Book probes Indiana black history

For much of her professional career, history professor Emma Lou Thornbrough has been interested in black history. As a result of her research, Thornbrough published "Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century" in 2000. \nAlthough Thornbrough wrote most of the book, Lana Ruegamer edited the book and wrote the final chapter. Ruegamer taught at IU from 1986 to 1998 and was associate editor of the Indiana Magazine of History.\nThe book is very factual and descriptive in its approach. Yet, with 100 years being compressed into about 250 pages, so much has had to be left out. For example, a description of school desegregation in Evansville in one paragraph leaps from 1957 to 1970, and the daily achievements and daily failures of the '60s are relegated to the phrases "continued to complain," "remained" and "meanwhile."\nThe author describes Indiana as "the state where the (Ku Klux Klan) achieved its greatest political power in the twenties." A chapter in the book focuses on whether the Klan was an extremist fringe group or representative of the mainstream. \n"Extended treatment is beyond the scope of this book," Thornbrough writes, but some research showed that "Klan members came from every stratum of society." \nAmong the flood of details that were left out are that of a later community leader who told of how a teenager had been hired by the Klan to burn down a warehouse owned by the teenager's relatives and was himself burned to death in the fire. When asked how that happened, the community leader replied, "Lack of experience. He had not been accustomed to burning down warehouses."\nOnly a little is said about the legacy of the Underground Railroad. Part of it says the Underground Railroad did very little and not as much as sometimes claimed. Yet there were legacies from it.\nTwo hundred pages in, we read that black "Indianapolis architect Walter Blackburn was chosen to design a major national museum, the National Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati."\nIU is barely mentioned. The chapter on school desegregation relates that, "Before the Second World War, black students at Indiana University were excluded from dormitories ... The University opened a dormitory for 'colored girls' in 1944, and African-American women were admitted to university residence halls in 1947. The following year, male students were also admitted to University housing, and University cafeterias . . . were opened to all students." \nLater we find that in the 1960s, "Indiana University had a larger black graduate student population than most other midwestern state universities because it had been one of the earliest to admit blacks to advanced degree programs ... But black students ... felt especially vulnerable." \nIndeed, in the summer of 1960, 50 percent of the Graduate Residence Center was black, and a major reason given for this was that IU was the southern-most integrated state university, so that black college instructors in the South who wanted to study during the summer found this to be the most convenient place to study. But sundown laws were not the only problem. Some black students complained there was so little understanding of black needs that it was like drowning in a sea of white marshmallows. \nA student going to New England could find how little this meant in another way, too. In New England there was an organization of graduates from and graduate students in colleges and universities there who had a "Teaching in the South" program. Organization members would go into the South for a year or so as substitute instructors for faculty in black colleges in the South who wanted to take the time off for their own studies in New England.\nMy opinion is that "Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century" can be a difficult book to read. Although it is almost dry in its correct, grammatical style, it can remind a reader of so many things that should have been better -- and perhaps still will be better.\nAnd, as the book itself says several times, it is only a summary so that much has been compressed. In addition, Thornbrough was the author of other books and articles on the subject. These are available at local libraries and bookstores.