Thanks for listening to Convo with Kyle.
My name is Kyle Bell.
As a writer, an author, and journalist, my
work has always been about telling stories.
But now, I want to tell a different story.
I want to tell your story.
The goal of this project is to share with
you the stories of ordinary people who do
extraordinary work.
They may be your neighbors, your friends,
your coworkers who want to make their communities,
and this world, a better place for all of
us.
So let's start a conversation.
Joining us is Curator George Garner.
George works at the Civil Rights Heritage
Center at Indiana University South Bend.
He has previously worked at the Studebaker
National Museum, the National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum, and the Chesapeake Bay
Maritime Museum.
Thank you, George, for coming on the show.
It's good to be here.
Thanks for inviting me.
So, George, why don't you start by telling
us a little about the Civil Rights Heritage
Center and your work there?
Sure.
So the Civil Rights Heritage Center, through
IU South Bend, is housed in a building that
started its life as the Engman Public Natatorium.
It was South Bend's first indoor swimming
pool.
And yeah, when it was built in 1922, even
though it was a city-owned site, even though
it had that word "public" carved into the
concrete out front, between 1922 and 1936,
if you were a person of color, you were denied
entry.
And from 1936 to 1950, entry was only allowed
on a segregated basis.
So in 2010, IU South Bend took over the site.
At that point, it had been operating -- it
operated as an integrated swimming pool from
1950 until 1978.
But it closed in 1978 and had been sitting
vacant for about 30 years before then.
IU South Bend took that site and turned it
into the home of the Civil Rights Heritage
Center.
So we use that story of segregation, we use
that story of exclusion to really look at
contemporary issues of race, civil rights,
social justice, of course for African American
communities but for all marginalized communities
-- for LGBTQ, for Latinx, for women, for anybody
who's been marginalized or otherwise oppressed.
There's a place for the things that we're
talking about.
There's vibrancy.
There's a need for it.
So it's this really amazing space and this
really unique space that can speak directly
to that history and use that history to inform
the present.
So when you say that the Natatorium was a
public facility, was it owned by the city
of South Bend?
Yeah, this was a South Bend Parks and Recreation
pool, just like any other public, quote unquote,
park today.
So the fact that this was city-sponsored exclusion
and segregation, it's an important part of
our story.
Yeah, I mean, when people think about segregation,
it's usually a place like Alabama that probably
pops in their head.
I think that's true, yeah.
I think that story has been told as a Southern
story.
When most of us learn about it in elementary
school or high school, we see those images
of Martin Luther King, we see the lunch counters.
And it tends to get taught as this thing that
happened a long time ago, it happened pretty
much south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and it
was solved at that was it.
Now there's no more problems.
And that's far from the case.
And that's something we really want to drive
home.
Segregation very much happened in the North,
and I go to work every day in a place where
that happened.
And so, we really want to drive that point
home of -- not just this space.
This was one space, but it was one space among
so many -- not just in South Bend but across
the United States -- in the quote unquote
"North," which is often supposed to be or
talked about as somehow better than the South.
And I just don't think that's true.
A few years ago, when I was the editor of
the South Bend Voice, you wrote a series of
articles that highlighted the work of civil
rights trailblazers in South Bend.
I'll provide a link to those articles in the
description below for anyone who is watching
on YouTube.
But South Bend has a surprisingly rich activist
history, actually, and you documented that
history in these articles.
One of those trailblazers was Odie Mae Johnson
Streets.
She graduated from Central High in 1931, which
was one of the only integrated schools in
South Bend.
I want to quote Odie Mae here from the article
that you wrote, quote:
"Black girls were not allowed to take swimming
classes, so one day I told my friend, ‘I’m
going to sign up.
They will have to tell me I can’t take swimming
lessons.’"
Mhm.
Could you talk a little bit about Odie Mae's
background and--
Yeah, so again, she's this fascinating character,
right?
Odie Mae was incredibly light skinned, so
as they say, she could have easily passed
if she chose to.
But she didn't, in the 1930s, when places
like the Engman Public Natatorium were excluding
people of color.
We're talking about a decade after the 1910s,
the 1920s, about 19% of the white men in St.
Joseph County, Indiana were members of the
Ku Klux Klan.
