From the WNIN and Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James and this is Two Main Street.

Well, after writing a book about Evansville and World War two, author and Professor James McCloud looks at the postwar challenges of the city in his latest book, Lost Evansville.

In the three decades after the war, did the city suffer from an inferiority complex?

When the big employers left, did Evansville deserve the label as a bad labor town?

And who were the movers and shakers who tried to turn things around with bold projects of urban renewal?

Lost Evansville also explores the ugly scars of racism, red scares and Vietnam War protests.

And along the way, we say goodbye to landmark buildings torn down in the name of progress.

And now just memories in old photographs.

Dr. James MacLeod is a native of Scotland educator at the University of Edinburg, and now, after teaching at Harloxton college in England, made the move to the states joining the history department at the University of Evansville and is now the chairman of that department.

Professor MacLeod welcome back to Main Street.

Good to have you back here again.

Thank you, David.

It's great to be back.

Now, in your previous book, Evansville, during World War II, the city swelled with war time workers building ships, planes, tanks, ammunition and military sparks parts of all shapes and sizes.

Now, in 1945, the war ends.

The writing was on the wall.

Times were changing for the city.

Yeah, they certainly were.

And, you know, one of the things that that I encountered very quickly when I started talking about Evansville and World War II was people would ask me awkward questions to which I didn't know the answer, one of which was, So what happened after the war?

So when I started looking into it, I found that was a pretty interesting story.

And one of the things that I found most interesting was that the people in the city, the business leaders, the political leaders, the labor leaders, they were all planning for the end of the war long before the war ended.

And so it didn't it was a it was a shock to the system when the war ended and orders stopped immediately and people lost their jobs.

Thousands of people lost their jobs overnight.

But the shock wasn't as as harsh as it could have been.

I think because of that planning, many of these companies were already retooling and getting ready to go back to what they'd done before.

Well, that's an interesting point.

Now, the companies said they did switch to wartime production.

Then they had to return to peace time production and some big employers left, including Chrysler.

Yes.

So that was later in the 1950s.

There was this initial period where they did pretty well right after the war.

And then there's the extra the renewed stimulus of the Korean War, of course, 1950 through 1953, which maybe artificially inflated the economy.

And I think by the end of the fifties, a lot of I would I would argue a lot of national and even international trends were beginning to coalesce that spelt bad news for Evansville.

And really, when Chrysler leaving and moving west, moving to Saint Louis or the Saint Louis area was really bad news for Evansville.

And I feel like we've often blamed ourselves for these companies leaving.

But the reality was that companies like that, especially big corporations, were really leaving old, older cities and moving to new facilities.

And they were doing that all over the country, primarily moving to the south and the west.

And so I think we were just caught in that trend.

And there was the impression, I know you wrote in your book warranted or not, that Evansville was a bad labor town.

Yeah, that was one of the one of the stories that I started hearing almost as soon as I got here, which which I found very interesting.

And I just assumed, since everybody was saying it, that that it had to be true.

And when I looked into it and on this research project, the answer as often as kind of yes and no, there were certainly militant unions here and there were some unions, some leaders of which were either actually communists or pretty close to being communists for sure.

But on the other hand, a lot of the acrimony between labor and management came from the management side.

There was a ton of hostility to unions in Evansville.

Some of the biggest employers have historically been extremely hostile to their workers organizing.

And so the when conflict comes, there was often blame on both sides.

And I think that was the case much of the time here in Evansville.

And during this period, city officials kind of wanted to chart a course for the future, and they came up with the fantasy report and the fairness report comes out.

It painted pretty gloomy picture and even mentioned that the city had an inferiority complex.

Yeah, and I think that was all part of that same process where we were coming to terms with what had happened after after the war.

There was kind of the excitement of the war and the massive expansion and then a lot of decline in the 1950s.

It wasn't all decline, but there was a lot of decline.

And I think the city did feel pretty bedraggled at that point.

But what I would also say is that the vendors report that the headlines that were pulled from the vendor's report by the local media tended to be these negative headlines.

But the fantasy report also listed a long list of the things that were really good about Evansville to some of which, you know, an excellent museum and excellent education facilities and so on, much of which we still have.

So I thought that was interesting to in a way, even the vendor’s report was the way it was perceived was was shaped a little bit by the very inferiority complex that they talked about.

Of course, that was the headline.

I mean, they would be able to glean that they saw that empirically.

My gosh, you would ignore that.

It was a big, thick report.

So probably relatively few people read the whole thing.

Now, the title of your book, Lost Evansville.

Did you struggle with that title?

Yeah, a little bit.

It's as as always with these things, you're a little bit in the hands of publishers who want to push a certain a certain word form.

