South Bend's Own Words

South Bend's Own Words

People's stories recorded from the Oral History Collection of the Civil Rights Heritage Center at the Indiana University South Bend Archives. Telling the history of the civil rights movement and the experiences of Black, Latinx, LGBTQ, and other marginalized peoples in South Bend, Indiana. For more, visit crhc.iusb.edu.

Episodes

January 10, 2024 16 mins

Gail Brodie lived her entire life in her beloved west side community. She even has an honorary street named after her. 

 

Her mother, Annette Brodie, was a long-time community activist during the late 1960s. Annette pushed city leaders to provide basic services, like paving their dusty, dirt streets. Gail took on her mother’s community work and became as trusted, and as vital a resource. 

 

As a generational homeowner, Gail had a p...

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Andre Buchanan grew up in South Bend’s east side African American community in a house that, today, is threatened by the rampant construction of the Eddy Street shopping areas right by the Trader Joe’s. During the mid-1940s, when he was in the fourth grade, Andre was one of the first students of color to attend Saint Joseph Catholic grade school. Despite living and going to school on the east side of town, his family worshipped on ...

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November 8, 2023 29 mins

Over the past two years, doctors Jamie Wagman and Julia Dauer from Saint Mary’s College collected local stories of those impacted by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. 

 

Last year, they gave a public presentation with clips from some of the narrators who graciously shared their stories. They did it again this past September at the Saint Joseph County Public Library with new narrators sharing a different set of stories. 

We shared th...

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September 20, 2023 19 mins

Ruperto Guedea lived the majority of his life in the United States straddling multiple cultures. Born into a small mining community in northern Mexico during the late 1930s, his mother and father brought their family across the border just after World War II. His first school was openly hostile towards Spanish speakers yet did not teach him English. After moving to Chicago, he fit right in with the Polish and other European immigra...

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August 14, 2023 20 mins

Alma Powell left her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, when she was two years old. Her father worked for Studebaker by day, and with his family, ran Nesbitt’s Club and Casino by night. Despite the name, it was a music and a social hall, holding local political rallies and community conversations as well as nationally known musicians. 


There were, as Alma said, few career paths for an educated young Black woman. Teaching was one ...

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July 12, 2023 36 mins

We’re releasing a new book. Placing History: An African American Landmark Tour of South Bend, Indiana, features South Bend’s African American history as told through some of the many landmarks where that history was made. The book is available for free in print while supplies last, and always available as an e-book by visiting http://aalt.iusb.edu/.

 

The oral histories we’ve archived deeply informed the writing. Today, we hear lon...

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March 24, 2023 21 mins

The daughter of migrant farmworkers, Rebecca Ruvalcaba witnessed the growth of the Latines community from a few originators, like her father, Benito Salizar. Rebecca’s parents instilled in her a desire to learn, and to serve. She adapted to a late-in-life diagnosis of dyslexia to earn degrees from Indiana University South Bend and the University of Notre Dame. She became a social worker, a director of La Casa de Amistad, and served...

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February 12, 2023 17 mins

In the 1940s, professional baseball segregated players both by race and by gender. The All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, and our home team, the South Bend Blue Sox, famously upset rigid gender discrimination and opened pro-ball to white women. But only white women.

For a talented young athlete like Renelda Robinson, the opportunity to play ball came from a café owner on Birdsell Street in South Bend’s west side. Unc...

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January 18, 2023 24 mins

Near the end of World War II, at age four or five years old, Abdul Nur moved from Elkhart, Indiana, to South Bend. Despite the short distance, Abdul experienced a huge cultural shock. For the first time, he was surrounded by children from multiple racial and cultural groups. Abdul went on to experience multi-ethnic spaces throughout his time at Central High School and into the Air Force.

As early as middle school, Abdul began a dee...

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October 29, 2022 28 mins

At two public events in October 2022, doctors Jamie Wagman and Julia Dauer from Saint Mary’s College presented the results of an oral history collection project they’d been working on. The idea was to collect stories of real people in our community deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The full versions of these oral histories are preserved in the Civil Rights Heritage Center’s archives, but today we share audio from Drs. Wagma...

