A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

The Cold War dominated Kennedy’s foreign policy. The USSR erected the Berlin Wall. The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in an effort to oust Fidel Castro was a debacle. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a game of chicken where the Soviets blinked first. They were attempting to put missiles in Cuba, and the U.S. regarded that as aggressive and put Cuba under naval quarantine, ultimately boarding a Soviet-flagged ship. The U.S. publicly agreed not to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove missiles from Turkey. Kennedy began attempts to negotiate nuclear testing ban treaties.

Kennedy also created the Peace Corps and began providing support to the South Vietnamese.

In April 1963, Kennedy assessed the situation in Vietnam: “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me.”

Kennedy is regarded as the founder of the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. “Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”

Domestically, JFK’s proposals were branded “The New Frontier.” He wanted to reduce the top income bracket from 90% down to 65% and the corporate tax from 52 to 47%. He also wanted to increase federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, economic aid to rural regions, and government intervention to halt the recession. He also wanted to end racial discrimination.

He ended a period of fiscal conservatism, his budget was the first to top $1 billion and to run a peacetime deficit, and the economy boomed:

GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963,while inflation remained steady at around 1% and unemployment eased. Industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales rose by 40%. This rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1969, and has yet to be repeated for such a sustained period of time.

Kennedy was committed to the civil rights movement. However, he did not act immediately in 1961, and he moved more slowly than civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King would have liked. Southern Democrats had the upper hand in Congress, and Jim Crow was still the law of the land. He did, however, appoint Thurgood Marshall to the federal judiciary. Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954, declaring that separate schools based on race was unconstitutional. However, southern whites continued to resist.

Kennedy had, as a Senator, been opposed to the manned space program. As President, out of consideration for Lyndon Johnson – who supported the space program, JFK did not dismantle the program. However, Kennedy changed his tune when the Soviets made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space. On May 25, 1961, Kennedy gave a speech, saying:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

In another speech, on September 12, 1962, Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Kennedy would not live to see Neil Armstrong step onto the Moon. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time, my Dad served in the Old Guard in Washington D.C. and, in that capacity, was present at Kennedy’s funeral as well as Johnson’s inauguration. In this picture during Kennedy’s funeral, my Dad is the one in the top-left corner. 

Indiana Bicentennial 11 (1961 – 1977)

With Indiana Bicentennial 11, we will be covering the 60s and 70s, into the nation’s bicentennial. Now we’re entering territory I was alive to see. As we approach the present, history has a way of insensibly turning into “news.” I’m not sure how I will approach the end-game of this project inasmuch as I don’t have a particular desire to, for example, spend a lot of time talking about the Pence administration — or even the Daniels administration, for that matter. I’m running out of time and, in any event, I covered those years contemporaneously with my regular blogging. I guess we’ll cross that bridge later. For now, I’ll follow my usual pattern — try to give an overview of the national scene and then head into the governors.

The Presidents were Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. We’ll see four Presidents over this 16 year period, which had to be fairly jarring for the country since it had only had four Presidents over the previous thirty-two years. The governors were Matthew Welsh, Roger Branigin, Edgar Whitcomb, and the first term of Otis Bowen.

This one may end up being a little shorter than in recent months. My schedule is a little challenging.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963).

JFK was the son of the wealthy Joe Kennedy. The way I often heard it, Joe made his money through sketchy Wall Street practices, then after the Depression, was consulted to help the government guard against the schemes that made him rich. He got out of the market at an advantageous time, then plowed his profits into real estate during the Depression; turning a modern day net worth of $55 million into a modern day net worth of $3 billion within the space of 6 years.

JFK had a privileged childhood, but one that left him (despite a variety of health challenges) well-educated and well-traveled. During World War II, Kennedy served in the Navy. In April of 1943, Kennedy was commanding the PT-109 in the Solomon Islands when it was rammed by a Japanese Destroyer. Rather than surrender, the survivors swam to an island three miles away and was rescued about a week later. Kennedy had been rejected from the Navy on his first attempt due to a bad back, and he struggled with back issues during the war.

