One of the most fundamental human needs is shelter.

From the 1910s through the 1950s, many thousands of people of African descent fled the most brutal forms of economic, racial, and violent oppression in the U.S. South and sought refuge in South Bend, Indiana. Many white people did not warmly welcome them into their new homes.

African American people were largely only allowed to live in the city’s west side. Quickly produced, low-quality factory homes were one of the few choices for most African Americans. A lot of people were only able to make shacks out of old piano boxes.

As the city grew and evolved, some neighborhoods maintained white racial exclusivity by adding restrictions onto deeds that homes only be sold to other white people. In other neighborhoods, less overt, but equally effective pressures thwarted African American homeownership well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Today, we hear from South Bend citizens who were simply trying to find a place to live. Narrators include Willie Mae Butts, George McCullough, Maurice Roberts, Charlotte Hudleston, Margaret and Leroy Cobb, Jack Reed, Audrey and Dr. Bernard Vagner, Tom Singer, Barbara Brandy, Ralph Miles, Glenda Rae Hernandez, and Federico Rodriguez.

This episode was produced by Donald Brittain from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at IU South Bend, and by George Garner from the Civil Rights Heritage Center.

Full transcript of this episode available here.

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/.