https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/148a467d1acabbe5c416a34b6835bd62.jpg 81bc18dbd9d7609aaacf1b26646a375e https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/9444f82497f947c3dcd299547aeec3d3.mp3 1b3d14d55914c577f0b165f247d5d2b2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 1 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a> Description An account of the resource Allen Watson, who has lived in Madison, Indiana his entire life, describes mass migration out of Madison to find better paying jobs, particularly to industrializing cities in the northern United States. ***Transcript*** Allen Watson: They had to. To find good paying jobs, they pretty much had to leave town here and go to the bigger cities, like go North, you know, and that’s where most of them ended up, like Indianapolis and Toledo, Ohio, and some of those areas. They didn’t go too far South. They went mostly North. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/7296da74e7aabca2b950f9e79bfb99fc.mp3 53c5f083df404bec6f492f4bd825a261 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 2 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District) Description An account of the resource Allen Watson describes discriminatory practices towards African American patrons at his local theater in Madison, where African Americans had to sit in the balcony or in the back rows of the theater as the result of race-based discrimination against Black patrons. ***Transcript*** Allen Watson: You know, I was telling about the pool and the restaurants, but also, you know, our theater was that was also, you know, our theater was, you know, you could sit in the very back, you had to sit in the back three or four rows of the theater, and sometimes you had to sit in the balcony. If you sat downstairs, you had to sit there, but in the balcony, you could sit anywhere in the balcony, and even, you know, the drinking fountains, they had white and black. You know, I remember that, and I wasn’t very old, you know, I was probably ten years old, and I remember seeing stuff like that. You know, at ten years old, you can read, you know, white or black or whatever. “Colored” is what the word they used back then. Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a> https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/f8bcf19857cdc97fa2222e04b142d8e1.mp3 0f00441c8658d2e36e3bb43db6ab1a2c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 3 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a> Description An account of the resource Allen Watson details when and how his parents discussed racism in his community with him at the age of 10 to 12. He also discusses discriminatory practices at the swimming pool in Madison, along with the drugstores located downtown. ***Transcript*** Allen Watson: When we was probably around eleven or so, ten or eleven or twelve years old, you know, even when my dad would take us to get ice cream, and we were set out on the curb, we just thought, well, you know, it’s a nice pretty day, you know, we don’t go inside and sit, but later on, we found out why we couldn’t. We weren’t allowed inside the drugstore because of the color of our skin, so we couldn’t go in, so my dad went in and got it for us, and then the pool, it’s the same thing at the swimming pool, you could not swim. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/43d52b22ab45850502e6d525fce06712.mp3 a60fbf5b3f3ddd7d45f485744077e078 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 4 with Allen Watson (Georgetown Historic District) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/28">Georgetown Historic District</a> Description An account of the resource Allen Watson, a resident of Madison, Indiana, shares the story of a local hospital's intentional expansion into a Black neighborhood on Poplar Street. Many houses were destroyed along with the Black community in that area for a parking lot. ***Transcript*** Allen Watson: The hospital, and I haven’t told this story much at all, but I think it’s a story that needs to be told. Back in the early [19]70’s, they started their expansion to the hospital. Well, they bought up some property on Poplar Street, and there was probably about nine homes on Poplar Street that they had bought and destroyed. Carrie Vachon: Just tore them down. Allen Watson: Just tore them down. Nice homes. I mean, it’s just like all the other homes in downtown Madison on Second Street, Third Street and whatever, East Street, but they wanted that property, so the Black community was just destroyed, it was torn down. I mean, you didn’t have a say. I mean, they wanted that property. Most of the property that they bought is used for parking, a parking lot, a parking garage and a parking lot. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Places Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Georgetown Historic District Description An account of the resource Located in Madison, Indiana, the Georgetown neighborhood, now known as the Georgetown District, became home to free African Americans as early as 1820. [1] Madison is situated directly on the Indiana-Kentucky border at the Ohio River, and Georgetown “became a place in which many freedom seekers found a community of safe houses and conductors willing to give them aid to reach the next station toward freedom.” [2] Eventually, the neighborhood would develop into the central hive of Madison’s bustling Underground Railroad activity, becoming an “important settlement of free Blacks who assisted hundreds of enslaved African Americans to freedom.” [3] Across several decades, Georgetown’s African American community continued to grow. In the 1820 census, there were 48 free black families listed as living in Madison, and by 1850, the number had increased to 298. [4] Along with the population increase came the additions of several black-run institutions including schools, churches, and businesses. [5] Several free black Georgetown business owners rose to a place of prominence in the community during this time, and used their influence to aid freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad. One