Editor’s note: An informal group of Brown County residents has been meeting to discuss human rights issues. A committee volunteered to take on the project of “capturing the current state of race relations” in our community, and part of that project is studying history. Local author Rachel Perry and Brown County Democrat intern Joe Schroeder collaborated on this piece, the second of two about “a brief history of people of color in our county and state” from 1836 to the present. Part 1 was published in the July 22 paper and is posted here.
By RACHEL PERRY and JOE SCHROEDER, for The Democrat
During the first world war and postwar years, racial violence increased in all parts of the United States.
Demands for tightening racial restrictions in the 1920s coincided with the period of Ku Klux Klan domination in Indiana politics and society. Leonard J. Moore, who has analyzed membership lists, estimated that one quarter or more of the state’s native-born white men joined, as did thousands of women.
In addition to Blacks, Catholics and Jews, immigrants, particularly eastern and southern Europeans, were a perceived threat.
White citizens near cities eagerly joined the Klan, though it was the White Supremacy League and related citizen’s groups that pushed earliest and hardest for more segregation in housing and public schools. “The widespread assumption that hooded men used lynching rope is wrong,” according to historian James H. Madison. “There is not a single documented Klan lynching in Indiana. Nor is there a known Klan murder of any sort. Violence was not the Klan way. Their primary method mixed intimidation with persuasion.”
Intimidation began with the organization’s secrecy and conduct. Sometimes, members burned the cross in a front yard as a warning, or soaped a window screen. Sometimes they left a bundle of switches on the porch of a wife abuser, similar to the Whitecappers, according to Madison in “Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana.”
The Brown County Democrat carried a story on Christmas night, 1922, about a large cross, 18 feet tall, that was wrapped in burlap, soaked in kerosene, and set afire on a hill just north of Nashville, simultaneously with a monetary contribution from the Brown County Klan to a local pastor. Six months later, The Democrat reported that a Klan parade took place in Nashville to recruit Brown County members.
The struggle for racial equality persisted into the 1930s. Health care was a major issue, since Black physicians were banned from practice even in the “colored” wing of the tax-supported hospitals. In Indianapolis, with a Black population of almost 40,000 in 1926, there were only 70 beds available and Black males were assigned to a ward in the basement at the only hospital in the state that accepted them.
Although color lines were not drawn here as rigidly as in the American South, the inconsistency caused confusion and anxiety for Blacks. Cultural norms such as a schoolyard game in Brown County called “blackman,” mentioned by Alma J. Lucas in “Brown County Remembers,” sent subtle messages.
In other Indiana counties, hatred of Blacks wasn’t so veiled. On a hot August night in 1930, a white mob of citizens unrelated to the Klan lynched two Black teenagers on the courthouse square in Marion, Indiana. According to Emma Lou Thornbrough in “Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century,” not a single member of the lynch mob was ever punished.
When the Great Depression hit, Black people were the first to lose their jobs. A notable enhancement for state-owned properties near and in Brown County was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Kate Martin, in her 2004 article about race and the CCC in Indiana, found that federal relief programs were the only hope for many Blacks, but racism in American society at large was also reflected in the CCC. Despite wording in the CCC legislation disallowing discrimination, the program was segregated due to prevailing racial attitudes of the day. Many whites did not want Black service camps in their communities.
Eight of the 56 CCC companies in Indiana were for Black workers only. Company 542 CCC camp S-69, a Black company, was headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, but most of the work was done in Morgan-Monroe State Forest. On their days off, buses took the workers to Bloomington or Columbus if they left camp, since the nearby village of Nashville was known to not welcome Blacks, according to Jack Weddle, former Brown County State Park naturalist, in a 1997 Herald-Times interview.
After many Black people served in World War II, everyday discrimination continued in communities across the state. Indianapolis welcomed GIs with informative pamphlets about local movie theaters, parks, churches and servicemen’s centers, but noted carefully which facilities were for “Negroes.” Few Black veterans were granted mortgages through the GI Bill.
Beginning with the 1949 Indiana legislative session, bills to fight entrenched custom and prejudice (and enforce the civil rights laws of 1885) were all defeated. Exclusion from hotels, restaurants, places of entertainment, and parks in obvious violation of the law were indignities that a growing Black middle class resented and resisted, but an issue of more fundamental importance to Black people was discrimination in employment.
Thornbrough in “Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century” wrote that few Black families had money to buy homes outside the “colored” neighborhoods, and most of the houses in those neighborhoods were classified as substandard.
Hispanic Hoosiers also encountered discrimination as they moved toward opportunities. Hampered by poverty and a lack of education, many found only unskilled jobs.
Although Brown County was not an agricultural county, compared with northern Indiana farmland, Mexican-American migratory workers from Texas began arriving to work on the Christmas tree farms in the late 1960s. Originally, they worked the spring planting, then went to Michigan to harvest fruit, returned to Brown County to help cut the trees and then spent the rest of winter in Texas. After a few seasons, some families settled permanently in Brown County and remain here today.
With the civil rights movement of the 1960s, citizens became more aware of the nation’s ideals. In 1961 and 1963, the state’s General Assembly passed civil rights bills that allowed individuals to bring charges, provided penalties for violations, and gave power to a state civil rights commission.
In September 1969, the Brown County Democrat reported that a journalist with the Johnson County Daily Journal was attacked and robbed by a Klan member while covering a Spearsville cross burning rally. The journalist had his life threatened and his camera stolen by Joe Napier, an Indianapolis Klan member who was arrested and held in the Brown County jail. Klan members, including the Grand Dragon William M. Cheney, again visited Nashville in 1971, according to The Democrat, to pass out leaflets and recruit members at the intersection of Main and Van Buren streets.
Brown County received statewide attention after residents found copies of a 16-page Klan pamphlet, titled “Truth At Last,” hanging from their mailboxes in 1996. The booklets attacked racial and religious minorities. At the time, local law enforcement denied a strong Klan presence in the area, but Chief Deputy Jack Slaybaugh said he was not surprised by the incident because he knew of many Klan sympathizers in Brown County, The Democrat reported.
Brown County’s progress in the 21st Century toward acceptance and sensitivity to minorities has been mixed. We now have a few Asian- and Black-owned businesses, and people of color are slightly more common on our streets. But the confederate flag, linked to white supremacy and slavery, can still be seen proudly displayed on our country roads, and a member of the 2014 graduating class of Brown County High School chose to exhibit this symbol on his graduation cap at commencement.
The Brown County Visitors Center has had three complaints in the last five years of racial bias experienced by visitors, according to the executive director.
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As a person of color living, working, visiting or doing business in Brown County, would you be willing to share your experiences and observations about your time here?
If you are interested in speaking with a reporter — or writing something of your own — please email [email protected].
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