History
In 1870, more African Americans were calling Indiana Avenue home as the original Irish and German populations began moving outward following the Emancipation Proclamation. The population had risen to 974 residents, more than one-third of the city's total African-American population. As the population escalated, African American residents took root opening businesses on practically every corner. Bethel AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, the oldest African American congregation in Indianapolis, was organized in 1836. The first African American businesses appeared on the 500 Block of Indiana Avenue as early as 1865: Samuel G. Smother's grocery store; William Franklin's peddler shop and the city's first owned and operated African American newspaper, The Indianapolis Leader in 1879.
The avenue continued to culturally develop, in much the same way as the Harlem Renaissance. In fact, due to the nature of segregation and Jim Crowe laws, several streets developed similarly including Beale Street in Memphis and 12th and Vine in Kansas City according to the book, Indiana Avenue: Black Entertainment Boulevard by C. Nickerson Bolden. Like Indiana Avenue, these streets were called Black Entertainment Bouelvards, or stops along the Chitlin' circuit because of the large concentration of black-oriented clubs, businesses and entertainment venues.
Many prominent historical figures have their roots on Indiana Avenue: Madam C.J. Walker, jazz greats including Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Coe, Noble Sissle, Erroll "Groundhog" Grandy and Wes Montgomery. Mary Ellen Cable was one of the most important African American educators in Indianapolis. Coupled with her great work as an educator, she organized and served as the first president of Indiana's NAACP chapter.
Read more about this topic: Indiana Avenue
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)