Daviess County and Gibson County, as well as Indianapolis and Lafayette.
Many were hesitant to talk at first but slowly opened up. Many stories Novak documented concerned racial injustice. She recalled speaking with one woman who had a negative interaction with a white girl when she was little.
“She said that there was a white girl who lived on her street, and one time they were looking at each other, and she was thinking how beautiful that girl was, and then the girl called her a slur, and she actually started tearing up when she was remembering that, because she was saying that she was having these lovely thoughts about this person, and that's what the person was thinking about her,” Novak said. “That really stood out, because I really could see the effect that had on her, and the reality of growing up at that time when that was their culture.”
Novak also worked with Tom Bartholomew, project facilitator for the Black History Preservation Project of Knox County, to digitally map out a historically Black neighborhood in Vincennes named Idaho. The Idaho neighborhood has existed since the early 20th century, but little is known about it or its inhabitants.
Within the Idaho neighborhood, the Dunbar School was originally established as a “colored school” in 1877 during the era of segregation, but there is no existing documentation on who attended. One of the things Bartholomew is working on is rebuilding a yearbook for that school.
“A school is a hub of a community, and so is a church, and so is a barbershop, and even pool halls, but schools and churches are really closely connected, and so we can uncover that way,” he said. “We're looking through newspaper records, and it seems arduous. Cindy Frederick, who I'm working with, is going through newspaper records, and any reference she can find to a student at Dunbar, we’ll write it down and try and find out when that kid went there, and in essence, try and rebuild a yearbook.”
Through this research, Novak and her colleagues were able to learn about the Idaho All-Stars baseball team headed by William “Cap” Embry, a Black baseball player and umpire from Knox County. He was one of the first Black men to serve as an umpire on the national stage.
Trotter’s own great-great-great grandmother, Mary Bateman Clark, was born into slavery and forced to become an indentured servant in Indiana, even though Indiana’s constitution stated slavery was not legal. She filed a lawsuit in 1821 against the person she was indentured to. Clark won an appeal in the state’s Supreme Court, forcing Indiana not to practice indentured servitude. Now, there’s a historical marker in front of the Knox County Courthouse to honor her.
“Let's learn more about the history of the state of Indiana that has not been taught in schools. It's not taught, you know, even in the colleges; it's little known history,” Trotter said. “…That kind of history has been buried, and we are working to uncover it.”
Trotter said many Black settlements across the state could’ve been connected to the underground railroad, something many people may not know.
“As enslaved African Americans left Kentucky or Tennessee or North Carolina to escape enslavement, they came to Indiana, and were assisted in escaping enslavement,” she said, “and are moving on to Canada, further north.”
The oral history interviews are available to view on the Indiana Memory website. The remaining work, including the interactive digital story map, will soon be posted online. But Bartholomew says the project won’t end anytime soon.
“There's always going to be something next, because you think, oh yeah, well, what's going to happen when we get to the end of this project,” he said, “but the project's not going to end because there's so much Black history out there.”
Bartholomew also stressed the importance of gathering oral histories across generations and conserving them in a safe place.
“Whether you're 80 or 90 years old, and somebody's asking about your history, or you're your age, or Olivia's age, it's important to document that history too,” he said. “And I'm not just talking about doing a bathroom selfie with your phone. I'm talking about, get the pictures if they’re on your phone or on a regular camera, and back them up, and make sure that they're in some kind of album, because people are going to need to see that.”
