A Look Back: Pushing back against Jim Crow laws
Better Homes for South Bend formed to improve life in the city
Between 1850 and 1950, the number of African-Americans in South Bend increased from 1 percent of the total population to 7 percent. What changed in those 100 years? The answer is in part: Jim Crow.
After losing the Civil War, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation. Over 6 million African-Americans moved out of the rural South to urban and industrial areas of the North and Midwest between 1915 and 1970 in search of a better life.
In many cases, black families found a more subtle form of segregation and inequality in their new towns and cities. Indiana, for example, also imposed Jim Crow laws related to miscegenation and public education.
Leroy Cobb, pictured, was the son of Southerners who migrated to the North. In 1950, at the age of 20, he was married, had an infant son, and worked a steady job at the Studebaker Corp. He and his family lived at 508 S. Laurel St., now the location of the Kroc Center, and like many others, they hoped to improve their situation.
That same year, a group of 22 African-American families, most of them Studebaker factory workers, met in secret to discuss plans for a community of homes in a nice neighborhood. The group called themselves Better Homes of South Bend.
What should have been a simple goal, however, was made almost insurmountably difficult by the prevailing racial divide. Most of South Bend’s residential neighborhoods were split along color lines, with black neighborhoods often falling on the seedier sides of town. Further, it was difficult for African-Americans to get financing to live in white neighborhoods.
Thus, the 1700 and 1800 blocks of North Elmer Street in South Bend became the focus of a quiet but important battle for racial equality. Cobb, the last surviving member of the group, was a crucial figure in the movement. After three years of perseverance, Better Homes succeeded, and on Nov. 1, 1953, the Cobb family moved to a new home at 1702 N. Elmer St.
This information was provided by The History Museum. If you would like to donate photographs of African Americans, or will allow a digital copy of your image to be made, call the museum at 574-235-9664.
