Moving on Up: The Experience of Post World War II African American of Indianapolis

Abstract

Housing discrimination is one of the main plights of many African Americans during their post WWII struggle from equality. It affected where African Americans could live, where they could work, where their children went to school, and it ultimately affected their means of accumulating capitol. Eventually, through legislation and the constant struggle for housing equality from local African Americans leaders and local community leaders, the discrimination marginally subsided and this allowed for African Americans to move away from the central city. This study is an examination of Indianapolis’s first African American suburbanites. This study focuses on residents from two Indianapolis suburbs that were predominantly African American and located outside of the central city. The goal of this paper is to try to understand, how these communities formed, try to understand who these African Americans were and most importantly what were their experiences as individuals with suburbanization post WWII and the effect that their suburbanization had on residential opportunities in Indianapolis.