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Memory-Making and Civility: Removing the Garfield Park Confederate Monument
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced his plan to remove the Garfield Park monument on twitter on June 4th, and it had been dismantled by the end of the day on June 8th (click for a larger image)....
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Escaping the Noose: A Near-Lynching in Late-19th Century Boone County
An 1878 illustration of the Boone County Courthouse where Frank Hall was tried in 1894 (image Historic Indiana Atlas Collection, IUPUI) On the morning of February 5, 1894 a crowd “of seven hundred or...
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Disenfranchised Design: Development and African-American Placemaking on...
A 1950’s view of the 700 block of Indiana Avenue (image O. James Fox Collection, Indiana Historical Society, click for expanded view). In January 1968 a group of African-American entrepreneurs and...
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The “Blank Slate” of Pastness and African-American Place
Contemporary planners, developers, and proponents of 21st-century city life routinely celebrate cities’ historicity. Urban boosters extol the appeals of historical architecture, and where that historic...
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Dehumanization, Dignity, and Development: Contemporary Cemetery Preservation
The Women’s Ward (often called the “Seven Steeples” building) at the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane in about 1903 (Bass Photo Co Collection, Indiana Historical Society). In July 1905, Martha...
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Circle City Confederates: Family and Rebellion in Civil War Indianapolis
This circa 1887 chromolithograph captured the Union victory at Fort Donelson (Library of Congress). On February 16, 1862 the Union Army captured more than 7000 Confederates at Fort Donelson, Tennessee....
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Retreating to Exclusivity: Diversity and Place at Newfields
In 1964 New York designer Edward Durell Stone advised the Art of Association of Indianapolis to move the John Herron Museum of Art from its location at 16th and Pennsylvania Streets. The Association...
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Commerce, Execution, and the Black Corpse: Injustice and Sherman Arp
On March 10, 1893 Sherman Arp stood before a crowd that had gathered at 5:35 AM to witness his execution in Centre, Alabama. Arp had been convicted of murdering George Pogue in 1891 and was sentenced...
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Nazis in the Heartland: The German-American Bund in Indianapolis
On March 10, 1938 the Indianapolis News reproduced this invitation to a German-American Bund recruitment meeting at the home of William Albert and Laura E. Soltau. On March 11, 1938 the Indianapolis...
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Dispossession and Demolition: Razing Second Christian Church
In February 1948 Second Christian Church celebrated its move into a 1910 church on West 29th Street and Kenwood Avenue. Second Christian would be one of the longest-lived Black congregations in...
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