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>> ASHLEY: Coming up... >> BRANDON: Race to the finish with a cycling legend.

>> ASHLEY: Walk in the footsteps of the Hoosier president.

>> BRANDON: And learn about the future of African American history in Evansville.

>> ASHLEY: That's on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Chilla.

And we're coming to you from Grouseland in Vincennes.

Built in the early 1800s, Grouseland is the former home of William Henry Harrison, who at the time, was the Territorial Governor of the Indiana Territories.

However, he may be best known as shortest serving president of the United States.

He died only 31 days into his presidency.

And there's so much more to explore at this historic home.

>> BRANDON: But first, we're bringing you a preview of WTIU's latest documentary "Major Taylor: Champion of the Race."

Through a mix of talent and sheer determination, Indianapolis native Major Taylor became one of cycling's greatest stars at the turn of the 20th century, but pedaling to the top of the racing world as a Black American in the Jim Crow era was anything but easy.

Producer Todd Gould brings us his story.

♪ >> It was super dangerous on the track because if there was any kind of a mechanical malfunction and a crash, there could be serious, serious injury or fatality.

>> At more than 40 miles an hour, the world's top cyclists would push each other at top speed.

This during a time in which cycles were often heavy and difficult to control, and riders never wore a helmet or protection of any kind.

>> Major Taylor later said that at least 11 of his competitors died during cycling races.

He himself was knocked unconscious, had many terrible crashes.

>> For Major Taylor, the threats were constant.

Competitors elbowed him, bumped him from the track, and once a spectator poured a pail of ice water over his head as he passed by.

One athlete, William Becker, grew so incensed after a race, that he came up behind Taylor and choked him into what Taylor called, quote, a state of insensibility.

>> Track racing is controlled chaos.

You have to leave the saddle, rock the bike from side to side.

The bicycle is more or less a weapon at this point, and your job is to chase down everybody in front of you, if you are gonna win that race.

>> For Major Taylor, to also combat racism at that time, competitors that didn't want to race with him or were boxing him out.

People that are pioneers, they have to welcome that pressure, I think.

>> White people wanted white athletes to be the stars, generally speaking.

So when a black athlete dominated the sport the way Major Taylor did, it was going to be clear that some of those white people would be trying to find the next white champion to replace him.

>> Taylor's challengers included Frank Kramer, once called "The New Jersey Nightmare" because of the intensity with which he attacked his opponents on the track.

He often hurled racial epithets at Taylor in the press.

There was Ivor Lawson, "The Big Swede" who once intentionally bumped Taylor into the infield and caused such terrible injuries that Taylor was forced into a hospital bed for weeks.

And then there was Floyd McFarland, "The Human Engine," a West Coast champion from San Jose.

>> McFarland was a big, bruiser of a guy, and McFarland was determined.

He would not stop at anything.

He was not going to be beat by a Black man.

When racing head-to-head, wins by Taylor would send McFarland into a rage!

>> Major Taylor had the determination to win, Floyd McFarland had the determination to not allow and to hinder Major Taylor from winning.

...that might bring about my failure to win the championship laurels.

>> Major Taylor would have been racing and training and traveling under a system of segregation.

This would cause him many challenges, challenges of where could he stay when he was going to races, how would he be able to train?

And all of those things were things that he had to consider.

>> Well, this is a very dangerous time to be a progeny of enslaved Africans in this country, to be a performer in a completely white theater was a daunting period.

>> Not only did Taylor endure the racial turbulence, somehow he thrived in it.

>> It was a turning point for Major Taylor, and he said, I'm not going to try to compete as anything other than what I am, and I'm gonna let the color of my skin be my fortune, my race is my fortune.

♪ >> Major Taylor had an explosive sprint.

He could wait in the back of the pack for his moment and then find an opening and jump!

>> He was extremely quick, and he could sit right on the wheel in front of him, inches from the wheel.

>> Above all, he had an incredible ability to burst into speed and win down the stretch, and that became really his trademark.

...then timing my jump perfectly.

I would suddenly hop through, leaving my rivals in the lurch.

♪ >> Often in direct defiance of promoters' bans, bogus fines and opponents' threats, Major Taylor continued to win races all over the United States.

In more than 12 years of competition, he set 22 world records and then went out and broke his own records another four times more.

He soon garnered more prize money than any other athlete at the turn of the 20th century.

♪ >> You look at the guy, and you say, he made $20,000 a year, $50,000 a year.

