Author: Eric John Abrahamson

April 1948 – Becoming Mayor the First Time

Viola & Fred Dusek (Dusek Family Archives)

When summer came, despite her marriage, Viola Dusek once again returned to Chicago to see her family and continue her studies. After she returned to South Dakota, she took a teaching job at Colome High School, 27 miles southeast of Witten, and continued to use her maiden name. Meanwhile, Fred Dusek launched his career as an entrepreneur. With a partner, he opened hardware stores in the nearby town of Winner and in Martin, just east of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He recruited his younger brother Rudy to help him set up and operate the store in Martin. Later, Fred would sell his interest in the stores to his partner.[1]

Early in 1927, Fred packed up and moved 200 miles west to Rapid City. Clearly he and Viola had planned the move together.[2] She hoped to follow him when the school year was over and secure a teaching job for the fall. Why they chose this community is unclear given that Sioux Falls and Omaha were much bigger at the time. With close to 8,000 residents, Rapid City was the fifth largest city in South Dakota and accounted for roughly half of the population of Pennington County, but it was in the middle of a postwar boom as new highways and the depopulation of rural communities in western South Dakota fed the community’s growth as a trading center for retail and wholesale business. Unlike Chicago, where Viola had grown up, only 7 percent of the population of Pennington County was foreign born. Most residents had been raised on the Great Plains, either in South Dakota or a neighboring state.[3] Eight out of ten people living in the county belonged to a church, with the Methodists, Catholics, Congregationalists, and Lutherans accounting for nearly half of the community.[4]

The Duseks may have chosen to make a fresh start in Rapid City because that spring the city was buzzing with activity and the focus of national and international attention. President Calvin Coolidge had announced that to escape the heat and humidity of Washington, D.C., he would spend several months in the Black Hills. The city’s stately, Federal-style brick high school would be turned over to the President to serve as his administrative headquarters. Meanwhile, White House staff and journalists from around the country filled the city’s restaurants and cafes during the day and its bars and saloons at night.[5]

In February, Fred moved into a room at the Harney Hotel downtown and took a job as an accountant for the Alex Duhamel Co, a thriving downtown mercantile with close to 60 employees that sold hardware, furniture, paints, queensware, plumbing, manufactured harnesses, and saddles.[6] But Fred was soon disappointed to learn that the Rapid City School District would not hire a married teacher for a full-time position. He wrote to Viola that she shouldn’t be concerned because “there seems to be a considerable amount of work in the city.”[7]

Lonely and eager for distractions, Fred began looking for other opportunities. He bought stock in Rapid City’s major new enterprise—the nine-story Alex Johnson Hotel slated to be erected in the heart of downtown. Gradually, the Duhamels recognized his abilities and gave him more responsibility.

In the summer, Viola may have joined him in Rapid City. He hoped she would stay and find work, but she wanted to continue to pursue the career she had been trained for and was good at. That fall she took a teaching job in Gettysburg, South Dakota, 230 miles to the east. By then, she was using her married name, an affirmation of the importance of their relationship, but Fred was losing patience with this long-distance relationship. In March 1928, he wrote to ask rhetorically, “Are you in Gettysburg to please me? No, I say not. You are there because you want to be there and not because I want you there.” Sounding wounded and vain, he continued, “In other words, I think enough of you to let you have your way in this as well as most other things,” but he “counted the days until school will be out several times last night.”[8]

“Are you in Gettysburg to please me? No, I say not. You are there because you want to be there and not because I want you there.”
Fred Dusek to Viola Dusek

That month, the Gettysburg school district offered Viola a contract for the following year, but she declined the offer. She had decided to put her career on hold and, to Fred’s delight, finally settle down with her husband, nearly two and a half years after they had gotten married.[9] By this time, Fred was making a decent salary with Duhamels. Ever conscious of his duties as a provider, he purchased a small house on a two-acre piece of ground to the west of downtown. Covered with lodgepole pines, yuccas, and native grasses, the property sat at the base of the hogback ridge and Hangman’s Hill. Undoubtedly remembering his childhood in Nebraska, the following spring Fred ordered fruit trees—six apple, three plum, three cherry—as well as eight grape vines and twelve lilacs to plant.[10]

Meanwhile, Fred continued to search for an opportunity to run his own business. In January 1929, he placed a classified ad in the newspaper in Sioux City, Iowa announcing that he had two good salesmen with established acquaintances who were willing to invest if the right opportunity came along.[11] In the fall of 1928, Viola worked as a substitute teaching debate and history at Rapid City High School, but she soon had to give up the work. She was pregnant and beginning to show. On May 14, 1929, she gave birth to their son Dorrance.[12]

