Madeline Smothers was born in Rockville, Illinois, in 1917. By 1935, she joined members of her extended family living in South Bend’s east side, soon befriending people in power like lawyers J. Chester and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen.

At this time, South Bend was rapidly evolving—but for African Americans who left the South to chase factory jobs up north, they were still confronting the entrenched racism they hoped they were fleeing when they left the South. As entrenched as racism was, many people still pushed for change—including Ms. Smothers’ friends, the Allens. And the Allens’ young, fair complected friend Madeline was a palatable candidate for some of the first jobs held by African Americans downtown.

The trust she built led Ara Parseghian, the University of Notre Dame’s football coach in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, to ask Madeline and her husband for help recruiting and retaining Black athletes.

In 2003, David Healey sat down with Madeline in the east side home she lived in for decades. Madeline talked about the early days of South Bend’s growing African American community, her time with the Allen family, and how different her experience was as a light-skinned African American woman in South Bend.

This episode was produced by Jweetu Pangani 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/.