If there was one message Daisy Hood drilled into her eight children in the 1920s and ’30s, it was the importance of contributing to one’s community.
The message was lived by Daisy herself who, despite being crippled from childhood polio, was a well-known community activist and educator in Terre Haute during the days of black and white segregation. Daisy was instrumental in the development of the Charles T. Hyte Community Center, the Colored Day Nursery and the Phyllis Wheatley Home. She also sat on numerous boards, including the Terre Haute branch of the NAACP.
In most of her work, the diminutive (4-foot-11) Daisy involved her children, all of whom would go on to college. Many of her children obtained advanced degrees and all eventually became professionals in the fields of education, psychology and divinity, among others.
Every one of them would become community leaders, including Dharathula “Dolly” Hood Millender, 87, of Gary.
Dolly continues her mother’s legacy in Gary, where she founded the Gary Historical & Cultural Society in 1977, developed free educational and cultural workshops for children, published five books and was inducted into Gary’s “Steel City Hall of Fame” in 2003, among other accomplishments.
The feisty octogenarian says she keeps Daisy’s legacy always in mind.
“My mother taught us to love ourselves, and to have something to contribute,” Dolly said during a recent interview in Gary. “Get some education and just contribute.”
The Hyte Center
In early 2006, when Dolly heard through her Terre Haute connections about upheaval at the Hyte Center, she contacted the Tribune-Star to tell the story of her mother’s efforts to get a community center.
The Charles T. Hyte Community Center, a 65-year-old institution in Terre Haute, in recent years has been the subject of failed negotiations between its former board of directors and the city regarding a lease for the current property. It has lost some funding and programs, and a few weeks ago the president and vice president of the center’s board resigned, leaving the future of the center unresolved.
“This foolishness at the Hyte Center, it grieves me,” Dolly said during a recent interview in Gary. “We walked the streets for that … Mama got that center.”
Dolly was living at home and attending Indiana State University in the late 1930s when her mother made a deal with then-Judge Joseph P. Duffy, who wanted to run for mayor.
“Judge Duffy had asked my mother if she would help him capture the vote of the ‘Negro’ community,” Dolly wrote to the Tribune-Star last February. “Terre Haute had no community center where all sorts of activities could take place.”
So Daisy agreed to help Judge Duffy on the condition that he would give the neighborhood a community center, if he won and if the “Negro” vote made a difference.
“As my mother explained to me,” Dolly wrote, “if a candidate wanted your help in getting votes from your community, you made a deal. You asked for … something for the community, and never any money for yourself …
“If you take money for yourself to work for the candidate,” she explained, “that is all you will get – money for yourself, probably a pittance, and nothing for your community.”
Dolly said she walked the streets of Terre Haute’s black neighborhoods with her mother and her younger brother, Nicholas, asking neighbors to vote for Joseph P. Duffy for mayor so that a community center could be opened.
When Duffy won and it was determined the black vote had made a difference, “he did give our community the first Charles T. Hyte Community Center,” Dolly wrote.
The first center at 1330 Deming St. was dedicated Sept. 13, 1942.
In 1972, the center moved from its original location to a new building at 13th Street and College Avenue, where it sits today.
Dolly Hood: Life in Terre Haute
Dharathula “Dolly” Hood was born Feb. 4, 1920, in Terre Haute, the sixth child of her parents.
“My grandfather was from Calcutta,” she said. Both her aunt and great-aunt were named Dharathula. On her father’s side, Dolly is descended from slaves.
As a slave in Kentucky, Dolly’s grandfather was taught brick-making “so he’d have a skill to use” when slavery ended.
Her grandfather managed a brickyard in Martinsville, where her father, Orestes Hood, was born in 1884. They were the only black family in the town.
Orestes showed an early talent at electrical wiring, and his father sent him to college at Purdue University. After two years of study, Orestes left Purdue so that his sisters could go to college. He became a teacher in East St. Louis, Ill., where he met Daisy Ernestine Eslick. She also was teaching, having graduated from Fisk University.
“Daddy began to wire up houses there for free because people didn’t know about electricity. They were using lamps,” Dolly said. Because he was black, Orestes could not belong to the union, she said.
He lost his teaching job after members of the electrical union complained about his free wiring jobs, Dolly says. For a short while, the family returned to Martinsville, but when Orestes heard about jobs at the steel mill in Gary, he picked up his family and moved there.
In Gary, Orestes taught classes at a night school and worked in the mill. In the city directory, he was listed as a “wireman.”