In the midst of all this, here's this light
skinned woman who very much chose to embrace
the fact that she was of African descent,
that she was a woman who was born as an African
American and born to African Americans.
She was born in Dawson Springs, Kentucky.
So, again, it's also this story of the Great
Migration for millions of African Americans,
escaping lynching, escaping Jim Crow racism,
trying to escape the Klan but still being
met with some of that same racism that they
found down there.
And I think a lot of her activism was influenced
by her being a member of the Baha'i faith.
Baha'i believe not in a capital G, a Judeo-Christian
god, but that there's a god that is this figure
that many different religions have bits and
pieces of, but it's a united god.
It's a god that unites all humanity and that
may come in different forms to different people.
But it's a very uniting and united way of
looking at people of different religious and
ethnic backgrounds.
So I think that helped inform some of her
activism.
So she encountered racism in her own life,
again, being told that she couldn't join the
swim team on Central High because she identified
as an African American woman and really having
that bravery to stand up and say what she
said, that, no, I'm going to make them tell
me no and then defend that position, defend
the fact that they don't think I'm as human
or as good as any other person can be.
So she ended up marrying a gentleman by the
name of Dr. Bernard Streets.
And Dr. Streets became not the first but one
of the first African American dentists.
He was an early graduate of the Indiana University
Dental School back in 1929, if my memory serves
me correctly, but then came back to South
Bend and opened a dental practice on the West
Side, which at this time was and was increasingly
becoming more African American but also Eastern
European.
So in addition to his African American clients,
he had a lot of Polish American clients.
So he ended up teaching himself Polish in
order to serve all of them.
And so, the two became just this one of a
couple power couples, and just constantly
getting involved, and lending their own voices,
and being brave and standing up to those who
would discriminate, like people did at the
Natatorium.
They became some of the people who were advocates
for integrating the Natatorium, among other
places, like theaters, like restaurants.
I found it noteworthy because Odie Mae, as
a woman of color, she actually ended up, it
seems, taking her experiences and helping
people who came from similarly difficult situations.
Mhm.
She taught English to women who stayed at
the YWCA in South Bend, and also served on
the board of -- what was it, the El Centro
Migrant Center?
Yep.
So I kind of find that striking.
She didn't just focus solely on civil rights
for African Americans.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think that's part of her being
a part of the Baha'i faith.
It's, in an early way, looking at what we
now call intersectionality, recognizing that
any group that has been marginalized that
the issues are more binding than they are
separating.
So she ended up getting her degree in Spanish
from Indiana University South Bend.
She was an early graduate of the same program
that employs me and that funds the Heritage
Center.
And my alma mater.
Exactly, exactly.
So she used that to work with the next wave
of immigration that was coming into South
Bend, the Latinx population that was coming
in, particularly in the '40s and '50s -- but
yeah, again, looking at the issues that were
affecting black people were also affecting
brown people, and working hard to try to do
that.
But the thing is, there are differences.
And the language barrier was one of them for
Latinx.
And so, that informed some of her work and
her using that degree, her using that training
to be able to do that.
It's a special story.
I think it might be useful to mention to viewers
that -- or at least give a little background
on South Bend as a city.
Obviously, South Bend is in Indiana.
It's an industrial Midwest town in this time
period we're talking about.
As George said, South Bend was a destination
city during the Great Migration.
I mean, compared to I guess the typical Midwestern
city / town, South Bend's a pretty diverse
place.
It has a large African American population
and it now has a growing Latino population.
Would you add anything to that, George?
No, I think you're absolutely right.
I've described South Bend as the quintessential,
prototypical Great Migration city.
We have had an African American community
in this city longer than there's been a city.
That's one of the things that we touch on
at the Civil Rights Heritage Center, too,
making sure that African American history
-- making sure we share that African American
history -- has been with this city for an
incredibly long time, that there have been
people of color living in and contributing
to South Bend throughout the course of its
entire existence.
But it's also true that there wasn't significantly
high numbers until the turn of the 20th century
and until the Great Migration.
Between about the 1910s and the 1930s, our
African American population quintuples.
It explodes.
And I think there is an analogy today between
that and Latinx immigration into the United
States, into the American South.
