One side of the apartment complex faced Indiana Avenue that was lined with over a mile of Black or Black-friendly businesses and nightclubs, on the opposite side was an existing Black school on the site with the complex facing more Black neighborhoods. The old westside was an integral part of the international jazz scene, home to ⅓ of the city's Black population and the center of Black Indianapolis society and culture since the Civil War. It was located on a 22-acre site surrounded by a Black cultural district that was over 60 years old at that point. Lockefield Gardens was built as an intentional, safe, comfortable community within a community and opened in 1938. And so Lockefield Gardens became a historical anomaly in the terms of racial equity, not only for Indiana but the nation itself. In a letter published in a major Indianapolis newspaper, an Indianapolis Times reader complained “the housing project put up for the Negroes of the city” wasn’t just “three room doubles but magnificent brick apartments” in which anyone would be proud to live. Of course, they may not have been the only ones unhappy about slums being replaced by high quality housing in Black neighborhoods. In an ironic way, Lockefield Gardens’ exceptionalism made it the target of constant attacks from the real estate and apartment owners lobby fighting for their right to exploit the Black housing market even before it opened. It was a symbol of pride in the Black community and a refuge to so many families suffering from housing instability, including my own grandparents. Lockefield Gardens overachieved compared to most other Federal housing projects - it was, frankly, the time we accidentally did public housing right. The city’s longest running Black newspaper, the Indianapolis Recorder, said the following about the tour: "Proper housing will go a long way toward making good citizens, cutting the crime rate, raising the health levels and molding the foundation of a strong progressive nation." Sadly, Indianapolis did not answer the challenge to replace its slums with quality housing attainable to most of its Black citizens. Straus challenged the Mayor of Indianapolis to work with him and the federal government to change that and make the conditions across the street from Lockefield Gardens just as humane. Yet directly across the street from barbaric third-world conditions was Lockefield Gardens, a massive, brand new, state of the art housing project built for low-income Blacks. The conditions they witnessed that spring day in 1939 were so inhumane that the board of health blamed it for several contagious outbreaks and high mortality rates especially among infants. They encountered conditions similar to what many modern Indianapolis mayors have seen when touring Black neighborhoods - unsafe, vermin-ridden slum properties, and misery. Housing Authority Director Nathan Straus said as he and Mayor Reginald Sullivan toured an Indianapolis neighborhood in 1939. “This isn’t civilized!” This is what U.S.
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