When he heard about jobs at the Terre Haute Battery Company, Orestes decided to move the family once more for a better job. They lived in a small house on South 14th Street, where Dolly was born.
After he had been in Terre Haute for a while, Orestes had enough money to open his own business, “Hood’s Radio Service,” in the 500 block of Ohio Street.
A radio pioneer in Terre Haute, Orestes built the first crystal set radio in town and set up a radio station in his yard for the children of the neighborhood to broadcast at the very top of the dial to the immediate area, Dolly recalled.
“He got a big old public address box – in those days you could hook it to the top of the dial, before the FCC cut it out – and it would just go on that block. So …” Dolly began to laugh telling the story, “…We’d get out on the front porch – we thought we were really something, and we would sing, and we’d recite poetry and the people at home could hear us over the radio. They thought that was wonderful, and we did, too.”
During the Depression, Dolly said her father had to move his business to the house, where he continued to repair radios.
“I really enjoyed living in Terre Haute when I was coming up,” Dolly said. “Everything centered around the church and the school – whatever else was going on, if there were racial problems, and I’m sure there were – we were so busy, it didn’t get to us.
“I guess our parents didn’t want us to have bad attitudes or something so they never talked about it. My mother didn’t allow us to see it … I’m sure it was there. She didn’t want us to be negative.”
In college, Dolly says, she began to be aware of some racist attitudes. In the 1930s, her older brother, Orestes, made a point of sitting down for lunch in the ISU cafeteria against the rule that black people could not sit to eat there. Eventually, Dolly says, his daily protest caused the university to integrate the lunch room.
Dolly and several of her black classmates in college were denied permission to use the union building to stage events for their organizations. Dolly remembers requesting such permission from the dean of women, Charlotte Burford, to which Burford replied, “Don’t you need someone to recommend you as a worthy graduate?” Dolly says she thanked Burford for her time and went home to cry.
Of her memories of Terre Haute, Dolly says her days at Booker T. Washington School were some of the best. All the children of Washington School in those days considered their principal, Charles T. Hyte, a “second father,” Dolly said.
“He was a wonderful, wonderful man,” she said.
Washington School only went up through the eighth grade, “and when you left there you had to go somewhere,” Dolly said. She and one other black classmate went to Woodrow Wilson Junior High, she said.
“Mr. Hyte and his wife didn’t have any children … he prepared us and taught us how to behave when we were integrated. He would give us lectures about how to operate in the world … who we were going to meet and how we were supposed to act.”
When asked if it was scary to be integrated, Dolly scoffed, saying, “No, not from my house, no. Mama taught us to believe in ourselves, and generally it didn’t bother any of us.”
The Hood children all went to college, and Dolly said going away to school was out of the question. “We couldn’t afford it … and [ISU] was there, and Mama said you can’t get any better education than you can get here.”
Dolly earned her bachelor of science from ISU in 1941.
After Terre Haute
Including Dolly, six Hood children still are living, ranging in age from 82 to 96. Four settled in Gary, one is in Detroit, another in Buffalo, N.Y. Older brother Orestes became a well-respected doctor of psychology in California before his death in 1981.
When asked why members of her family left Terre Haute after growing up here, Dolly said it was her mother’s influence once again.
“My mother told us, ‘Get out of here. Get your education and get out, there is nothing here, it’s a dead end,’” she said.
It wasn’t because of a hostile environment, Dolly said – “It was hostile all over the U.S. in those days” – it was because there were no jobs in Terre Haute, especially for educated young black men and women.
“You had to leave to make a living. Many went to Indianapolis and quite a few went to Gary,” Dolly said.
Though the young Dolly took her mother’s advice, spending much of her adult life on the East Coast before moving to Gary, she said Terre Haute “doesn’t have to be [a dead end].
“It’s a beautiful place … all you have to do is live and let live.”
Dolly met her husband, Justyn L. Millender, in Baltimore when she went to visit her brother. Millender was a printer for a newspaper there. Dolly was a librarian and she wrote children’s books, including biographies of Crispus Attucks, Louis Armstrong and Martin Luther King Jr. She earned her master of science degree from Purdue University in 1967.
Dolly and her husband raised two daughters, Naomi and Justine.
Naomi attended ISU, where she started the campus chapter of the NAACP, Naomi said during a recent interview. Now she lives in Gary, where she is manager and cellist with the Gary Civic Symphony Orchestra. Naomi helps her mother run free Saturday and summer programs through the Gary Historical & Cultural Society.
Dolly explained, “We teach everything: music, art, all kinds of instruments, creative art or drawing, Spanish, math and science, tae kwon do.
