Telling Hoosier Stories: Promised Lands and Proving Grounds

Abstract

Originally a living history museum celebrating Indiana’s homogeneous pioneer past, Conner Prairie began in the late 1990s to tell a more complicated story, one that included the expulsion of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. With the new “Promised Land as Proving Ground” exhibit, scheduled to open in 2023, Conner Prairie will even more radically enlarge its subject matter, examining the lives that free persons of color voluntarily built in a state with an antagonistic white majority. Curatorial Director Charlene Fletcher, who designed the new exhibit from the ground up, described in an interview with David A. Nichols the layout, media components, and modern community partners of “Promised Land.” Dr. Fletcher also explained the exhibit’s goals: to introduce visitors to antebellum Black Hoosiers, who were some of central Indiana’s pioneer settlers (and the ancestors of future Black professionals), and to remind audiences of modern Hoosiers’ ongoing struggle for inclusion and equity.