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August 17, 2022 26 mins

One of the most fundamental human needs is shelter.

From the 1910s through the 1950s, many thousands of people of African descent fled the most brutal forms of economic, racial, and violent oppression in the U.S. South and sought refuge in South Bend, Indiana. Many white people did not warmly welcome them into their new homes.

African American people were largely only allowed to live in the city’s west side. Quickly produced, low-q...

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On June 29, 1922, several hundred people attended a special, two-hour evening opening of the new Engman Public Natatorium. By September, South Bend’s Parks Board estimated almost 10,000 people took advantage of the brand-new facility.

It is unclear exactly when the white people in charge of the Natatorium first denied entry to African American people—but they did. And as a taxpayer funded, supposedly “public” facility, it became a ...

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February 23, 2022 19 mins

Madeline Smothers was born in Rockville, Illinois, in 1917. By 1935, she joined members of her extended family living in South Bend’s east side, soon befriending people in power like lawyers J. Chester and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen.

At this time, South Bend was rapidly evolving—but for African Americans who left the South to chase factory jobs up north, they were still confronting the entrenched racism they hoped they were fleeing w...

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January 26, 2022 17 mins

Jack Reed was about four or five years old when his mother moved him from Tennessee to South Bend. He absorbed a strong desire to work watching his mother clean other people’s homes. The job he desired most was as a state police officer. The Indiana State Police, however, did not hire African Americans.

Jack eventually served as the first African American Battalion Chief in the South Bend Fire Department, and then later got an offe...

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November 24, 2021 14 mins

Dr. Les Lamon was a long-time history Professor at IU South Bend. In 2000, he started the Freedom Summer class that brought students on a bus tour through the civil rights movement in the U.S. South. David Healey was a student in that class. Inspired by his experience, he became an early founding member of the Civil Rights Heritage Center on campus and led the early Oral History program. His efforts preserved the life stories of do...

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November 3, 2021 16 mins

In the 1970s, Ricardo Parra helped organize and direct a new midwest chapter of the National Council of La Raza, a progressive Chicano political advocacy group. Over the following decades, both Ricardo and his wife, Olga Villa, became integrally involved in South Bend’s growing Latinx community. They allied themselves with almost every local organization, like La Raza, El Campito children’s center, the former El Centro migrant advo...

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October 13, 2021 17 mins

In 1952, three-year-old Ralph Miles moved with his family to South Bend after an uncle told Ralph's father that the Bendix company was hiring. 


Ralph’s special needs school gave him work well beyond his grade level. He left that school to attend Harrison and then Washington. The work was on grade level, and way too easy for him. Bored, and without appropriate emotional and learning spaces, he acted out. By the time he got...

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September 24, 2021 13 mins

In the 1920s, Lucille Sneed’s parents left Tennessee for South Bend to work at Studebaker. They were part of the first wave of African Americans migrating north chasing what they saw as opportunities in factory jobs. 


During World War II, Lucille’s brother was called into military service. Lucille took his place at the Studebaker factory. 


She stayed after her brother returned. Lucille learned how to sew with la...

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September 15, 2021 1 min

Do you know someone whose story about South Bend should be preserved? 


We're seeking nominations for new oral history recordings. Every year, we'll invite about six people with unique, compelling stories to share how they experienced South Bend's past. 


Nominate someone now: https://go.iu.edu/3WVo

Learn more about the new oral history recording project: https://mailchi.mp/8d6594f2e6f8/know-someone-whose-south-be...

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August 11, 2021 31 mins

In 1867, the people inhabiting what we now call South Bend established a corporation to run community schools. Today, few things are as important, or as fought over, as our public schools.

This episode shares stories from people who were children in South Bend schools from the early through late-mid 20th century, as well as stories from people who, as adults, fought for change. 

Narrators include Barbara Brandy, John Charles B...

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