There have been a significant increase in
those populations.
And just like now, those new populations aren't
being welcomed with open arms.
There's the thought of that person as the
other and something else.
And we saw the exact same thing with the African
American populations in South Bend.
But this was a thriving, industrial town.
If anybody has ever heard of Studebaker, of
the wagon manufacturer and the car manufacturer,
this was where they were all made for decades.
But that provided ample employment opportunity
for thousands of African Americans who were
trying to escape sharecropping, who were trying
to escape the Jim Crow down there.
And this was a path forward.
This was a job.
You also wrote about Helen Pope, who was a
nurse.
Can you share a little bit with us about her
story?
Yeah, so Helen's another one of those trailblazers.
Among the many things in her life and career,
she became a nurse at a time when patient
care was segregated as well, when white patients
wouldn't accept the care of a person of color.
So she helped integrate what was then known
as the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital.
And then, throughout the '70s and the '80s,
one of the things in South Bend -- like so
many industrial cities -- after the industry
left and as we're seeing so much change in
mechanization, automization, those things
that we hear brought to the forefront now
-- particularly with the recent election and
particularly among white workers -- this has
been happening in communities of color for
decades.
And it happened here in South Bend around
the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
Studebaker, for example, closed December 20,
1963.
7,000 people lost their job in a day.
A huge portion of them were African American.
And at one point, it employed tens of thousands
of people in the city.
Exactly.
You're exactly right.
And Studebaker was the largest industrial
employer of African Americans, too.
So that story of industrialization really
hits African American communities throughout
the 20th century.
Those two are inexorably linked.
But as that industry changes and as cities
try to struggle to decide who and what they
are in the latter half of the 20th century
and into the 21st, and South Bend really struggled
with that.
And there's a lot of things that they did
to try to adapt and to try to change.
And a lot of them didn't work.
So one of the things that Helen Pope was involved
in is this thing called the Model Cities program.
It's really looking at creating these model
blocks where there would be hyper-local government
that would be able to make decisions.
And, I mean, we can look back on them -- we
can look back on some of those big urban planning
ideas now and realize that maybe they weren't
the best ideas.
But, at the time, I think they were struggling
just to try to find something to do to stem
the tide of tens of thousands of people who
had been moving away from the city in the
wake of all of this de-industrialization.
So I wanted to quote -- and by the way, I'm
going to mention again that I'm going to put
the link to George's articles below in the
description so you can check those out.
I'm going to go ahead and quote from you one
of your articles.
You said, quote:
"I became enthralled with history because,
to me, history is so much more than closed
companies or torn down buildings.
It is about people, like you and me, who lived
their lives facing trials and troubles, happiness
and hardships."
I think it's important to document and have
conversations about these topics that often
get overlooked or they're simply not understood,
and to learn about those from people who lived
through challenging periods in our country's
history.
But, anyway, that's a long version of me saying
that I agree with your statement.
You certainly put it more eloquently than
I did.
Could you reflect on that a little bit?
Well, thank you.
I mean, I wrote that a while ago.
And I was thinking that I don't remember -- I
mean, I'm sure that -- but that sounded great.
[LAUGHTER]
Past George did something good there.
No, also, I've spent my professional life
combating the idea of history being dead,
that it's that dry recitation of something
that is no longer relevant.
I just don't think that's true.
And, again, one thing that we do at Civil
Rights Heritage Center is make sure that we
very much are actively involved in present-day
activism and activist issues, becoming directly
involved with those organizations, those groups,
providing a space, providing a voice.
And it's because we're rooted in history that
that work can happen.
We can play a role of making sure that people
are aware that these issues aren't new, that
there are systemic issues and systemic challenges
at hand.
And that we have to dismantle them, and that
we have to dismantle patriarchy.
We have to dismantle white supremacy.
We have to dismantle institutional racism.
These are things that haven't been invented
in the past five to ten years, and they also
haven't been solved in the past five to ten
years.
The election of Barack Obama, for example,
did not -- while it was this incredible watershed
moment, it did not mark the end of any of
those things that I just described.
And as, again, we've seen in this most recent
election cycle, it's that I think it's proven
that.
