IUPUI

This free event begins at 6:30PM to 9:00PM.

Indianapolis’ near-Westside was home to numerous European immigrant groups during the nineteenth century. As more African American families began to appear on the area’s census rolls in the early twentieth century, however, the near-Westside became “the” place for Blacks to pursue and create their segregated-slice of the American Dream.

Indiana Avenue was the main corridor slicing through the near-Westside and it soon became a microcosm of the New York City’s storied Harlem with its many businesses, churches, social institutions and jazz clubs. Completion of the Walker Building in 1927 brought additional prominence to the area: it housed Madam C.J. Walker’s manufacturing company and a theatre that attracted national artists and performers. The Walker Building also provided office spaces for Black professionals and other entrepreneurial undertakings that brought vitality and pride to the area. However, the year 1927 also saw the opening of Crispus Attucks High School and the ushering-in of an era of segregation that had far-reaching implications for the area.

This program comes at the conclusion of a project that has examined the history of Indianapolis’ near-Westside through the oral memories of African Americans who were once residents of the neighborhoods where IUPUI sits today. The intent of the program is to provide a public forum that will reflect upon concerns that have circulated throughout the African American community for many years: How the displacement of a once-vibrant, African American community resulted in the establishment of an urban university, IUPUI.

The project - The Price of Progress: IUPUI, the Color Line, and Urban Displacement – is a written compilation of elders’ memories focusing on the central features of life in that community along and across the color line, ranging from faith to schooling to leisure and entrepreneurship. It examines residents’ sentiments about the community’s displacement after World War II and during the establishment of IUPUI. It is important to note that such displacements throughout the United States were targeted at marginalized and often-Black communities, but virtually no urban universities have reflectively contemplated their own roles in these dramatic transformations.

The published oral interviews will provide insight into how elders view their lives and the near-Westside’s history while documenting their sentiments about the urban renewal displacements that began in the 1930s and continued into the 1980s.

This conversation - along with publication of the compiled memories – can be the beginning of a critical and reflective public discourse in which IUPUI can publicly examine its institutional complicity in urban renewal without ignoring the dramatic public benefits the University brings to the city and its residents.

Orders will be taken for free copies of the publication at the program and the project’s interviewees will be invited as special guests.