In 1946, Joe arranged to have a Congress seat in a strongly-Democratic Boston district open up, and John ran for that seat and won. He served in Congress for six years before running for the Senate and beating Henry Cabot Lodge II for that seat. Despite being absent due to health reasons for long stretches during his Senate term, Kennedy came in second in the Vice-Presidential ballot during the 1956 Democratic primaries.

When he ran for President in 1960, he broke new ground as a Catholic. He felt compelled to make a statement that he would not be beholden to the Catholic Church. As the nominee, Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson as his running-mate over some internal opposition. He needed Johnson’s strength in the South in what was anticipated to be a close election. Nixon and Kennedy participated in the first televised Presidential debates. This is considered a milestone in the transition from radio dominated politics to television. The story goes that those who watched TV considered Kennedy the winner while those who listened to radio considered Nixon the winner. The common wisdom on this is that Kennedy was the better looking candidate, and it was form over substance when the debates were on TV. But, this is apparently more folklore than evidence-based. And, to the extent Nixon did do better with radio listeners, it could be a function of the demographics of radio owners versus TV owners at the time — for example, maybe TV was more prevalent in urban areas with more Catholics.

In any event, Kennedy beat Nixon by a narrow margin in 1960. In the popular vote he won by .2%. In the electoral college, his victory was more comfortable – 303 to 219. Some electors from the South refused to vote for Kennedy due to his support for Civil Rights legislation. In his inaugural address, Kennedy famously asked citizens to be active, saying “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Returning to Governor Handley. After serving a term as lieutenant governor to the less conservative Governor Craig, Handley  sought nomination as the Republican candidate for governor in 1956. In an effort to undermine Governor Craig’s influence in the party, he blasted Craig for the scandal in the highway department (which Craig ultimately had no part in). Handley had the backing of Jenner and had Craig on his heels. So, Craig’s efforts to block Handley’s nomination were unsuccessful.  The general election was fairly easy in that Republican year, riding on the coat-tails of President Eisenhower’s re-election. Handley beat the Democratic nominee, Terre Haute mayor, Ralph Tucker with 55.6% of the vote, compared to Tucker’s 44%.

Because the General Assembly had spent the state’s surplus on a bonus for Korean War enlistments, in 1957 and 1958, the state was looking at a budget deficit. In order to deal with that problem, Handley advocated a 50% increase in the gasoline tax which was passed — earning him the nickname “High Tax Harold.” He also advocated a law that would allow employers to withhold the state income tax from an employee’s paycheck. This turned up  a large number of tax cheats, and produced an unexpected windfall for the state. In response Handley and the General Assembly repealed most of the state real estate taxes (the local ones remained in place.)

During his term, the General Assembly also passed a “right-to-work” law (later repealed) and also outlawed union shops which contributed to the decline of union influence in Indiana.   The right-to-work legislation in 1957 made it through the Indiana General Assembly on the strength of lieutenant governor, Crawford Parker’s “fast gavel” in the Senate. Since the Labor Committee chairman was almost certain to kill the right-to-work bill, the anti-labor forces engaged in a bit of procedural chicanery and sent it straight to the Senate floor where it passed 27 to 23.

The bill’s passage prompted a protest that drew 7,500 labor supporters to the Statehouse. One of their supporters from the corporate level was J. Irwin Miller, then the 47-year-old chairman of Cummins.

“The classic argument against the union shop,” he said, “is the right-to-work argument. The average American manager feels that there is a character known as the ‘loyal employee,’ and this is a fellow who is supposed to figure that joining the union is a fate worse than death.

“Well, this man is in the same category, in my opinion, as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. I’ve never found him.”

. . .

[T]he new law was so unpopular that many Republicans were turned out at the polls in 1958. By the 1960s, Democrats controlled both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s office. And in 1965, they repealed the right-to-work law.