Even as Viola cared for the new baby, the Duseks purchased the stock of an existing furniture store and opened their own establishment downtown in a small building behind the Harney Hotel on 413 Seventh Street.[13] Viola had a buyer’s eye and the ability to negotiate for good prices. They dubbed the 25-by-60 foot enterprise, “the little store with big ideas.”[14] A year later they moved to a larger space in the Palace Theater Building at 603 St. Joe.[15]

Despite the Depression, Fred and Viola seemed to thrive. As they expanded their inventory to include more new furniture, Viola and Fred, separately and together, often traveled to visit wholesalers and manufacturers in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, and Kansas City. Sometimes Viola took baby Dorrance on the train and left him with her grandparents in Chicago while she did business. With all the passion that she had once devoted to reading Karl Marx and Jack London and teaching drama and debate to teenagers, she now poured over catalogues, brochures, and trade journals to find sofas, buffets, dining tables, rocking chairs, lamps, trunks, dressers, beds, phonographs, kitchen cabinets, and carpets that would appeal to homeowners in Rapid City and the surrounding Black Hills.[16] In the classifieds and sometimes with display advertisements, the Dusek’s touted their wares.

With his banking and accounting skills, Fred focused on the financial side of the business, establishing a credit program that would allow buyers hard hit by the Depression to buy new furniture and generate extra profits from interest payments. He also invested in real estate and other businesses. He served as secretary of a development company that offered speculators mineral leases near Edgemont in Red Canyon, which was said to be rich with oil.[17] In September 1932 the company ran an advertisement in the newspaper promising investors who had sustained business losses during the Depression an opportunity to take “the shortest way back” to prosperity.[18] Meanwhile, Fred also speculated in local real estate.

Many people in town assumed that the Duseks were prospering against the odds because they worked seven days a week and were committed to doing whatever they needed to do to satisfy their customers. In 1931, they began building a new home on their property on Quincy Street.[19] In 1934, Viola gave birth to their second child, Barbara, who was named after Fred’s mother.

Increasingly, Fred and Viola were active in civic affairs. Overcoming the atheism she avowed at the age of 18, Viola and her husband began attending the Presbyterian Church downtown. Viola was active in the Ladies Missionary Society where the group discussed the “Advancement of Christianity in China” and other topics.[20] Fred served as secretary-treasurer of the Men’s Club.[21] Meanwhile, Fred joined Rotary and the Lions Club. In the fall of 1931, he was elected president of a new organization to promote economic development.[22] Leveraging his experiences with retail credit and banking, Fred presented himself to the community as someone who kept close tabs on his money and the public till. As a member of the Lions club, he gave a talk on government accounting in 1932.[23] He also presided over a special discussion of the Townsend Plan, a national effort to provide pensions to Americans over the age of 60.[24] In 1935, he filed a petition objecting to the city’s tax assessment on his property.[25]

Fred’s increasing interest in taxes and the city’s finances led to his decision to run for the city commission in 1936, less than a decade after he had arrived. A number of issues fed the campaign, including a looming crisis over the city’s water supply. For years the city had relied on a well and water line developed for the Rapid City Indian Boarding school on land west of town and along the path of Rapid Creek. With the federal government’s plans to redevelop the shuttered boarding school as a sanatorium for Native people afflicted with tuberculosis, the city was forced to look for a new water supply. A proposal had been placed before the voters for a $90,000 bond for waterworks improvements that would support the city’s continued growth up to 30,000 people.[26]

Campaigns for city commission in the 1930s were very low key at that time. While several of the other candidates bought newspaper ads on the day before the election, Fred did not. Nevertheless, when the votes were totaled on April 21, he easily secured one of three open seats with the second highest number of votes – 1,014.[27] Meanwhile, the water bond, which involved no increase in taxes, passed with an overwhelming majority.

Over the next dozen years, Fred served on the city commission, winning re-election every three years. When voters returned him to his seat in 1942, he became the longest serving commissioner in the city’s history.[28] Although the city commission was a nonpartisan position, Dusek identified as a Democrat in the late 1930s and ran for a position on the State Central Committee.[29] In 1945, he bought his first campaign ad.