But I really, in the end, like the title for for two reasons.

One was that partly what I'm talking about is, is physical and business entities that are no longer here.

So are lost.

But I also thought it was really important to tell some stories that hadn't really been told very much before.

So in a sense, the lost history.

Sure.

And trying to trying to rectify that as best I could.

So that's where the title came from.

And you also write about the early growth of Evansville, the excitement over the Wabash and Erie Canal.

That was short lived.

Yeah, it sure was.

I mean, I think talk about bad timing.

You know, that was that was one of these things that could if history had been a little bit different, being the southern terminus of the the the longest canal in North America could have been an absolutely terrific boon for Evansville as it happened when by the time the canal was completed, the railroad age had begun.

And so canals, for the most part, were rendered almost obsolete overnight.

And and, you know, I think it's a it's a it's a solid reminder to us that Evansville, I think, owes that its existence to to the river.

And for a long time, being on the river was what made Evansville an important city.

And then potentially being on the canal, made Evansville an important city, and then very quickly being on the railroad system, made Evansville an important city.

And so when I think that's part of the context, when you look at what happened in the fifties and the decline of Evansville in the fifties, such as it was, partly that's because the the interstate highway system is now going to come and dominate the way transportation works in this country and being on a river and being in a railroad hub is no longer the advantage that it was.

And, you know, there's another story about the interstate highway and how close it was to Evansville or not, but it was just a different transportation world.

And we were our place in it was going to be different.

The Wabash and Erie Canal, I mean, that's a that's a great history in itself, how that started and all the problems they had with it.

The horses would pull these these barges.

Yeah.

I mean, it is amazing.

And there are you know, there are parts of the city and Canal Street.

Of course, we still have at least parts of it.

And there's places in the city where you can see bits and pieces of the canal.

And as you probably know, the the the sewer project downtown here recently stumbled across not just an old cemetery, but an old bridge over the over the canal.

And some of the timbers are still laying out there on the on the roadside.

So it really must have been an amazing thing to see, to watch these barges moving up and down through the city and feeling that you were connected all the way up to to the northern part of the United States.

But as you said, a very short lived.

But they had they had little, little stations along the way where they had to change the horses out.

So they had like little outposts along the canal, too.

And I think there's there's certainly parts of the canal and central northern Indiana where where you can see much more clearly the way it operated.

And there's really, sadly, very little evidence left.

You have to really know where to look in Evansville to to see the bits and pieces of it here.

Now, we talked about the Evansville really is an important city along the Ohio River and the population growth in the mid-19th century.

Did we start growing then?

Yeah, there were.

There's various I think one of the things that makes Evansville interesting is you see these various waves of immigration.

Oftentimes associated with external events or, you know, sometimes events in Central Europe would drive people to leave Central Europe.

And so we see a wave of German emigration coming to Evansville and settling for the most part in what we think of as the west side today.

A couple of of layers of African American emigration as well to Evansville and the population.

You know, a time you can sort of see the growth of the city.

There's that there's an image in the book of the city limits growing pretty steadily over the course of the 19th century and of course, through the 20th century as well.

We have early industries, breweries, of course, that were very popular with first with the German immigration, coal mining, furniture factories and the German heritage was very strong.

But it takes a hit during World War One.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I think this was a very difficult time, of course, was a difficult time for everybody.

But you can imagine as a as a German immigrant in 1917, when you've maybe got cousins or even brothers fighting in the German army and here you are again ready to enlist in the U.S. Army.

But for some I know for some German families, here was an opportunity to really prove, no, no, I'm an American.

And Indiana sent a disproportionately high number of men to fight in the First World War.

Of course, as we all know, the first American to die in the First World War was was an Evansville man, James Bethel Gresham.

But, you know, it was difficult then.

So the the German language newspaper shuts down at that time.

And I think there's there's even evidence that some German churches began switched over from taking their their minutes for their for their congregational meetings.

They switched over the minutes from German to English.

And so there's really a very steep decline in German after that.

And, you know, we still have elements of it today in Germany, America, or, you know, an old German male voice choir club is really one of the remaining vestiges of this really thriving German culture that we once had.

And the beer.

Okay.

Who were some of the movers and shakers who tried to jumpstart the city?

James?

Well, I think at one it wasn't very wide.

And one of the one of the things that's so it's on the one hand kind of encouraging that there were so many people and so many organizations and civic groups that wanted to to fix things.

What's a little bit depressing is that they all produced plans and they produced ideas and they they produced the master plans, even encompassing all different kinds of ideas and very little of that kind of coalesced.