Construction of the Interstate Highway System also began. Accepting federal money for its construction was contrary to Handley’s position against federal involvement with the state, but Handley was willing to make an exception, given the amount of federal funding and the economic impact of Interstates. There was some debate over how the State would prefer that the federal government treat Indiana’s Toll Road. The federal Highway Act passed in 1956. Construction of the Toll Road in northern Indiana began in 1954 and was underway in earnest by 1955. When plans were being made for the national Interstate and Defense Highway network, Governor Handley opposed inclusion of the Toll Road in that network because he feared that, if the federal government bought the Toll Road, it would use up money that could be used for the construction of highways that were free to the public elsewhere.

In 1957, after William Jenner surprised the political establishment by announcing that he would not seek re-election to Congress, Governor Handley — only two years into his term — threw his hat into the ring, partly at Jenner’s urging. Initially, he and Jenners looked into a scheme whereby Jenners would resign early in 1958, and Lt. Governor Parker would appoint Handley to complete Jenner’s term in the Senate which expired in January 1959. Ultimately that did not happen. And, in fact, Handley’s decision to campaign for the Senate before he was even halfway through his term of governor was regarded as inappropriate. He was defeated in that campaign by the Democratic mayor of Evansville, Vance Hartke.   Hartke also hit Handley with charges concerning his tax increase, the right-to-work legislation, and unemployment in the state. Those issues combined with a national resurgence for the Democrats resulted in a defeat for Handley and a victory for Hartke.

After his term ended, Handley opened a public relations firm in Indianapolis. He also became an advocate for the intellectually disabled. In 1969 he served on the Constitutional Revision Commission where he was, among other contributions, in favor of repealing the constitutional provision that limited Indiana’s governors to one term. Governor Handley passed away on August 30, 1972, of a heart attack when he was on vacation in Rawlins, Wyoming.

That brings Indiana Bicentennial 10 to a close. Next time, in Indiana Bicentennial 11, we’ll head into the 1960s.

Harold Handley (1957-1961).

Harold Handley, like Governor Craig, was born in 1909. Unlike Craig, he was raised in LaPorte. He went to the public schools there before going to IU in Bloomington where Craig and future Senator Jenner were also students. After IU, he went to work with his father as a salesman, but that was in 1932, so the Depression made sales tough. During a stretch of unemployment, he got into politics, forming the Young Republicans club in his county and unsuccessfully running for the state Senate. In 1940, he was elected to the Indiana Senate during a strong Republican year and worked with his colleagues to try to roll back some of the legislation implemented during the Democratic domination of the 1930s and to reorganize state government in an effort to wrestle away power from the governor.

In 1941, when the U.S. got involved in World War II, Handley resigned his position as senator and enlisted. He was assigned to a training unit and remained in the United States despite requests to be transferred. At the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He married a woman who lived near his base and, after the war, they moved back to LaPorte where he resumed his career in sales. In 1948, he was re-elected to his former Senate seat and became re-acquainted with U.S. Senator William Jenner. In 1952, Craig was a darkhorse candidate that won the Republican nomination for governor in spite of the party leadership. Jenner and other party leaders were able to get Handley nominated as lieutenant governor.

William Jenner

Jenner seems to have been a dominant figure in Indiana politics during this time. (For some reason, he puts me in mind of Senator Jesse Bright — the Senator from Indiana dominant in the 1850s who caused a rift in the Indiana Democrats and was ejected from the U.S. Senate after he introduced an arms dealer to Jefferson Davis.) Jenner was born in 1908, and, as mentioned before, he was at college with Craig and Handley. He got his law degree and practiced for a time in Paoli and Shoals, Indiana. He was elected to the state Senate in 1934 (at the age of 26) and served there until World War II. In 1942, he resigned his seat to serve in the war as part of the Air Corps. He was discharged in 1944 and — for a few weeks — served as U.S. Senate in the seat left vacant by the death of Frederick Van Nuys. In 1945, Jenner became the state Republican chairman. And, in 1946, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in his own right.

