Moment of Indiana History
WFIU Staff
Recent posts by WFIU Staff
December 26, 2005
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The Slavery Question
Indiana’s acceptance of African-American citizens, despite the 1787 Northwest ordinance outlawing slavery, was slow in coming.
December 19, 2005
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Century of Steel
In 1901, U.S. Steel settled in Lake County Indiana, to build what would become the world’s largest integrated steel mill.
December 12, 2005
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Indiana Dunes
A "place for the millions of pent-up city folk to seek refuge, quiet and renewal"; the Indiana Dunes State Park was an early environmentalist victory.
December 5, 2005
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Crispus Attucks High School
The team from Crispus Attucks High School won the state basketball championship in 1955, the first time a team from an all-black school took a state title.
November 28, 2005
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Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was a lifelong resident of Terre Haute. Having dropped out of school at an early age, Debs first worked on the railroad as a fireman. The bonds that he forged with his fellow workers shaped his lifelong philosophy, expressed in one of Debs’ famous court speeches — “While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
November 21, 2005
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Paul Dresser
Indiana 's official state song conveys the sense of nostalgia for a long-gone rural domesticity that characterized Paul Dresser's best-loved songs.
November 14, 2005
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Levi Coffin
Born in North Carolina in 1798, Levi Coffin observed first-hand the institution of slavery. His strong hatred for oppression and injustice was further bolstered when as a young man he saw a group of slaves chained together as he and his father chopped wood by the roadside.
November 7, 2005
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Booth Tarkington
Writer Booth Tarkington is identified with Indiana and the Midwest. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Tarkington spent his first two years of college at Purdue before graduating from Princeton in 1893. His comical writing style epitomized the 1920s Lost Generation. His most known works were cheerful, realistic novels of life in small Midwestern towns.
October 31, 2005
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Indiana State Seal
The Indiana State Seal has a convoluted history. With the creation of the Northwest Territory in 1787, the seal depicted a coiled snake in the foreground, boats in the mid-ground, a rising sun, a tree being chopped into logs, and a fruit bearing apple tree.
