Episode 8: Uncovering Black Heritage in Knox County and Beyond

Our Indiana Episode 8 Transcript

[INTRO INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

Denny Spinner::
Denny. This is Denny Spinner from the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement. Welcome to Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers, recording today from the Meeting House in Vincennes, Indiana. We are with Eunice Trotter, the program director of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Project, and historian from Knox County, Tom Bartholomew. Tom and Eunice, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

Eunice Trotter:
Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Denny Spinner:
We're going to start off with just some basic information. Eunice, would you tell us what the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Project is? Long name, tell us what it means.

Speaker 1
Well, the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program was actually started in the 1990s as an all-volunteer group with the mission of uncovering and preserving Black heritage sites around the state. It morphed into a fully funded program in 2022, and with the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, a $5 million grant from that endowment, which endows the program, and also support from the National Trust. And so these entities, along with a smaller fund created by Charlitta and Robin Winston, helped support the program. And our mission is to uncover, to document, to preserve, and/or restore Black heritage and Black heritage sites.

Denny Spinner:
And with that, we're here in Knox County in Vincennes, which is historic in many, many ways for our state, for our Midwest. And Tom, so why was this project important for Knox County as well? How did Knox County get engaged in this, and what’s its significance for your community?

Tom Bartholomew:
Well, Knox County got engaged in this probably 250 years ago —

ALL
[LAUGHTER]

Tom Bartholomew:
— when Knox County became a county in Indiana territory. And the Black history in Knox County reaches back to the, you know, mid-, even the early 1700s. And it's been going on up until, you know, the year we're in now. So that's a couple of hundred years of Black history, and a lot of people just don't know anything about it. And it's important for the whole community, I think, to recognize their whole history and really enrich their selves and have a broader picture of who we are as a community.

And so, two-and-a-half years ago when we started the Black History Preservation Project in Knox County, we were just getting started. We are winding up a grant at the library funded by Indiana Historical Society called Love, Death and Marriage in Knox County. And it was in those documents that it became apparent that we had a lot of Black history here—a lot of really significant Black history here. And people sometimes have a hard time understanding that, because, you know, ‘What? Right here in Vincennes? Knox County?’ We're in the middle of nowhere, some people think. But the things that played out here 200 years ago are as important as what played out in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia and other places, as far as the history.

Denny Spinner:
As we were talking before we started recording, one of the things both of you mentioned—because of the history here In Knox County, this is probably one of the most well-documented communities when it comes to Black history. Is that correct?

Eunice Trotter:
Well, there has been a lot of documentation that has been buried. It's been in boxes and in file cabinets and, you know, on microfilm that's not been indexed. So the work that Tom and his group are doing is so critical because it puts these documents in a public space where they're public-facing. They're available now for researchers and for genealogists and for historians to see that history and to expand upon it, to document it, to share it.

So you know, as we all know, Knox County was the capital of the Old Northwest Territory. So when a lot of these settlers, particularly descendants of the Revolutionary War, came to Knox County—to the Old Northwest Territory, actually—to claim land grants and to just find better opportunities in what was the West—this was one of the furthest reaches of the West at that time—they brought with them African Americans who had been enslaved. Some were not. Some had been here even before they arrived with Native Americans. And there, a community began—not just of African Americans, but of Hoosiers period.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
Also here at that time were French, who also brought African Americans from France with them here to the Old Northwest Territory. So our history here reaches back to that period and continues, as Tom said, until today.

Denny Spinner:
So a part of that, the documented history, is there, and we're working hard on that. But Eunice, one of your projects is also capturing the oral histories of Black communities in Indiana. IU students and faculty have been assisting in that. Tell us a little bit about that work, and what's that like?

Eunice Trotter:
Well, I've been very grateful for their involvement in this project because it's a learning opportunity for the students, but it's also a significant step toward capturing this history that we may not know anything about. We are interviewing elder African American people, and not just African American people period who might have some information about Black history and Black heritage, and we're documenting these conversations through this oral history project that we started in conjunction with the Indiana State Library.

So this is actually a statewide program. Here under Tom's leadership, they've really taken off. They have formed some of these partnerships that have allowed us to do what he calls—and I stole the term—“harvest” of Black history. And so we're using that term now statewide, because it is a harvest of Black history. Historically, African Americans have not documented history as thoroughly as other people. They just have not and did not. And so we are able now to capture some of these stories, not only through the oral tradition, but also supported by the documents that Tom and his team are uncovering and digitizing here.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
African Americans have documented history that people just did not know existed. African Americans were married in civil ceremonies. My own family, matter of fact, from Knox County, had a marriage recorded in 1817, right here in Knox County. We had births. We lived life, you know? We own land.