Jenner was apparently not too bothered by General MacArthur’s insubordination to President Truman and was given to conspiracy theories. When Truman fired MacArthur, Jenner said, “I charge that this country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie, which is directed by agents of the Soviet Government. Our only choice is to impeach President Truman and find out who is the secret invisible government.”  He contended that a communist conspiracy in the State Department was responsible for the fall of China and was a proponent of financial aid for Nationalist forces in China.  In 1950, he famously accused General George Marshall of being a traitor and a friend to communists. In the 1952 campaign, he said that voting for Adlai Stevenson would allow the “Red Network” to operate safely. Even so, Eisenhower did not like him. At a Republican rally in Indianapolis with Eisenhower and Jenner in attendance, Eisenhower voiced support for the Republican ticket but failed to mention Jenner by name. When Eisenhower’s speech was finished, Jenner lept up and hugged Eisenhower so that the press could get pictures of him with Ike. Eisenhower later told Emmet Hughes that he “felt dirty from the touch of the man.”

Jenner did not like the European orientation of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. He was mad that we gave aid to socialist England and did not support the creation of NATO.  In 1956, he said the Republican Party had been ruined by President Eisenhower. Senator Joseph McCarthy he apparently liked, however. When the Senate moved to censure Senator McCarthy, Jenner stood by him, maintaining that the censure movement was “initiated by a communist conspiracy.”  At the end of 1957, Jenner had had enough. He surprised political observers and party leaders when he announced he would not seek re-election. He returned to his law practice and his interest in the Seaway Corporation, a land development company, as well as his four farms.

During Governor Craig’s term, the General Assembly spent quite a bit of money on school consolidation, phasing out smaller schools and busing students to larger, centralized facilities.  Speaking of small schools, in 1954, Milan High School won the Indiana high school basketball tournament. Indiana had fallen in love with basketball since Nicholas McCay brought the game from James Naismith to Crawfordsville and played that first game against Lafayette in 1894. “In a dark and lonely winter, the gym was a warm, noisy and well lit place. For Indiana, basketball was a godsend.”

Milan and the one-class basketball tournament

Indiana’s one-class basketball tournament started in 1911. A number of things fueled its success: the lack of other forms of entertainment, the introduction of vehicular travel and good roads, Indiana’s multitude of small rural schools, lack of professional teams, and the low barriers to entry — schools didn’t need a big team, rural kids could enjoy the sport even if all they had was a ball and a makeshift hoop.  

The early tournament had a dominant team in the twenties known as the Franklin Wonder Five, winning it all in 1920, 1921, and 1922. The boys on that team had been playing together since they were kids and compiled a 104-10 record in their four years in high school. (Most of the team followed their coach to Franklin College and was dominant on the collegiate level as well.) John Wooden would call their lead scorer, Fuzzy Vandivier, the greatest high school player he had ever seen.

High school basketball would be responsible for some major building projects around the state. In 1928, Butler would propose a 10,000 seat arena — pretty ambitious given that the institution only had a few thousand students. The head of the IHSAA would ask them to expand that number to 15,000 and promised to conduct the high school tournament championship at Butler (later Hinkle) Fieldhouse for at least 10 years. In fact, the championship would take place at Indiana’s Basketball Cathedral until 1971. There was also an arms race among local high schools to construct larger and larger facilities, due to the unassailable logic that — if you had the biggest arena in the area — the tournament games would take place on your home court. Indiana has 14 of the largest 15 gyms (15 of 16 if you count the defunct Anderson Wigwam). North Central Conference schools (or former NCC schools) figure prominently on that list: New Castle, Anderson, Marion, Muncie, Lafayette, Richmond.