And so I think what we end up having is a city that some parts of what came out of the sixties and seventies especially, I think we can be proud of and say that looks looks good and it's coherent and it makes sense.

And there's other parts of it where I think strangers come into Evansville and kind of shake their heads and say, you know, why?

Why are there so many parking lots and why why does Main Street have a great big building across it?

And that kind of thing?

So sometimes it was it wasn't through lack of desire to plan out the future, but it almost seems like it was a at times too many cooks where there were so many different plans and competing ideas that the city ended up with an outcome that probably wasn't ideal.

Was there any were there any dynamic city leaders at that time?

Well, I think the during Frank McDonald, longtime mayor of Evansville, is a really key player or someone who was deeply involved in a lot of the changes.

And I think while I'm certainly happy to be one of the people that criticizes urban renewal in general, I think what you have to remember is just how bad things were in the downtown and kind of from Main Street down to the river and roughly over the area about where the casino is now, really all the way over to Fulton, that whole area by 1960 was a real mess, really.

All dilapidated structures, oftentimes industrial structures and warehouses and that kind of thing.

A little bit of of residential material, too.

But but just really rundown and in need of really significant change.

And so when the wrecking ball hit these areas and McDonald was a real driver of that happening this is the first.

Mayor.

McDonald First Mayor McDonald Yes.

And then and replacing, you know, a lot of the new buildings that went up at the time, including the then the very late sixties, the civic Center complex, really a huge improvement on, generally speaking, on that part of town.

Now, when it comes to urban renewal, more generally, there's where you're destroying people's homes because they're considered to be slums.

Again, I think you can very rationally and objectively say that is better.

It is good to remove slums.

But if you're someone that lives in these neighborhoods, sometimes a slum is in the eye of the beholder.

And what I thought was very interesting when I looked at one of the first areas to be cleared was an area on the south east side called Village Sites.

And some of the people who were forced to relocate from Villa sites were really very sad to go.

And it was a really rough it was a very undeveloped part of town and open sewers and all that kind of thing.

But the people had a really strong sense of community.

And one lady talked, wrote a letter to the paper, very passionate, talking about how they never had to lock their doors.

And other people helped you look after your kids and all of that sort of stuff.

So I think sometimes we we think about removing low quality housing in a very kind of paternalistic way.

And we don't often really in fact, we hardly ever ask the people themselves, What do you think?

And so it's a it's always a mixed bag.

And of course, when Highway 41 came through the city to the improve, that they had to remove a lot of homes as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And project and really a ton of road building in this period of course nationwide and we don't get a highway through the city but we do get I mean we get Highway 41, not an interstate through the city, but Highway 41 running north south, and then the very gradual, long, long process to get what we now call the Lloyd Expressway, which was also pretty controversial at times and involve houses being removed and houses losing their views and all that.

That's part of lost Evansville.

Yes, it sure is.

Okay.

Now, in your book, you also expose the scars of racism in the community, discriminate in housing, education and employment, and the black residents confined to certain areas of the city boundaries for racial balance.

I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, the the this part of the story I thought was absolutely fascinating and very eye opening for me.

You know, I think were were aware of the civil rights movement and the the discrimination that gave rise to it.

We tend to think of it as something that happened somewhere else or we think it was something that was just in the South.

But Evansville was, of course, a very segregated city to an extent.

We, of course, still are.

But it was really clear to me that the the black population were predominantly in that area that was called Baptist Town, kind of Lincoln Avenue Governor Canal, that area there.

And one of the things that's interesting in Evansville, which is unusual, is that when when black when housing that was considered slum housing in black Evansville was cleared.

And the it was in the 1930s and it was replaced with high quality public housing, Lincoln Gardens, which was located right there in black Evansville.

So the black community in Evansville was one of relatively few in the U.S. where they were cleared out of bad housing.

They were given new housing and they were given new housing in the same place.

And there was a model project.

It was a model project.

But I think Eleanor Roosevelt praised it.

She did?

Yeah.

And but I think the more negative spin on that would be that we we did that because we didn't want black people moving anywhere else so they can find still confined to Baptist.

Yeah.

And of course at the Evansville African-American Museum they still have an apartment restored.

Yeah.

Lincoln Gardens.

I think the African-American Museum does a fantastic job.

And, you know, I think it's just a fascinating story because so many of the people that I name in the book who were part of the civil rights movement here, ensuring the opening up of schools and the desegregation of restaurants and theaters and swimming pools and all of that.

Sometimes these very people, if they're not still around there, their children and grandchildren are.

So, yeah, you often see the last names have been mentioned and you realize, this person is the son or daughter of, you know, someone who should really be a hero in our eyes.

These people that changed the world.

