'We've lost so much': Norwood residents defend area from city encroachment, gentrification

Editor's note: This is the first in an occasional series of stories about the Norwood community. 

On a cold night, waning fluorescent light bulbs flickered overhead as residents of Norwood stood inside Pride Park Community Center with their heads bowed in prayer.

Occupying the first chair of the front row was Flinora Frazier, 92, who many recognize as the neighborhood’s matriarch, calling her ‘Aunt Flinora’ irrespective of shared genealogy. Frazier’s grandfather, Rev. Sydney Penick, founded Norwood’s first church in 1889. 

Frazier was one of roughly 20 people gathered inside Pride Park’s small single-room facility for a Norwood Neighborhood Association meeting.

The black framed reading-glasses fastened around her neck hung motionless, as Frazier and others prayed for help and change, as they have for decades. Change which in many ways has never come, said Frazier, at least in the manner which they’ve asked for it.

Where they’ve requested paved sidewalks, filled potholes, additional restaurants and a bus stop shelter, they recently received a roughly $600 million criminal justice complex – within it, a new jail – towering over them just outside of Norwood’s boundaries, on the north side of Prospect Street. Its beaming lights are visible at night through the windows of the community center.

When the prayer concluded, an attendee shared what she heard werethe city's new development plans for the neighborhood: a coroner's office, forensics lab and IMPD office in the vacant lot across from Pride Park – a space where Norwood residents have other hopes.

Anger and angst erupted, edging the calm crowd toward chaos.

A woman yelled, “We don’t want no dead bodies over here!” Another asked, “Why do they always have to come to our neighborhood with this stuff?”

“They keep putting more disaster around us,” Frazier exclaimed. “Is it because we’re Black?”

In a meeting weeks later, nearly a dozen city officials arrived at Pride Park to explain their proposal, but their efforts were blunted by a larger, more enraged audience, displeased by what they heard. 

Disregarded desires and neglected needs are not new to Norwood, which until the 1920s, Indianapolis newspapers referred to as “N—r Hill.”

Before the Community Justice Campus encroached its boundaries, a desolate lot was in its place; before that, a hazardous coke-fuel plant, which residents remember for the black soot it left on their windows, the coals which bounced off dump trucks into their yards, the smell of “rotten eggs.”

Before it all, at its inception, Norwood was a Freetown: built by Black hands in the late 1860s, following the Civil War; home to the first generation of Black Americans born free, like Frazier’s parents; fresh acquaintances to liberties and freedoms written into their country’s constitution nearly 100 years earlier.

Above all, residents in Norwood say they most fear losing their cultural heritage. Many want a cultural center honoring the neighborhood’s history to go across the street from Pride Park where the coroner's office – which includes a morgue – is to be built.

“We’ve lost so much,” Frazier said. “It makes me want to cry. We don’t want to be just like we were never here.”

In addition to the city’s plan to extend Community Justice Campus facilities into Norwood, gentrification also threatens the erasure of its history.

In the last three years, Southeast Neighborhood Development (SEND), a community development organization that claims to build affordable housing, has purchased at least 12 vacant lots and two homes from the Renew Indianapolis land bank, as well as constructed two new houses. Both homes sold for more than double median home value in the area, which is $46,400, according to SAVI data. 

Sitting two rows behind Frazier, Sampson Levingston, who’s not a resident of Norwood but who conducts historical “Walk & Talk” tours around Indianapolis, spoke up to say, “We just need as many people as possible to know about the history of Norwood.

“The more people that know,” Levingston said, “the more they’ll care.”  

The history of Norwood

In the 1860s, the first signs of an African American community along Prospect Street appeared with the arrival of soldiers recruited to serve in the 28th U.S. Colored Troops, Indiana’s only Black Civil War regiment.

The training grounds for the 28th Regiment were at Camp Freemont, a plot of land near the intersection of Shelby Street, Prospect Street and Virginia Avenue, owned by prominent Indiana lawyer and civic leader Calvin Fletcher.