During the 1952-53 season, the small school of MIlan had an unusual pool of talent, owing to its junior high program. The team defied the normal pattern of advancing a couple of rounds only to fall to a large, urban school in the regionals. Instead, it won the regionals and semi-state competition, advancing to the final four. They would get blown out by South Bend in the semi-final game, but most of their starting lineup was going to return for the 1953-54 season. So, expectations were high. During the regular season, Milan lost on the road to the much bigger school of Franklin and a surprise loss to Aurora which also had a very good team, but otherwise, Milan more or less cruised. In the sectionals, Milan crushed Cross Plains, Versailles, and Osgood. In the regionals, they beat host Rushville handily and then avenged their loss to Aurora, beating that team 46-38. The first semi-state game found Milan in the unfamiliar position of being the bigger school, playing (and beating) Montezuma who had won its first regional to advance to the semi-state. The second semi-state game was a trickier proposition, playing a Crispus Attucks team with future hall-of-famer, Oscar Robertson. Milan built a lead, then played a lot of keep away, winning by 65-52.

In the state game, they played Terre Haute Gerstmeyer Tech which had also been in the final four the previous year, winning by a score of 60-48. The final game was against powerhouse Muncie Central. It was a defensive battle, the game tied at 26-26 going into the 4th quarter. Early on, Muncie Central put in a pair of free throws taking their first lead since early in the game. Bobby Plump was having a bad shooting night, having gone 2 for 10 from the field. He dribbled to “up over mid-court, pulled the ball up against his stomach, and stood still. Muncie waited, and if you think you gotta have motion to generate excitement, you should have been there. Plump held the ball amidst more noise than you’ll hear in the wildest fast breaking game for four minutes and 14 seconds, and then called time.” After play resumed, Plump shot the ball with 2:55 on the clock. He missed, and Muncie Central got the rebound. However, a bad pass gave the ball back to Milan and they scored, tying the game at 28-28 with 2:12. Plump gave Milan a 30-28 lead with a pair of free throws. Then Gene Flowers tied it again at 30-30 with 48 seconds left. It was then that Bobby Plump and Milan made history, Plump hitting the game winning shot with 3 seconds left and giving Indiana it’s own David versus Goliath legend.

The one-class tournament would continue until 1997. During that time, the Marion Giants — featuring Jay Edwards and Lyndon Jones — matched the Franklin Wonder Five with three consecutive state titles of their own in 1985, 1986, and 1987 (beating my Richmond Red Devils in the ‘85 and ‘87 efforts.) In 1997, the IHSAA decided to move to a class-based system, ending the crown jewel of Indiana sports. (I had the fortune of being in the room at the State House when Bobby Plump testified to a Senate committee in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get the General Assembly to somehow step in to preserve the one-class basketball tournament.) Bloomington North was the last one-class basketball champion, beating Delta by a score of 75-54. After 81 years of frustration, my Red Devils won a championship just under the wire — beating Lafayette Jefferson in overtime to win the 1991-92 season.

George Craig (1953-1957)  

George Craig is another past Indiana governor whose rise was helped considerably by his involvement in the American Legion. Born in 1909, he was the first governor born in the 20th century. He was raised in Brazil, Indiana; the son of an attorney and a product of the public schools. He went to undergrad at the University of Arizona but, apparently, spent more time drinking than studying. He returned to Indiana to enroll in law school in Bloomington. While there, he was questioned by Dean (and future governor) Paul McNutt about his poor grades at Arizona.  Craig promised to do better and was allowed to enroll. He was a classmate of William Jenner who would later come to be a prominent rival of his within the Republican party.

Craig got his law degree and went home to practice in his father’s firm. Business was light during the Depression, and Craig got involved in politics. He became the chairman of the Clay County Republicans in 1938. During World War II, Craig enlisted with the infantry and commanded a platoon, storming the beach at the Invasion of Normandy. Ultimately, Gray was discharged in 1946 with the final rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

When he returned home, he became involved with the American Legion. (The Legion had become a perpetual organization. Rather than being specific to one war like the Grand Army of the Republic, it was an organization devoted to veterans more generally). Craig became the Clay County Commander in 1947 and, in 1949, he became the national commander of the organization. In that capacity, he continued the acquaintance he had made with Dwight Eisenhower during World War II and gave speeches opposing communism. While Craig denied gubernatorial ambitions, he worked behind the scenes to further them.