Also the red scare of the Cold War years.

I thought this was interesting.

You talk about redlining.

Well, redlining is a is a reference to race as well.

So red redlining is where the federal government drew lines and said, I thought that was related to the Red Scare.

So we know.

So we can I could say something about redlining though, because it's interesting to know.

So in the in the 1930s, the federal government literally drew maps to to say to show areas that would be suitable for insurance purposes and for giving mortgages.

And if you had black people living in an area, that area was colored red.

And so we get the term redlining from that.

Okay.

And these areas were not considered suitable for mortgages or mortgage insurance.

And it was one of the techniques by which black people were basically shut out from the homebuying expansion that happened after World War Two and Baptist Town.

Of course, if you look at the redlining map for Evansville from 1937 about this town was neatly surrounded by red lines.

And it has obviously has ramifications that go all the way to today.

Now, let's talk about the Red Scare.

Okay.

In the Cold War years, of course, everybody knows about the McCarthy hearings.

And an Evansville College professor got caught up in all this.

George Parker.

Yeah.

So there's a couple of really interesting stories here in Evansville where, you know, partly driven by some of these business leaders who were extremely anti-communist.

And Louis Rothenberg, who was the president of Serval, was a founding member of the John Birch Society.

So a really active, nationally active anti-communist.

And there were a couple of other business leaders who were as well.

And they kind of drove the idea that there were reds under the bed here in Evansville, and one of whom was George Parker, who was a UVA professor, who made some very kind of mild mannered remarks about about politics.

And he tended to support left wing candidates and he ended up getting fired.

And the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, came in and did an investigation, and they castigated Evansville College for for its treatment of George Parker.

So he was one of their of hundreds of professors across the country that ended up getting fired as part of that.

And then there was the congressional.

A congressional committee came to town in 1948 and held its hearings here in town.

And people who were who were alleged to be communists were named.

And then all of these names were printed in the paper the next day.

So it was, again, stuff that we've heard about and stuff that we think of as happening in far off places that happened right here.

And I think what it was interesting, too, is that one of your one of your guests on on the show and a dear friend of mine, Charlie Berger, you know, his parents, Sidney and Sidwell Berger, very active in the labor movement, very active in the civil rights movement.

Sidwell was was one of those named as a communist.

Really?

Yeah.

And and she was them.

And she wasn't a member of the Communist Party, so it was a slur that his family lived with really, the whole time they were here.

And also, you talk about the polarization over the Vietnam War protests on college campuses or even some protest that what was in Evansville College.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, again, this just really struck me that what was happening across the country was happening here in sleepy old Evansville as well.

And, you know, you can read letters to the editor and the courier and the press were people speak out in support of the Vietnam War and and attack the hippies and so on.

And then you see these protests from both the what is now UCI and and what is now.

You see both college campuses came together.

They had united protests people there were squabbles.

And then they in the aftermath of the killings at Kent State University in 1970, there was a lot of tension here on campus, and there was a squabble over the American flag and in the front over there.

And so, yeah, it was clearly it was one of the most divisive moments in American history.

And it would be remarkable if I didn't come to Evansville, I suppose.

But it was interesting, too, to see evidence of that.

Well, my memories I was the editor of the school newspaper at the University of Evansville during the Vietnam War.

And of course, on campus you had students in uniform at the ROTC, cadets in their uniform going classes.

Yeah.

So they were visible, all right.

And stood for the protesters, too.

So you had definitely some divisions on campus.

I know there was a lot of professors were involved in the in the peace movement, too.

There was a peace rally on campus.

I know when I was a student there, some of the professors would would work with students who were having low grades because if your grade average was below a certain level, you could go to the draft board.

And they could do they could draft you.

Okay.

So they tried to keep the students grades up.

They really worked with them to keep them keep them on board.

Interesting, because I remember the first lottery, too, when they had the ping pong balls and you got your your number there.

What was your name?

I was 353.

Okay.

So the first like the first 40 or so would go, so I was in the definitely in the lower.

Yeah.

I was, was like women and children before me probably, you know.

But anyway it was a it was an incredible time and of course I was the editor and I was trying to be as impartial as possible and get both sides of the story, which was my job.

Now, your book has been out.

You've been on the speaking circuit.

What's been the reaction so far to Lost Evansville?

I think people have been pretty fascinated, I would say.

I think a I had a really wonderful event last weekend at the African-American Museum, a predominantly African-American audience.

Some of whom were were seniors who clearly remembered these events themselves.

Some of these people were literally friends of folks that I mentioned.

