Making Waves: Civil Rights and the South Bend Natatorium

Event Details

Join us for a deeper dive into the stories of resistors in South Bend. Civil Rights Heritage Center Assistant Director and Curator George Garner uses the Natatorium to explore South Bend’s history of white supremacy, Black resistance, and the broader experiences of African Americans in this city. In 1922, the word “public” adorned South Bend’s first municipal swimming pool. Despite this, the people in charge denied entry to African Americans. The Natatorium became a focus of local resistance to injustice with activists pushing thirty years to enact change. In 2010, the Natatorium was rebirthed as a home for the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center.

This is a live, virtual presentation hosted by the Indiana Historical Society. To join, please use the following Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ayy2fG0FRJmgVLEZv3DJsA

George Garner (he/him) earned his M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program where he gained experience in museum administration, exhibitions, and collections care at such well-known institutions as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. He has dedicated his career to exploring how museums and memory spaces can help people make meaning from traumatic histories and use history to work actively toward change today. Since 2012, he has served the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, a space that, for thirty years, operated as a segregated city-owned swimming pool.