PHOTO CREDIT: Charles K. Dargo Fruit and Vegetable Market, 104 W. Charles, 1926. Image courtesy of Ball State University's Bracken Archive and Special Collections.
The Lenape were the first to arrive in what is now Delaware County in the late 1790s. After their expulsion, settlers from eastern and southern states migrated to the area primarily to farm. Muncie’s manufacturing enterprises then created a huge demand for labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning in the early 1900s, thousands of migrants came from southern states to work in northern factories, including the many plants found in Muncie. White migrants from Appalachia left places like Jamestown and Byrdstown, Tennessee after the coal mining industry collapsed. These migrants settled throughout the city, particularly on the south side. Millions of African Americans also left the Jim Crow south to resettle in northern factory towns, where jobs were plentiful.
In Muncie (and throughout Indiana), Blacks resettled at a rate sometimes higher than that of white migrants. By 1890, as the gas boom spurred Muncie’s industrialization, Muncie had 418 Black residents. This number more than doubled to 1,085 by 1910, and then doubled again to 2,058 by 1920. By 1930, there were 2,646 Black Munsonians, about 3% of Muncie’s population. Also, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants from Europe and Russia, fleeing poverty, famines, and religious persecution, made their way to “the land of opportunity,” with many settling in Northern and Midwestern states and cities, including Indiana and Muncie.
Delaware County Migrant Camp, 1971
Photo courtesy of Ball State University Library's Bracken Archive and Special Collections.