South Bend's Own Words

The late Rep. John Lewis speaks at Indiana University South Bend in 2001. In 2001, Charlotte Pfeifer was Director of Indiana University South Bend’s Office of Campus Diversity as well as a South Bend Common Council representative. That year she led the fifth in a series of events called “Conversations On Race.” The keynote speaker was Representative John Lewis. John Lewis passed away last Friday after a lifetime of fighting for justice. To honor his life, we present the speech he delivered here at IU South Bend in 2001. Hope you enjoy.

Jenell Kauffman learned to embrace dual identities. Born with the name John Danforth, Jenell knew as early as age six that "it would be nice" to be a woman. What Jenell lacked was the language of the transgender experience. As a young person, John knew there were people who were cross-dressers, or drag queens. But the world John lived in was strictly gendered: girls wore girls’ clothes, and boys wore boys’ clothes. But John also knew the feeling of wanting to be something more. Eventually, John learned to incorporate Jenell and present with both identities.  In 2015, Jenell sat down with St. Mary’s College professor Dr. Jamie Wagman. They spoke about Jenell’s youth, and how Jenell learned to co-exist as both Jenell and John.  This episode was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we learn how to engage you and continue the work we do, we'd love to hear from you about how we do that. Go to http://crhc.iusb.edu and find our contact information. Call the Center and leave us a voicemail, or email Darryl Heller and George Garner to let us know how you are and what you think we can do during these hard times.  This episode was produced by Mark Flora and George Garner.  Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/.  Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/.

Ruth Tulchinsky was a young Jewish woman living in the shadows of the Holocaust. At the age of 16, fortunately, she and members of her immediate family managed to escape Nazi Germany and arrived in South Bend.  Ruth had experienced life in Hitler’s Germany, but did not expect to see elements of it  here. Yet, she did. The divisions between white and black were eerily similar to those she saw between Jews and non-Jews back in Germany. In 1944 she met and married South Bend native Maurice Tulchinsky, who also recognized and fought against the racial divisions here. Maury became a white ally in the fight to integrate the Engman Public Natatorium, speaking in front of the South Bend Common Council alongside lawyers J. Chester and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen, Zilford Carter, and Charles Wills. In 2008, Ruth sat down with interviewers from the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center. Ruth read items from a memory book she created including, what she calls, “The Natatorium Incident.” There’s a link to it in the description of this episode. Here’s Ruth, telling her life story. Created and produced by Kevin Tidmarsh; hosted and co-created by George Garner.  Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/.  Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/. 

Helen Pope grew up on the west side of South Bend, Indiana during the 1920s. She watched her city grow and change over the eighty years she lived here.  She earned a nursing license from Ivy Tech and a degree in early childhood development from IU South Bend. She worked as a nurse at the old Northern Indiana Children’s hospital, back when they segregated their patients by race. Helen helped end that horrible practice. But when South Bend started losing its factory jobs in the 1960s, African Americans were among the hardest hit. More and more jobs needed college degrees, so without equal access to higher education, lots of positions were out of reach. Helen did what she could to help. She worked with women in need as a YWCA director, and coordinated President Lyndon Johnson's Model Cities program on the West Side. She worked with the school system, with the NAACP, with Hering House, with the Urban League, and so many others. In the 1980s, she became the local coordinator of the History of Black Women in Indiana project. So she didn't just make history in South Bend—she made an effort to share stories from across the state of black women before her who also made history. Helen sat down with the Civil Rights Heritage Center twice in 2001 to talk about the ways she made history.  Created and produced by Kevin Tidmarsh; Hosted and co-produced by George Garner Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/.  Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/.