That doesn't seem that much to people today.

But we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

He made someplace between maybe $2 million, $3.5 million during his career.

That's -- that's a lot of money.

>> Major Taylor starts getting headlines, nicknames, The Worcester Whirlwind, The Black Comet, The Black Cyclone.

People just loved to see how fast he can go.

No matter whether they were rooting for the Black man to defeat the white man or whether they wanted to see white supremacy upheld, they wanted to see it.

>> ASHLEY: It is so important that we are highlighting somebody in sports who maybe we haven't heard of before.

I certainly know that I had never heard of Major Taylor before, and I'm excited to see what our -- what our producer Todd Gould has put together.

>> BRANDON: Mm-hmm.

Want to learn more?

You can get links to the full documentary at the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: Earlier, we spoke with Lisa Ice-Jones, the executive director here at Grouseland to learn all about this amazing place.

>> William Henry Harrison is probably best known as the shortest serving president of the United States.

He died of pneumonia in March of 1841, only 31 days into his term.

However, he had a long and notable career, which could be traced back to this sturdy mansion here on the banks of the Wabash River in Vincennes >> Grouseland is a national historic site, a presidential home of William Henry Harrison, and it was the house he built when he came here to be the first governor of the Indiana Territory.

He came here as the governor at the age of 27.

And by the time he's 40, he's a general for the Army of the Northwest during the War of 1812.

It was called Grouseland because grouse were abundant here in the area when he came.

Spent $20,000 of his own money to build it.

All of the architecture is hand carved.

A lot of it is original to the house.

He wanted the house to be a beacon of everything familiar from the East for the people, so that they would know it was the American government.

He brought federal architecture to the undeveloped territory, and he also built it like a fortress.

So the design of the house has fortress features incorporated for people's protection.

The windows here, some of them are 10-foot high.

They had exterior shutters, an inch and a half solid black walnut, said to stop a musket ball, but we have a musket ball hole in one of the interior shutters in the dining room.

And the legend is that an angry Native American tries to assassinate Harrison as he's standing in the dining room walking in front of the fireplace holding his infant son John Scott.

We know that something came through that shutter, about the size of a musket ball, and we have a musket ball that's reportedly the musket ball that came through the house that hit the wall and ricocheted and landed.

When the American settlers started coming here, they kept expanding further and further into native lands, and it made the Native Americans angry because this was their hunting grounds.

This was their means of survival.

Many of them recognized what was happening from the development that had happened out East.

Many of the tribes had been shoved this way because of that.

And so they're making random attacks on American settlers.

Tecumseh at one point told Harrison, if you continue to allow settlers and surveyors into native lands, you are going to provoke a war, and that is the Battle of Tippecanoe.

The Battle of Tippecanoe occurred while Harrison lived here at Grouseland.

He mustered troops here on the Wabash, about 950 men.

The losses were pretty equal on both sides, and the Americans ultimately win that battle which incentivized the campaign slogan 29 years later, Tippecanoe and Tyler too.

The house is an authentic build from the period.

Everything that's been restored on the interior, the wallpapers, the carpeting and the floor cloths, all period.

We've had some of the best experts in the country advise us after we did a comprehensive and extensive historic house study.

So we called upon the best experts that we could find to advise us on how we needed to update the house and restore it to the way it would have been when Harrison lived here.

We have original furnishings in the dining room in the council chamber, upstairs in Harrison's bedroom, and then pieces here and there throughout the house.

Lots of official documents.

A collection of presidential signatures of all U.S. Presidents on various historical documents, documents from the time he was here in the Indiana territories.

So it's very interesting.

He's -- he's a really diverse person.

So with the military history, coming from a founding family, all of that combined provides a really varied and interesting story for the visitors, not only about him and his presidency, and his career but also about the early expansion of the country.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to Grouseland.org.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Nick Deel takes us to Marion County to explore the home of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, and William Henry Harrison's grandson.

♪ >> In the 200 plus years since Indiana's statehood, Benjamin Harrison is the only Hoosier to ascend to the American presidency.

And fortunately for us, his memory and legacy are preserved right here in Indianapolis.

>> The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is a museum that's dedicated to the life and legacy of the 23rd President of the United States.

So we're situated on about two and a half acres.

And the house itself is a 10,000 square foot Italianate brick home that was built by Benjamin Harrison and his wife Caroline Harrison started in 1874.

