We are excited to celebrate with Archives graduate student Jo Otremba (they/them) in their receipt of an Indiana Humanities Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship! Jo is one of six fellows to be awarded $5,000 for a humanties-based research project that examines anti-Black racial injustice and structural racism in Indiana.
Jo plans to expand upon research they have already shared on the Archives blog about Indiana University’s segregated student teaching practices during the 1930s. Jo’s research shows that in 1934 IU’s Black education students were required to train at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis to keep schools in Bloomington and central Indiana segregated. Early research identified seven IU students who traveled to Indianapolis to complete this training at Crispus Attucks and in their blog series, Jo shared a bit more about their lives at IU and beyond. Thanks to the support of the Moore Fellowship, Jo will explore more broadly the history of segregated schools in Indiana, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, and how segregation impacted K-12 education for Indiana’s Black community. They will also use this as a case study for how archivists and historians should search for and utilize Black stories in archives and repositories at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and how these organizations can restructure records to make them more accessible.
Further information about the fellowships can be found at https://indianahumanities.org/2023/07/06/indiana-humanities-awards-new-round-of-wilma-gibbs-moore-fellowships/. Many congratulations to Jo and we look forward to seeing where this research takes them!
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