Survivors of the Civil War from the 28th Regiment returned to Indianapolis in 1866 as newly freed slaves, and they settled further east along Prospect Street, eventually expanding into what became known as Norwood.

Norwood's first church, Penick Chapel AME Zion, was founded in 1889 by former Kentucky slave and Civil War veteran Rev. Sydney Penick, Frazier’s grandfather. It has been sitting on the same plot of land on Earhart Streetsince at least 1915.

When Frazier sought to list the church in the National Register of Historic Places and the Indiana Register of Historic Places in 1998, she received a denial letter that read in part that the church "does not contain enough historical or architectural significance to be considered for either of the Registers.” 

Another desire disregarded. 

Norwood saw significant additional growth in 1888, when 200 lots were sold to several Black families in an exchange called the Hosbrook Place Addition. It was the biggest “addition” in Marion County that year, according to newspaper reports. 

The same year, educator, librarian and community activist Ada B. Harris arrived in Norwood to lead a class of 15 students at the Norwood School, the fifth school for Black children in Marion County.

In 1903, under Harris’ helm, average enrollment grew to 105 students. The school was given the name Harriet Beecher Stowe School and moved to a new, larger location within Norwood.

Its alumni included John Hardrick, born in Norwood in 1891. Hardrick was a prolific painter whose work once appeared at the Smithsonian Institute; his popular portrait Little Brown Girl currently hangs on display at Newfields.

Kisha Tandy, curator of social history at the Indiana State Museum, describes Harris as a “strong presence” whose influence was paramount to Norwood’s self-sufficiency as a Freetown.

The Indianapolis Sunday Star described Harris’ efforts in a headline in 1909: “Scenes in Norwood, once a moral blot, redeemed by woman’s efforts.”

Through a variety of neighborhood fundraisers and “penny parties,” Harris helped Norwood to receive a host of firsts: In 1908, its first community center, where Black Hoosiers would have everything from dances and dinner parties to political rallies; in 1912, its first library, where 1,000 books were housed, mentioned by W.E.B. DuBois in The Crisis magazine.

This progress happened, Tandy said, even though “Norwood was not receiving any city aid prior to its annexation in 1912.”  

The city still appeared slow to its aid even after annexation. Among a myriad of delayed services, paved roads did not arrive on residential streets in Norwood until 1971.

Harris died in 1927. In her will, she bequeathed some of her property to the Indianapolis Board of Park Commissioners, under the condition that it be named after her and “for the use and benefit of colored children."

To Tandy's knowledge and other historians, Harris' will was not honored by the city.

Desires disregarded yet again. 

A neighborhood of Black joy

The Norwood residents who succeeded their ancestors tell a story of a thriving Black community, once brimming with Black joy that is slowly vanishing.

Frazier recalls waking up on the first Sunday of every month – Communion Sunday –  getting dressed in all white, racing to be the first one at church to ring the bell that sits atop, then walking into Penick Chapel to admire the altar covered in white flowers picked from the neighborhood.

Vanessa Edwards, 65, remembers her childhood Saturdays spent at Frazier’s mother’s house on Orange and Madeira streets, where she’d receive piano lessons from Frazier’s mother before returning home to "the big white house” around the corner, jars of pear preserves waiting for her in the basement, prepared by Edwards' mother from pear trees growing in their yard.

Seated together in Frazier's home, they recalled the Black-owned “burger joint,” convenience store, car wash, laundromat and other Black-owned businesses that once proliferated along Prospect Street, shuttered long ago. 

“All of a sudden they weren’t there anymore,” Edwards said, “they just disappeared.”

Frazier added, “They just faded away… you don’t notice it as it's leaving.”

Alesha Holder, 57, lives with her 102-year-old grandfather in Norwood in the house his parents built in the 1920s. She helps organize the Norwood Neighborhood Annual Southside Reunion, where these memories and others are shared and preserved in-between games of corn hole, bites of barbecue and sounds of live music.

“What we do not want is someone to come in and take our neighborhood,” Holder said. 