And we were also the central issue in a huge battle that culminated nationally in the Civil War—was Indiana going to be a slave state or not? So here, we're taught that Indiana was a northern state. No slavery. However, we have learned that Indiana, in fact, did support slavery. And you know, you can see the logic of that happening, because many of the earliest pioneers were people from slave states, and these were some of the highest officials of the land—William Henry Harrison, General Washington Johnston, Henry Clay, and on and on we go in terms of the people who actually held slaves here in Knox County.

Well, we kind of changed the term of “slavery” here in Indiana and called it “indentured servitude.”

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
Now, in school, we're taught that indentured servitude is a state in which a person is placed to pay for their passage from Europe or some other country here to America. Well, for African Americans, it was the term used for people who were enslaved because the indentured servitude contracts that they were required to sign extended from 20, 30 years up to 90 years of labor without pay. The only pay was something to eat and some clothes to wear.

And so we do know that this battle began here in Knox County, culminated in court and in the state Supreme Court, which is where it was located at that time. But it involved people who were from Knox County. That's just some of the history that we've been able to document and uncover and digitize and share.

Denny Spinner:
As you're working with the students from IU, what are you hearing from them as they come away from this project, Eunice? What are they gaining from it that is important for that generation to see and hear?

Eunice Trotter:
Well, the Center for Rural Engagement connected with me during a conference, and I'm really grateful for that, this partnership. So we were able to gain from the center an intern, a young woman, who is helping us lead the way and train the students. So they're learning about history and heritage, of course, but they're also learning about culture. And so some of the training that they get are things in culture that they need to know before they interview an elder.

Here's an example. We had one young man who wanted to call an 80-year-old Black woman by her first name. So we had to tell him, Look, you don't call her Helen. Her name is Mrs. Smith to you, okay?

ALL
[LAUGHTER]

Eunice Trotter:
And, you know, it's a cultural thing. It's a sign of respect that you use these titles. So they're learning culture, they're learning history. You know, they didn't know a lot of these things that these young people are hearing from these elders, in terms of the conditions at the time—the social conditions, the political conditions, the economic conditions, the civic conditions that people had to live under during certain periods of our history. They're learning that they won't learn this in school, unfortunately.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
And we're in a time where there's probably going to be even less learning. So it is really important that our young people understand the full story of our history, not just bits and pieces.

Denny Spinner:
So Tom, tell us, what do you see? What are the discoveries that you've made that inspire you to keep this work going, to keep this effort important in your community?

Tom Bartholomew:
Oh, gosh, my biggest inspiration was a woman named Judah, and she was a slave of the first sheriff here in Knox County. And so this happened a couple years ago when I was sort of straightening up in one of the rooms where we hold all the documents, and there was a shelf that fallen down, and some boxes had become askew. And so since nobody else was going to put it up, I decided I was going to have to make the shelf right, and, you know, put it up. And I didn't even know what the boxes were.

And so after I got them put up, I pulled a box down at random and just pulled a folder out at random. And it was a petition from Judah, a woman of color, as she went to the courthouse and petitioned for her freedom from, actually, John Small’s son. And, you know, I'd seen a lot of stuff before, as far as in the marriage records. In the marriage records, people are described by the color of their skin, and I thought, “Oh, boy. I heard they did that.” And it was, you know, something to see down there. But when you start seeing the Black community as appearing on an inventory, on an estate inventory, with a monetary figure after their name—if they were even given a name—that was, that was shocking, and that was disturbing.

And I started to see more of that—the slave records, the article 13 records. And I knew it was all there. And when Judah fell into my lap—almost literally fell into my lap—you know, it was like it was a sign from God. And I went over to our director, Emily Bunyan, and told her about all this stuff, and told her that we needed to do something with this, and we need to go forward with the input of the local Black community. And without hesitation, she said, Do it. And so I reached out to some folks I knew in the Black community, and they showed up for the first meeting.

So that was the inspiration. The inspiration, too, is that people keep showing up for meetings. [LAUGHS]

Denny Spinner:
Right.

Tom Bartholomew:
And that's so great. And, you know, attendance is getting bigger, and the interest is getting bigger. And it's not just in the history that happened 225 years ago. It’s more recent history, and also documenting the history as it's playing out—taking pictures of those family reunions, getting the stories from your elders. It's so important that we get that now because, you know, it'll come in so handy 100 years from now for people who are continuing to build this story and paint this whole picture.

