2033-12 Hoosiers American Story.indd 140 and allAmericans.and Hoosiers enjoyment offered cars gives and asense of freedom the cover sheet The music century. during early the ture twentieth pervadedmobile American cul- auto- how the reflects Tilzer, von composer Albert by Hoosier ten This 1912 song, withmusic writ- 8/29/14 11:00 AM COLLECTIONS OF THE INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 6 Immigrants, Cars, Cities, and a New Indiana Indiana holds by the pioneering culture . old-fashioned philosophies springing out of the soil and smelling of the pennyrile and the sassafrack [mint and sassafrass]. — Irvin S. Cobb, 1924 In the late nineteenth century Indiana moved Americans had come from England, Scotland, Wales, along with the nation, experiencing increasing immi- and the German principalities. Immigrants from gration, rapid industrial change that came with a new Ireland and the German states started arriving in the invention—the automobile, and big city growth. Indi- early to mid part of the nineteenth century, and a few ana developed a culture of its own. Hoosiers claimed African Americans settled in the state, too, most near to be the most American of Americans, but they also Quaker settlements. developed pride in being different from Texans or New By 1880 Indiana had become different than other Yorkers. They liked the Indiana way of doing things, states in an important way—hoosiers were primarily including being fiercely independent and self-suffi- American-born, white, and Protestant. Other states cient, intensely political and wary of the government, tended to have more immigrants, more ethnic groups, and community-focused. However, economic growth and more people of different religions. In 1880, 70 in the late nineteenth century changed the old ways. percent of Indiana’s population had been born in the Change promised a better life, for some, but not all. state. By 1920, 95 percent of Hoosiers had been born Some Hoosiers welcomed the new era; some found in the United States; 97 percent were white; and 75 the changes threatening. percent of Indiana’s church members were Protestants. There were also a few thousand Jews and a sizable The Indiana Way number of Catholics. Regardless of nationality or reli- At the time of the American Revolution, Indiana gious affiliation, most Hoosiers lived in small towns or was settled by Indian groups and a few Catholic French on farms. fur traders and families of mixed French and Indian Such homogeneity offered a foundation for build- blood, mostly from tribes associated with the Miami. ing a Hoosier identity. Hoosiers could rightly think After winning their revolution with the British, Ameri- that they were all mostly alike and belonged together. cans who had been born in the eastern United States Likely, too, this homogeneity contributed to a ten- began to move west. The ancestors of most of the dency to cling to old ways and question different Chapter 6 | Immigrants, Cars, Cities, and a New Indiana | 141 2033-12 Hoosiers American Story.indd 141 8/29/14 11:00 AM and new ways. Hoosiers preferred slow and gradual or even hostile welcomes from native-born Hoosiers. change. They tended to reject revolutionary proposals They were different. Their language, their religion, and disruptive arrangements. Consequently, Hoosiers their food, and their ways of doing things seemed NDIANA I hesitated to embrace people and ideas different from strange. Would they and their children continue to be N ER the Hoosiers they knew and the Indiana way of doing outsiders, or would they assimilate, that is, become OUTH S things. Nevertheless, the late nineteenth and early like other Hoosiers? Long after they had assimilated, SITY OF twentieth centuries brought revolutionary changes. By southern and eastern Europeans moved into the state, ER NIV the early twentieth century Hoosiers were grappling and Hoosiers asked these questions of the new groups. U TIONS, with “new” immigrants recruited by factories produc- But even the least welcome of European immigrants EC ing new types of products, such as the automobile. had the chance eventually to become more like white, IAL COLL native-born Hoosiers. SPEC S AND S New Hoosiers E HIV One of the most obvious changes came as a new African American Hoosiers Arc SITY wave of immigration from southern and eastern Unlike Irish Americans or Polish Americans, ER NIV U Europe flooded into the United States at the end of African Americans were not going to become “white.” E the nineteenth century. Speaking Italian, Greek, Pol- In 1850 about 1 percent of the people in Indiana were TIONS OF TH TIONS OF ish, and many other languages, newcomers generally black. The small proportion of African Americans in In- EC made their way from ports in Boston, Massachusetts; diana was due in large part to generally held anti-black COLL New York