Honoring an Indianapolis Community’s Past by Facilitating a Resident-Driven Plan for the Future July 29, 2024

For more than 150 years, a tight-knit community has existed in southeast Indianapolis, its members bound to one another and the Norwood neighborhood they call home by a shared history as the descendants of Civil War veterans who served in Indiana’s only regiment of Black soldiers. Established in 1872 after those veterans settled in the area, Norwood is one of the oldest, descendant-maintained Black communities in the United States, with more than 30 families still living on the land their ancestors purchased with their Army pensions during the Reconstruction era.

While Norwood’s history is significant, it’s the community’s future that has coalesced residents in recent years around a vision for an intergenerational cultural and community center that would both honor Norwood’s past and provide a high-quality venue for community-strengthening services and programming. More than just a physical location, the proposed facility represents the first opportunity in many years for community development in Norwood to be driven not by the desires of those outside of the neighborhood, but by residents who have long fought to preserve their heritage. And by bringing public and private resources together to support residents’ aspirations for their community, the project also represents a potential turning point for Norwood after experiencing long-term disinvestment.

“The idea for a new park and community center on the property came directly from residents, and it aligns with our strategic plan to create additional park space in Indianapolis,” explains Phyllis Boyd, director of Indy Parks and Recreation (Indy Parks), which is spearheading plans for the Norwood Family Center project. “We always want to incorporate community voice in the decisions we make about where to focus resources, and Norwood’s residents were clear that this is what they wanted on the site.”

Indy Parks, in partnership with Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership, engaged IFF’s Real Estate Solutions team to assess how the new facility could best serve the neighborhood, what’s feasible to build, and the steps needed to make the Norwood Family Center a reality as part of a larger revitalization of a blighted industrial site into community greenspace.

As part of this process, the IFF team attended numerous community meetings over a five-month period, while also leading visioning sessions that provided local residents and nonprofits with the opportunity to identify specific needs the new community center should meet. Out of these sessions emerged several themes, including a desire for the new center to support health and wellness with a gymnasium, aquatic center, and exercise room; to offer dedicated programs for young people and arts programming for all ages; and to provide a food pantry and warming kitchen, along with rentable space for community events. Residents also expressed that they wanted to bring Norwood’s history to the forefront with displays honoring the people, stories, and events that helped shape Norwood over time.

“Norwood was the capital city in a Black settlement on the south side of Indianapolis that had a school, a park, a community center, library, post office, fire station, an orchard, and many other resources that made it a vibrant place to live for generations of families,” says Kaila Austin, a local artist, historian, and activist who has helped document and preserve the community’s history since 2019. “Many of those resources slipped away as agency was stripped from Norwood’s residents over the direction of their community, and the new community center would be a reparatory project that helps start the process of putting resources back into the neighborhood so that residents have the opportunity to conserve their culture and continue building their community as they see fit.”

To fully appreciate what Austin means requires a deeper understanding of how Norwood became an oasis for Black Americans to pursue their dreams for the first time after the conclusion of the Civil War, what contributed to the disinvestment in the community, and why so many of its residents remained in the neighborhood fighting to preserve their land and cultural heritage.

A self-reliant community blossoms

Norwood’s founders were veterans, but many were also formerly enslaved persons who fled to Indianapolis after escaping from plantations in Kentucky and Tennessee. Having enlisted in the army in 1863 after the establishment of the U.S. Colored Troops’ (USCT) 28^th Regiment to do their part to end the war and the institution of slavery, Norwood’s founders played an important role in battles along the eastern seaboard and were among the Union troops that secured Richmond, VA, in the days leading up to Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in April 1865. In the months that followed, they were deployed to Texas and participated in the events that are now commemorated by the Juneteenth holiday before returning to Indianapolis in early 1866 after the regiment was disbanded.

Though Black troops fought valiantly on behalf of the Union, their contributions to the war effort were not celebrated like those of their white counterparts, and the sites where USCT’s camps were located became the focal point for commemoration of their sacrifices. The largest such site in Indiana was Camp Fremont in Indianapolis’ present-day Fountain Square neighborhood, where every Black soldier in the state trained, and near which a commemoration tree planted by USCT veterans still stands today. By 1870, more than 20 Black families were living within a mile of the former camp, and Norwood was incorporated two years later.

Norwood soon became the epicenter of the growing settlement of free Black Americans in the area. Its location at the intersection of four major railroad lines – the nation’s largest train depot outside of New York City at the time – created ample employment opportunities for new arrivals, while Black-owned businesses sprang up around the depot and thrived. And with Norwood’s location immediately outside of the Indianapolis city limits, residents had full control over their community. By 1900, Norwood was home to more than 1,000 residents, with an abundance of talented Black artists, tradespeople, teachers, and successful business owners.

