The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center celebrated its 50th anniversary Oct. 13. The center’s 50th-anniversary theme is “Power, Progress, and Promise.”
Gloria Howell, the center’s associate director, said one of the goals of the 50th anniversary is to honor people who came before and made the existence of the center possible.
The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center provides academic and other resources, such as spaces for students to study and cultural programs, to support students and their success. The center welcomes first-year students with the Freshman Pinning Ceremony and honors black students graduating from IU with the Black Congratulatory Ceremony.
The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, previously named the Black Culture Center, was established thanks to campus activism in the late 1960s.
Black student groups sent a document to the Faculty Council in 1969 outlining their goals to increase black faculty, admit more black students and introduce black studies programs. The document was approved and Herman Hudson became the first chair of Afro American Studies, which is now the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Hudson created the black culture center, a facility that served the university’s teaching, research and service missions, while also working to offer a positive environment for black students, faculty and staff, according to the center’s information guide.
“We want to take into account how far we’ve come,” Howell said.
Nancy Cross-Harris, a Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center staff member, said she has seen the growth of the center, and she feels joy that students today have more opportunities.
“It was a struggle to get,” Cross-Harris said.
The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center has experienced several name changes and relocations in its time. The Black Culture Center opened on North Jordan Avenue in 1973. Plans for a new building with more space for student facilities were formally proposed in May 1981. According to the center’s website, in 2002, a new 97,000-square-foot building named the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center opened. The new name honored the first black male and female graduates of IU.
Marcellus Neal graduated in 1919 and Frances Neal graduated in 1895, according to the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies’ website. Both were students at a time when black students were not allowed to live on campus. After completing their degrees at IU, both worked in the field of education. For 25 years, Neal served as the head of the science department at Washington High School in Dallas, Texas. Marshall worked as a teacher and university administrator at Edward Waters College in Florida, Florida Memorial College and Spelman College in Georgia.
In 50 years, campus has changed a lot, but the center remains a go-to for black students.
“They make us feel welcome here on campus,” sophomore Ja'Nay Coleman said.
Coleman said the center is like a home.
"It's kind of overwhelming being the only black student in class sometimes," sophomore Mariam Sows said. “So coming to the Neal-Marshall, being surrounded with people like you that are doing the same thing that you’re trying to do, it’s uplifting.”