He was an outsider to the established Republican leadership in the state and was considerably less conservative than William Jenner who ran the state Republican party. Working under the assumption that party delegates from the previous convention would likely be elected to the next convention, Craig met with hundreds of those people, trying to build support. At the 1951 Republican convention, he was able to beat out the more conservative candidates by the third ballot. One of those conservatives — future governor Harold Handley — was selected as the lieutenant governor candidate.

Craig and Eisenhower were both opposed to the spread of communism, but from the perspective of zealots like Jenner, they were not sufficiently anti-communist enough. Their preference for a measured approach to the problem caused guys like Jenner and McCarthy to label Eisenhower and General Marshall as soft on communism. Jenner also disapproved of Craig’s proposals to spend more state money and initiate more government programs. Eisenhower was very popular, however, and his coattails in the election of 1952 helped propel Craig to a comfortable general election win over his opponent, John Watkins who had been the lieutenant governor in the previous Schricker administration.

Craig had an ambitious agenda but was unable to pass most of it due to his conflicts with Republican Party leaders. At the State House, it was apparently a battle between the pro-Craig faction, the anti-Craig faction, and the Democrats. Craig wanted to consolidate government agencies into fewer departments — this was rejected out of hand as a return to the battle between executive and legislative that had raged for decades but had simmered down in recent years. He was mostly unsuccessful in lobbying for the creation of major new highways because the General Assembly did not want to pay for them, but despite some reluctance, the General Assembly did authorize the creation of the Toll Road in northern Indiana. Toll roads had been abolished decades earlier, and the legislature was concerned about adding new patronage positions controlled by the governor that would accompany toll roads. So, the legislature did not authorize any other toll roads. The General Assembly rejected Craig’s proposals for a new state government office building, new prisons, the expansion of Purdue, and creation of a new harbor on Lake Michigan. However, he did have some successes:

Craig was successful in having the Department of Corrections created, which he used to implement most of his penal reform. The Uniform Traffic Code was also established, which standardized road signs, speed limits, and traffic rules across the state. Funding was also granted to improve safety by installing signage and signal lights around the state. The police academy was expanded and the first narcotics group. The state police force was expanded to add fifty new officers, making it the largest in the nation at the time. The state’s Mental Health Division was also established to reform the state’s mental hospitals.

The General Assembly spent most of its surplus on a measure not favored by Craig: a bonus for people who enlisted to serve in the Korean War. Craig thought such a bonus was misguided, stating, “you can’t put a bonus on patriotism any more than you can on motherhood.”

As governor Craig’s term proceeded, he had some national popularity – being featured in Time Magazine for some of his reforms and being considered as a potential Secretary of the Army by President Eisenhower. However, he continued to battle with his fellow Republicans in Indiana. At one point, he proposed ending the death penalty. Senator Jenner and his faction pointed to this as proof that Craig was no true conservative. Near the end of Craig’s term, it was discovered that three highway commissioners had accepted bribes to influence their decision to accept highway contracts. Lieutenant Governor Handley used this incident to accuse Craig of being culpable in the scandal.

Craig himself was not found to be personally involved in the plot, but was required to testify before a grand jury in 1957, after he left office. When he left the court building, he gave an interview to the press in which he attacked William Jenner and a number of other party leaders for having a political vendetta against him. The scandal and his interview were published around the state and significantly hurt his popularity. In his later years he said that he forgave Jenner for his actions while Craig was governor, and that the two never agreed on anything except the weather.

After his term of office, frustrated with the local Republican Party, Craig left the state. He practiced law and ran an automotive company in Virginia, then moved to Los Angeles and practiced law there for awhile. He returned to Brazil, Indiana in 1967 and finally retired in 1986. Governor Craig passed away in 1992 at the age of 83.

