Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship

Indiana Humanities is pleased to offer the Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowships, which provide $5,000 stipends to support new humanities research that explores anti-Black racial injustice and structural racism in Indiana and that considers how Black Hoosiers have responded.

We believe that the humanities provide context for understanding complex issues and that they can be a force for strengthening the civic fabric of our state. Outstanding public humanities programs, which can bring Hoosiers together to talk through differences and solve problems, are rooted in high-quality humanities scholarship. Our purpose is to increase the amount and quality of such humanities scholarship about Indiana.

2024 Fellows Announced

News
2024 cohort of Wilma Gibbs Moore fellows announced
Indiana Humanities has awarded fellowships of $5,000 for five humanities-based research projects that examine anti-Black racial injustice and structural racism in Indiana. Fellowship-supported research will examine the history of the oppression of Black Hoosiers in Knox County, the lynching of Black WWII veteran James Edward Person, the history of activism in Indianapolis’ Babe Denny neighborhood, and other topics.
Learn more

Grant Details

Goals and Timeline

Our Goals for the Fellowship

Understand Black Hoosiers’ responses to racial injustice and structural racism through the creative arts and/or involvement with political, economic, social and cultural programs/activities at the neighborhood, city or state level.
Increase knowledge of Black Hoosiers’ strategies for overcoming racial injustice and structural racism over time.
Increase the amount and quality of humanities scholarship on the causes and effects of racial injustice and structural racism in Indiana.
Document and/or analyze the decisions, policies and actions that created racial inequality in the past and/or the present.
Add or expand the stories of Hoosiers in regional and national historiographies of racial injustice and/or structural racism.
Increase the use of Indiana-based archives and collections by humanities scholars and researchers.

Timeline

The application window for the 2024 Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship is closed. We expect to issue a new call for proposals in early 2025 with applications due April 30. While we may revise the 2025 call for proposals, it should be similar to the one we issued in 2024, which you can find here.

About Wilma Gibbs Moore

Wilma Gibbs Moore was one of Indiana’s preeminent scholars of African American history. She served as an archivist and librarian at the Indiana Historical Society for more than 30 years and edited the Society’s Black History News and Notes publication. A graduate of Indianapolis’s famed Crispus Attucks High School and Indiana University, Moore contributed her knowledge and expertise to a number of organizations promoting African American history and culture, including the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Indiana African American Genealogy Group, Indiana Freedom Trails, Indiana Landmarks’ African American Landmarks Committee and more. In recognition of her work, the American Association for State and Local History gave her an Award of Merit, and the Indiana Historical Society honored her with the Eli Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award. We’re proud to offer this fellowship in her honor.

To learn more about Wilma Gibbs Moore’s legacy, read this article in the Indianapolis Recorder and this blog post by her Indiana Historical Society colleague Ray Boomhower.