History Department Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/423

This collection represents the research of IUPUI history master's degree scholars. Areas of research include United States History, European History, and Public History, as well as dual degree research--combining an M.A. degree in history with a master's degree in either library science or philanthropic studies. Also included is research as part of the Graduate Certificate programs in Museum Studies and Professional Editing.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 162

NOW and Then: Indiana NOW, Abortion Rights, and the 1980s Culture Wars
(2022-10) Smith, Hannah Jane; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Haberski, Raymond; Stump, Shana
After the fight by the Indiana chapter of the National Organization for Women (Indiana NOW) to include the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution of the United States failed at the national level, it was thrust into a battle to protect abortion rights. During the 1980s culture wars, a period of identity politics and antifeminist movements, abortion rights became the largest issue Indiana NOW had to face. Indiana NOW utilized a strategy based on both empathy (to form an emotional motivation) and a political (or legal) strategy to combat the political Right’s attempts to eliminate women’s right to obtain a legal abortion. This thesis looks at Indiana NOW’s strategies to fight for women’s right to keep abortions safe and legal during the 1980s. Understanding Indiana NOW’s efforts throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s to combat the removal of abortion rights offers a glimpse into how we can understand feminism before, during, and after the culture wars. This understanding allows us to see the utility of and problems with the idea of “waves” of feminism.
The Legacy, Life, and Lynching of George Tompkins
(2022-10) Brinker, Haley Renee; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Haberski, Raymond J.; Kelly, Jason M.
In 1922, George Tompkins was found dead in an isolated area of Riverside Park. Though the media and evidence present pointed to Tompkins having been the victim of a lynching, the official ruling was that of suicide. Almost a century later, a multiracial, driven group of individuals set out to memorialize Tompkins as a victim of lynching and challenge the ruling that he had taken his own life. In discussing deaths such as George Tompkins’, it is vital to remind oneself that the victims of lynchings were more than just statistics in the ongoing epidemic of anti-Black violence that has permeated the history of the United States. By employing a victim-centered methodology, we can examine the lives of these victims before the worst happened to them and recognize the three-dimensionality of their lived experiences. This work examines the lived experience, lynching death, and memorialization process one hundred years later of George Tompkins. In understanding the means by which he lived, died, and was remembered, we can better understand the ways that this process can play a role in multiple contemporary communities.
Expanding the Narratives of Domestic Staff at Historic House Museums: A Case Study of the James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home
(2022-10) Vorndran, Zoe; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Kelly, Jason M.
The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home (JWRMH), located in Indianapolis, Indiana, is best known for interpreting the life of the famous Hoosier poet who resided at the home for the latter part of his life. The JWRMH has the opportunity to more fully incorporate the domestic staff – Katie Kindell, Dennis Ewing, and Nannie Ewing – who worked at 528 Lockerbie Street during Riley’s residence, into the story told today at the home. The JWRMH has preserved Katie Kindell’s room on the second floor of the home and the butler’s pantry next to the kitchen, places in which interpretation about the domestic staff have long been presented to visitors. Yet archival research shows that there is much more to the lives of the domestic staff than what is currently presented at the house. While Katie Kindell, the only white domestic staff member at the home, has been fairly well documented, much less was known about the home’s two Black domestic staff, Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing. Since Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing were married, a story about them being married to each other while they worked at the home has long been perpetuated. This study of the documentary record, however, has revealed that their marriage to each other occurred long after they left their employment at 528 Lockerbie Street. This study explores where this myth might have originated, why it has been perpetuated, and how Dennis Ewing and Nannie Ewing’s work and marriage history situates them into the larger story of Black Indianapolis in the early twentieth century. Additionally, exploring the ways in which architecture during the nineteenth and twentieth century isolated the domestic staff and the ways in which this has been reproduced in the site’s interpretive strategies reveals how the lives and stories of the domestic staff have been devalued. This study demonstrates that there is a great opportunity for historic institutions to expand their interpretive narratives and hopes to inspire them to be curious about all the people whose lives shaped their sites.