A couple of one of the things about the the civil rights era, David, that shocked me was how much violence there was in terms of straight shootings and and the times in both 68 and 69 when there were curfews imposed and then the violence and all the schools as well, all the high schools and the people that we're talking to on Friday night remembered all of that so clearly.

And so I think there's always a risk with with a book like that that you're opening old wounds.

And there's always I'm always very conscious as a as a foreigner that I'm coming in here and telling your stories.

But people people have been very gracious and and I think people are appreciative of the fact that the story of their city is being told.

So let's talk about what was lost, I guess, in the sense of historic buildings torn down in the name of progress.

And you mentioned the old Central High School and Assumption Cathedral.

yeah.

I mean, I think if I if I had to pick my my top two, it's probably those two.

And again, if you're not familiar with Evansville, it's it's that whole area effectively where the civic Center is today.

And then some of the parking lots between the Civic Center and the new YMCA.

And so Central High School was was the first public high school in the city.

It had buildings added at various times over the course of the 19th century.

But a but a pretty beautiful and classic version of a public high school with a magnificent bell tower and the prolonged effort to try to save it.

But it was eventually demolished in the mid 1970s.

And then old assumption Cathedral, which was across the road from Central High School, again, just a really beautiful Catholic church building, a really important center of the Catholic community for a long period.

But by the late sixties, early seventies, that congregation had pretty much dwindled.

You know, as the downtown population was declining and with special permission from the Vatican, that building was, I guess, consecrated and and demolished.

didn't know.

Had to go through the Vatican.

Yeah, it did.

Yeah.

Apparently.

Apparently it went it had to go through the Vatican to get permission for it to be sold effectively.

And there's a couple of very poignant photos, I would say, in the book of just the last remaining shell of that cathedral, as it's the last part of it is about to be demolished.

But I also feel fairly strongly that these these seeing these buildings come down, I think was a really powerful impetus to what came next, which was the preservation movement.

And I think in Evansville, it's almost like people woke up in 1973 and realized, my goodness, if we don't if we don't start acting now, all of these old buildings are going to be gone.

And and they probably would have been the probably the the old courthouse and the old post office.

These, too, probably would have been next.

But there was serious talk about tearing down the old courthouse.

Absolutely.

So but 73 is when really urban preservation gets going across the United States, and it certainly does here.

And a bunch of really dedicated individuals and groups work really hard to preserve the buildings that we have.

And so we're I think we're we're very fortunate to have the buildings that we do have.

And we've got some, of course, magnificent buildings, even on Main Street itself, some beautiful bank buildings, for example, that date from the early 20th century, and the old courthouse and the the old post office are just magnificent examples of that time.

But it's a long winded answer.

But I would also say that it's part of urban life to demolish and replace.

And of course, that was making way for the civic Center.

Yeah, which is huge when you talk about the parking lot.

Yeah.

So really, I mean, how many acres is that?

Right.

It's an it's an enormous building that we again, we sort of take for granted.

And not not everybody likes that style.

It's the actual name of that style is Brutalist, which sounds awful, but it's a reference to the kind of concrete that's used.

But I personally think that the Civic Center is a beautiful building and it's really beautiful inside and out.

A lot of craft craftsmanship inside that building.

So many buildings of that kind have since been demolished themselves because people don't like how they look.

So it's kind of funny that they have they've known themselves become buildings that have to be preserved, but they replaced older buildings.

And then I should you mentioned beer earlier, of course, the cook brewery, which was on that site as well.

And there was an old railroad terminal building, exactly of which the four pillars at the front of that building, which was a railroad terminal for for a long time, and also served as the USO during World War Two.

The White only USO during World War Two.

But when it was demolished, they preserved the four pillars that were at the front.

And these are, of course, now the Four Freedoms Monument downtown.

It was also the site of many high school dance.

It was yes.

I remember going to the Coliseum for the rock and roll bands there.

They had a beautiful bar there, Gorgeous facility really was.

Yeah.

That railroad building was was a community center for a long time.

And a lot of a lot of people of a certain age remember going to their first dances there.

And then they had like about 20 or 30 ping pong ball ping pong tables there, too, and pool tables.

It was really neat place.

Very cool.

Okay, now we're going to talk about your this is kind of your adopted hometown, Evansville, but you do have a hometown back in Scotland.

So electric, pronounce it well, Greenock.

I grew up in a town called Greenock, which is on the west coast of Scotland.

So it was a port city and it most, if any Americans know anything about Greenock, it's because they're their family members who served in the two world wars.

Many of them came across the Atlantic and the first place they landed in Britain would have been Greenock, and then they would have taken the trains up to Glasgow and then taken the trains done to to England to ship over to Europe.

Population 44,000.

That sounds about right.

