Return to: Back in the Day - Indiana's Black History

Indiana's history is her career, passion

Archivist ensures Hoosiers have works that teach them about their past.
By CELESTE WILLIAMS
Published: February 15, 2001

As a child, Wilma Gibbs would walk from her Near-Westside home to Central Library Downtown, where she communed with her favorite authors among the towering stacks. It was for her a temple -- where her library card was the offering, and the books, the blessing.

For Gibbs, the gift was more than words printed on pages. It was the catalyst that would open her eyes to the history of her community.

Now as program archivist for African-American history at the Indiana Historical Society, Gibbs helps fellow Hoosiers read about their past, so they will be better prepared for the future.

"To me this job is so fascinating," she said. "When you are in the business of history, nothing is foreign. You can connect everything."

Her sense of history grew out of the relationship with her family, her community and with the written word.

"I grew up with an acute awareness of what was going on around me," said Gibbs, 49, an Indiana University graduate.

"I had a fascination with books," Gibbs said while seated in her Downtown office. "I read a lot. I read a lot."

That loyalty extended to history. Young Wilma savored not only the past, but recognized the present as history in the making.

"I had a fascination with history," she said. "I would watch things going on and think about growing up." As a teen-ager, that meant watch ing seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement; the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers; escalation in Vietnam.

And the girl who would graduate from a school within walking distance of her home at 14th and Missouri -- segregated, all-black Crispus Attucks High School -- became proud of the accomplishments of her people and thirsted for more.

"I got this idea I was going to go to Spelman. (Spelman College in Atlanta is a historically black liberal arts college for women.) I did actually apply and got accepted," Gibbs said.

"But I just didn't have the courage to go that far away from home."

Home. Indianapolis, Indiana. The place her ancestors settled (she found a grandfather's name in the 1880 census), where she and each of her six siblings was born.

"When I think of my own life, I think about my mom and dad," said Gibbs, named a feminine version of "William" to honor her father.

William Gibbs, a plasterer by trade -- a skill handed down from his father and his father's father -- always worked more than one job to provide for the family. He worked as a laborer at a meat packing plant, then in maintenance at Methodist Hospital after the plant closed in the 1960s. Gibbs recalls that her father, now 77, always owned a truck, so he could do hauling and other odd-jobs on the side.

Her mother, Tessie, 70, cooked at a Downtown cafeteria, then for the Veterans Affairs hospital.

Although Gibbs' parents did not have the opportunity to go to college, they expected high attainment from their children.

"Even before I was in kindergarten, I remember my mother made it very clear she expected us to go to college," Gibbs said. "Very clear."

Just as the parents expected their children to make history, they expected them to observe as it unfolded in their own lives. "I can remember staying up with my mom and watching the presidential election returns. I just had a great thirst.

"I remember sitting there with my dad when Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech. . . . I remember watching my dad as he watched (King), on the TV, and seeing his eyes well up, and seeing the wonderment with which he looked at him."

By that time, Gibbs had graduated from reading juvenile literature to titles such as Malcolm X Speaks, Black Boy, and Native Son, by Richard Wright. And she started writing letters of social commentary to the editor of The Indianapolis Times.

Even though Gibbs grew up in an era of so-called "colored" schools, still, she seized with both hands the opportunities at Attucks, where her father graduated in 1942.

"You had individuals (teachers) who were terribly interested in your success," she said, "because to a large extent, they felt like your success was their success."

That schooling and her parents' encouragement brought Gibbs a certainty about the future. She still has a palpable self-assurance, manifest in her direct gaze and neat-as-a-pin office. "I knew in kindergarten that I was going to college," she said.

Gibbs graduated from Attucks in 1969. She enrolled at Indiana University, majoring in sociology. After getting her bachelor's degree in 1973, she stayed on and earned a master's degree in library science the following year.

"I didn't grow up thinking, 'I want to be a librarian,' " Gibbs said. But her natural curiosity would not be ignored.

She worked more than a dozen years as a librarian -- for Indiana University in Bloomington and for the Indianapolis-Marion County Library. Since 1986, Gibbs has nurtured the Historical Society's African-American collection.

"Where there's historical distance, it is especially exciting," Gibbs said, explaining: "When I go back, I think about learning about people like Madame (C.J.) Walker or W.E.B. DuBois. . . .You touch something you know that they handled. Man, that's terribly exciting."

Gibbs' co-workers can't help but notice her enthusiasm.

"She's very passionate," said Trina Nelson Thomas, director of educational and public programming for the Historical Society. "She is passionate about the history of this area because she is part of it, but it goes beyond that. Wilma is willing to make that information accessible.

"Plus, she loves what she does."

Gibbs' daughter Johari Miller, 29, is an IU-trained physician; daughter Jamila Miller, 23, is a Georgetown University graduate who studied international relations and Russian.

Gibbs, who is divorced, said she hopes that she imparted the same wisdom to her children that her own parents gave.

With all she knows about history, she worries about the future. "With all that we have now," she mused, "shouldn't literacy rates be a lot better than they are? With all that we have now, shouldn't life be easier? Shouldn't the world be a better place?"

Gibbs wonders how the future will interpret today's history. She is in the ideal spot to continue having her insatiable hunger fed. "I could be here forever and never know everything," she said with a smile.

"When you're archiving an area you are familiar with, there's always that possibility you are going to 'connect' simply because it is a part of your past. It's so up close and personal.

"Because this is my home. This is my hometown."

Return to: Back in the Day - Indiana's Black History