"Unusual Demands of this Unusual Time": Logansport State Hospital and World War I
(2022-09) Jesse, Helen Diane; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand; Nelson, Elizabeth Angeline
The Northern Indiana Hospital for the Insane (also known as Longcliff Hospital or Logansport State Hospital) struggled with a number of challenges common to state institutions, including a lack of funding, staff shortages, and stretched capacity. These problems worsened during World War I and the years immediately following, hindering the hospital’s ability to care for its patients. In response to these challenges, the hospital administration was forced to adapt in order to conserve resources. Using state and hospital records, this thesis examines the changes experienced by the hospital between 1910 and 1920 and demonstrates how external events such as a war had a greater impact on the care of vulnerable residents than did the internal dynamics of the facility or the motivations of its leadership.
A Look at the Effect of Two Extractive Industries on the Economy of Midland Michigan from 1850 to 1949
(2022-07) Getzin, Kristen Marie; Scarpino, Philip V.; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Shrum, Rebecca K.
This thesis will investigate the effect of extractive industries on the economy of an average Midwestern town from the mid-1800s until the conclusion of the WWII. Primary and secondary sources were studied to gain an understanding of the effect of extractive industries on the development of Midland Michigan. Due to its complete reliance on extractive industries for its economic welfare Midland suffered extreme economic upheavals. In conclusion Midland’s intensive boom and bust economy mirrors Michigan’s own rocky relationship with extractive industries.
Systemic Anti-Black Violence in Indiana: A Digital Public History Wikipedia Project
(2022-07) Hellmich, Madeline Mae; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Tandy, Kisha; Robertson, Nancy Marie
The most recent racial justice movement that emerged in the United States beginning in the summer of 2020 in response to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd laid bare the overdue need to revisit white America’s legacy of racist violence against its Black citizens. Historians can help bridge the gap between past and present and urge more Americans to identify and confront racial violence. As a born-and-raised Hoosier, I wanted to contribute to social change and racial justice at home. The historical silence on the history of racist violence in Indiana supports the myth that Indiana was a free state where Black citizens found refuge from the racist violence they experienced in the South; thousands of primary source newspapers containing details of white perpetrators lynching and violently attacking Black Hoosiers refute this myth. This paper identifies white perpetrators’ acts of anti-Black violence and Black Hoosiers resistance to anti-Black violence throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This analysis of racial violence in Indiana shows that white perpetrators employed violence in defense of white supremacy and that Black Hoosiers resisted anti-Black violence and white supremacy. The record indicates that racial terrorism has been embedded in the fabric of Indiana since its founding. Grassroots efforts, such as the Facing Injustice Project’s work to acknowledge the 1901 lynching of George Ward in Terre Haute, Indiana, are starting to recognize the harm white Hoosiers did to Black Hoosiers and bring repair to victims’ descendants and communities. More public history projects are needed to engage all Hoosiers in reckoning with the history of anti-Black violence. Activists and organizations have shown that Wikipedia is one digital institution where anyone can do the work of rooting out inequalities and injustices. This digital public history Wikipedia project challenges the historical silence on Indiana’s racially violent past by telling the truth about the history on one of the most-visited websites in the world. Using Wikipedia to do public history invites Hoosiers of all backgrounds to take up the work of acknowledging Indiana’s history of anti-Black violence, updating the historic record, and reevaluating the narrative constantly.
“This Great Building Belongs To Everyone”: Interrogating Claims About Inclusiveness and Exploring the Role of Nostalgia in the 1970s and 1980s Historic Preservation Movement at Union Station in Indianapolis, Indiana
(2022-05) Butterworth, Alexis Victoria; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Scarpino, Philip V.; Rowe, Stephanie
Union Station is a unique historic building in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The station, which first opened in 1853, has connected the history of the evolution of travel and the city of Indianapolis and, in the late twentieth century, became deeply embedded in local conversations about national issues at the intersection of race, historic preservation, and urban renewal. The station was a place of Black exclusion from public spaces throughout its existence, first as a train station, and later when it was repurposed as a Festival Marketplace. In preparation for the opening of the Festival Marketplace in the 1980s—complete with shops, restaurants, and a hotel—the developers invited people to write to them to preserve personal memories of experiences at the station from the era of train travel. Indiana residents, both white and Black, as well as Indianapolis city officials, and redevelopers of the station showed nostalgia for earlier eras when the station was active. This nostalgia, I argue, played an active and productive role in the process of saving Union Station. Importantly, those who contributed a letter to the “Remember Union Station” project were overwhelmingly white. Out of eighty-six letters, the race of seventy-three of them can be confirmed. Of those eighty-six, only two have been identified as Black. The two Black letter writers used the opportunity to contribute to the “Remember Union Station” campaign as a means to remember and claim the right to belong in Union Station for themselves, their families, and Black communities. As this project shows, the Indianapolis Union Station has always been more than just a building. It is a space that captures a part of the complex history of the city of Indianapolis and can hopefully provide more links to the past, present, and future for Hoosiers and visitors alike.