Next time: The Milan Miracle

School Desegregation

In 1949, five years before Brown v. Bd. of Education, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law desegregating Indiana’s schools. The Indianapolis Public Schools had been formally segregated since 1927 when a Klan dominated school board drew dual elementary school boundaries and Crispus Attucks high school was constructed. Protests against segregation gained momentum after World War II. Indianapolis was the largest city in the North with a segregated school system. (Indiana being the “middle-finger of the South thrust up into the north.”) Gary and Elkhart announced firm plans to desegregate, but IPS was standing firm. A desegregation bill was introduced in the legislature in 1947, with the support of the NAACP, labor groups, the Indiana Jewish Community Relations Council, and the Indianapolis Press. The IPS board was opposed, saying it would be too disruptive to their current allocation of resources to various schools and faculty. There was also some talk of respecting “current local practices in race relations.” The desegregation bill failed that year.

The campaign to integrate schools continued after the 1947 General Assembly. The NAACP threatened an injunctive law suit to force integration. Some black students had been transferred to School 32, ostensibly because the black schools those students would have gone to lacked the capacity. A number of white parents kept their kids out of school protesting that their kids were being used as “guinea pigs” for the integration movement. The IPS board was ambivalent.

When the General Assembly reconvened in 1949, the Board no longer openly opposed desegregation. Some groups from the north side of Indianapolis did oppose the desegregation school bill, arguing that legislation “cannot change the social order.” There was also some racist literature from the era of Klan domination in the 20s circulating. Nevertheless, the bill passed the House 58 to 21. In the Senate, it was reported out of committee after Governor Schricker announced his support. It passed the Senate 31-5 with the five negative votes coming from Republicans and thirteen other Republican members walking out rather than voting.

After the legislation was passed, IPS duly began redrawing districts and generally complying with the desegregation requirements. However, this seems to have accelerated white flight to the suburbs and de facto rather than de jure (in fact rather than by law) segregation became the main issue. In Indianapolis, this apparently became known as “the Shortridge problem.” (Which caught my eye, because my Dad went to Shortridge. It’s my understanding that my grandparents lived near the Butler campus but moved around that time — most likely they were part of the white flight.)

Shortridge had, at one time, been ranked one of the twenty-five best high schools in the nation. Kurt Vonnegut, who went there, wrote of Shortridge:

[Shortridge is] my dream of an America with great public schools. I thought we should be the envy of the world with our public schools. And I went to such a public school. So I knew that such a school was possible. Shortridge High School in Indianapolis produced not only me, but the head writer on the I LOVE LUCY show (Madelyn Pugh). And, my God, we had a daily paper, we had a debating team, had a fencing team. We had a chorus, a jazz band, a serious orchestra. And all this with a Great Depression going on. And I wanted everybody to have such a school.

Through the 50s there was a significant influx of black students into Shortridge and a corresponding exodus of white students. By 1963, Shortridge was a majority black school. As this transition was taking place, many white parents asked the school board and administration to do something to reverse the trend. In 1964, a study of “the Shortridge problem” was commissioned. One proposal was to shift two elementary schools that were primarily black and have those students go to Washington or Northwest while, at the same time, taking two elementary schools that were primarily white and sending those students to Shortridge. The white elementary schools had, in the past, been feeders into Shortridge, but started going to Arlington when that school was built. The parents from the primarily black schools were relatively accepting of the proposal. The parents from the white schools were not. That proposal was ultimately dropped. (The linked article above and again here is a graduate thesis by Sophia Nicholas Gonis from 1964 entitled “An Analysis of Desegregation Trends in the Indianapolis Public Schools.”)