“We have lots of community centers around here [in Gary], so the kids go there after school and on Saturdays. Something is going on all the time,” Dolly said.
Dolly continues to attend meetings, speak at events and recently helped with the 100-year celebration of Gary’s founding.
The Legacy of Daisy Hood
Dolly’s two grandchildren, both young adults, have been trained to be community leaders, just like their parents and grandparents before them.
“They’ve been involved in the community all their lives,” Dolly said, adding that when her granddaughter was still an infant, she took her along to community meetings. “The whole time I campaigned [for city council], I took her along.”
Dolly said she returns to Terre Haute from time to time to revisit old friends. She said that on her last trip, a couple of years ago, “I got so excited – I walked so much I took sick afterwards. I was just walking and looking and walking and looking.
“It was a beautiful community,” she said.
Dolly is hopeful that the community center she and her family worked for will once again thrive and serve the needs of Terre Haute.
When asked what she considers her greatest achievements, Dolly said, “Having two children and grandchildren to pass on my legacy – to follow in the footsteps of my mother.”
Deb McKee can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.mckee@tribstar.com.
Black History Month
February 18, 2007
Black History Month: Author of 5 books building legacy across Indiana
- Black History Month
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- Councilman’s plan: Help Terre Haute grow by working with other cities Neil Garrison, city councilman, has implemented a new plan that fosters unity between communities similar to Terre Haute.
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Black History Month: Carter Goodwin Woodson 'Father of Black History'
Carter Goodwin Woodson, a black author, editor, publisher and historian, was born in December 1875 and lived until April 1950. Woodson believed that African-Americans should know about their past in order to cooperate intelligently in the affairs of our country. Strongly he believed that African-American history is a firm foundation for young Black Americans.
He is known as the “Father of Black History” and held an important position in black history in early 20th century American history. - Correction March 16, 2007 The Tribune-Star corrects errors. If you believe we have made an error, contact Editor Max Jones at (812) 231-4336 or e-mail him at max.jones@tribstar.com.
- There’s still a lot to learn When I sat in the first meeting discussing plans for Black History Month, I knew this was going to be a challenge. Although it was mid-January, something told me we would still need more time.
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Capturing history while we can
When the idea for a month-long project on Black History Month was suggested, I was excited and a bit apprehensive.
Being a history buff, the idea of rooting around in archives and yearbooks, and talking to members of older generations really appealed to me. - Persevering over obstacles When I was in school, I remember reading Ralph Elison’s poem “Invisible Man” and not understanding why he thought of himself as “invisible.” But in studying a little about local black history I believe I got a glimpse of what he meant. I think for hundreds of years there was a feeling among the majority of Americans that this land was a white, European nation and black people, native Americans and other non-Europeans were aliens who should be kept out of sight — made “invisible” — by being placed on reservations, deported back to Africa, or legally kept in legally segregated schools or in different neighborhoods.
- Deming students send Black History Month out with musical celebration Black History Month went out in style in Deming Elementary on Wednesday afternoon as students and guests shared, in words and song, some of the lessons of the monthlong celebration.
- Black History Month: Phillis Wheatley Association worked to create dormitory for black women The not-for-profit Phillis Wheatley Association of Terre Haute was incorporated in 1923 to provide a dormitory for black women students of Indiana State Teachers College.
- Black History Month: Color barrier broken in Valley When a man asked Marcella Herndon, 74, if she would be interested in posing for a photo to advertise beer, she was a little skeptical.
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Black History Month: Former resident looks back on his days in Vigo County’s ‘colored orphans home’
James Anderson lived at the “colored orphans home” east of Terre Haute more than 60 years ago, but looking out over the wooded and hilly landscape where he spent much of his childhood, it “almost seems like yesterday,” he said.
- Black History Month: Evangeline Merriweather heads toward historic marker Although Evangeline Evelyn Harris Merriweather was widely known in Vigo County as a teacher, writer and musician, it was her writing that likely will earn her a historical marker.
- Black History Month: Terre Haute barber Edward James Roye became fifth president of Liberia The man who became the fifth president of Liberia, Edward James Roye, once was known to have the largest barber pole in the Midwest, about 79 feet tall.
- Teacher, Democratic committeewoman still influencing city council Theresa Turner served in Terre Haute as a Democratic precinct committeewoman for almost 60 years, longer than anyone else in the city’s history, according to her family.
- Bell, renowned veterinarian, spent 20 years on Vigo County School Board Iverson C. Bell was called “one of the most contributing members of our community” by the late Mayor P. Pete Chalos in 1984.