Overlooking the Indigenous Midwest: Prince Maximilian of Wied in New Harmony
(2021-11) Wertz, Kyle Timothy; Guiliano, Jennifer; Wokeck, Marianne S.; Rowe, Stephanie
In the winter of 1832-1833, German scientist and aristocrat Prince Maximilian of Wied spent five months in the Indiana town of New Harmony during a two-year expedition to the interior of North America. Maximilian’s observations of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River have influenced European and white American perceptions of the Indigenous peoples of North America for nearly two centuries, but his time in New Harmony has gone understudied. This article explores his personal journal and his published travelogue to discover what Maximilian’s time in New Harmony reveals about his work. New Harmony exposed him to a wealth of information about Native Americans produced by educated white elites like himself. However, Maximilian missed opportunities to encounter Native Americans first-hand in and around New Harmony, which he wrongly thought required crossing the Mississippi River. Because of the biases and misperceptions caused by Maximilian’s racialized worldview and stereotypical expectations of Native American life, he overlooked the Indigenous communities and individuals living in Indiana.
The Lost Cause, Reconciliation, and White Supremacy in South Carolina's Education System, 1920 - 1940
(2021-08) Bird, Jeffrey Allan, Jr.; Kaufman-McKivigan, John; Morgan, Anita; Guiliano, Jennifer
Between 1920 and 1940, South Carolina saw major changes in its education system both in response to low literacy rates in the state and as part of a national trend in education reform. The period also saw the emergence of one history textbook as the dominant history text for middle school students across the state. William Gilmore Simms and his granddaughter, Mary C. Simms Oliphant, the authors of this history text, had influence over middle school-aged children’s history education for over a century with their books being used in South Carolina schools in some capacity from around 1840 until 1985. These books exhibit strong influence from the Lost Cause Movement, as well as reconciliationist and white supremacist ideology, to present a more pro-southern point of view of the Civil War. Through heroification—the remaking of historical figures into heroes despite their flaws—revision/omission, and both implicit and explicit racism, Simms and Simms-Oliphant weaved narratives that twisted the facts of the Civil War era. These narratives implanted in the seventh and eighth grade students’ minds who typically read the textbooks’ false ideas about the events and people involved in the war. While research on history textbooks generally is widespread, there have been no in-depth studies of the influence of Simms and Simms-Oliphant on South Carolina’s education system. In the 1920s and 1930s, when students across the country on average completed eight to nine years of school, Simms’ and Simms-Oliphant’s books would have been the last history book many of those students would have read before ending their schooling. This gave these two authors immense power to influence public opinion in South Carolina. Ultimately, it appears that education is the primary tool through which South Carolina, and other southern states, have institutionalized Lost Cause, reconciliationist, and white supremacist narratives of the Civil War era that continue to influence public opinion in South Carolina and across the South.
The Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association and the Fight Against Residential Segregation in Indianapolis
(2021-07) Prebish, Lydia Anne; Morgan, Anita; Mullins, Paul; Robertson, Nancy
The Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association (BTNA) is a community group organized in 1956 by a few concerned couples living in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood on the north side of Indianapolis. These couples, both Black and white, witnessed a demographic change in their community as their white neighbors fled for the suburbs as the black population expanded. The BTNA, inspired to create an organization that would promote residential integration rather than continued segregation, worked to educate neighbors on the realities of integration, promote neighborhood conversation and comradery, and worked to influence the local and state governments on the impact of segregation that harmed their community. One of the first neighborhood organizations of its kind in the country, the BTNA still exists today, but little is known about their early history. This paper looks at the BTNA’s efforts to promote residential segregation in their community through activism, conversation, and legislative change. Additionally, this paper analyzes the BTNA success in its efforts to integrate the community during their first decade of existence.

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