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1941–1968 · SOUTH BEND AT BOUNDARY SIZE; THE TOWNSHIPS' OWN TEST AT THE END
Defence housing was built separately, and it is counted. South Bend's council refused a housing authority in 1939; the authority created in 1941 existed only to support defence-worker housing, and its first two projects were restricted to defence workers and segregated by race and location under federal policy: 250 housing units for White workers, 150 for Black workers. The White project went onto vacant land in River Park, as recommended. For the Black project there was no vacant land in the existing Black neighbourhoods, the city refused Black housing in White areas, and the city's proposed Birdsell Street site would have torn down existing Black homes and businesses and St. John Baptist Church — J. Chester Allen protested that the development would leave "46 Negro families" without homes, since the displaced could not live in the new units, reserved for war workers, nor move elsewhere under segregation; the Polish-American Central Civic Committee opposed any "housing project for Negroes anywhere on the west side." The city built instead in Beck's Lake and Maggie's Court, the worst housing in the city. The B.G. Smith Homes, named for Hering House's director, were completed in 1943; of 1,300 homes built in the programme, only 130 were for the exclusive use of African Americans. The temporary war housing was used for decades beyond its intention. The street bought in secret is Better Homes of South Bend. Formed 21 May 1950 by African American Studebaker workers and their wives — officers Lureatha Allen, president; Earl Thompson, vice president; Louise Taylor, secretary; Ruby Paige, assistant secretary; Bland Jackson, treasurer — its 22 couples (18 of the 22 men worked at Studebaker) kept their plans secret from the first meeting ("no information is to be given out," the minutes say, the location itself concealed) and worked through a white lawyer, George Sands, to obtain the deeds, with J. Chester Allen as their own lawyer. The lots were undeveloped ground in the 1700–1800 blocks of North Elmer Street, in a formerly all-white neighbourhood on the northwest side. The first family in was Bland and Rosa Jackson, in the fall of 1952; by the mid-1950s 22 homes stood. (The two figures print together, as the sources give them: the Commission's account has Sands obtaining deeds to 18 lots, and the same account, with the Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Landmarks, counts 22 homes built; Leroy Cobb was a founding member, and his house is the only original since demolished. The Bureau's marker 71.2017.2, installed 2017, stands at North Elmer and Keller Streets.)
The whole Black commercial district is mapped at its centre, Birdsell and Liston Streets, with Linden Avenue and Chapin Street as its arms: Uncle Bill's Big House, Bill Harris's restaurant; the Liston Hotel; the dry cleaners Gabrielle Robinson catalogues; Plumps grocery; Higgins funeral home at Birdsell and Colfax; Saunders ice cream parlour; Pilgrim Baptist at 116 North Birdsell; Greater St. John Missionary Baptist; St. Augustine's Catholic Church, founded 1928 as the area's first fully integrated Catholic church; New Testament Missionary Baptist; and the Linden Avenue storefronts across from the present MLK Jr. Center. The National Urban League counted approximately 81 Black-owned businesses in South Bend in 1958: 25 hotels, restaurants and taverns; 17 barber, beauty and dry-cleaning shops; 16 professional services; 9 retail stores; 8 amusement centres; 5 garages and service stations; and 1 real estate and finance concern. Chapin Street's district, "the life blood of South Bend's black community," was razed in the urban renewal of the 1950s and 1960s; Birdsell grew into the 1950s and 1960s and then emptied as its people moved out — today the district is mostly empty lots and parking lots. Frankie's BBQ, 1621 W. Washington Street, founded 1968 and still run by the same family, is among the last survivors. The open-housing fight is carried to the ordinance's month: on 25 March 1968 the Common Council's Committee of the Whole sat at 8:00 p.m. on "An Ordinance Prohibiting Certain Practices of Discrimination in Housing Accommodations Because of Race, Creed, Color, National Origin or Ancestry, and Providing Penalties for the Violation Thereof, As Amended." Mayor Lloyd M. Allen spoke for it; Jesse L. Dickinson, executive director of the Housing Authority, spoke for it for the Urban League; Councilmen John Wise and Albert Palmer spoke against. The amendment motion carried 8–1, and the motion to send the ordinance to Council as amended carried 7–2. The federal Fair Housing Act followed later in 1968.
Granger's share. Two adapted points belong to this ground. First, Granger is unincorporated: no municipal open-housing ordinance was ever possible on its ground, and its subdivisions grew under the county and covenant regime while the city fought its fight in March 1968. Second, the counter-move test on the townships' own ground returns nothing: no defence housing, no secretly bought street, and no Black commercial district was ever seated in Clay or Harris Township in any record reached — the townships' Black population in the era (art-68-4) was counted in tens, and the institutions of resistance were the city's, an easy drive and a legal world away.
Sources: South Bend Reparatory Justice Commission, Final Report, History §§III.D, VI.A (defence housing; Better Homes; 1958 business count); Indiana Historical Bureau marker 71.2017.2 (Better Homes); Indiana Landmarks (19 May 2026); South Bend Tribune, George Garner (12 Feb. 2026) on the B.G. Smith Homes; Gabrielle Robinson, Better Homes of South Bend (2015); South Bend Common Council, Committee of the Whole minutes, 25 Mar. 1968 (docs.southbendin.gov); westsb.com, Birdsell Street history.