Harry Schricker (again) (1949-1953)

After sitting out a term, Harry Schricker ran for re-election and won. Senator Jenner had sought the Republican nomination but, due at least in part, to some bad blood between Jenner and Governor Gates, Jenner lost the nomination to Hobart Creighton. Creighton was a native of Kosciusko County and had served in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1932 to 1948, six years of that as Speaker. Originally, he was a math teacher. But then he went into business with his brother, Russell. First they tried hogs, but the bottom dropped out of the market. Then they went into chickens. During the depression, they managed to keep afloat. Homer remembered, “Luckily feed costs fell faster than egg prices.” They continued to expand and, by 1955, they had “20 farms, ranging from 12 to 320 acres, mostly close to Warsaw. On them [were] 50 modern, 2,600 bird laying houses. They also [had] an egg plant, a 365,000-chick hatchery, a $250,000 feed mill, their own genetics program and, on the side, 1,000 beef cattle to utilize the outdoor pullet runs which must be alternated from year to year.”

Despite Creighton’s business success, his fortunes were not so good during the gubernatorial campaign. Schricker beat Creighton by a healthy margin, 53% to 45%. The Democrats also regained a narrow majority in the Indiana General Assembly.

The Creightons weren’t the only ones prospering during this period. Indiana’s per capita personal income which had lagged far behind the national average up until 1930 began to rise in the late 30s and, exceeded the national average through most of the 40s and 50s. Industrial workers joined the middle-class, often getting a new car when new models came out, , were able to take family vacations, bought television sets, and sent their kids to college. Historian James Madison notes that this came during a period of extensive government intervention which never turned out to be quite as consequential as its proponents hoped or its opponents feared. He also noted that welcoming government intervention was not new to Hoosiers. During the pioneer era, Hoosiers had “allowed and even welcomed significant government intervention.”  Labor unions were also significant during this period. In 1939, over 20% of Indiana’s nonagricultural workers were union members. By the 1970s, that number was 38%. (That’s not to say that labor was necessarily popular in Indiana. The Chamber of Commerce and Republicans who resented labor’s alliance with Democrats often fought the labor movement aggressively.)

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Schricker had taken office in 1949 with a friendly General Assembly, however the Republicans re-took the legislature in the elections of 1950. One measure that caused controversy was legislation that made welfare records open to the public. Specifically, Senate Bill 86 in the 1951 General Assembly provided that the names of welfare recipients and the amounts they received would be filed with the county auditors and could be inspected by the public during regular business hours. This was ostensibly to “tear away the veil of secrecy” from welfare records. Governor Schricker vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode the veto. The Social Security Administration determined that this was in violation of the rules of the federal program and cut off funding, creating an $18 million budget deficit for the state.

A special session was called by Governor Schricker but the General Assembly was unsuccessful at coming to a resolution that would prevent federal funding from being cut off. What saved the money for Indiana was Congressional effort by Senator Jenner, passing a provision that said states couldn’t lose their money if they made welfare records open to the public. This resulted in a number of other states passing similar provisions.

It doesn’t appear that the efforts to repeal “secrecy” were necessarily worth the effort because, by and large, the public wasn’t interested in knowing. Very few county auditors were approached by anyone wanting to look at the records. Supporters of the public records legislation contended that the mere risk of being exposed prevented welfare “chiselers” from attempting to get on public assistance. The Indianapolis Star was an enthusiastic advocate of this position. It asserted that welfare money was going to “cheats, bums, prostitutes, irresponsible parents, and well-heeled sons and daughters of the aged.” (I can’t help but notice that a lot of those categories are the sorts of people targeted by the White Caps back in the late 19th and early 20th century.)

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A couple of random items here, and I’ll complete Schricker’s term in this post today and have a section next time devoted to “The Shortridge Problem.”

-In 1951, Howdy Wilcox, Jr. founded the Little 500 at IU.   He modeled the race after the Indy 500 which his father had won in 1919. This, of course, would be the basis for the 1979 movie, “Breaking Away” along with too many hangovers to count.

-In 1952, the Indiana Congressional delegation would send 10 Republicans and one Democrat to D.C. The lonely Democrat was Ray Madden from Lake County.  Governor Schricker ran against Senator Jenner for the U.S. Senate seat but was defeated.

-Governor Schricker gave the speech to nominate Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 Presidential campaign at the Democratic National Convention. Schricker would retire to his home in Knox and passed away in 1966.