They completed it in 1875.

When Benjamin Harrison built this house, he was a prominent attorney here in Indianapolis.

He was known at a statewide level because he was well-respected as an orator and had increasingly prominent roles through his political interests and interacting on a national level with other prominent political figures of the era.

>> Remarkably, Harrison conducted much of his successful 1888 presidential campaign from this very home.

>> So Harrison was especially notable for his front porch campaign.

This is one of the iconic front porch campaigns in that he conducted that entire campaign literally from the front stoop.

So those limestone steps that are coming out of what now consists of that front porch on the front of this house.

So he gave over 80 speeches to more than 300,000 people from this house on Delaware Street in what is now downtown Indianapolis.

♪ >> Harrison may have stepped into the presidency in the late 19th century, but his administration's agenda feels remarkably modern.

During his four-year term, he set aside some 13 million acres of land for public use and created three national parks.

He pushed for Civil Rights legislation aimed at ensuring Black Americans could vote freely, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act signed into law by Harrison is still used today to combat monopolies.

>> Clearly, he had a vision for what he could accomplish.

He was able to do much during that administration.

I think it would be a fair characterization to describe Harrison as anticipating the modern presidency.

♪ >> After Harrison lost his bid for reelection in 1892, he returned to Indianapolis and resumed his law practice.

He died here in March of 1901.

The home has been open to the public since the early 1950s, serving a role akin to modern presidential libraries.

And now, a recently completed capital campaign has refreshed the Harrison story for a new generation.

>> One of our aims was to serve the larger community.

And so we announced the $6 million capital campaign.

We were able to exceed that goal.

That allowed us to invest nearly $2 million in the historic structure itself, and then to make substantial additional infrastructure improvements across our grounds.

>> Visitors to the site are now welcomed by newly revitalized public spaces.

Presidential scholars will find a refreshed library where they can handle original documents.

A new third-floor gallery gives staff an opportunity to highlight Harrison's legacy.

And much of the home has been restored to its near original state.

♪ >> So 75 to 80% of what you see is actually original to the Harrisons themselves.

You know, you will see the original oriental rug as you walk past the front parlor from the 1870s.

You will see family portraits of family members, you know, whether it's his grandfather William Henry Harrison, his great grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

You will see gifts that were given to him as president.

We have examples of the Harrison china which was informed by Caroline Harrison's own artistic sensibilities.

We have many examples of the hand-painted china that she herself painted.

So we have really extraordinary collection that we're able to draw from that really speaks to the authenticity of this place, and gives you a better sense of the personalities of the people who inhabited this house.

♪ >> Even though it's been well over a century since Benjamin Harrison inhabited this grand home, there's still much to be learned inside these walls.

>> Since the founding of our country, there have been over 500 million citizens, but only 45 presidents and 46 administrations out of those half billion people have been President of the United States.

So there's something exceptional about those 45 individuals.

It may be good.

It may be bad.

More likely it's somewhere in between.

But to be able to see the spaces that they inhabited, to understand better perhaps their mindset, and how they sought to shape the world around them.

What better place to start than their very own homes?

♪ >> BRANDON: You know, it's really interesting being in the grandson's and the grandpa's house in one episode because you see how grandiose and stylistically kind of similar both houses are.

>> ASHLEY: Very similar.

I mean, even the wallpaper has, like, a sort of similar style to it.

So -- >> BRANDON: Yeah.

Good taste must run in the family.

Want to learn more?

Head to bhpsite.org.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, producer Tyler Lake takes us to Vanderburgh County, to explore the Evansville African American Museum.

>> As you enter the Evansville African American Museum, you pass through gates that are meant to evoke the baobab tree.

It's native to Africa and is also known as the Tree of Life, a fitting metaphor for the place the museum holds in the surrounding community.

>> So the Evansville African American Museum is inside an apartment building.

The apartment building was part of the Lincoln Gardens complex that was built in 1938 through the WPA program.

There was 500 units where residents could move into and have basic amenities that the rest of Evansville had.

It cultivated a very strong community presence.

And it got to the point where the Lincoln Avenue, which is in front of the complex, populated 200 Black-owned businesses.

And it really was the gem of the community that helped uplift the people that lived here.

And so it lasted until 1997.

Evansville Housing Commission was going to bulldoze everything, but our founder, Sondra Matthews, petitioned the city to save as many units as she could, and she was awarded one unit.

