By:- Brenna Coleman
Across Indiana, the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program is working to preserve the stories, places, and memories that shape Black Hoosier history.
Through its Rural Scholars Program, the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement joined the effort by connecting Rural Oral History Scholar Olivia Novak with the program’s work in rural communities.
“People want to share their history. People want to tell their stories, and everybody has a story to tell,” said Eunice Trotter, director of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program.
Established in 2022 with support from Lilly Endowment Inc., the Black Heritage Preservation Program works to identify, protect, and celebrate historic Black sites across Indiana. Its oral history initiative expands that mission by recording firsthand accounts from Black Hoosiers across the state. The interviews become a part of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Oral History Collection on the Indiana Memory site operated by the Indiana State Library.
The IU Center for Rural Engagement’s involvement began after Colleen Rose, the center’s director of student engagement, approached Trotter in 2024 at the IU Rural Conference.
“We had just started this Rural Scholars Program and were looking to have a student help document more history out of rural communities,” Rose said. “So I approached Eunice and asked if they could benefit from having an extra person contributing to this important work they’re doing.”
The Rural Scholars Program pairs passionate and skilled IU students with community-driven projects that advance the vitality of rural Indiana. Since 2024, Novak has worked alongside the Black Heritage Preservation Program to help collect oral histories and document historically significant Black sites.
“It has been a really cool hands-on experience getting to uncover the history for myself,” Novak said.
“People want to share their history. People want to tell their stories, and everybody has a story to tell.”
Eunice Trotter, director of the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program
Preserving Black Hoosier stories
“We are losing stories about Black history because our elders are dying,” Trotter said.
Oral history is both a discipline and a practice focused on recording, preserving, and making meaning of personal accounts from people who experienced past events firsthand.
Modeled in part after the Works Progress Administration’s oral history efforts of the 1930s, the project gathers firsthand accounts from Black Hoosiers through oral history harvests—community-based events where individuals are invited to share their experiences through interviews.
Novak, who recently graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences with degrees in history and anthropology, helped conduct and coordinate the collection of oral histories.
The harvests occur three to four times per semester and are often held in churches, community centers, and other trusted local spaces where participants feel comfortable sharing their stories.
Novak helped organize the events, making sure recording equipment was set up, permission forms were signed, and interviews were taking place. Other times, she served as an interviewer herself.
“Olivia has done some incredible work with collecting oral histories about the Black experience in rural communities—stories that hadn’t been previously documented,” Rose said.
Many of the interviews she helped coordinate focus on elders in Black communities, who reflect on what they or their parents remember about pivotal moments in their lives and the nation’s history, including the Great Depression, World War II, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights movement.
Novak’s work with the Black Heritage Preservation Program recently earned campuswide recognition when she received the 2026 Student Employee of the Year Award for Social Impact and Belonging from IU Bloomington Career Exploration & Student Employment.
Listening with care
The most important skill when conducting interviews, according to Trotter, is not technical.
“You really have to be a good listener—an empathetic listener,” she said.
Many of the stories shared are deeply personal and, at times, painful. Interviewees often reflect on experiences shaped by segregation, discrimination, and migration.
“A lot of the history they have is an uncomfortable history,” Trotter said.
That care is essential to helping participants feel safe sharing their memories. Trotter credits Novak with bringing that sensitivity to her work.
“She loves doing the work, and you can see her passion,” Trotter said. “She’s a great interviewer, a good listener.”
Connecting stories to place
In addition to conducting interviews, Novak identified and documented historically significant Black sites in Knox County with Tom Bartholomew, project facilitator for the Black History Preservation Project of Knox County, and volunteer Angie Bartholomew.
Using geographic information systems mapping tools, they began building an interactive digital story map that will allow users to explore the locations through images, research, archival materials, and historic and contemporary photographs.
Once completed, the story map will be hosted by Indiana Landmarks and serve as a publicly accessible digital resource where users can discover places central to the Black experience in the region.
“I love exploring history that focuses on underrepresented people,” Novak said. “It’s just really important to finally highlight their stories.”
Although Novak has graduated, the work she helped advance will continue with a new Rural Scholar, extending the partnership’s role in preserving Black Hoosier stories and the places connected to them.
The IU Center for Rural Engagement improves the lives of Hoosiers through collaborative initiatives that discover and deploy scalable and flexible solutions to common challenges facing rural communities. Working in full-spectrum community innovation through research, community-engaged teaching and student service, the center builds vision, harnesses assets and cultivates sustainable leadership structures within the communities with which it engages to ensure long-term success.
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