Everybody knew that every week, it was another black student's turn.
Phyllis Bartleson knew one day the teacher at Muncie Central High School would choose her. It would mean that, for the week, the teacher would pick on her and only her.
When Bartleson's turn finally came, she decided not to take it.
"I rebelled," Bartleson said. "I picked up my books and I left the class."
She and her mother were called to the principal's office. When Bartleson explained herself -- telling the principal about the teacher's discrimination -- the principal called the teacher to the office and asked Bartleson to repeat what she had told him.
The teacher tried to deny it, but Bartleson wouldn't let her. Week by week, Bartleson named the children who had found themselves in the teacher's line of fire.
When Bartleson finished, the teacher sat stunned. Apparently the only person who didn't know what the teacher was doing was the teacher herself. She apologized, and from that point on, Bartleson was the teacher's pet.
That day was a point of revelation not only for the teacher, but also for Bartleson, now the director of Muncie's Human Rights Commission. That was the time when Bartleson realized that all the bullies, all those big kids that had picked on her and her friends over the years, weren't just picking on her because she was smaller, but because she was black.
That was in the early '60s, almost 30 years after the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Muncie had come a long way. The civil rights leader had been born at the end of the decade known to Muncie's black population today as "The Klan Years." But when Bartleson was in high school, the Civil Rights Movement, led by King, was raging across America, and Muncie was not left behind. Now, another 40 years later, Muncie has improved, but not enough to satisfy citizens like Bartleson.
"I'm kind of an impatient person," Bartleson said. "How long does it take?"
Of course, back in those days, Bartleson said she never would have thought Muncie would come as far as it has. In reality, the history of Muncie's black population has been one of an uphill battle, of a community that, like the black community today, never stayed satisfied, and was never afraid to fight to be treated as equals.
'THE KLAN YEARS'
When the Ku Klux Klan revived itself in the 1920s, Muncie had one of the largest Klaverns in the state and possibly the nation.
"A lot of this was being pushed by science and popular ideas about race," Eric Lassiter, a professor of anthropology said.
Michael Doyle, a professor of history, said as many as one-third of Muncie's eligible white men were due-paying members of the Klan by the mid-1920s. Many were reportedly prominent members of the community, including Mayor John Quick, chief of police Van Benbow and Republican City Councilman Frank Barclay.
Much of what is known today about the Muncie Klavern comes from reports in the Muncie Post-Democrat. The editor of the Post-Democrat, George R. Dale, fought the Klan vigorously in the pages of his newspaper. In response, he was attacked, his family was threatened and he was placed in jail. Later, though, as the Klan's rein was ending, he gave it a fatal blow when Muncie's citizens elected him mayor.
But there is a lot that isn't known about the '20s, including exactly how the Klan took hold in Muncie.
"The '20s are so really bizarre," Doyle said. "It's just hard to figure things out."
Muncie's black community had rid themselves of an enemy, but much more work lay ahead. In "A History of Negroes in Muncie," Hurley Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell talk of little tangible progress made on the topic of race relations in Muncie in the '30s and '40s.
The one exception was World War II. As white men left to fight in the war, black men had a new opportunity.
"A lot of African-American men were able to fill jobs normally reserved for white men," Lassiter said.
But white men weren't the only ones who went to Europe to fight. The black community sent soldiers too, and they soon realized that their men were fighting to give the people of Europe the freedoms they did not enjoy themselves.
"Negroes were literally having to fight for democracy on two fronts," Goodall and Mitchell wrote in their book.
Blacks in Muncie gained slightly more ground in the '40s thanks to World War II, but attitudes were changing, and the community was gearing up for the tumultuous times that came with the Civil Rights Movement.
'FIGHTING FOR EQUALITY
Martin Luther King Jr. finally emerged on the national scene in the fifties, inspiring black communities everywhere, including in Muncie, to fight for equal treatment.
