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| 80th Indiana Regiment (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: Downtown TerreHaute, looking Southwest, taken from the roof of the Sycamore Building in July '06. --Simon Dodd 00:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| English: A map of cities and activities in Indiana during the American Civil War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Every once in a while
you find a gem at your public library. A very old book that has managed to be
over looked by those making the selection for the library book sale, and it
sits on the library shelves.
I recently found
such a book the last stamp on the pouch card was May 1, 1955. I am sure it was
checked out many times since then, but it is not the kind of book people pick
for leisure reading or students for school research.
The title of the book itself was somewhat eye opening;
"Negro in the History of Indiana." .It was published in 1953 when the
term "negro" was not considered offensive. It was the work of one
John W. Lyda Of Terre Haute Indiana. It was an accumulation of his research for
the Indiana Negro History Society. There was only one copy purchased by the
Logansport Public Library.
Reading the first lines of this book made me know I had
found something very special. A work of love and intense honesty by a man that
loved the history of every day African American people ;in a State that had not
been hospitable to his people. This book has extraordinary value African
American families doing genealogical research in this State. It lists many
people who were active on every level society in Hoosier African American community in
the nineteenth century. The black population was pretty small before the Civil
War. Folk who immigrated to Indiana
Mr. Lyda knew and boldly told the reader that the history
of this State would have been dramatically different," if it had not been
for the Negro who has lived within the confines of the state during its entire
life. He also noted with honesty that the early black pioneers of this state
had to endure the hardships that all the pioneers in the Northwest
Territory had to endure but with an added burden. He wrote,"
They had to undergo all the hardships that other pioneers endured and to suffer
many legal disabilities imposed upon them by an inhospitable state that finally
forbade anymore Negros coming into its borders and outlawed the testimony in
the courts in cases to a white person was a party.(Preface)."
Mr. Lyda went on to note the importance of the Quaker
communities in Indiana for it's few black residents, He wrote," To protect
themselves from being captured and kidnapped to be sold into slavery, and to
give their children an opportunity to attend the schools provided for them by
their Quaker Friends, these Negro pioneers usually made their homes near Quaker
settlements (Preface)." He also noted with pride that the black community
in Indiana
These facts about blacks in Indiana history are well know
in many academic texts but the unique prespective of this book is that Mr. Lyda
researched it from little known sources at the time and relied on some
information from the aged black community at the time who had lived
,"being Negro" in nineteenth century Indiana. I plan from time to
time to write about some of the more obscure information about life for African
Americans in 19th century
Indiana
I will be renewing the "Negro in The History of
Indiana", giving this little read volume a much needed break from its
place on the Logansport
Source
Negro IN the History of Indiana : John W. Lyda, The Negro History Society: 1953; Terre Haute , IN.
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