African American Organizations Receive Grants
The institute is one of eleven sites receiving restoration funding.
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSites across Indiana significant to the state’s African American history are receiving help through two funds established by late Eli Lilly and Co. chemist Standiford “Stan” Cox. Eleven sites will receive a total of $190,000 from the two funds, with the Central Indiana Community Foundation supporting the sites in various ways.
Stan Cox was born in Brazil, Ind., graduated from Indiana University and was hired by Eli Lilly and Co. in 1957 as its first Black chemist. He passed away in 2019 after establishing the funds to preserve the state’s African American history.
The Standiford H. Cox Fund supports the restoration, preservation, operation, and maintenance of African American historic sites in Indiana. Cox also established The Dovie Stewart Cox & Chester A. Cox, Sr. Memorial Fund in honor of his parents to support Lost Creek Community Grove at the Lost Creek Settlement near Terre Haute, one of the state’s earliest settlements of free people of color.
“Partnering with Indiana Landmarks allows us to honor Stan’s legacy by caring for sites that are important to our state’s African American history,” said Tamara Winfrey-Harris, vice president of community leadership and effective philanthropy at CICF.
The eleven sites receiving funding include:
- Fox Lake Preservation Foundation, Steuben County: $15,000 for rehabilitation of the K.T. Thompson Lodge, which served as clubhouse for the Fox Lake segregated resort community established in 1927.
- Friends of the Town Clock Church Inc., New Albany: $7,500 to restore a gasolier light fixture that once served as the centerpiece of the sanctuary in the 1852 building.
- Historic Eleutherian College Inc., Lancaster: $15,000 for the first phase of a plaster wall and ceiling restoration project at the 1855 Greek Revival building.
- Leora Brown School Inc., Corydon: $10,000 for repairs and rehabilitation to the building constructed in 1891 as the Corydon Colored School.
- Lyles Station Historic Preservation Corp. Inc.: $25,000 to continue rehabilitation of the Joseph Lucas Home for use as an interpretive center.
- Roberts Chapel Homecoming and Burial Association Inc., Atlanta: $10,000 to repair water-damaged plaster in the 1858 church and restore damaged nineteenth-century tombstones in the adjacent cemetery.
- Shaffer Chapel A.M.E. Church, Muncie: $12,500 for restoration of stained-glass windows in the circa 1893 building.
- Southeastern District Association, Inc., New Albany: $15,000 for the construction of two canopies to shelter entrances at the First Baptist Church in West Baden Springs, an early twentieth-century church originally built as a place of worship for African American staff of the West Baden Springs Hotel.
- Union Literary Institute Preservation Society, Randolph County: $40,000 for critical stabilization of the 1860 building that housed one of the first pre-Civil War schools to offer higher education without regard to color or gender.
- Washington Street Church of God, Gary: $25,000 for roof repairs and stabilization for the 1928 Campbell Friendship House.
- Wayman Chapel A.M.E. Church, Gibson County: $15,000 for critical repairs to the foundation and sanctuary ceiling of the 1887 church.