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Fort Wayne Business Weekly
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Progress made, but 'we're still behind'

BY LINDA LIPP
lindal@fwbusiness.com (Created: Monday, February 26, 2007 3:26 PM EST)

http://www.fwdailynews.com/articles/2007/03/01/greater_fort_wayne/news/doc45dee36fe84de030700666.txt

   As a news anchor at WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Terra Brantley is one of the area’s highest-profile African Americans.

    “I’ve encountered my share of derogatory comments and sneers based solely on my race,” acknowledged Brantley, a Cleveland native who has lived and worked here since 1993.

    “I really try not to dwell on the negative, because I choose to channel that energy into something positive. Yes, I remember being called ‘an uppity nigger’ when I was starting out as a reporter. Yes, I remember working with some people who’d tell me I only have the job I have because I’m black and my employer needed to fill a quota. However, I’ve also cried on the shoulders of white co-workers, been welcomed into their homes, embraced by their families and made to feel at ease in my work environment,” Brantley said.

    Rae Pearson grew up in Fort Wayne, left for several years and then came back to found her business.

    “I think I’ve been better for staying here,” she said.

    Last year, her personnel, placement and training business, Alpha Rae, was named to Black Enterprise magazine’s list of the nation’s top 100 African-American-owned businesses.

   As an African American and a woman — far more than her white male counterparts — “I’ve had to prove over and over again that I can do the job,” Pearson said.

    Pearson’s business has expanded nationally, and it doesn’t just serve employers trying to recruit minority workers.

    “We hire just as many majority employees as minority employees,” she said.

    Dr. Alan McGee, a spinal specialist at Orthopedics Northeast, grew up in Fort Wayne and came back here to practice because of his parents and eight siblings.

    “Family is the most important thing,” he said.

    “There were some rough times in the ’60s, there were some rough times in the ’70s,” McGee recalled. “But for what I do, this is as good a place as any. I wouldn’t practice anywhere else.”

    Economic opportunities for African Americans — particularly at the professional level — have not always been plentiful in Fort Wayne and Allen County. A 1949 study by J. Harvey Kerns, assistant director of research for the National Urban League, counted two black doctors, one dentist, two lawyers, five social workers, one mortician and one architect.

    Lutheran Hospital was the only hospital at the time to enroll a black woman in nurse’s training. An African-American man from Chicago, who had received technical training during World War II was forced out of his job after just an hour when lower-level white workers protested his employment.

    Local government had a handful of black employees in 1949, and the city’s police force has had black officers since 1917. But there were no black firefighters in the Fire Department, and those who sought employment were turned away without being offered applications.

    “In the fair distribution of city job patronage to Negro citizens, Fort Wayne lags behind many other Midwestern cities and even cities of comparable size in the Deep South,” the Kerns report concluded.

    More than 50 years after the Kerns report, many of the conditions it described have improved. Many still need work.

    “I think Fort Wayne has come a long way … but employment to me is an area we still need to improve on. We still need to work hard on breaking down the prejudices,” said Hana Stith, a retired teacher and one of the founders of the African American Historical Museum.

The State of Black Fort Wayne

    In 2003, the Fort Wayne Urban League published “The State of Black Fort Wayne,” the first effort in decades to provide a comprehensive economic profile of the area’s African-American residents.

    It found the county still is very segregated in terms of housing, with the largest concentration of African Americans living in Wayne (21.5 percent of the total population) and Adams (26 percent) townships, the older central and southern parts of the city.

    Although African Americans make up 11.5 percent of the total population in Allen County, St. Joe Township, on the northeast side, had a black population of 4 percent, and Aboite Township, to the southwest, had a black population of just 2 percent.

    Fort Wayne was the 24th-most segregated city in the U.S., based on the number of blacks who would have to move to white-dominant tracts to achieve racial balance; and the second-most segregated city in Indiana, behind Gary, the 2003 study noted.

    Other statistics also tell a story of lingering inequality:

    • The rate at which African Americans in Fort Wayne were denied mortgages, compared with white applicants, increased between 2000 and 2001 at the fastest pace of any city in the nation, according to the 2003 report.

    • While the unemployment rate for whites in the city of Fort Wayne was 4.5 percent, according to the 2000 census, the unemployment rate for blacks was 13.4 percent.

    • The median household income in Allen County for whites, according to the 2000 census, was $45,186. The median household income for blacks was $28,004, more than 38 percent less.

    • Per-capita income for whites was $23,100; for blacks, $13,985 — a gap of nearly 40 percent.

    On the positive side, the Urban League’s 2003 study found there were 570 African-American-owned businesses in the six-county Fort Wayne MSA with sales and receipts calculated at nearly $49 million. The study also estimated that African Americans in Fort Wayne generated $555 million in spending in 1999.

    Miles Edwards, a retired assistant principal from Fort Wayne Community Schools and another of the organizers of the African-American museum, believes Fort Wayne’s traditional, “almost below conservative” attitudes have contributed to the problem.

    “Indianapolis is embracing cultural differences, and Fort Wayne is still isolating,” he said.

    “European American residents are being polite to people, but in actuality, I don’t see an inclusiveness. We should want to be an inclusive city.”

    Fort Wayne has been slower to recognize the value of diversity, Pearson agreed.

    “When I look at places I’ve traveled, we’re behind,” she said.

    Local white residents tend to be ill-informed about the black community, Edwards added. They don’t realize, for example, that there are 120 black churches in Fort Wayne that represent a broad range of denominations, from traditionally black to traditionally white.

    And many probably would be surprised to learn that one of the first concentrations of black residents in the area was in Aboite — now home to wealthier, almost all-white residents. African Americans settled there because they were not allowed to live within the city limits, Edwards said.

    Fort Wayne has the only African-American museum in the entire state, but Edwards believes the public schools lag behind when it comes to teaching black history, either as a separate topic or by integrating the accomplishments of blacks with those of whites.

    And while many community and nonprofit boards number African Americans among their membership, the same few African Americans are called on time and time again to serve.

    “There are 37,000 of us here,” Edwards noted. “How are we going to break out of this cycle if people don’t break out of their comfort zones?”

    Fort Wayne has had a difficult time keeping young college graduates — of all races — in the community. Pearson believes that’s largely a function of the overall economy. Edwards thinks the community also needs to do more to provide social and cultural opportunities for young African Americans if it wants to entice them to stay.

    Pearson said there are opportunities, however.

    “And the first opportunities that we need to be looking at, as women-owned and minority-owned businesses, is working together. We need unification,” she said.

    Brantley, a single mother, tells her children to “never be afraid to be first … to stand out and stand up for a righteous cause, even if you stand by yourself.”

    “Look for the beauty in life and the beauty in others, regardless of race,” she said. “If it helps, close your eyes and talk to someone so you see no color. For the words that we speak and the things that we do are the true test of who we are.”