Work: the barbershop, and the plants' silence

1868 – 1967 AND AFTER

The first Black business of record is the founding fact of the first entry: Elijah Powell's barbershop, practiced from 1868 for thirty-eight years, is the one Black enterprise Mishawaka's early record names. Beyond it, the business roll is a named gap with a named settling source: the Directory of Negroes in Business published in April 1967 by the St. Joseph County Center for Economic Development survives in the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center's Small Collection; it is a county-wide directory, it has not been digitized in any source reached, and whether it lists Mishawaka firms is unexamined. It is the document that would settle the city's Black business roll for the segregation era, and it is named here so the future pull can be made. A second unworked route stands open: the 1921 Polk's Mishawaka city directory — the first standalone directory the city ever had, recovered whole by this build's owners-roster pass — is digitized in parts, and its 7,023 canvassed names carry the addresses and occupations from which the Black workforce of 1921 could be read name by name.

At the great plants, the record reached is silent, and the silence is printed with its search: Ball Band and Dodge between them employed the city — Ball Band's wartime workforce approached ten thousand, with women over half of it in 1943 on the state marker's account — and no hiring record, testimony, strike account, union minute or history reached for this build states the race of a single Mishawaka plant worker or a single plant's practice toward Black applicants. The colour line inside the plant, which the South Bend record counts in incidents, cannot be counted here because no incident, and no hiring datum, is documented for these plants in the sources reached. The one plant datum of any kind is at anecdote strength and printed at that strength: Notre Dame Magazine's account of St. Augustine's parish in South Bend mentions a parishioner surnamed Chism who worked several years at the Mishawaka Uniroyal plant — Ball Band's successor — in the 1990s while pursuing degrees.

Sources

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — Elijah Powell's thirty-eight years of barbering, 1868–c.1906.
2. IUSB Archives, Civil Rights Heritage Center Small Collection, finding aid — the Directory of Negroes in Business (April 1967), St. Joseph County Center for Economic Development. Unexamined; named as the settling source.
3. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory recovered; 7,023 names canvassed.
4. Notre Dame Magazine, the St. Augustine's parish account — the Chism Uniroyal datum, printed at anecdote strength.
5. Ball Band state marker — a wartime workforce near 10,000, women over half in 1943; no race data in any plant source reached.