One of the first scenes of racial struggle in the '50s mentioned in Goodall and Mitchell's book was at Tuhey Pool, a public pool which had an unwritten segregation policy. In 1953, the black community called for a safe swimming facility, and in 1954 it received it.
But the second pool was only satisfactory for two years until black leaders began to fight for the desegregation of Tuhey Pool, beginning discussions with Muncie Mayor H. Arthur Tuhey -- a descendant of the man for which Tuhey Pool was named.
The discussions failed. But in 1956, three black children decided to defy the unwritten policy. They went to Tuhey Pool, paid their admission fee and became the first blacks to swim there. They swam for an hour without being attacked, but white children yelled at them from behind the fence.
The next serious event in the racial struggle came 10 years later, in 1967. Six students from Southside High School met with the Chairman of the Education Committee of the Muncie Human Rights Commission to discuss the exclusion of black students from Southside's after-school activities. Students later met with Southside's administration about the same matter.
The meetings did not go well, and racial fighting broke out at Southside. Some students were hospitalized and a police officer suffered a broken arm.
After the fights, Muncie's Human Rights Commission offered several solutions, but none seemed to deal with the problem. Fighting broke out again. Several students were seriously hurt.
The black community decided to boycott the community schools until a solution was reached. The boycott lasted three days. Indiana's Civil Rights Commission conducted a hearing soon after on practices of Muncie's schools. The commission pointed out, among other things, that there were feelings of serious racial discrimination at the school, that the school's use of Confederate symbols -- the school mascot is the Rebels -- was distasteful and the school lacked any black teachers or administrators.
While all of this was going on, another community school issue began to concern the black community. The school board was planning on constructing a third high school in northwest Muncie. This new school would mean boundary lines would have to change, sending most white students to the new school and most black students to the run-down Muncie Central High School.
The black community saw this as an attempt to segregate the schools and took action. The Whitely Community Council and Muncie's chapter of the NAACP joined forces to create a proposal to stop the new high school from being built and for the construction of a new Muncie Central High School on the grounds of the old Minnetrista Golf Course.
The school board decided to build both schools. A lawsuit was filed to stop the construction of the new high school, Northside, but the judge ruled against the plaintiffs.
TODAY AND BEYOND
Muncie's black community rose up again last summer to begin a debate that might lead to further advances for blacks in Muncie.
Many in the community opposed a proposal to rename Broadway Avenue after Martin Luther King Jr. when it came to a vote in June. Business owners on Broadway Avenue complained that they would lose money if the address was changed.
Muncie's City Council voted the proposal down 7-2 on June 2, but that wasn't the end. On Aug. 9, supporters of the proposal lined Broadway Avenue to show their support. Later that month, the Department of Justice decided to send a mediator to Muncie to help with the dispute.
In December, the mediation ended. City leaders agreed to propose the renaming again this year. Other steps are in the works to increase opportunities for Muncie's black community.
But, as Bartleson said, the fight is not over. Ed McNeary, the past president of Muncie's NAACP, said Muncie has yet to become a place where people are not judged by the color of their skin.
"You still can go into a department store and you are observed more than a person who isn't African-American," McNeary said.
Many black youths today leave Muncie to pursue opportunities elsewhere because of the current state of race relations, McNeary said, something that could be very detrimental to the battle the black community continues to fight.
"Unless we can make the progress that we should make, this will continue to happen," McNeary said.
Bartleson sees hope. A member of the city's mediation team told her during the Broadway Avenue controversy that the entire issue had been an eye-opener for him. The team member told her he just hadn't understood the stance of Muncie's black community until he saw it through from the perspective of what it had already gone through.
"That's what happens with race relations," Bartleson said. "We operate on what we know, which is sometimes either erroneous or false. We don't even stop to think about how this is affecting another person."
That's what she said happened with her teacher in high school. The teacher, like the member of the city's team, did not understand what she had been doing until someone like Bartleson laid it out for her.
"We have to educate people," Bartleson said. "I think we're making good progress.
"I think, overall, that one day we're going to get there."
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