“Families felt welcomed, safe, seen, and heard in Norwood, which caused them to reinvest their time and energy into their community,” says Austin. “Norwood and the surrounding settlement were built against the odds, at a time when there was blatant racism and discrimination. The intentional connectivity fostered between residents was a key component of Norwood’s success.”

A loss of autonomy creates change

With Norwood’s growing population came new challenges, and outbreaks of typhoid prompted Norwood to request in 1902 that it be formally annexed by the Indianapolis City Council to gain access to the city’s water supply and other municipal services. Citing the potential tax burden, the council refused and left the community to fend for itself.

Several years later, a Citizens Gas coke plant opened on the northern boundary of Norwood, along with several other industrial facilities nearby that were considered too harmful to place near white residents within Indianapolis city limits. This influx of industry replaced what had been pristine wilderness, degrading the environment and harming Norwood’s residents. With new industry in the area generating ample revenue, Indianapolis’ City Council unilaterally moved forward in 1912 with the annexation of Norwood despite residents’ desire by then to remain an independent municipality able to chart its own course.

Fears about the loss of the community’s autonomy over its own affairs were well founded, with Norwood’s residents forced to wait six, 13, and 25 years after annexation to receive basic utilities like electric, water, and gas service, respectively. All the while, the coke plant continued to pollute the community. Around the same time, a rapidly growing Ku Klux Klan established a stronghold in Southeast Indianapolis, isolating Norwood from surrounding communities and exacerbating the negative impact of its annexation.

Despite these challenges and others that followed – such as the closure of its only school when Indianapolis Public Schools were formally segregated in 1927 and the government-sponsored redlining that became commonplace in the mid-1930s – many of Norwood’s residents remained rooted in the community, with the federal benefits of local World War II veterans helping to fuel a period of expansion and providing a level of stability.

Over the next five decades, Norwood continued to be affected by racist public policy, with another notable example being the construction of the federal interstate system in Indianapolis that cleaved the city’s predominantly Black southeast neighborhoods and displaced thousands of families and numerous businesses. Still, a core of longtime Norwood residents remained in their homes on the properties their ancestors passed down to them.

“There are 40 or 50 elders in Norwood between the ages of 90 and 110, all of whom live in a city where the average life expectancy for a Black man is 69 years,” says Austin. “I think that speaks to the way residents have cared for one another and nurtured their heritage despite all of the challenges that they’ve faced that could have driven them from the neighborhood and erased the history that exists in Norwood. In speaking to the Smithsonian and other historians, there’s a consensus that this is a remarkable place for Black history in the United States.”

An opportunity for a fresh start

Given the history of disinvestment and overt racism that stripped Norwood of many of the community assets that its early residents fought so hard to attain, it was particularly difficult when, in 2022, plans were announced for the morgue and forensics lab in the neighborhood. Already frustrated by the development of the Indianapolis Community Justice Campus immediately north of Norwood, residents’ concerns about how a morgue would further alter the fabric of the community were amplified by the historical significance of the property where the facility would be built.

Once owned by renowned artist John Wesley Hardrick, who was born in Norwood in 1891 to formerly enslaved parents, the property was acquired after his death in the late 1960s by Citizens Energy and used as a coal storage facility for the company’s coke plant before falling into disuse. Surrounded by fencing and razor wire, and providing no benefits to Norwood residents, the property had long been emblematic of the choices made outside of the community that deeply impacted its trajectory.

Compounding residents’ displeasure with the proposed morgue was its location directly across the street from an existing pocket park and a single-room community center that, while small, plays an important role in the neighborhood as a gathering place and hub for services like a free food pantry. Mobilizing quickly, Norwood’s residents were successful in pushing back against the proposal, opening the door for the plan for the property that’s now well underway.

“IFF brought a wealth of knowledge about community spaces and community engagement to the planning process, and we have a good understanding of exactly what residents want out of the center,” says Boyd. “That work has also helped us to think about how much space is needed to be able to support the services and programs desired in the facility and provided us with financial feasibility modeling for the development of a small, medium, and large family center to assess the cost of each option.”

With that information in hand, Indy Parks is now turning its attention to creating a master plan for the project, developing schematic designs, assessing the environmental remediation needed to build on the property, and pursuing the funding needed to bring Norwood residents’ vision for the new family center and park to fruition.

“What we’re envisioning is a significant project, and there’s no doubt that it will be difficult to fund,” says Boyd. “But we’ve dealt with larger challenges before, and this is a huge opportunity to move in a new direction in Norwood, with residents not having to fight for something that will strengthen their community, and instead having the city come alongside them to support their priorities for the neighborhood.”

Learn about additional projects in Indiana supported by IFF’s Real Estate Solutions team