Denny Spinner:
You mentioned before we talked on line here that Vincennes takes a lot of pride in being a city of firsts—about the first to do this, the first to do that, and that this history that you're uncovering is documenting that as well, that there were several historic firsts when it comes to the Black community that happened right here in southern Indiana.

Tom Bartholomew:
That's absolutely true. And some of the most significant ones have to do with, you know, like Judah, freedom suits, Mary Clark, Polly Strong—these women went and petitioned for their freedom in 1820, okay? Maybe 50 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. This was happening right here, and that's how significant this history is.

Denny Spinner:
Now, Eunice, of course, Vincennes is the focus of our talk here today. But as you mentioned, this is a statewide effort. Tell us a little bit about some of the other communities that are finding this rich history that they maybe didn't know anything about. As you come in and do your work, not only here in Knox County, but across our state, what are some of the communities that you're gathering information that has never been uncovered before?

Eunice Trotter:
Well, just all over the state, we have been able to document 90 Black settlements throughout Indiana, pre-Civil War. And the evidence that we use is institutional, so a cemetery, a church, a foundation of a building, records. We're able to document these with primary source information. So we are going into communities statewide, uncovering, just—it's unimaginable what's there. It's just overwhelming.

We're looking at ways now to grow our program, and one of the ways that I have tried to focus on is through capacity building, through creation of these small groups, like the one Tom operates, which is probably one of the best operated small groups in the state. And we're doing this all over the state. We have 10 of these groups now, and these groups are operating at varying levels of, you know, functioning. However, they're doing something. And that something ranges from collecting oral histories to getting historic landmarks installed to doing surveys. A survey is a listing and inventory of both extent and non-existent historic sites. A lot of this history is uncomfortable history—

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
—so it makes documentation a bit more challenging for the larger community. For example, here in Vincennes, there was a lynching in the early 1900s at the courthouse, on the courthouse square, of a man by the name of Holly Epps. One of my goals is to have a historical marker erected remembering that history. Now, not only does it recall this dark period here in this community, it is also a pathway to healing—

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
—of the trauma that has occurred generationally as a result of that lynching. Because there was a huge crowd that witnessed that lynching, as is the case all over the state when these kinds of incidents occurred. In Indianapolis just a few weeks ago, we erected a marker for a lynching there that occurred in the middle of the day in downtown Indianapolis before 300 people. Imagine the impact that has not only on the African American community, but on the larger community. So we have to address the trauma that exists in our communities that was created by these incidents that we today see as uncomfortable history. “We don't want to remember this. Why are you bringing this old stuff up?” becomes a response when we are doing these kinds of tasks, when we are having these kind of projects.

But there's also a lot of positive history. Here in Vincennes, the first woman to vote was a Black woman, a suffragist. Her name—she was a Brewer. She happened to be a member of my own family. And the reason that I know about that history is because I've done such deep research of my own family's roots here in Knox County, which date back to the early 1800s. So I've accumulated a lot of this history. In fact, the historical marker that's at the Vincennes courthouse right now is there remembering the state Supreme Court case related to indentured servitude and Mary Bateman Clark, who was a three-times great grandmother to me.

So I have a lot of personal reason to make Knox County my favorite place in the state. And I don't say that all over the state. You know, this is real. [LAUGHS]

Denny Spinner:
Well, you know, we're amongst friends here. [CHUCKLES]

Eunice Trotter:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I love Knox County.

Denny Spinner:
Tom, you know, Eunice mentioned the grassroots effort that you lead. If there are others who are listening to our podcast today in a community where they might have an opportunity to do this work, what's some words of advice that you would give to others who might want to become engaged in this type of project?

Tom Bartholomew:
I think if you can influence on people how much of Black history affects them, even if they're not Black people. And Eunice mentioned the first woman to vote in Indiana. There's another woman who was the first woman to license a business in Indiana, and she is a Black woman named Esther Bazadone. That happened right here in Knox County. And those are two major things, and those are things that people can connect with regardless of the color of their skin.

So if they can impress upon people how much Black history has actually formed and had an influence on the things in their lives. That that goes on not just legal cases, but culturally, music, art, fashion, so many things. And that's one way I try and reach out, is, yeah, I love music. I love the Rolling Stones. Would the Rolling Stones exist without the Black community? Probably not. And so that's one way you can reach out. There's things that interest us all, and if we can take an interest and appreciate these things, our lives become so much richer.

