South Bend's Own Words

DeAnn Gatto worked as a bouncer at the Seahorse, a center of queer culture in South Bend for decades. It was there that she befriended some legendary male impersonation performers. They encouraged DeAnn, teaching her the art and skill of impersonation and the differences between that and drag performance. One day, DeAnn was pushed to enter the Mr. South Bend competition, a title that showed to her...

Born in Arkansas, Dorothy Smith and her family fled the state in 1937 due to a violent encounter with white men. They found refuge in South Bend. Dorothy fondly remembers her time at Hering House, a community center, and her involvement with the Phyllis Wheatley Girl Reserves.  She was also the first African American person hired at Wells Electronics company. Despite her hard work, she faced inten...

Doris Grady Howell grew up on the east side of South Bend, Indiana, in the shadow of the University of Notre Dame.    As a sixteen-year-old, Doris's life took a significant turn when she joined Uncle Bill's All Girls Softball league. For the next twelve years, Doris and her teammates toured the Midwest—fierce competitors on the field while making history off it, including meeting and playi...

As a student athlete in Central High School, Tom Singer saw how his African American teammates had very different experiences than he did. This observation fueled his work as an ally in the 1960s civil rights movement.    Tom leveraged his law degree to challenge discrimination, filing a case against a local gym that charged African Americans more for memberships, challenged discriminatory treatme...

Over fifty years ago, a Notre Dame priest sought to become a literature professor. He ended up on another path, becoming an ally with South Bend's Latinx immigrant community and founding a youth and community service center—La Casa de Amistad. This episode was produced by Caleb Matz and Jon Watson from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at IU South Bend, and by George Garner from the C...

In the small, midwestern city of South Bend, Indiana, for members of the LGBTQ+ community, having a space for themselves is life changing. And for twenty years, people here have had that space.    Today, it’s called the LGBTQ Center. As the Center approached its twentieth anniversary, Dr. Jamie Wagman and students from Saint Mary’s College students preserved the history of the Center by conducting...

Ms. Adeline Wigfall-Jones’ west side barber shop has brought safety and built community for generations. Now in her 90s, Ms. Adeline shares her life’s journey from a small farm in rural Georgia, to the rigorous studies she undertook to get her barber’s license, to opening her famous shop in South Bend, Indiana.    This episode was produced by Jon Watson from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the A...

John Charles Bryant was a lifelong historian of South Bend's African American community.    In 2021, after a colorful life of nearly 84 years, he reached out to us to record a series of four oral history interviews. Each would cover 20-year chunks, talking about the people who inspired him, and some of the many figures in local African American history that he spent so much of his life learning ab...

With makeshift decor and a boom box for music, the original Seahorse was totally undistinguished, but it became a sanctuary for South Bend’s LGBTQ+ community seeking a place where they could be their whole selves. Tom Beatty was a frequent patron, and he shares his personal experiences of coming out, his family’s reactions, the challenges he lived through, and some of the other LGBTQ+ spaces that...

After growing up in Puerto Rico, Joaquin Robles moved to South Bend, Indiana, and lived forty-plus years here. Joaquin talks about his experiences in this city, and his perspectives on multi-generational discrimination and evolution of the Latine community here.   This episode was produced by Jon Watson from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at IU South Bend, and by George Garner from the...

As the only African American Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) at South Bend, Indiana’s Memorial Hospital in the late 1960s, Charlotte Huddleston shares her perspective on racism in healthcare, housing, and in education.    This episode is the first of a new format for “South Bend’s Own Words,” featuring more of the back story behind the history. We hope you enjoy the switch.    This episode was prod...

Since 2017, for 54 episodes, you’ve been with us as we’ve gone back into South Bend’s history. And next week, we’re presenting a new format for “South Bend’s Own Words.” It still shares stories of people who worked to make this city change—real stories told  by  them, in their own voices. Look for the first of the new episodes to arrive in this same podcast feed on June 12, 2024. And please, tell...

A Mississippi native who moved to South Bend in 1944 speaks about Black businesses on the west side.    Elmer Joseph came to South Bend from a resort community in Mississippi. His family was financially well off, yet still deeply impacted by Jim Crow segregation. He attended an all-Black school—and experienced a huge culture shock when he moved to South Bend to attend Central High.    Elmer rememb...

A 1931 graduate of South Bend’s Central High School talks about her experiences growing up in a resort town of Kentucky, and the discrimination she experienced as a white-passing African American woman both in the south and in South Bend.    Odie Mae Johnson Streets was born in Chicago before moving with her family to Dawson Springs, Kentucky. In the 1920s, she moved to South Bend both so her fath...

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 g...

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...

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 diff...

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 th...

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...

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 in...

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 directo...

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 St...

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...

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 t...

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...