such prominent resident was George DeBaptiste, who settled in Madison in 1837. Immediately upon his arrival, he protested against racist legislation by contesting an 1831 Indiana act which required new black residents entering the state to pay 500 dollars as “a bond for good behavior and self-support.” [6] After successfully suing to reside in Indiana without paying the bond, DeBaptiste conducted a wholesale shipping business between Madison and Cincinnati. Through this venture, he met William Henry Harrison, who hired him to be “steward of the White House” during his presidency. [7] After Harrison’s death, DeBaptiste returned to Madison and operated a barbershop for six years on the corner of Walnut and Second Streets. During this time, the barbershop was the heart of Underground Railroad activities in Madison. [8] Through these brave efforts, “DeBaptiste estimated that he personally assisted 108 fugitives to freedom, and several times that number indirectly.” [9] Despite the relative size and success of the free black community, life for residents of Georgetown was not easy. Free African Americans were harassed persistently, facing discrimination at every turn. [10] Furthermore, the Georgetown neighborhood’s connection to the Underground Railroad had long been suspected. In 1846, a mob of slave owners crossed the border from Kentucky and, joined by pro-slavery allies from Madison, violently raided the homes of several black families in Georgetown. [11] The mob “took it upon themselves to search the homes of free African Americans for fugitive slaves and weapons,” [12] and any who resisted were “nearly beat to death.” [13] Several prominent community members, including George DeBaptiste, fled northward to continue their work as conductors in the Underground Railroad under safer circumstances. Although the neighborhood faced white vigilante attacks and the loss of some key leaders, “the system that DeBaptiste and his collaborators built continued to flourish” in Georgetown. [14] Madison’s Georgetown neighborhood is representative of African American-led Underground Railroad networks across the nation. While the overall population of Madison was overwhelmingly white, the residents of Georgetown had carved out a small, thriving community for themselves. This neighborhood, like in many other black-led nodes of Underground Railroad work, allowed those escaping from slavery a method of camouflage “by blending in with the people around them.” [15] Community leaders like George DeBaptiste in cities across the United States were able to use their wealth, connections, and prominence to help propel freedom seekers northward while hiding their enterprise in plain sight. The Georgetown neighborhood continued on as a black community nestled within white Madison well into the twentieth century. Madison was heavily segregated, with its black residents restricted to their own residential section, their own school, and their own churches. [16] Madison’s black citizens were not allowed to eat in restaurants, sit with their white peers in theaters, or even be admitted into the main area of the town’s hospital; instead, there were “two rooms in the basement set aside for black patients; if they were filled, no blacks could be admitted.” [17] Only when residents of the Georgetown neighborhood conducted their own sit-in protests modeled after those conducted in the South by civil rights activists in the 1960s was the town finally desegregated. [18] While many of the historic landmarks like churches and the houses of Underground Railroad conductors still stand as a testament to the Georgetown neighborhood’s black history, the black families who remain in Madison have now expanded their community across the entire city, taking advantage of the equal access they finally achieved. <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/228">Interview 1 with Allen Watson</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/229">Interview 2 with Allen Watson</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/230">Interview 3 with Allen Watson</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/231">Interview 4 with Allen Watson</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived [1] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. [5] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. [6] Earl E. McDonald, “The Negro in Indiana Before 1881,” Indiana Magazine of History 27, no. 4 (1931): 297. [7] “The Story of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana.” UNDERGROUND NETWORK TO FREEDOM, Indiana DNR. Accessed March 1, 2019. [8] John T. Windle. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Madison Historic District. Madison, IN. Historic Madison Inc, 1970 [9] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 3. [10] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. [11] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 205. [12] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. [13] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 205. [14] Fergus M. Bordewich, “Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 206. [15] National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Georgetown Historical Interpretive Walking Tour. Madison, IN: Historic Madison, 2018. [16] Don Wallis, All We Had Was Each Other: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), xi. [17] Ibid. [18] Don Wallis, “The Struggle Makes You Strong: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 11, no. 3 (1999): 29. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource PHOTO & VIDEO Sherman Minton Birthplace, attributed to Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherman_Minton_Birthplace.jpg Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Student Authors: Allison Hunt and Molly Hollcraft Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey Relation A related resource <a href="https://www.in.gov/history/markers/1.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a> 1800s 1900-40s 1950s-present Indiana Historical Bureau Marker Jefferson County Madison Oral History Segregation Slavery Underground Railroad