The political history of Evansville Indiana from 1870 to the 1950s goes much deeper than election results and names of winners. For over one hundred years, the African American population was subjected to a political force that not only prevented social and economic progress in the river city but was also monetized into a monolithic voting block that rewarded political bosses and their patronage. There was little return on the voting investment to minority voters themselves. Poverty, housing instability, and lack of progress in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to impact the economic and social stability in 2025. This book explores behind the voting curtain and tries to illuminate the political sphere that made decisions in Evansville for nearly one hundred years and how actions taken long ago reach us today.
Names like Fred Ossenberg, Ben Bartlett, Herbert Males, Ernest Tidrington, Joseph Huffington, and Manson Reichert reach out from the past and help tell the story of how the old political machines were built and maintained over the years. From segregated schools to Jim Crow hotels and nightclubs, the political bosses that preached morality and reform were the same men who profited from vice and conspired to hide it from the everyday citizen in a city that was once labeled as Little Chicago.