Eunice Trotter:
Let me give you another example—

Denny Spinner:
Please, yeah.

Eunice Trotter:
—just furthering the comments Tom just made. Brown County, Indiana, asked me to come and give a talk to their county commissioners because they were debating whether or not Brown County would celebrate Juneteenth.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
And so the commissioners decided, no, there's no reason to celebrate. There's no Black community to speak of in Brown County. Well, you know, after I did some research and really took a hard look at Brown County, I gave them many reasons why Juneteenth should be celebrated in Brown County. It would be a county paid day off. You know, it would be, of course, a benefit to the county workers. That goes without saying. They were going to call that day Old Settlers Day instead of Juneteenth because they wanted to celebrate it on Juneteenth, which is June 19th. And Juneteenth remembers the freedom of the last African Americans being held in slavery. And that was in Galveston, Texas.

And so in Indiana, Emancipation Day is celebrated in September. It’s celebrated at different times, but on a national level, Juneteenth became that day nationally. So I said this to the people of Brown County—I said, now, if you look at the whole point of this celebration, it was to recognize the freedom of a people who were the center of a dispute, a war that took more lives than any other war. Not just Black lives, but many, many white lives. Brother against brother, North against South, old against young. And so would you want to celebrate the end of that war? Wouldn't you, like we do the Fourth of July?

Denny Spinner:
Right.

Eunice Trotter:
So they began to think about that. Now, here's another piece. All over Indiana—not just Indiana, throughout the country—there are so many biracial people now with white mothers. Now, it used to be biracial people would have Black mothers. It was a consequence of enslavement. These women were used to, you know, grow inventory, so to speak, of enslaved people. Nowadays, there is a legal coupling of people with white moms now having biracial children.

So when I looked into the audience in Brown County, I said, you have a much larger Black community than what you think. Now, if you go by the one-drop rule that used to exist—if you had one drop of Black blood, you were Black. I don't care what you look like. [LAUGHTER]

Then we look in this audience and we see many African American people. So you have to understand that this history is not just a siloed history—“That's for Black people, then we have our history.” It is our history collectively.

Another example I want to give here, and I'll talk your head off here about this.

ALL
[LAUGHTER]

Denny Spinner:
I love it.

Eunice Trotter:
Another example is how the history of Levi Coffin has been recognized. Levi Coffin was a very infamous—famous, really—abolitionist in Richmond, Indiana. And so he was this tough guy who hid escaped enslaved people and ushered them to Canada and to freedom. So never in the history of the existence of the Levi Coffin house did anyone recognize his wife. I asked people, what was Levi Coffin’s wife's name? Nobody knows. Her name was Elizabeth.

And so now that house is named for her and him, because she has been left out of history, and she was a significant part of the work that he did. It was Mrs. Coffin who prepared the meals for the escaped enslaved people, or had the clothes made, and so forth. So when we talk about telling the full story, that's an example that has nothing to do with race, with telling the full story of history. Now

Denny Spinner:
Now there are those out here, I hope, are listening to our podcast here today that may have something in their mind, a history, or something that they might think might be part of this, something that they wanted to contribute, but they think, ‘Oh, no. That's not important.’

If you have a history like this, what would you ask them to do? What would be an action-step with someone who might have a story, might have something historic that they can reflect on—what's their action step? How do they reach out and become involved in what you're trying to preserve here?

Tom Bartholomew:
Well, realize that it's all important.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bartholomew:
Even what's seemingly the slightest little details can lead to the biggest stories. And that's been the case so many times over across the street where we work. In terms of education, I was writing a report on education in the Black community in Knox County, and it's pretty well understood that Dunbar School was the center of education in the Black community for a while. I can't even remember what document it was on, but I came across a couple other Black schools, “colored schools,” if I may use a vernacular of the day, and, you know nobody knew.

In Monroe City, some of the most significant Black families sold some land to the township trustee on which they were going to build a school. Busseron Township, just outside of Emison, Indiana—there was Black school there too. So all this started just from, like, one or two little lines on a document that I found. And so, people have these—I mean, I could give you instances of families around here that’d go, 'Oh, It's not important.’ But, you know, you do a little work, and it's like, that is so important. And it's so important to keep.

‘Oh, my picture of my family around the Thanksgiving table. That's not important.’ Yeah, it's important. It's so important. What I wouldn't give to have a Thanksgiving table picture from 100 years ago. And we have a few of those because of our members. And they're striking to look at, and inspiring as well.

