Posts tagged YMCA

February 22, 2010

Monster Meetings At The YMCA

Even before the founding of the NAACP, an Indianapolis institution came to serve as a crucible for integration.

During the last century, a preacher named Billy emerged as a world-renowned evangelist. But it’s not the Billy one might imagine. As if predestined by his surname, Billy Sunday brought “old time religion” to an estimated 100 million people without the benefit of television or electric amplification. Sunday’s career was intertwined with that of Winona Lake, in Kosciusko County, a mecca of religious and cultural activity from the 1890s through the 1930s.