So we're very blessed that we have this one building that houses the history of the Evansville Black community.

And with that, we've never separated from the descendant community.

In fact, the original descendants that created the space still interact with the museum and use it as a community center.

>> Inside, you'll find meeting spaces, interactive play rooms, an original apartment with era-appropriate furnishings, and exhibits that tell the stories of the Baptisttown community.

>> So right now, in the first set of cases when you walk into the museum, we have the exhibition "Baptisttown Reimagined: The Three Renaissances of the Black Community."

We look at the 157 years and three succinct periods that show periods of extreme growth, as well as collapse.

And then we have a pictorial representation where you can see what housing looked like.

And so we color-coded the Renaissances to the pictures.

You see these houses, you see Lincoln Gardens, and then you see where we're at today.

So it's this pictorial representation of what this history looks like.

>> Another exhibit tells the history of the fraught relationship between the African American community in Baptisttown and the white citizens of Evansville.

>> What you learn in this exhibit is the American Victorian ideology and the race relations that were happening here in Evansville.

It led to the festering of racial tension and racial anxiety, which was a term called Negrophobia.

And from that Negrophobia, it launched itself into the most traumatic event in Evansville history, called the Bloody Race Riot of 1903.

And what made that race relation boil over was the fact that a Black man shot a white man.

The citizens of Evansville took it upon themselves to administer justice, and it led into a multi-day race riot that was ended by the summoning of the National Guard.

>> Tensions remained high in the city until the start of Prohibition, which became an unlikely catalyst for cooperation between the Black and white communities of Evansville.

>> It accidentally mended racial relations in Evansville.

Black and white individuals were working together to circulate moonshine, to manufacture it and sell it.

And then it also led to the establishment of bootlegging joints, in which white and Black individuals spent leisure time together.

They started to break down racial tensions.

>> While the exhibits tell the sometimes difficult history of the neighborhood, the museum itself is a place for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn and enjoy.

>> So where we are now is Building Communities for Kids and Legos, and where kids can actually come and, you know, have some fun and enjoy themselves while they're at the Museum.

There's also another WonderLab, which is right next door, that will allow kids to learn about history and some of the African American Black residents of Baptisttown.

♪ >> So this is an apartment that -- how it looked when it was built back in 1938.

And this was really an upgrade for the community.

Modern appliances, indoor plumbing, recreational center and playground.

It was very clean and it was like an amazing place for people to live.

So this is the Lincoln Clark Douglas room.

Lincoln used to be a segregated high school and it's where actually African Americans were allowed to go to school.

And they were outstanding in sports and basketball, football.

They won several national championships, and just were phenomenal and a pride of the community.

This is a map of Baptisttown.

This is where Blacks were centrally located.

The whole idea around Baptisttown is it was designed.

It was a red-lined community.

It was drawn up: This is where we want Black people to be.

In fact, the whole idea, the terminology of Baptisttown, came from whites because of the idea that there were so many Baptist churches.

And Liberty Baptist Church being one of the first Black churches, whites called it Baptisttown as a negative thing.

The Blacks adopt it and turned it into a positive thing.

>> Turning something negative into something good is just what this community does.

They have made the one remaining Lincoln Park Gardens building into a lot more than just a museum.

>> We have a community space.

We have tons of different groups that meet here, The Soul Writers Guild, the DNA lab.

Cultural heritage professionals come here to host workshops.

We're going to hold election polls here.

We have the Baptisttown Cultural Festival that we have on an annual basis to celebrate our history.

We have a gift shop.

It has objects for sale from local Black vendors.

We've only been around for 15 years.

We are in the infancy of our existence as a museum and community center.

So one of our biggest missions right now in our strategic goals is to rebuild local Black pride.

When you come into a space like this, it's amazing, because when you see people laughing and talking, moving around the hallways, it's not a traditional quiet, don't-touch-anything museum.

We want to get you involved.

We want to get you inspired, and want you to have a piece of this history with you so that you can understand, again, why is this important.

Why we need to be here, but also so you can connect with it.

♪ >> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to evvaam.org.

>> BRANDON: And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> ASHLEY: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> BRANDON: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

>> ASHLEY: You know, we were experiencing some, um, very frigid weather here in the state of Indiana as of late, and we actually caught some folks enjoying some winter sporting on frozen Griffy Lake in Bloomington that we're going to share with you now.

>> BRANDON: We will see you next time on -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!