Holly Hays, who is a reporter for the Indianapolis Star, spoke to us about “The Meaning of Indiana Names.” Holly studied with Owen Johnson, who introduced her. After George Floyd’s murder this summer, the Indianapolis Star realized it needed to improve its coverage of communities of color. Indianapolis is 28 percent black, but coverage in the Star does not reflect that. Holly is trying to explore Indiana’s history and to write stories that celebrate the work and lives of Black and brown people.
As a part of her efforts, Holly began to explore places in Indiana named for people who were racist. She noted IU’s decision to change the names of places that had been named for former IU president David Starr Jordan, who was a proponent of eugenics. She looked at the William Henry Harrison statue on Monument Circle. Harrison was pro-slavery and promoted treaties that were detrimental to the Native American people. Most of Indiana’s counties were named in the early 1800s, and about one-third of the counties are named for people who enslaved others or who supported racist policies. These include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, Francis Marion, Daniel Morgan, James Monroe, and Patrick Henry.
Holly talked to IU professor Rasul Mowatt, who noted that public memory and history are not the same. He urged people to think about what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget. That representation creates a new reality. Inequity, inequality, and racism are deeply entrenched in American society and culture as well as in Hoosier history.
The Star is working on diversity. Its employees are 78 percent white and 13 percent Black, with other minority representation. Holly is co-chair of the newsroom’s diversity team. She said they are working on new ways to source news and creating a larger database of contacts so as not to call the same small handful of people for comment and information. Holly noted every newsroom needs to tackle racism and white supremacy. Newspapers need to tell more stories of different populations.
Holly encouraged us to share more history with students, look critically at the texts, use newer resources, such as the 1619 Project for Black history in the United States, and be more conscious of the angles we take in stories and history.
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