Denny Spinner:
And Eunice, with the oral histories, I know you're doing in-depth work on that. So if someone might have a story that they would like to share, how do they get engaged? How can they reach out to say, Hey, I've got something that I'd like to share? What would be a path for them to reach out to you and your effort here on this work?

Eunice Trotter:
My telephone number and my email address, those are the paths. Because then, depending on what city they're in, I would connect them with the organizations in those cities doing the work. Or if there is no organization in that particular community, we would just do it ourselves. This collection that we're building, we're gathering these oral histories ourselves in these various cities, but we're also wanting this collection to be a collection of collections.

Denny Spinner:
Mm-hmm.

Eunice Trotter:
So we are looking around the state where there's a box of cassette tapes, or even reel-to-reel tapes that we're then converting to a digital format, creating a transcript, uploading the transcript and the digital formatted, actual interview, and then making it publicly available on the Indiana Memory website.

So we're going to be releasing that website to the public sometimes this summer. I wanted to get a critical mass before we released it, and I wanted to make sure infrastructure was in place so that as people come in with their collections, we can handle them. Because right now we're probably about 50 transcriptions sitting here waiting to be done. So we need to build the infrastructure, and that's going to take resources. So we're also working on finding additional funders and partners who can help us with the cost of getting this work done. And that's just a little tiny piece of the work that the Black Heritage Preservation Program is doing.

Here's another example. We are grant givers. We make grants. So one of the sites here in Knox County that I would like to see benefit from the grant program is the Second Baptist church just a few blocks from here. The Second Black Baptist Church, I think, is the oldest extent Black church in Knox County, and so it has a lot of history. A church that was even older is no longer in existence where it used to be, or is now the site of an apartment complex, which was Bethel AME Church.

Tom Bartholomew:
And can I just weigh in here and say, if you have records for Bethel AME Church in Vincennes, please contact the McGrady-Brockman house.

Eunice Trotter:
Yes, please. We do need those records, because the records were lost. Thirty years ago, I heard that the records were in one location. I could never get access to it. And anyway, these records are lost. But the Bethel AME Church was started here in the 1830s. We do have a history, an anniversary history dating 1895 of some of the history of some of that church, but we don’t know where the records are. But we do know somebody has something about that church.

Denny Spinner:
Speak up.

Eunice Trotter:
Speak up.

Denny Spinner:
That's right.

Tom Bartholomew:
Look in your garages.

Eunice Trotter:
So that church was torn down in the 1960s, so that’s pretty recent enough that there could be some evidence of its existence.

Denny Spinner:
Well, could talk for a long time about this. Our time is about running out on this. But as a parting comment, what is your hope as you move forward, both of you, what this work will do for your community and our state? Just give me a few moments about that.

Tom Bartholomew:
I'd like for Knox County and Vincennes to realize how rich their past is and how much history and culture there is. Because right now, we're not realizing that. And it's not specifically because non-Black people don't want to see it. There are Black people out there that are, I think, are too modest? You know, ‘Oh, my history is not important. You don't want to hear about how we spent Sunday afternoons at 1220 Perry Street in 19—.’ Yeah, we do. I mean, because that tells a story.

And hearing these things that aren't significant legal cases, it's like having a drawing, a pencil drawing with just lines. But once you start to hear these stories and get glimpses of these little things like the Monroe sisters or something like that, then you can start to fill in these lines with color, and it becomes quite a picture, indeed.

Denny Spinner:
Eunice?

Eunice Trotter:
Well, you know, I want people in communities like Vincennes to realize how financially beneficial recognizing this history could be. Already, the work that Tom is doing is attracting academics. This is tourist heaven. It could be much greater, a tourist location. There is funding for underground railroad sites. There is funding for tourism that would recognize this history.

So this could benefit not just, you know, the academics and the historians and the genealogists, but the economic base of these communities. So it is very critical. We can think of all these various places all over the country that attract tourists because of their history, and this could be one of those places.

Denny Spinner:
Well, I really do appreciate your time today. It's been a very interesting discussion. We'll put some information along with our podcast of how to contact you and how to make those contacts. But for Eunice and Tom, thank you so much for being part of our podcast today. It's been great meeting you and hearing your stories. So thank you so much for being here.

Eunice Trotter:
Thank you, Denny.

Tom Bartholomew:
It’s been my pleasure.

Eunice Trotter:
Thank you for allowing us to be here.

Denny Spinner:
Thank you all for joining us for our discussion for our community's history. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in to this episode of Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers.

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