But all of those conversations have to be
rooted in history and have to be rooted in
what has happened for decades, generations
before us -- that has influenced us -- before
we can start to change that, before we can
start to really pull those institutions apart
and build something truly more humanistic
and more collaborative.
I keep looking at our present-day and comparing
it to the past.
The decade that I really think about that
I think mirrors the present is -- maybe imperfectly
-- is the '60s.
There's definitely a cultural shift that's
taking place right now that seems similar
to the '60s, a shift in values taking place,
and also a demand for more rights, expanded
rights.
And we're seeing that in movements like the
successful push for nationwide marriage equality
and we're seeing it in Black Lives Matter.
It seems like social activism is more alive
today and young people are more active today
than at any point really since the '60s.
I don't really have a question for you there.
It's more just an observation.
Sure.
But perhaps you can comment on that?
No, I think you're exactly right.
And yeah, when I think of what decades, I
tend to see maybe more alignment with the
1870s, maybe even the 1910s and 1920s.
And I say that because every time there have
been these major leaps forward, there's always
a regression backward.
So while the Civil War ended slavery, Reconstruction
ensured that a new racial caste system went
into place and that equality didn't happen.
When we saw -- again, when African Americans
were moving north, we saw this backlash here
and segregation take -- coming into places
like South Bend in the 1910s and 1920s, and
again, organizations like the KKK becoming
national movements, a movie like "Birth of
a Nation" in the 1910s.
So I kind of see that happening now, that
the nation has responded to the first African
American president with another backlash.
And so, I think it's important to galvanize
and set up those firewalls and make sure that
those people who need protecting in this era
have those firewalls in place, and that we
continue to move forward, that we don't let
this backlash slide us back too far -- and
we continue to be active, and get out there,
and be brave about it.
Civil Rights Heritage Center, in connection
with a number of community organizations,
organized an event called The People's Inauguration.
It was very much meant to be a mark of resistance
against the things that we knew were going
to happen.
And in addition to holding events at the Civil
Rights Heritage Center, we held events at
the local mosque here in town.
And it was this wonderful event, all of these
different community organizations from the
mosque to Civil Rights Heritage Center to
the LGBTQ Center to talking about reproductive
justice and pro-choice issues.
Hundreds of people came to this because they
wanted to get involved somehow, wanting to
take that action, take that stand.
In a way, it's regrettable that didn't happen
before and that didn't happen earlier.
It's important to remember that there are
people who have been doing this work for years,
who have been affected by this more so than
many.
And, in fact, there's a lot more "woke" people
now.
Again, that's a good thing, but it is important
to recognize -- recognizing that it might
be new for some people, but it's not new for
a lot of people.
I think we have to recognize that while also
acknowledging and hoping that we can maintain
this, that this pressure, that this galvanization
that has happened continues and continues
to have some positive results.
So for anyone that's curious, George, what
exactly is a curator?
Sure.
I've had somebody describe it to me as being
an editor.
There's about 150 different jobs and one word.
And I think that's true.
But, basically, the way I like to describe
it -- particularly with my work at Civil Rights
Heritage Center -- is that building has 90
years of history in it and this city has 150+
years of history in it.
It's my responsibility to know as much of
that as I possibly can, to collect, preserve,
and keep those tangible documents -- the artifacts,
the photographs, the papers, all of those
things that help us share that history, and
then share that with as many people as humanly
possible.
So that's anywhere from school groups coming
in to tours off the street to undergraduate
history classes and just anybody and everybody
in between.
But, essentially, the preservation and dissemination
of the pieces of history is a good way of
describing what many curators do.
So what did you study for undergrad?
Yeah, so, my undergrad was in history, and
luckily did an internship at the Pennsylvania
Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania,
and some staff there, who were graduates of
the Cooperstown Graduate Program.
It's this amazing masters-level museum studies
program in Upstate New York.
You eat, sleep, drink, and breathe museum
studies for two years straight, but you leave
there with this incredible view of the role
of museums, and the power of museums, and
what these places can do and what they can
mean to many different people.
Collecting and putting stuff on display is
just a small part of what they do.
And if they're doing it wrong, then that's
all they're doing.
If they're doing it right, though, they're
really looking at the stories.
