Will Higgins

will.higgins@indystar.com

It's hard to say how many people pause to read historic markers, but there's a new one whose story is most unusual both for its violence and its sense of justice.

The new marker indicates that in Indianapolis, as far back as 1836, at least one black life mattered.

In March of that year, James Overall, who was black, shot and wounded a white man known to history only as Allensworth. Allensworth and at least one other white man, possibly more, had armed themselves and were trying to break into Overall's house. One of the would-be intruders, David Leach, "threatened to kill and murder said Overall and his family."

That, from Overall's affidavit, was enough to put Leach in jail, signaling a rare legal victory for an early 19th century African American. "Despite an 1831 Indiana law that barred black testimony against whites in court, (Overall) sought legal protection from further attack," according to the marker. "Though blacks had few legal rights, a judge affirmed Overall’s 'natural' right to defend his family and property."

The marker, to be unveiled at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, is on West Street, just south of the Indiana Avenue intersection, near where Overall's house stood.

The mid-19th century social justice Overall enjoyed turned out to be fleeting. Leach's incarceration was brief, and Overall, for reasons unknown, declined to press charges against him.

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More broadly, in 1851, the people of Indiana revised the state constitution and made it so that blacks could no longer settle here.

But in 1836, Overall, a "free person of color" since at least 1820, according to the census, was a respected man of means. He owned several properties in Indianapolis and 164 acres in Hamilton County. He was a trustee of Indianapolis' first black church, an African Methodist Episcopal Church.

It was, however, Overall's work helping escaped slaves to freedom that brought him to the attention of modern historians. One escaped slave he helped was Jermain Loguen, who would pay the favor forward. Loguen eventually reached New York, where he became a prominent abolitionist and preacher and helped organize that state's Underground Railroad.

In his autobiography, "The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life," Loguen described Overall as having "a large character and acquaintance among colored people, and was much respected by white ones."

One "white one" who respected Overall was Thomas Atherton Hendrickson, an intensely curious, Yale-educated attorney with wide-ranging interests born in Indianapolis 82 years after Overall's death. Hendrickson practiced law in the city from 1954 until last year.

While reading Loguen's book, Hendrickson ran across a brief mention of Overall. Hendrickson began exhaustively researching the all-but-lost-to-history Hoosier. In the 1980s he wrote several articles about Overall for the Indiana Historical Society. In 2005 he petitioned the Indiana Historical Bureau to erect an historic marker commemorating Overall.

But during the ensuing negotiation, he clashed with the bureau over the marker's wording. He wanted the Leach bunch characterized as a "white mob," while the bureau wanted it listed as a "white gang."

Precisely what happened at Overall's house on that night 180 years ago isn't clear. According to Overall's affidavit, his attackers consisted of Leach "in company with diverse other persons unknown to him."

To Hendrickson that meant a mob.

But the historical bureau held that the attack was carried out by "about two or three men," said Dani Pfaff, a bureau researcher, and to call that a mob would be misleading. "'Mob' sounds big," Pfaff said, "and there were mobs of white men attacking black settlements in Cincinnati and New Albany, mobs of 50 or 60 people ransacking a neighborhood. This was not that."

Neither Hendrickson nor the bureau would budge. Nine years later, in 2014, with Indiana's bicentennial approaching, Maxine Brown, a historian who specializes in African-American Indiana history and friend of Hendrickson's, took over the project.

"I think it's a really important story to Indianapolis history," Brown said. "Tom was the first person who really delved into it. Tom said to me after I resurrected (the project) that he was grateful, even despite the wording. He said, 'I'm hotheaded. I shouldn't have been so difficult.' "

Brown bowed to the historical bureau's view that Overall's attackers constituted a gang instead of a mob, and she raised the $2,200 necessary for the marker from the Society of Indiana Pioneers, a group devoted to preserving state history.

It'll be dedicated at 3:30 p.m. Thursday inside Madame Walker Theatre, 617 Indiana Ave., with several short speeches, including one by Hendrickson's son, Thomas S. Hendrickson. Thomas A. Hendrickson, who a year ago suffered a debilitating stroke, died last month at age 89.

Call IndyStar reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter: @WillRHiggins.