The Indianapolis Jazz as Cultural Heritage Project project is an effort to reclaim, but more importantly preserve, the history of the once vibrant Jazz traditions found in the Black community in Indianapolis, specifically in the cultural corridor that was Indiana Avenue. In De Facto segregated Indiana, Indiana Avenue was the line of demarcation for Black people, a line they were not supposed to cross, but it became the center of Black commerce and culture in the early 20th century. This bustling enclave of a low-lying area that was cordoned off to contain Black movement was at one time in the 1920s, home to over 30 jazz clubs with iconic headliners such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and many more. In 1927, “The Avenue” became the home of the Madam Walker Theater, which was built by Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made American female millionaire, for her beauty products business and to provide entertainment to Black patrons.
Northern states participated in the American racial politics of the day and Jim Crow laws, or racial covenants still manifested in cities that only seemed less hostile than the South and Indiana Avenue was one of several streets developed similarly in other cities. Beale Street in Memphis, 12th and Vine in Kansas City, and Little Rock Arkansas Ninth Street are but a few that would become stops along the “Chitlin’ Circuit” on these streets with dueling Black entertainment venues and businesses. Madam C.J. Walker was not the only prominent historical figure who can be associated with Indiana Avenue. Many Jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Coe, Noble Sissle, Erroll “Groundhog” Grandy, and Wes Montgomery blew their horns and strummed guitars there on the way to international fame.
By the 1960s, Indiana University, the city of Indianapolis, and the Highway system decimated the community to make room for an expanded Indianapolis campus, a way to accommodate white-flight, and the need to uphold age-old racial taboos like interracial dating. The neighborhood was blighted, and the decline saw near total erasure, with only a few landmarks such as the Walker Theater, which had fallen into disrepair itself remaining. Today, contemporary efforts to revive Indiana Avenue and restore it as near to its former glory as possible are being undertaken by the city, local stakeholders, the business community, and other institutions.
Our project aims to work alongside these efforts to develop an interactive project that champions the cultural heritage of Jazz music in Indianapolis through interactive exhibits, performances, and archiving. It will also work to provide the basis for an appreciation for the art form, and guide people into an understanding of the ways it developed as a world-wide phenomenon despite the societal limitations its purveyors and innovators were made to endure. We will feature the nuance and contours that identify the broader influence and impact of jazz on popular culture while situating it in the context of its origins within Black culture. This will include areas where Black Jazz artists were at the forefront of racial and social justice in both their artistry and the use of their platforms to amplify issues related to the collective freedom of Black people during the era of Jim Crow and the parallel Black Freedom Movement.
This project will be sponsored by the Center for Africana Studies and Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis and will be led by CASC Artist in Residence Rob Dixon, an Indiana Jazz icon. He is also the Artistic Director for the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation, which will serve as a partner in cultivating this rich and impactful research into a public good, that school-aged children, community members, and people worldwide can benefit from.
