Claira Wilson, Comm 224, Story 2 – 405 words, Campus, 2/19/2019 – Academic
Racial Injustice Sankofa tour through Grant County for IWU Day of Courageous Conversations
At 9:15 a.m., Feb. 12, students toured Grant County and learned its history from IWU professor, Dr. Rusty Hawkins.
“It just occurred to that perhaps we didn’t need to go all the way to the South to experience these different sites of discrimination, that maybe there is enough right here in our own county that could help us have some of these conversations,” Hawkins said.
Gas City, originally a sundown town, was a white only community. This significantly affected the current diversity there. The Wagner neighborhood had had racially restrictive covenants that kept races other than caucasians from living in the area.
“I used to live there (the Wagner neighborhood). So seeing how my life turned out because of this thing that happened way before I was born, how that played into my life is very interesting,” Annie Garcia, from Marion, said.
The final stop was Marion’s old jailhouse. The brick building held three African American men after their hand in the death of Claude Deeter and the supposed rape of Mary Ball in 1930.
Abe Smith was killed in his cell by a mob before being hung at the jail. Tom Shipp was lynched in a tree outside the courthouse, and James Cameron was freed.
Students were able to leave the bus and take the same walk from the jail to the courthouse made by the three African American men and their accusers.
Upon arrival back on campus, students debriefed with Hawkins. They discussed Marion College’s past policies, and how they affected the makeup of IWU campus today.
“Just the things you don’t think about. You think our population here is just because of who chooses to come here but really, a lot of it probably has to do with policies that were in the past,” Rachel Glover, Freshman on the tour, said.
According to the brochure, the main idea of the trip was “that we must return to the past in order to move forward.”
“My hope is that they come away from this with awareness of this history that they didn’t know existed before, and with an understanding that racism is tied up in systems and power that have to do much more with making people live particular ways, and less to do about how people might feel personally towards someone of a different race,” Hawkins said.
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