- Terre Haute formed first black fire station in September 1891 The first all-black fire company in Terre Haute was organized Sept. 10, 1891, in old hose company No. 1 at Lafayette Avenue and Sycamore Street, according to Fire Department historian Tom Champion.
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Black History Month: Valley resident became college dean, ambassador
Ambassador Cynthia Norton Shepard Perry, now U.S. director of the African Development Bank in Ivory Coast, was born in Lost Creek township in 1928, one of nine children.
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Black History Month: Author of 5 books building legacy across Indiana
If there was one message Daisy Hood drilled into her eight children in the 1920s and ’30s, it was the importance of contributing to one’s community.
The message was lived by Daisy herself who, despite being crippled from childhood polio, was a well-known community activist and educator in Terre Haute during the days of black and white segregation. Daisy was instrumental in the development of the Charles T. Hyte Community Center, the Colored Day Nursery and the Phyllis Wheatley Home. She also sat on numerous boards, including the Terre Haute branch of the NAACP. -
Black History Month: Terre Haute native leads one of Navy’s most successful athletic programs
Paul Harris learned two lessons in one moment.
First, coasting is not an option while wearing a U.S. Naval Academy track-and-field uniform. Second, his coach — Stephen Cooksey — is quite comfortable standing out in a crowd. - Black History Month: Emancipation Proclamation once celebrated in Terre Haute Terre Haute’s black citizens used to celebrate the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation every Sept. 22 with a day off from work and school.
- Black History Month: Jenkins, scholar-athlete at Wiley, became Morgan State University president Martin Jenkins, who has been called a “forgotten pioneer” in the study of intellectually gifted black Americans, was born and raised in Terre Haute, where he was an outstanding scholar and athlete at Wiley High School.
- Black History Month: Colored Day Nursery provided care for black kids From 1908 to 1966, the Colored Day Nursery in Terre Haute provided care and meals to black children whose parents worked. The nursery was organized by a group of mothers to “serve the colored working mothers of the neighborhood,” according to the book “The Negro in the History of Indiana” by John Lyda.
- African Global Night set for Feb. 24 at ISU On Feb. 24, the African Students Union together with other departments within and outside Indiana State University will sponsor African Global Night to celebrate Black History Month.
- Black History Month: Mother Bettie is a TH living legend Bettie Eleanor Davis, 85, is a Terre Haute native whose love of young people and interest in sharing the history of her people have made her a local treasure. Davis, also known as Mother Bettie, is a volunteer and activist who has been researching and telling the history of black people in Terre Haute for more than a decade.
- Clarification: Feb. 13, 2007 The Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation began meeting in a local home in 1837, prior to the construction of the first church at First and Crawford streets in 1839. The church was referenced in a Monday Tribune-Star article on the Underground Railroad.
- Black History Month: Wood craftsman spent his life in Terre Haute making violins It is difficult to imagine what tools he might have had access to, what kind of a workshop he may have had and how he learned to create one of the most intricate musical instruments in the world.
- Black History Month: Terre Haute native was influential U.S. pilot Willa Beatrice Brown left Terre Haute at age 21 and eventually became one of the most influential aviators in U.S. history.
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Black History Month: Valley’s role on Underground Railroad still being revealed
In a day when skin color differentiated the masters from the slaves, many people took a chance by putting their lives in the hands of strangers, traveling hundreds of miles north through the Wabash Valley in search of freedom.
More information about Vigo County’s role in that system comes to light each day, but because of the extreme secrecy of the Underground Railroad, it’s unsure if its entire, storied history ever will be revealed. - Black History Month: Demetrius ‘Dee’ Ewing broke business barriers in Terre Haute Born on Halloween 1909 in Clarksville, Tenn., Demetrius “Dee” Ewing would eventually become the first black businessman to own a store on Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute.
- Black History Month: ‘Doc’ Jones helped pave way in Valley, was a ‘pillar of the black community’ Winton D. “Doc” Jones was a pharmacist and businessman with a shop at 13th Street and College Avenue in Terre Haute for more than 50 years.
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Black History Month: Indiana’s first black legislator attended Allen Chapel school
James S. Hinton, Indiana’s first black state legislator, was one of the earliest students at the original Allen Chapel school in Terre Haute.
The Allen Chapel school was a “subscription school,” meaning parents paid for their children to attend. The fee at the school was 25 cents per week, according to a publication by the Allen Chapel. - More Black History Month Headlines
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