January 25, 2008

Black Cultural Center to sponsor history tour to Southern Indiana

Tour participants will learn about and experience African-American history of Southern Indiana through storytelling, exhibits, hands-on demonstrations and historical documents. Participants will visit Lyles Station, one of the state's last remaining African-American settlements, and the Evansville African American Museum.

"Lyles Station was settled near Princeton in the late 1840s by brothers Joshua and Sanford Lyles, who were free men," said BCC director Renee Thomas. "Nearly half of the residents are descendents of the original settlers.

"The African American Museum in Evansville is on the site of a public housing project and traces the history of the city's black residents."

The tour is part of the BCC's salute to Black History Month, which is observed in February.

In 1870, Joshua Lyles donated 60 acres of his land to the Airline Railroad, which managed a station for passenger trains and mail service in the community until the 1950s. In 1886, the settlement was officially named Lyles Station in honor of Joshua Lyles. The town flourished during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lyles Consolidated School was built in 1919 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Today, visitors to the school can experience a day in the life of African-American schoolchildren in the early 1900s.

The Evansville African American Museum features a virtual tour of its neighborhood as it was in the 1950s, a living legends display and wall of fame, and the Lincoln-Clark Douglas room, which is dedicated to Evansville's all-black schools.

Cost to go on the tour is $100 for the general public and $35 for Purdue students. Registration fees cover bus transportation, lodging, admission fees and lunch. Registration and full payment is due by Feb. 8. Call (765) 494-3092 for more information or to pre-register.

To compliment the tour, the BCC library is sponsoring "Writing Indiana History: Blacks in Tippecanoe County" contest for local youth in grades K-12. The contest will give students an opportunity to make connections between their personal lives and local history as it relates to the black experience in Tippecanoe County. For contest guidelines, visit the BCC Web site www.purdue.edu/bcc.

Writer: Greg McClure, (765) 494-9394, gmcclure@purdue.edu

Sources: Renee Thomas, (765) 494-3091, rathomas@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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