It like a lot of places it's going to risen and fallen over the years.

It started off that little old fishing village in the 18th century, but like many West Coast ports, it greatly expanded in the 1700s with the trade to the Americas.

And Greenock really built its fortune on shipbuilding and sugar refining.

So it's know a lot of importing of cotton as well.

So the sugar cane would come.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So from the Caribbean.

Caribbean.

Yeah.

So even even when I think it maybe I would say in the maybe in the early to mid-20th century there were probably about 14 or 15 different sugar refining facilities in the in the town.

So yeah, it really and there were streets with Caribbean names like Jamaica St and Antigua Street.

And it's really I was just talking about this the other the other night, the 1619 project.

Nikole Hannah-Jones was here in town and I was, I had certainly grown up long before I ever thought for a moment about the reality of what all of that meant, which was that all of that certainly, of course, all through the 19th century, all of that sugar was being produced on plantations, been worked by enslaved people and while while Greenock was not a slaving port, there were a few enslaved people went through Greenock, but not many.

But Greenock fortune was built on on labor that was, you know, forcible labor in the Caribbean.

And it certainly never crossed my mind until relatively recently.

But yeah, was a, it was a there were always so a big river town just like, like Evansville.

But the, the actual coast is of course much closer than, than here.

And so there's tons of shipping activity on the river and then a lot of oceangoing ships heading, getting ready to head out to sea.

So it was a really cool place to be as a kid.

So if you're planning your your trip to Scotland and you want to check it out, there are some tourist sites in Greenwich.

Lyall Hill What institution?

Well, Park and nearby Highlands, Loch Lomond and Old West Kirk yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's, there's a lot of and again, all of this is stuff that of course she completely took for granted growing up there and I couldn't wait to get out of the place.

But the when you mentioned the Watt Institute, so Green Oaks most famous product was James Watt, the one of the key inventors of the steam engine.

So the original college and the town was called the Watt College, and there's a great statue of James Watt there.

And then it's just really the river Clyde at this point in Scotland geographically basically marks the beginning of the Highlands.

So once you cross the river, you're you're into the mountains of Scotland and into some really beautiful territory.

So and then, to my great astonishment, in recent years, Greenock has also become a stop for cruise ships.

So.

So yeah, yeah.

So there's, there's now a big cruise terminal and so, you know if you'd asked the 18 year old me that couldn't wait to get out of out if you'd said take a cruise down one day there'll be cruise ships coming in here, I would have you know, I would have laughed in your face.

But such is progress, I guess, because there's no shipyards now.

So all the all the shipyards are closed, all the sugar refineries are closed.

So like a lot of places, it's had to reinvent itself and that's one of the ways that's done it.

Now, you went to the University of Edinburgh, of course.

That's a classic university, a long history.

Tell me something about the university.

Well, Edinburgh's just a really beautiful, beautiful city and of course, a very historic city.

And the the university, my siblings, I'm the youngest of seven and about half my siblings went to University of Glasgow and the other half of us went to University of Edinburgh.

So there's a little bit of rivalry in the family.

But University of Edinburgh was founded in the 1500s, 1584, so pretty ancient university.

And you know, it was a played a really important role in the Reformation, Protestant Reformation in the 1500s and was it was really a wonderful environment for and again you know, you sort of I think sometimes I probably shouldn't say this as a professor, but sometimes I think I look at some students and I think you're going to really appreciate this, but in about 20 years.

Sure.

And I think there were aspects of the University of Edinburgh that I just took for granted, you know, the quality of the professors and people who had written numerous books, but to us they were just the guy giving you homework, you know?

So I've tried really hard in the last few years to reach out to these people and say, You know, what you did meant a lot.

Thank you very much.

And I actually had a wonderful exchange just with two professors just last month, two people that I'd I'd been talking in class.

And I realized in one of my own classes, I realized that I was echoing stuff that I had heard from these people who I had as a freshman, just as a freshman.

And I reached to both of them just to say the the lessons you taught me as a freshman, I'm still using today.

And they both go right back to me and we're very appreciative of of been told that.

So the moral of the story is thank your all teachers for what they did for you.

You took this passion for history from Enberg, Edinburgh to Harlington.

Yes.

You went from Scotland to England.

Yes, I did.

And that was I've often thought that it was it was more of a jolt for me to move from Scotland to England than it was.

It wasn't that far move.

No, I know.

It's ridiculous, really.

Just it just seems like there is a kind of big psychological barrier between Scotland and England, although physically very.

That's that's hard for us to imagine.

Yeah.

I mean, it's kind of I don't know.

