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1922 – PRESENT
The firsts do not surface, and that is printed plainly: no first Black member of the Common Council, police officer, firefighter, teacher or school board member for Mishawaka appears in any source reached for this build. The searches are not empty of data — the women's-history pass of this build established that even the seven winners of the 1963 council election go unnamed in every record reached, a gap that swallows more than this section's question — but no Mishawaka civic first of record can be certified from the sources reached, and none is invented here. The settling routes are the council and board rosters in the government file's own sources, the departments' records, and the Civil Rights Heritage Center's oral histories. The school board the record does give stands in the women's-history file: three women of five members in 2026, with the Penn Township trustee Doris Portolese — the present officeholding record at the strength the sources carry it.
No Mishawaka NAACP branch surfaces: the county's chapter is South Bend's — founded in a named church on a named street there, and standing whole in South Bend's file. No Mishawaka branch, unit or youth council appears in any source reached; the definitive test, the University of Washington's Mapping American Social Movements database of NAACP branches, 1912–1964, is named as the settling source, its interface unqueried. The community's own scholarship, which for South Bend is the Rev. Buford F. Gordon's 1922 social study of that city, is for Mishawaka the Powell family history kept by John Charles Bryant — the founding entry's griot — a family record rather than an institutional one, which is again the shape of this section. South Bend's reparatory accounting, the Reparatory Justice Commission and its present record, is South Bend's institution and is pointer here only; Mishawaka's own accounting item in this section is the older and smaller one: the Normain Heights covenant, still legible in the deeds.
Sources
- Women's-history file of this record — the 1963 council sweep's unnamed winners; the 2026 school board; Trustee Portolese.
- South Bend black-history file — the NAACP chapter, Gordon's 1922 study, and the Reparatory Justice Commission, whole. Boundary: South Bend's records, pointer here.
- This build's searches, all passes — no Mishawaka civic first and no Mishawaka NAACP branch surfaced.