A new Black Heritage Committee wants your Greater Lafayette stories this weekend

A two-day reunion and oral history ‘harvest’ opens Saturday. Plus, reported stolen, what the artist says really happened to the missing pearl in the ‘Pearl of the Wabash’ sculpture at Tapawingo Park.

• Support for this edition comes from the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, presenting Art on the Wabash. The juried art fair will be 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, at Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette. Admission is free. For more, check out Art on the Wabash here.

• Support also comes from Brokerage Brewing Co., presenting Broktoberfest 2025 — happening RIGHT NOW. Join West Lafayette’s first brewery for four days of food, entertainment and beer, now through Sunday, Sept. 28, at Brokerage, 2516 Covington St. Get the band lineup and all the day-by-day Broktoberfest details here.

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A NEW BLACK HERITAGE COMMITTEE WANTS YOUR GREATER LAFAYETTE STORIES THIS WEEKEND

A newly minted Tippecanoe County Black Heritage Committee, a group looking to preserve oral histories and catalog local sites significant in local Black history, will host two days of reunions, food and gathering stories this weekend.

Formed in 2025 and backed by Indiana Landmark’s Black History Heritage program, the group has been pulling together histories of people, neighborhoods, churches and schools for several months now. This weekend is a next step, Barry McKinney, a 1993 Lafayette Jeff grad who is chairman of the committee.

“If nothing else, we’re looking forward to seeing everyone come together and share stories and just be together,” McKinney said.

Here are excerpts of a Q&A with McKinney, ahead of what’s being billed as a Meet-n-Greet Reunion and Oral History Harvest on Saturday and a cultural heritage and food celebration on Sunday.

Question: How did this project get started with the Black Heritage Committee?

Barry McKinney: What really got it started was an article about Dr. Ashima Krishna (associate director of the Purdue Policy Research Institute), who was doing some work about Lincoln School with her Urban Matters Lab and with students in an interdisciplinary class she teaches over at Purdue. They were talking about different places, concentrating on Black heritage sites in the county, specifically for Lafayette. Funny enough, my dad, who’s in Alabama, sent me an email he got from (Lafayette native) Jerry Johnson, who’s in Arizona, about it before I even saw it. He knew that I was interested in local history and everything. From there, she and I met at the library, and she tied me in instantly with Indiana Landmarks and Eunice Trotter (director of our Black Heritage Preservation Program at Indiana Landmarks). I built a group site, and it’s kind of taken off.

Question: What’s your goal with the group page? Is it about highlighting sites, history, people, culture? Or something beyond those?

Barry McKinney: It’s all of those things, actually. What we are is a cultural heritage preservation committee. What that means is we seek to honor and preserve both voices and also sites. For instance, one of my colleagues, Dr. Amber (Neal-Stanley), she’s working with Bethel A.M.E. Church, working on getting them a national historic grant. This particular project this weekend, that one’s mine. Charlie Shook, he’s our liaison with Indiana Landmarks and also will be doing interviews with people this weekend. I told you about Dr. Ashima and her work. So, our goal overall is to make sure that we’re honoring history and heritage of African Americans in Tippecanoe County since we’ve been here, since the late-1840s.

Question: If you’re putting together a list of touchstones for the Black community in Greater Lafayette, what are the examples of things that people should know that are vital, given your goals?

Barry McKinney: First and foremost, I have to say, for me, definitely Bethel A.M.E. It’s been here since the 1800s. Of all the AME churches in Indiana, there’s only two that have actually received historic designation. So, that is a very vital as far as a touch point – as far as something I can say, OK, we want to honor and preserve and talk about. Number two, is the whole north end, as far as what happened there and what was there. You had Al’s Barbecue – places that brought people together, as I found out. You know, I was too young to go to Al’s Barbecue. So was my mother. But some of my other friends – Black, white or otherwise – had parents that used to go down there and get barbecue. It was kind of a linchpin in that Hanna neighborhood. A lot of history about the community was in that place. And then, obviously, the next thing would be Lincoln School, because that was where Black people went to school and basically where they gathered socially.

