Madam C. J. Walker, Indiana Avenue jazz, Crispus Attucks High and a night of calm in 1968.
Madam C. J. Walker
In 1910 Madam C. J. Walker moved her business to Indianapolis and set up its headquarters there. She made her fortune developing and selling cosmetics and hair care products for Black women, and Guinness records her as the first woman to become a self-made millionaire in America. In December 1927 her company's headquarters building, the Walker Theatre, opened on Indiana Avenue, and it became known as the Crown Jewel of the Avenue.
Indiana Avenue
In its glory days Indiana Avenue was the cultural center of Black Indianapolis, with Black-owned shops on nearly every block. From the 1920s through the 1960s it was home to a notable jazz scene that produced the Montgomery brothers, Freddie Hubbard and J. J. Johnson.
Wes Montgomery, born in the city's Haughville neighborhood, played Indianapolis clubs at night while working a day job, and developed a sound all his own by plucking the strings with his thumb rather than a pick and playing in octaves. From the late 1950s, as segregation laws changed, many middle-class families left the corridor, and by the early 1970s much of it had been cleared for the IUPUI campus.
Crispus Attucks High School
In 1927 Crispus Attucks High School opened as the only public high school in Indianapolis designated for African Americans. In 1955, led by Oscar Robertson, its basketball team became the first all-Black school in the nation to win a state title. The Crispus Attucks Museum has been inside the school since 1998.
April 4, 1968
On the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy went ahead with a rally at 17th and Broadway, in the heart of the city's Black community, and broke the news to a crowd of about 2,500. Indianapolis remained calm that night, which is believed to be in part because of his speech. In 1995 the Landmark for Peace Memorial, with sculptures of King and Kennedy, was installed in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park near the spot.
Black Indianapolis Today
The Walker headquarters, renamed the Madame Walker Theatre Center, carries the avenue's history, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Indianapolis.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Indianapolis on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company building on Indiana Avenue. Photo: Nyttend, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons The 500 block of Indiana Avenue. Photo: Indiana Landmarks, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons Crispus Attucks High School. Photo: Nyttend, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons