One excellent way to celebrate Black History Month would be a visit to the Evansville African American Museum, located at 579 S. Garvin St. The very building itself is historic: it’s a unit saved when Lincoln Gardens, a 1930s Depression era housing project that officially opened in 1938 and was dedicated by no less than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1937, was razed in 1997.
Wednesday: 10 am- 4 pm
Thursday: 10 pm – 4 pm
Friday: 10 am – 4 pm
Saturday: 12 pm – 4 pm
In 2020 the Indiana Historical Bureau installed this marker outside the museum to commemorate Lincoln Gardens and its continuing impact on the community.
Some of the museum’s exhibits:
If you take a closer look at image above, the display case holds a model of the Lincoln Gardens complex in its heyday. Seen below is a photograph from the UASC collection that shows Lincoln Gardens under construction in 1938.
NOTE: The three color photographs above of the museum exterior and interior are from “Why You Should Visit the Evansville African American Museum” by Meghan McDonald, posted on May 10, 2019 in the online version of My Indiana Home, a magazine produced by the Indiana Farm Bureau for its members. Click here to see the full article.
One particularly fascinating thing is that not only was the actual building part of Lincoln Gardens, but the museum has preserved/re-created one of the apartments housed in it so viewers can get an idea of what it was like to live there. The one bedroom apartment may look small, particularly the kitchen….and it was. But it was clean, new, with indoor plumbing (and you got your own bathroom in the apartment) and new appliances….a far cry better than what many residents had been forced to endure. Although just barely seen in these images, that’s a new gas-powered refrigerator manufactured by Servel, a local company (lower right corner of kitchen image).
NOTE: the image of the bedroom and living room are from a blog and podcast by Tamela Rich entitled the 981 Project. This June 2, 2024 episode was called, “In the Heart of Lincoln Country, I toured Lincoln Gardens.”
To be clear, these furnishings are not exactly what was found within a specific apartment, but rather what would have been typical for the time. Some liberties were taken—take a look at the picture of the kitchen….there’s no sink there. There would have been in the original and would have where this cabinet set is in this recreation.
I encourage you to take a guided tour when you visit the museum. Many of the guides can speak from personal experience as to how African Americans in Evansville lived during the time when Lincoln Gardens was an active housing project and/or may have lived in one of the apartments.
Several years ago I wrote two blogs delving a bit more into the area of Evansville where African Americans lived in segregated time, an area commonly known as Baptisttown. There was some use of that term that was derogatory, but the local African American community co-opted the term and made it a matter of pride! Those blogs are available to read here:
A Baptisttown Requium, part. 2
Resources Consulted
Bigham, Darrell E. We Ask Only A Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. General Collection F534.E9 B58 1987
Evansville African American Museum website.
Indiana Historical Bureau. “State Historical Markers” website.
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