Question: For the generations that came after that, what are those touchstones today? What do you see that needs to be preserved and noted now?

Barry McKinney: Something I’m getting ready to do is to write about the Lafayette history of Black hair care. We can trace a very long history of that, and a lot of successes. Basically, building around Black businesses, Black successes, where we’re going from here. That’s part of why we’re having the gathering this weekend. I hope talking with these people is going to stem some things. Because it’s not only the people from that period in the ‘50s and ‘60s and Al’s Barbecue, all the way to the ‘80s. It’s my generation, as well – our experiences at Hanna Camp and places like that. Hopefully, they’ll bring some things up that I can remember.

Question: What do you hope to get out of this weekend, with the oral history collections and all? And when people come, what are they going to see and experience?

Barry McKinney: The biggest thing I want everybody to get is just exposure to one another. I found that with the Facebook group that I can kind of stir the pot and get people interested, but these people have stories that they won’t let go of. They’re maybe too embarrassed to post them. So, I’m hoping that I stoke the fires on some conversation. What I’m hoping for is even if some of those people come and they’re still reticent about giving their stories, they’re going to sit there and eat cheese and crackers, and drink coffee from Wanderlust, and hopefully they start talking. Getting them primed up, that’s kind of my thinking.

And then number two, I’m hoping they get used to oral history and how we’re going to do it, because this is not going to be the only one that we do. Also I think it’s really good for my mom’s generation and everyone else, because a number of people are coming back. Just to see all those people together for a good reason, other than a funeral or somebody getting married, just to be perfectly honest with you. It’s rewarding for me just to have Second Baptist on board, because the church is beautiful. I don’t know if you’ve seen it.

Question: After the recent expansion?

Barry McKinney: Absolutely. They’ve got this gathering area we’re going to utilize when people come that is just beautiful. For some of the younger people who come, we just want them to know that we’re here and there’s a place where we can talk about Black history, and then we can push that forward for posterity or more research.

Question: Is that the long-term goal beyond this weekend?

Barry McKinney: My focus going forward is to concentrate on curating our group page with new local history and heritage articles. We need new community narratives. As a collective, we are looking to create a space for volunteer engagement through monthly meetings and collaboration with groups like Hanna Community Center or Bethel AME. … We have a lot to learn from the stories people have.

If you go

A celebration of Black community’s heritage in Tippecanoe County will collect oral histories and have reunions Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 27 and 28. The events hosted by the Tippecanoe County Black Heritage Committee — with backing from the Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program, Lafayette’s Second Baptist Church and the West Lafayette Public Library – feature two days of events at Second Baptist Church, 2918 S. 18th St.

• Noon-3 p.m. Saturday: A community Meet-n-Greet Reunion and Oral History Harvest. Participants will have a chance to record experiences for the Indiana Landmarks Black Oral History Collection, which will be archived at the Indiana State Library. During the oral history portion of the event, interviewers will record up to 30 minutes of both audio and video of community memories about growing up and living in Greater Lafayette.

• Noon-2 p.m. Sunday: Cultural heritage celebration with food samples from around the world.

Admission is free.

• For more on the Tippecanoe County Black Heritage Committee, go the group’s Facebook page.

• For more on Indiana Landmarks’ Black Heritage Preservation Program, here’s your link.

Time’s running out: Get this deal on a full-access subscription to Based in Lafayette through Tuesday, Sept. 30.

ABOUT THE LOST (AND FOUND) PEARL FROM WEST LAFAYETTE’S ‘PEARL OF THE WABASH’

A daily police bulletin out of West Lafayette this week reported that the centerpiece of a public sculpture called “Pearl of the Wabash” had been stolen from the hands-on piece installed in Tapawingo Park in May.

After that news made it into media accounts, artist Esteban Garcia Bravo said Friday that the pearl had not been stolen and was in safe hands.

But the pearl portion of the sculpture had been taken for a ride.

A look at the lights ‘Pearl of the Wabash,’ when the pearl was still in place. (Photo courtesy of Esteban Garcia Bravo)