Teaching about Indiana Avenue
(Indianapolis, Indiana)

Introduction:

Indiana Avenue was the center of Black culture in Indianapolis. During the Jazz Era legends like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald played alongside locals like the Hampton Sisters and Wes Montgomery at the 30-plus clubs in the neighborhood. "The Avenue" was also home to the headquarters of Madam C. J. Walker’s majestic theater and hair care manufacturing company, prominent Black churches, Black newspapers, and Black-owned businesses. Urban renewal projects, particularly the expansion of Indiana University, destroyed the neighborhood in the mid-20th century.

1. Who controls the narrative of what is in "public interest"? How have Black communities been excluded from this narrative, past and present?
2. How can we hold universities and governments accountable for their past and present actions against Black communities?
3. How have personal interest of white led organizations harmed Black communities throughout history? How should organizations operate differently? What are other models for how organizations engage with communities?

Historical Overview

Although the University Medical Center (the forerunner of today’s IUPUI campus) had bought surrounding property piecemeal since the 1920’s, and this continued well into the 1970s, in the 1950’s federal funding targeting so-called ‘urban-blight’ made rapid and aggressive acquisitions of surrounding neighborhoods possible, expanding the power of eminent domain, and destroying communities in the process. The present day IUPUI campus was home to a neighborhood that in the middle of the twentieth century was the center of African American life in central Indiana, including a business district, schools, churches, leisure spaces and homes of both affluent and impoverished families.

In the 1950s two urban renewal projects directed by the Indianapolis Redevelopment Commission removed residents to sell their land to the university. The Commission purchased properties (104 homes in the first case and a neighborhood comprising 18 acres in the other), relocated residents, cleared the land, and sold it to the university. A January 1970 IUPUI memo demonstrates that the university was fully aware of the displacement of this community and the resulting ill-will, stating that the projects

“significantly reduced the area’s supply of low cost housing. … In fact, as social and commercial services disappear from the neighborhood, tenants and home owners are asking if the City and the University are not making the area so barren that people are forced to move out rather than “die on the vine.” Institutions are behaving in ways which look like the same old obstacles which poor Black folk have experienced over past years. There is some local bitterness about the “paternalistic” approach common to organizations purporting to serve the neighborhood. The white or “giving” group usually selects the local leadership it will work with, and secondly the group selects the services it thinks the neighborhood needs. People are no longer willing to appear grateful for things they never asked for. They are understandably upset … by massive change forces over which they feel they have little control.``

Additional Resources:

Websites:

Publications

8th grade:

8.1.21 Give examples of the changing role of women, minorities, and immigrants in the northern, southern and western parts of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, and examine possible causes for these changes.
8.1.28 Recognize historical perspective and evaluate alternative courses of action by describing the historical context in which events unfolded.
8.3.7 Using primary and secondary sources, identify ways people modified the physical environment as the United States developed and describe the impacts that resulted.
8.3.8 Analyze human and physical factors that have influenced migration and settlement patterns and relate them to the economic development of the United States.

Ethnic Studies:

ES.1.3 Students evaluate how society’s responses to different social identities lead to access and/or barriers for ethnic and racial groups in relation to various societal institutions, including but not limited to education, healthcare, government, and industry
ES.2.4 Students examine history and the present to make predictions about what role the dominant culture plays in the loss of racial/ethnic culture and cultural identity.

U.S. History

USH.7.6 Identify the problems confronting different minorities during this period of economic and social change and describe the solutions to these problems.

Indiana Studies:

IS.1.25 Summarize key economic and social developments and changes in post-WWII life in Indiana.
IS.1.26 Summarize and assess the various actions which characterized the early struggle for civil rights and racial equality in Indiana.
IS.1.35 Locate and analyze primary sources and secondary sources related to an event or issue of the past. Discover possible limitations in various kinds of historical evidence and differing secondary opinions.
IS.1.36 Analyze multiple, unexpected and complex causes and effects of events in the past.
IS.1.38 Research and describe the contributions of important Indiana artists and writers to the state’s cultural landscape.

Social Justice Standards
6-8:

DI.6-8.8 I am curious and want to know more about other people’s histories and lived experiences, and I ask questions respectfully and listen carefully and nonjudgmentally.
DI.6-8.10 I can explain how the way groups of people are treated today, and the way they have been treated in the past, shapes their group identity and culture.
JU.6-8.12 I can recognize and describe unfairness and injustice in many forms including attitudes, speech, behaviors, practices and laws.

Social Justice Standards
9-12:

DI.9-12.8 I respectfully express curiosity about the history and lived experiences of others and exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way.
DI.9-12.10 I understand that diversity includes the impact of unequal power relations on the development of group identities and cultures.
JU.9-12.12 I can recognize, describe and distinguish unfairness and injustice at different levels of society.
JU.9-12.15 I can identify figures, groups, events and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world.