Level Up-Fort Wayne
Heather Guy, B.A., M.A.
Racial Justice Coordinator
YWCA Northeast Indiana
In 2011, after completing graduate courses at Indiana University, I found myself in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. I was teaching Kindergarten at a French/English bilingual school on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It was an amazing opportunity both professionally and personally. On one occasion I was mingling with a group of expatriated Americans. A brother from New York and I started to chat and I told him that I was “just from Indiana”. Somehow, this shocked him. “All the way from Indiana to the continent, huh?” After Senegal, I landed in St. Louis. While I was there I tried to get into non-profit community work, but to no avail. After being there for a few years, I was prompted by Joe Jordan of the Boys and Girls Club to come back to Fort Wayne.
What I came back to was my hometown grappling to accommodate population growth and progress. “Regional development” was a buzzword, especially as it relates to the impact of developing the identity of our city’s downtown sector. I’ve seen the way various organizations work to welcome and transition immigrant populations. And we’re all aware of how county and city culture collides. For all the recent attempts and efforts to cement a sense of community identity and culture, we’re still not quite the inclusive culture most of us aspire to be a part of. I’ve recently had the fortune of doing a little digging around the region’s diverse cultural history. That is to say that diversity has always been a part (quite literally) of this land we share. For now, I want to talk about something else that has also been a part of this region for as long as its recorded history. I want to talk about Black Americans.
Cultural sectors of the city are eager to point to the mural renaissance that has taken over as a symbol of development. And while the city celebrates itself, I am here to encourage a renewed interest and engagement with local African American history. Indiana’s history includes free settlements/farming communities of Black Americans which includes; the Roberts Settlement in Hamilton County, Huggart Settlement in St. Joseph County, Weaver Settlement in Grant County, Jeffries Free Settlement in Whitley County near the Eel River. These communities of free and thriving Black Americans in this area also support the presence of the Underground Railroad in Indiana. This region is also included in the Negro-Motorist Green-Book, citing the Fox Lake, Angola area as a safe place that hosted well to-do Black families during the summer months. These are cultural legacies of well-being and success for our children to look up to. The site of the museum is also featured in the Negro-Motorist Green-Book and should be valued and preserved as one of the first (and many) Black owned properties of William Warfield. Property owner, business man, songwriter and man of letters, William Warfield’s legacy should be acknowledged and celebrated as a local historical legend! I am also ever grateful for the vision of Hannah Stithe who thought of collecting narratives, historical documentation and all kinds of cultural goodies to share with future generations. Since 2020, I’ve been a part of the African African American Historical Society and Museum board. And what a dream it has been to become so intimately acquainted with the history of Black Hoosiers in this region. With the help of my father, I am so proud to say that I have been able to update the first floor exhibits and would be so proud to have you come visit! The African African American Historical Society and Museum is happy to announce that 436 E. Douglas will be open every Saturday in February from 11-4.
As the Racial Justice Coordinator for the YWCA I do not take my position lightly. The organization has a legacy of actively engaging cross cultural community building, which includes having invited W.E.B. Du Bois to Fort Wayne and provided some of the first Black History community education to Fort Wayne. While some of my mission includes helping to educate the Fort Wayne community regarding bigotry, microaggressions, discrimination and allyship, what is most important for me is the platform for community service this position provides. On behalf of the YWCA Northeast Indiana, I invite those readers who are particularly interested in the causes of we Black and Brown folks in Fort Wayne, to join the Level Up Council. For now meetings are held online, on the second Wednesday of every month at 11.a.m. I am also open to discussing supplemental information after business hours if enough interest is generated. If you are interested in joining please reach out to me at HEssex@ywcaerew.org. For the sake of our children and our future, our ancestors deserve our acknowledgement. And it is imperative that we reclaim our beautiful rich community’s history. If we don’t embrace this collective effort, it becomes too easy to act like Black Hoosier history is not relevant, or worse, does not exist.
The Level Up Council is an opportunity to both voice our perspectives and create the kind of community and cultural legacies our Black and Brown communities are proud to pass along to future generations.