'Affordable housing' moves in

Since 2019, the development group SEND has purchased at least 12 vacant lots for $3,500 each and two homes for $15,750 each along Madeira and Vandeman streets – inside Norwood’s boundaries – according to Renew Indy’s property data.

The group isdeveloping or constructing nine more homes, in addition to two built and sold in November 2020.Five are in collaboration with the non-profit Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership.

Kelli Mirgeaux, president of SEND, said the plan is to develop more “affordable housing” in Norwood.

The term ‘affordable housing’ is relative, however. 

SEND houses are going to be significantly more expensive than a typical home in the area. The median price assessed value of homes in the region including Norwood is $46,400, according to SAVI data – versus the $150,000 to $155,000 price Mirgeaux said the SEND homes will list for.

SEND’s homes are not affordable to an average Norwood household either, who earned $28,654 a year in 2019, according to SAVI data on the median household income in the same region.

Even attempts to increase affordability for lower income residents exclude those in Norwood. SEND’s affordable homes are available only to people earning less than 80% of the area median income. But, because the “area” spans a vast region beyond Marion County and includes Carmel, the income qualification of $65,300 for a four-person household exceeds most Norwood household earnings, like Edwards.

“There’s no way I could afford one,” Edwards said. “It’s (affordable) only for people in a certain age bracket. You can’t have a senior citizen moving in there because most of us are on fixed income.”

But Edwards isn’t entirely against SEND’s presence in the neighborhood. She’s hopeful that potential new money and new residents moving in will also bring about new businesses and renewed interest into Norwood.

When asked by the IndyStar about the relatively high cost of SEND homes, Mirgeaux wrote in response, “It is incredibly challenging to build a home targeted towards those who are at very low-income levels.”

She added, “If it is not SEND, INHP or another affordable housing partner, an investor will build homes that are not affordable.”

Preserving a Freetown 'under threat'

Ahmad Ward is executive director of Mitchellville Freedom Park, a commemorative park to the former Freetown of Mitchellville, South Carolina. He's been working with Norwood residents about how they might preserve their history. 

“Norwood is under threat,” Ward said, “because you still have people there who have ties to the history who are at risk of losing that connectivity.”

Unlike Norwood, Mitchellville has been preserved to recognize its history. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. Like Norwood, it’s been the site of a lot of development.

Where Norwood has a jail down the street, Mitchellville has an airport and a retirement home in its backyard.

But unlike Norwood, and most noteworthy according to Ward, Mitchellville doesn’t have the descendants of the original pioneers still living there, witnessing their neighborhood’s transformation against their will.

“You have people who want to preserve what has happened there, but they’re old," Ward said. "It shouldn’t be a confrontational situation. There shouldn’t be animosity about this.”

What Norwood residents hope for

When tension over news of the morgue and other facilities dissolved during the meeting at Pride Park, the discussion shifted toward things people would like to see.

Shouts in sporadic succession called for a community center, a museum of the neighborhood, the rebuilding of Pride Park, a “big” monument that reads “Norwood.”

Brenda McAtee, Norwood Neighborhood Association president, told the audience, “Closed mouths don’t get fed,” then emphasized the importance of teamwork to create desired change.

She tapped Frazier on the shoulder and nominated her for the closing prayer.

In the end, there was a collective “Amen."

A certain anxiousness filled the air as residents wandered out the building into the night, awaiting what happens next.

'They need to quit making jails' 

The Community Justice Campus (CJC) opened its doors on the northern boundary of Norwood last year. 

Edwards said she felt it was somewhat of a necessary evil: another hopeful tactic to revitalize the neighborhood and bring back commercial interest, like the businesses and retail spaces Edwards and others said they were promised but have yet to see since the arrival of SEND and the CJC. 

However, residents like Kenneth Strader are outraged by the nearby criminal justice buildings.

“I didn't like it, because didn't nobody want it over here,” Strader said. “They need to quit making jails and make something where people don’t have to go to jail.”

More:Indy's Community Justice Campus open in December. It's only the beginning.

Another disregarded desire appeared when, last year, Strader and other Norwood residents feared rumors that the city was going to expand the campus into Norwood, building a Youth and Family Services Center which includes a juvenile detention facility.

