In 1923, the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA was officially chartered in the city of Indianapolis. Six years later, this groundbreaking organization for Black women had raised enough funds to construct and open a building at the corner of West and Walnut Streets that housed the stories of Black girls and women and their navigation of race, culture, and space in Indianapolis. It was an astounding and almost unheard-of achievement for a Black community at the beginning of the twentieth century. It closed in 1959 as YWCAs desegregated. Over the last five years a group of scholars and a community historian have been working to memorialize the history of this critical Black institution in Indianapolis through the development of a documentary, the installation of a historic marker, and the creation of this website.