City; Baltimore, Maryland; or New Orleans, attitudes and discriminatory laws. Due to the ban on Louisiana, to Indiana. Although the immigrant popula- blacks in 1851, the proportion would change very little tion in Indiana increased, immigrants accounted for no until after the Civil War. Blacks who did live in Indi- more than 10 percent of the state’s total population— ana encountered challenges of race that persisted for a smaller proportion than in other industrial states. generations. Still, the immigrants had a large impact on native-born During the 1870s many former slaves immigrated Hoosiers. north to join relatives, find work, or just to get away Hoosiers struggled to accept people unlike them from the South. Later in the century black people im- from the start. Most of the state’s Indians were sent migrated to Indiana for newly available factory jobs. By away by the 1830s, and blacks were barred from 1920 African Americans comprised nearly 3 percent of entering the state in its 1851 constitution. The “old Indiana’s population. immigrants,” the Irish and Germans, received cool Logansport Drugstore Busjahn and schneider’s drugstore with a soda foun- tain in Logansport, Indi- ana, in the early twentieth TY E century is an example of I C O S how the children of im- AL C I R migrants became part of ISTO their new communities. H Part owner John Busjahn NDIANA I E was the son of German im- migrants and his partner, John Schneider, was the TIONS OF TH OF TIONS EC son of a German and a COLL Canadian immigrant. 142 | Hoosiers and the American Story 2033-12 Hoosiers American Story.indd 142 8/29/14 11:00 AM Evansville Barbershop William H. Glover’s Shaving Parlor in Evansville. Although job opportunities for African Americans in Indiana were often limited and most worked for low pay, some found higher paying work in factories or as small business owners. In 1885 Indiana passed a civil rights act that prom- borhoods. Indiana cities became like patchwork quilts ised all people could eat in any public restaurant, get where Hoosiers sorted themselves by race, ethnicity, a hotel room, or go to a theater. The problem was that and class. the law was rarely enforced; discriminatory practices In his novel The Magnificent Ambersons, published were still the norm. African Americans found ways in 1918, author Booth Tarkington wrote that in India- to help each other, however. Despite an often hostile napolis “all the women who wore silk or velvet knew climate, they began to seek ways to enjoy the same all the other women who wore silk or velvet.” Such rights as other Americans. By 1900 black Hoosiers had wealthier, native-born Hoosiers knew each other, but most of the same legal rights as whites. They still could usually not those people in their town who were poor, not legally marry a white partner or serve in the state of foreign birth, or had dark skin. At the same time, a militia; but black men could and did vote. Polish American family in Indianapolis or South Bend knew mostly other Polish immigrants. They attended Factory Jobs and City Lives the same churches, shopped in the same stores, and For most newcomers the pull to Indiana was the joined the same organizations. possibility of a job, a better job than back in Ireland or It would take time for Hoosiers of different back- Italy or rural Mississippi. European immigrants and grounds to learn to know each other—time to trust, African Americans provided essential labor for Indi- respect, and even value differences. As much as tra- ana’s new factories and cities. Employers could often ditional Hoosiers might have liked old ways, many hire them at lower wages than white, native-born gradually came to see benefits of new people and new Americans. technology. Newcomers brought their culture—food, Most of the new factories were in cities, so it was music, and ideas—that added zest to Indiana’s culture. to the growing cities that the newcomers migrated. New manufactured products brought jobs but also South Bend, Fort Wayne, Gary, Evansville, and India- increasing prosperity to many, while new technol- napolis pulled them in. Newcomers often lived with ogy—especially the automobile—brought increasing people of similar origin, clustered in separate neigh- freedom to most Hoosiers. Chapter 6 | Immigrants, Cars, Cities, and a New Indiana | 143 2033-12 Hoosiers American Story.indd 143 8/29/14 11:00 AM English. In 1915 in Vanderburgh County, the grand- 6.1 children of immigrants who had come to Indiana before the Civil War were still confirmed in church services conducted in German. One woman recalled, Immigrants Come to Indiana, “‘if you weren’t confirmed in German, you weren’t 1850–1920 confirmed. God didn’t listen to you in the English lan- guage.’” German-language newspapers, schools, beer “Cooking, keeping house, and mending in the true German way are very much harder here.