It's, it's Indiana, Kentucky sort of thing, you know, it's it's really nothing nowadays, you know, hundreds of years of warfare in the past and so on.

But I was I had a wonderful time at Horrocks and of course, beautiful fairy tale castle to live in, met lots of great lifelong friends.

There, and then had the opportunity to move here in 1999.

So and I should one of the things I really want to say is that when I came here and started to become interested in Evansville history, I was very hesitant because I thought, how are the local history people going to react to a stranger and a foreigner and an alien coming in here and looking at their stuff and the local history community?

David has been just amazingly welcoming to me from the very beginning, and I really can never thank them enough for that.

People have worked painstakingly over the years to preserve our past, and then the stranger shows up and they they're welcomed with open arms.

I really appreciate that.

Some other landmark buildings that are lost, but most of us remember them.

Of course, the Roberts Stadium, an iconic Roberts Stadium, home to all those great concerts and basketball tournaments.

It's gone.

The old National Bank tower is gone as well.

Yeah.

So these are these are both big these are big parts of my book in terms of when they were built.

You know, Sir Robert Sam was built in the early fifties.

It was a really kind of wonderful moment for the city to get this big civic stadium.

The Harlem Globetrotters came and played.

I think they opening night there, the Aces were playing there.

I think I think it was the second night the Aces played.

And of course, it was a hugely important part of of Evansville as passed as Evansville, University of Evansville professor and a huge part of Aces Aces history.

The move to Division one, the the you know, the ACES team that died in the plane crash.

That's outside of my remit in this book.

I finished in 75, but I think a lot of it was in 77, 77.

A lot of the folks who have talked to me will say that that there was a fundraising game played at the stadium.

Well, it was a memorial service at the stadium, but then also a fundraising game where they were the Pittsburgh Steelers game.

And, you know, a really beautiful, iconic moment.

But the progress, I suppose, you know, it became outdated over time.

And you go to the Ford Center today and that's a beautiful facility.

So, you know, I think sometimes progress has to happen.

And then the old national bank building, you know, is the tallest building for miles around when it was built and a really kind of important part of downtown life, civic life and, you know, parties up on the top of it.

And all of that.

But that was part of the skyline.

Yeah, it sure was.

And you know, what a what an amazing moment that was when it came down and we talked earlier about the preservation efforts to save local treasures, the soldiers and sailors coliseum and their plans to renovate that.

Yeah, I think it's really great.

I mean, the Coliseum has itself so many amazing moments.

Historically, it was a building that kind of went into a certain amount of disrepair.

And again, like we were saying, it could easily have been part of it could easily be in a victim of downtown renewal or road building, but somehow it hung on in there.

And the plans for are, I think, are really exciting.

And, you know, I feel like we've done a really good job with the repurposing and the reusing of of the old courthouse and the old the sheriff's residence and the old jail, the old post office and custom house are just three examples.

And I would say the the the first street, you know, you know, that historic district.

I think our historic preservation office and and officers have done a really great job over the last 40 years of preserving these these houses and that whole neighborhoods in McCurdy Hotel.

Yeah, no calculus here.

McCurdy Old McCurdy Hotel.

Right.

You think of all the all the deals done in there and probably some good and some bad, but just Yeah, an amazing history right there.

So any new books in the works?

Well, I'm sort of taking a very deep breath at the moment, but I don't know.

I mean, I feel like for the part of the story in the end interested me the most was the civil rights stuff and the Vietnam era material.

So my current idea and I'm sort of just tentatively talking with the publisher is maybe an oral history of that period for to try to catch some of these folks who were involved in the movements of that time while they're still around.

You know, Joe Atkinson and I made a film for nine in 2016 about World War Two.

And our biggest regret as we made that film was that the people we were talking to were all in their eighties and nineties and many of them passed really even before the film was aired.

And we kept saying to each other, I wish we'd done this 20 years ago when these folks were all, you know, when there were more of these people and when they were younger.

So I think it would be an awesome project to talk to some of the people who were involved and the civil rights struggle and maybe in both sides of the Vietnam war struggle and maybe even editors of of university newspapers and and get their experiences and their memories.

My my guest is Dr. James MacLeod.

He's professor of history at the University of Evansville.

He's the author of the also the author of The Second Disruption.

And I'm not familiar with that.

What's that all about?

Nobody in the world is there.

That was your first book?

Yeah, it was my and my siblings.

This and see this, they'll be falling off their chairs laughing.

But so my my Ph.D. research was what became that book.

It was a split in the Scottish church that took place in the 1890s.

Real page turner.

no kidding.

Yeah, it's really I it was fun.

I couldn't get the kids to go to when they were little.

I would just read from the second disruption.