They believed it was going to be built on the west side of Vandeman Street, directly across from Pride Park, where children go after school to play; views of the CJC already in plain site over their shoulder as they walk inside.

Derrick Goss, Pride Park site director, said the rumor has since disappeared. But still, Goss said, it feels like the city is sending a message that “no matter where you look," Black people living in the neighborhood are "destined to be there.”

The mayor’s designee for management of the CJC project, Sarah Riordan, told IndyStar there was “never any discussion” about the juvenile detention facility being placed in Norwood’s boundaries or across from Pride Park.

They did have plans to build a coroner's office, forensic lab and IMPD office in that area, she said. 

But the city hadn't broken ground, Riordan said, because of ongoing research to determine if that area, west of Vandeman Street and south of Prospect Street, once belonged to the family of renowned painter John Hardrick – potentially making it a historic site.

Multiple researchers and historians believe it to be true, like IUPUI historical archaeologist Paul Mullins. He identified documents to IndyStar which he said concretely proves the lot was owned by Hardrick's father.

"I’m positive that’s in the footprint for Hardrick’s house," Mullins said. "This is more than a solid case."

IndyStar emailed those documents to city officials, who days later confirmed in an email statement that the area is the former site of Hardrick's family property.

The emailed response also included an announcement that city officials wouldpause further work and "engage in furtherdiscussions." 

But according to McAtee – who said she knew nothing about the morgue prior to IndyStar obtaining the information – the upcoming meeting with city officials would not be a 'further discussion,' but rather, the first. 

Flames of frustration had already been fanned. 

If city officials would have involved residents in the process from the beginning, they likely could have avoided the heated debate on the horizon. 

Norwood wins this fight, others loom 

Two weeks after the first mentioning of the morgue, several city officials packed inside Pride Park Community Center alongside a crowd doubled in sizeand fury.

Among the ranks were Judith Thomas, deputy mayor; Lourenzo Giple, deputy director of planning, preservation and design; and Riordan.

 “We plan for this to be an informative presentation," Thomas said, starting the meeting. 

Giple, the first presenter, told the crowd that yes, the land intended for the morgue was the area of the Hardrick family home.

Murmured grumbles quickly grew into shouted outbursts.

“We are going to fight,” exclaimed Donetta Strader, one of numerous Norwood residents who opposed the proposition.

Her voice was followed by an applause and more yells interjected each time Giple attempted to speak, until finally, he quit trying.

Thomas stepped in to grab the microphone and explained that it was just a proposal.

“Well, un-propose it,” shouted a resident.

Cries from the crowd restrained Thomas' ability to speak too, until McAtee intervened, using her familiarity with the audience to ease tensions – temporarily.  

Each speaker who followed was cut short by more yelling. And each time, the microphone would then land in the hands of either McAtee or Thomas working to regain control.

Forty-five minutes into the meeting, Thomas reiterated, “We as a city are here to help you.” 

Seemingly unconvinced, the audience reiterated back, “It doesn’t belong in this neighborhood.”

The shouting match reached its crescendo in the final minutes of the meeting when Margo Holiman screamed: “They’re killing us, and they don’t care. It’s about the money!”

Approaching ten minutes over the allotted hour, officials had enough and concluded the meeting. 

Less than a week later, McAtee received an email from city officials announcing their decision to cancel development plans for the morgue and other facilities in Norwood. 

More:City planned morgue in historic Norwood neighborhood. Then officials heard from residents.

She described her emotions as "over thrilled."

Strader said she was "overwhelmed with excitement."

Meanwhile, 92-years of wisdom led Frazier to say, "I guess it could be exciting."

She and others describe the "battle won" as the first of many to come, so long as the land still remains in the city's possession.

For the moment however, the pattern of disregarded desires outlining much of Norwood's history appears to be broken.

Optimism and uncertainty linger in Frazier's final words, "They may just consider what we're asking for."

Contact IndyStar reporter Brandon Drenon at 317-517-3340 or BDrenon@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonDrenon.

Brandon is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world.

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