Peoples Park

HISTORY 

People’s Park started as Sunshine Cleaners from 1945 and ending in 1947. Then it turned into the Black Market. Clarence “Rollo” Turner opened the Black Market in 1968. They sold things from African culture ranging from hair products to art to jazz record albums. 

Before opening, 1968 was already filled with racial tension.  Martin Luther King was assassinated. Also In march 1968, Morgan County had a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and tried starting one in Bloomington. That year, black IU students formed the Afro-Afro-American Student Association (AAASA) because only 2% of the students at IU were black. 

Clarence Turner was a founder of that group. He founded it to help students who didn’t feel welcome. He also held a little 500  protest because fraternities were discriminating against black students. When the black market opened it was a big success. But black students involved with the market were getting harassed. The owner received bomb threats through calls on the telephone.

Sadly the Black  Market got destroyed by a kerosene filled bomb that was thrown by two members of the KKK. They would be arrested about a year later.  Community members and IU students would place flowers to show their support. After the bombing turner held a rally and posted a sign which said “A coward did this”

After the building burnt down, Turner moved to The University of Pittsburgh and he started The Black Studies Department. Kathy Canada, a philanthropist and heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company fortune, donated the land to use as a park in 1975. Peoples Park got its name from the Peoples Park in California where In 1969 a demonstrator got killed by police.  

As the years went on, it became a hub for protests and political activity. It became the center of Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. In June 2017, Eva M made a mural that says, “Welcome to Bloomington you belong here” and later in 2020 another one was painted over it that says “Black Lives Matter”. 

ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY

Peoples Park has long been a political hub and several protests have taken place there. For example, from 2011 to 2012, the movement Occupy Bloomington was happening. Occupy Bloomington was a protest against homeless encampment removals that mobilized the community to help their fellow citizens keep shelters. Peoples Park often host concerts that usually happens on Thursday from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM. These concerts are often local musicians playing for Kirkwood spectators and buskers. Peoples Park helps people socialize and relax at the public chess and checkers tables. While they sit and relax they can view the public sculpture called "Bench in the Shape of Opposing Wings" which was built by William Galloway in 1989.