But it is funny, you know, how I look back on that now and I read you know I had to read a little piece of it for something in class the other day and and I can barely I can barely remember writing that stuff, and I can barely remember even knowing the stuff I was writing about.

But it was a very you know, my my father was a minister.

And the church that he was in had been formed by that process of the second disruption.

So it was a very big part of our life and identity.

What was the first disruption?

The first disruption took place in 1843 and the main Scottish Protestant church split in two.

So one of the churches that was formed as a result of that then split again 50 years later that second.

Yeah, exactly right.

You know, you know more than most people in the world.

I mean, have to look into that now.

And of course, you also wrote a book about the cartoons of Angels, Karl Cake Connect.

Yeah.

And you even have, I think, one of his cartoons in your book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He the one there's actually two images in the book from him on one is a negative image which was a racist image you know sex but and the other is his depiction of of the the discovery of Evansville I suppose human Gary arriving.

So yeah he was a cartoonist who drew for the Evansville courier from 1906 to 1960.

So a really important part of Evansville life in the 20th century.

I got a chance to meet him.

Did you really?

And really He had a condo on the east side.

He was like his upper eighties or nineties.

Some still drawing had his little visor cap on and everything really very petite.

Yeah.

Very interesting guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was a big character for such a small person.

yeah.

And very he got brought the circus to town.

I mean he brought the elephant to the zoo.

I mean he really started.

Yeah, he was a circus fanatic.

Yeah, the circus.

Interesting fellow.

Really interesting.

Yeah.

So, anyway, so we've got Moby, an oral history in the works.

Hopefully.

I hope so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what I really found interesting with the World War two projects, David, was over the years of presented on that topic so many times and there's always people asking questions and pointing things out and saying, you know, my grandma did this or my grandpa did that.

And so I'm really looking forward to talking about this book with audiences in Evansville and and having that that same experience where people say, you know, maybe they'll there will be people who lived in Lincoln Gardens or people who lived in village sites or, you know, people who were involved with the demolition of the Cook brewery.

And so that's always exciting.

Well, you're always learning something.

always, always.

Did you think of something that you should have had in the book?

Did people remind you of certain things?

Yeah.

I mean, I think my the book could have been twice as long.

I was constantly emailing my my editor and saying, Can I add some more words?

Can I add some more words?

So, you know, yeah, the I think let me think on that one.

well, you got the, you know, all the movie theaters.

You had all these movie theaters in town and they're all gone.

Those neighborhood theaters gorgeously.

I think probably the thing that I would have liked to have done more on, you know, you asked about the movers and shakers and I talked about Frank McDonald out of like I have done a little bit more about the politics of the city.

Sure.

But it's really they could almost be a whole other work.

And I know that our friend Kelly Cooper's is really interested in and Evansville politics and I think is maybe even working on a on a book on Evansville politics.

So, you know, that's a field that I think is really interesting.

But, you know, for for me, I think it was just the image of of these kids going to try to swim and Artie's pool and been turned away because they were blind and the realization that that was reality for people for forever.

But in the 1950s, they didn't settle for that.

And they said, you know, this isn't going to happen.

And Charlie Berger's dad, Sidney Berger, files a lawsuit and three days later, the city rescinds the rules and black kids and white kids are swimming together.

So, you know, to me, these stories are the heart of this book, which are stories about national movements, things that were happening all over the country.

But here in Evansville, as everywhere, it came down to individuals doing heroic things and really changing the world.

So, you know, I feel like people people like Sidney Berger and and people like Solomon Stevenson and Willie Thomas and all of these black heroes of the book are all folks who who did their bit to make the world better.

And as we, you know, look at the news.

There's so many depressing, terrifying stories out there.

And it's easy to be depressed as a historian, of course, But it's also, I think, easy to be encouraged and say, you know, these were just regular people who did amazing things and we could do that, too.

Well, you're talking about what was lost, but also what was found.

Exactly.

Yeah, Kind of a new energy.

Exactly.

You know, I think the sixties, the really the fifties through the seventies was it was a time when people were pushing boundaries and and not accepting the way things were.

And and, you know, for better and worse.

So let's we don't need these old buildings.

Let's destroy them and put up new ones.

You might say that was bad.

We don't like these old rules.

Let's change them and move forward.

And we would probably say that was good.

So it's definitely a mixture and it's a story of loss, but also a story of new creation.

And it's also a story of preservation, the stuff that we managed to keep lost.

Evansville, the latest book by Dr. James MacLeod, A snapshot in time from 1945 to 1975.

Thanks for being my guest, James.

Thank you so much.

I really enjoyed it.

I'm David James and this is two Main Street.