J. Chester and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen · two lawyers, thirty years of cases

1928 – 1994

The couple who made a law office into the community's headquarters: J. Chester Allen came to South Bend from the East, was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1930, and was appointed County Poor Attorney for St. Joseph County in 1931 — a Black lawyer holding county office in the Indiana of the Black Laws' long shadow. He married Elizabeth Fletcher, a Chicagoan he had met at Boston University, in 1928; she joined him in South Bend in 1931, was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1938 — the first Black woman attorney in South Bend and in the state of Indiana — and in 1939 the two opened Allen & Allen, among the first husband-and-wife law practices in the city. What they did with it fills this section: the Natatorium campaign of 1936–1950 was theirs; the Hook's Drug Store test case of 1941 (below) was theirs; their home and office were open to Black Notre Dame students whom the city's landlords would not house.

J. Chester's public career ran on a parallel track. Elected to the Indiana House of Representatives for St. Joseph County in 1938, he served 1939–1943 and there introduced the Fair Employment Protection Act (H.B. 445), arguing that "Negro workers, skilled and semi-skilled, by the thousands are walking the streets or working on WPA projects because they happen to have been endowed with a dark skin by the Creator of all men." The bill was defeated. On 1 June 1941 Governor Schricker appointed him Negro Activities Coordinator to the Indiana Defense Council, and under its Indiana Plan of Bi-Racial Cooperation he toured the state winning formal pledges from the A.F.L., the C.I.O. and the state medical, dental and pharmaceutical associations to employ African Americans; that same year he helped persuade Bendix Aviation to hire its first Black workers.

Elizabeth's firsts were her own: in 1953, 1955 and 1960 she sat as judge pro tem in South Bend's city courts — "likely the first woman to wield a gavel in South Bend's courtrooms," the Indiana Historical Bureau writes — and she later served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, the first African American woman to do so in South Bend. J. Chester returned to elective office as a South Bend city councilman, 1960–1963 — the first African American to sit on the council — and was elected president of the St. Joseph County Bar Association for 1969–70, the first Black lawyer to hold that post. In 1965, from the far side of thirty years of this work, he wrote the Tribune editorial against the neighborhood-school policy quoted in the schools entry below. (A popular encyclopedia entry assigns the 1939–43 House seat to Elizabeth; the IU South Bend Archives' finding aid for the couple's own papers and the Ball State museum record both give it to J. Chester, and they are followed here.) The Allens' papers are held by the Civil Rights Heritage Center at IU South Bend; Elizabeth died in 1994, fifty-five years into the marriage.

Sources:

1. IU South Bend Archives, "J. Chester and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen Papers," Civil Rights Heritage Center — the biographical record: his 1930 bar admission and 1931 county appointment; her 1938 admission and standing as the first Black woman lawyer in South Bend and Indiana; the House service 1939–1943; the council service 1960–1963; the bar-association presidency 1969–1970.
2. Indiana History Blog (Indiana Historical Bureau), the Allen series, Parts 1–2 — the couple's judicial-system and wartime-employment work; her judge-pro-tem service of 1953, 1955 and 1960; the 1939 founding of Allen & Allen; Shannon Nolan, "Indiana's First Female African American Lawyer Worked in South Bend," ABC57, 2 February 2019.
3. City of South Bend, Final Report of the Reparatory Justice Commission (2026), Part III — H.B. 445 and its defeat, quoted argument included; the 1 June 1941 Defense Council appointment and the Indiana Plan pledges; her Superior Court judge-pro-tem service.
4. Ball State University Digital Civil Rights Museum, "J. Chester Allen J.D. and Elizabeth Fletcher Allen J.D." — the couple's NAACP and civic memberships; the summary's broader "first African American in the state legislature" claim for J. Chester is an overreach (Indiana seated Black legislators in the nineteenth century, James S. Hinton of Indianapolis in 1880 among them) and the county-scoped claims are carried instead.