Odie Mae Streets, on passing in the early 20th century

South Bend's Own Words

A 1931 graduate of South Bend’s Central High School talks about her experiences growing up in a resort town of Kentucky, and the discrimination she experienced as a white-passing African American woman both in the south and in South Bend.

Odie Mae Johnson Streets was born in Chicago before moving with her family to Dawson Springs, Kentucky. In the 1920s, she moved to South Bend both so her father could find work at Studebaker and so she could go to school beyond the sixth grade—a common end point in formal education provided to most Black students in Dawson Springs.

In 1996, Odie Mae sat down with her niece to record her life’s story. She spoke about growing up in Kentucky and Indiana, challenging racial discrimination at Central High School by joining the swim team, seeing South Bend’s Birdsell Street evolve into a multi-racial neighborhood, and how her four children lived their own lives in South Bend and beyond.

This episode was produced by Nathalie Villalobos and by George Garner from the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center.

Full transcript of this episode available here.

Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/.

Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/.