They're really looking at creating these experiences
for people to come in and be moved in some
way, either by learning something, either
by feeling something, by spending time there,
by getting involved in some way, shape, or
form.
And could you tell us how you ended up in
South Bend?
Sure.
So it was a different museum job than the
one I have now, but I moved here after ricocheting
around the East Coast for a while, between
undergraduate, and grad school, and internships,
and post-grad school jobs.
I think I calculated, at one point I had moved
about nine to ten times in about ten years.
It was a lot.
That is a lot.
Yeah, so I moved out here, and having not
been in the Midwest really at all, having
not been aware that South Bend was a place
that existed.
[LAUGHTER]
I was vaguely aware of Indiana, that that
was a place that existed.
But yeah, so I regret I was one of those East
Coasters who thought of the Midwest as this
kind of flyover country.
And I readily admit that I was wrong, and
that perception is a terrible perception,
that there are an incredible amount of wonderful
spaces in the Midwest, and that the perceptions
of what it is politically and culturally are
just that.
They're perceptions.
And it was coming here that helped me realize
that.
Again, this is a former industrial powerhouse
that had been struggling with its identity.
But in the 21st century, after decades of
struggling, I have met more people here who
care about this place than any other place
I've lived previous.
And I've met more people who are willing to
experiment, who are willing to make change.
Those cities that I lived in on the East Coast,
they were further ahead in the process.
And so, they were fairly inflexible.
They were places that I lived in and consumed,
really, but I didn't get involved with, because
there wasn't that space for it.
We've been working to make change for so long.
And there's this desperation, in a way, to
just do something.
That creates this really exciting space to
be able to have ideas, and to run with them,
and get to know people in the community who
are very open and very willing to say yes
to things.
And I absolutely love that.
So I've been here for the past ten, so I've
completely reversed that ricocheting that
I was doing before, but doing what I wanted
to do, which was actually be in a place for
a while.
Out of all the places to be, South Bend's
been a great place to be.
And you started off at the Studebaker National
Museum, right?
I actually started off at The History Museum.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, and then I did a project or did some
work at the Studebaker Museum, too, which
is coincidentally right next door, and then
Civil Rights Heritage Center is about two--
[INAUDIBLE]
--to escape that little block around West
Washington, which is totally great.
Yeah.
So if people wanted to check out the Civil
Rights Heritage Center, where can they find
it online and where can they find it in person?
Sure, so online it's CRHC.IUSB.edu.
There's a number of digital assets, including
a podcast that we've done ourselves where
we share stories from our oral history collection.
So it's people who have lived the experiences
here in South Bend either as people of color,
or as LGBT, or as allies in the civil rights
movement.
We share those stories on that.
And then in person, we're at 1040 West Washington,
so just a little bit west of downtown South
Bend.
And are you open seven days a week?
We are open five days a week -- Monday, Wednesday,
Friday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm and then Tuesday
from -- sorry, Tuesday and Thursday from 3:00
pm to 7:00 pm.
And those are just the regular public hours
where we do tours and things like that.
But there's events that happen anywhere from
at least one to often three to five times
a week.
So right now, for example, we have a lecture
series going on.
So for those in South Bend, it's this free
lecture series by our director, who's a University
of Chicago historian, Dr. Darryl Heller, talking
about race and social movements.
So he's done things on women and the foundation
that they laid for the modern civil rights
movement.
We're going to do another one on the Black
Panther movement and yet another one on Black
Lives Matter.
We're also doing a film series.
We recently just showed a film about a native
Hawaiian transgender woman, where her native
Hawaiian culture has been more celebrated
than it has been in many Western cultures.
And that's true for a lot of different cultures,
that there's this celebration instead of discrimination.
So it followed her experience as a transgender
woman in relationship but also trying to coach
students on traditional Hula dancing.
So there's just all sorts of different events
and things that we do on a regular basis.
Awesome.
Do you want to plug anything for social media
or anything?
We're on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
So, yeah, everybody's encouraged to follow
us there for sure.
We post regularly on each of those.
Well, I think that's about it.
Thank you so much for joining us, George.
It's a pleasure.
Thanks for the conversation.
I'd like to thank you again for listening
to Convo with Kyle.
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
for more episodes.
You can also keep the conversation going on
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I'd love to hear from you.
