The schools' and the library's women: Medora Powell, and the librarians from Olive Long to Donna Meeks

1887 – the present

Medora Powell: in the Mishawaka High School class of 1887 — ten graduates — stood Medora Powell, and the Mishawaka Enterprise's commencement account of 10 June 1887 carries the distinction the record has kept for her: she was the first African-American graduate of any high school in northern Indiana. Her commencement address was titled "Self Made Men." She went from the graduation to a schoolroom of her own, teaching at the Brownsville School in Cass County, Michigan. She never married; she returned to Mishawaka, and she died in 1931. The record reached names no other Black graduate of the high school for twenty-one years, until her brother, Farrow Raymond Powell, in the class of 1908. Powell's record stands in this build's Schools and Culture sections; she stands here at anchor size because the first she holds is a first of the whole region's women's record, not of one school.

The women who ran the schools' daily work: below the superintendent line — all men, as the firsts entry records — the schools' documented women stand at the working level: Hannah M. Lindahl, the elementary supervisor who carried the children's museum to its founding in 1946, stands in this section's founders entry; the museum she built was itself an instrument of the schools' teaching. The full roster of the city's women teachers is not recoverable at name strength from the records reached, and no count of them at any year is printed in a source this build has read; the gap is named rather than estimated, with the school board's annual reports and the Enterprise's school coverage as the settling sources.

The librarians: the public library that succeeded the Ladies' Library was run, from its first years, by women. The first librarian of record was Olive Long, part-time, in the library's room on the second floor of City Hall, from 1907 to 1916, in the National Register nomination's account. The succession then gaps in the record reached — 1916 to the nineteen-thirties names no librarian in the sources read — and resumes with Ella Hodges, librarian by the WPA-built addition of 1937–38. The line ends, in November 2026, with the library's executive director, Donna Meeks, carried in the State Board of Accounts' audits of 2016–19 and 2023–24, in the Indiana State Library's 2026 directors list, and speaking for the library on its own site in October 2026. A library founded by a ladies' subscription society in the 1870s is administered by a woman in 2026; the women between Long and Meeks stand in the Libraries section at the size the record gives them, which is thinner than the institution they ran.

Sources:

1. Mishawaka Enterprise, commencement account, 10 June 1887, as quoted in this build's Schools section — Medora Powell's graduation, the first-African-American-graduate distinction for northern Indiana, and the address "Self Made Men"; her Brownsville School teaching, Cass County, Michigan, her return, and her death in 1931 as carried in the Schools and Culture sections; Farrow Raymond Powell, class of 1908, in the Culture and Neighborhoods sections.
2. National Register of Historic Places nomination, Mishawaka public library — Olive Long, first librarian of record, part-time, City Hall second floor, 1907–1916; Ella Hodges librarian by the 1937–38 addition; the succession gap of 1916–1937 as the record reached leaves it.
3. Indiana State Board of Accounts audits of the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, 2016–19 and 2023–24; Indiana State Library directors list, 2026; mphpl.org, October 2026 — Donna Meeks as executive director.