'Honest' and 'celebratory': New Conner Prairie exhibit shows Black life

Indianapolis Star

3 days ago

About five years ago, Conner Prairie set out to revise the way it depicted Black history. For more than two decades, the interactive living history museum had offered "Follow the North Star," in which students participated in a re-enactment of people trying to escape slavery. While the program and others like it initially won national museum and history awards, many visitors and Black students said they found such experiences traumatic.
The shift prompted Conner Prairie to develop an alternative.
"It was very popular for a time, but certainly not with the community whose history it was intended to portray and certainly not everybody. And so that's just a non-starter right there. We're not doing that anymore," said Allison Cosbey, senior manager of exhibits.
In 2020 Conner Prairie convened a panel of national museum leaders, historians, staff and community members who provided advice on creating a new permanent exhibit, she said.
" Promised Land as Proving Ground" chronicles Black experiences from pre-colonial Africa to the present-day United States while highlighting how families built lives and fought racism in Indiana. The exhibit had a soft opening in 2024 and incorporated feedback into the version visitors have seen starting this summer.
"The story that we are telling now is more comprehensive. It tells the story up until today. It's not just a moment in time. It's telling some things that previously were not taught in schools," Cosbey said. "It's honest, but it's also celebratory."
"Promised Land" comprises four buildings — including one that's newly built — that house experiences exploring resistance, reclamation and reflections. The exhibit is threaded throughout Prairietown, a living history village that depicts 19th-century Hoosier life. Instead of including first-person interpreters who perform as someone living in 1836, "Promised Land" relies on videos, photos, didactic panels and artifacts to educate people.
The information is organized along themes of faith, food, family and fellowship. Here are five highlights from the new exhibit.
A cabin filled with 19th-century photos and stories
Perhaps the most visually striking section of the exhibit is the Resistance Cabin. Inside is a series of portraits that show 19th-century Black life nationally and in Indiana. They hang on floor-to-ceiling beams painted haint blue — a color historically used in the South to ward off negative energy, Cosbey said.
Hoosiers depicted include the Rev. John H. Clay, who led the Vermont Street African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indianapolis Recorder founder George P. Stewart.
In between the portraits are panels that explain the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Black settlements in Indiana, indentured servitude in the state, and the 28th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops soldiers who helped build the Freetown Norwood on Indianapolis' southeast side.
Not only are the portraits memorable. they serve as a thread throughout the exhibit. A picture of Civil War veteran Milton Robinson and his sons, for example, inspired a picture that hangs in the Reclamation Building. Israel Solomon, the Indianapolis artist in residence for "Promised Land," created the modern-day interpretation.
A garden rooted in African culture
Sweet potatoes, turnips, peanuts, thyme, Scotch bonnet peppers and more bloom in and around a set of wooden bins full of foods that enslaved people ate and popularized in the U.S.
Africans brought over several plants from their home continent during the slave trade, and the goods were often noted on ship captain's manifests, interpreter Courtney Hammill said. Other foods stood in for what Black people would have eaten in Africa.
"They eat a lot of greens there, but turnips are not African. So since the Europeans had brought them here, they had started to establish them here, and they were able to use those greens as a substitute and cook them in the same way," Hammill said.
These foods return as part of an interactive experience in the Resistance Cabin later in the exhibit. At a kitchen table in the middle of the room, people can lift up dishes that hold replicas of fried fish, sweet potatoes and more on a kitchen table to read about their historical context.
Under one plate, for example, the display notes okra's African origins and how enslaved Africans transported the seeds to the U.S. in their braided hair.
Explore the Green Book and Indiana's sundown towns
Visitors can flip through a reproduction of a 1940 Green Book in the newly built Reclamation Building, which covers the 20th and 21st centuries. The guide contained restaurants, hotels and businesses that were safe for Black travelers. Organized by state and city, the Indianapolis listings show several spots on Indiana Avenue and West Street.
Another interactive in the building maps Indiana's sundown towns, or places where Black people weren't welcome after dark. The locations are divided into "surely," "probable" and "possible." Each is backed up with evidence derived from people's memories and historian James Loewen's research.
"For us to be able to include people's first-hand reminiscences of these things, that's really important," Cosbey said.
A tree that shows Black music's impact
A musical tree sculpture on the wall in the Reclamation Building consists of interwoven branches and vines arranged to show how African musical traditions helped shape American music. Each branch's bends, twists and crossovers — such as the connections between rural blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll — are intentional, Cosbey said.
Several of the genres are linked to buttons on the wall where visitors can don headphones and listen to significant recordings, like the Gipson family's 1939 rendition of "It's Cool Down Here at the River Jordan."
A celebration of Black achievements
In the Reclamation Building, several achievements by Black Hoosiers are written on windows that overlook a scenic cluster of trees. These milestones include Beulah Wright Porter, who opened her own medical practice and became Indianapolis' first Black female physician.
The windows' position toward the end of the exhibit is important, Cosbey said.
"We want to make sure that we're celebrating all the achievements, all the wins, in the African American community in Indiana, so we make sure that we end on a positive note," Cosbey said.