Meanwhile, he and Viola grew their furniture company, invested in land and property, and raised their two children, Dorrance and Barbara.[30] For her tenth birthday in 1944, Barbara’s parents hosted a lawn party for thirty children. The children played games, rode a pony and hiked up to Dinosaur Hill.[31] From this ridgeline, Fred and Viola could see the city growing almost before their eyes. On the horizon to the east, B-17 “Flying Fortress” bombers landed at the air force base as airmen trained for the final campaign against the Axis forces in Europe and the Pacific. To the west, they could see where Rapid Creek spilled out of the canyon and then coursed its way through cottonwood tree-covered neighborhoods and past the open fields adjacent to the Indian boarding school towards the Gap dividing the city west from east. In mid-October, the trees and the prairie grasses in the valley below were aflame in yellow, orange and red and belied none of the troubles that lay just beyond the postwar horizon.

[1] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[2] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[3] South Dakota State Census, 1925.

[4] South Dakota State Census, 1925.

[5] Seth Tupper, Calvin Coolidge in the Black Hills (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2017).

[6] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives. See also,

[7] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[8] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[9] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[10] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[11] Classified advertisement, Sioux City Journal, January 3, 1929, 17.

[12] Rapid City Journal, March 21, 1955, 11.

[13] “Announcement of Opening of the Furniture Exchange,” display advertisement, Rapid City Journal, July 3, 1929, 5.

[14] Rapid City Journal, April 13, 1955, 14.

[15] (RCJ, 5.7.1946, 2; RCJ, 6.2.1954, 9) (Viola profile, RCJ, 5.31.1951, 7)

[16] “Local Notes,” Rapid City Journal, May 28, 1931, 2.

[17] Display advertisement, Rapid City Journal, September 10, 1932, 2.

[18] Display advertisement, Rapid City Journal, September 10, 1932, 2.

[19] Rapid City Journal, April 16, 1932, 3.

[20] “Presbyterian Missionary Society Meets,” Rapid City Journal, July 13, 1933, 3.

[21] “L. Boyd Elected Men’s Club Head,” Rapid City Journal, October 8, 1935, 4.

[22] “Form Organization Here to Work for Industries,” Rapid City Journal, September 22, 1931, 2.

[23] “Government Accounting Talk Given Before Lions,” Rapid City Journal, April 5, 1932, 2.

[24] “Lions Informed of Pension Plan,” Rapid City Journal, August 13, 1935, 2.

[25] “Official Proceedings of the Board of City Commissioners,” Rapid City Journal, March 26, 1935, 9.

[26] “Rapid to Vote on Water, Court,” Rapid City Journal, April 20, 1936, 1. See also, “C o C Studies Deerfield Dam,” Rapid City Journal, April 15, 1936, 1.

[27] “Citizens Elect Dusek, Root and Miller Officers,” Rapid City Journal, April 22, 1936, 1. See also, Rapid City Journal, April 16, 1945, 8)

[28] “Successive Term as Mayor to Set Record—Dusek Ties Record,” Rapid City Journal, May 5, 1942, 3.

[29] Rapid City Journal, April 27, 1938, 3.

[30] https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/m-t0627-03865-00567?ssrc=&backlabel=Return&pId=116429257

[31] “Birthday Party Given for Barbara Dusek,” Rapid City Journal, October 16, 1944, 3.

January 1972 – Before He Was a Hero

Sam Roach was credited with saving 41 lives during the flood. (Rapid City Journal)

Staff Sergeant Sam Roach was more than frustrated with the elected town council of Box Elder. All he wanted was a license to sell beer, and the council refused to give it to him. With his close-cropped black hair, a thin moustache over his lip, his penetrating brown eyes, and most of all his dark skin, the muscular 37-year old Air Force veteran was sure it was because he was Black.

With nearly two decades of service in the Air Force, including wartime tours in Korea and Vietnam, Roach was one of nearly 700 African-American airmen stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in 1971. Many of his fellow airmen lived minutes away from the base in trailer courts and poorly built homes in Box Elder, a community of roughly 600 people living just east of Rapid City. Most of these men and their families had experienced racial prejudice since arriving at Ellsworth. If they went out to eat in some coffee shops or drink in various bars in town, they had food or drinks dumped on them by waiters or waitresses sending a message that they weren’t welcome. Plenty of landlords in Rapid City wouldn’t rent to them. To find off-base housing, they placed classified ads—“Negro airman desires 1 bedroom furnished apartment”—hoping to find one of the handful of landlords willing to take Black tenants. Many local employers—including Kmart, Woolworth’s, Gibson’s and Gambles—routinely hired the wives of White servicemen but refused to employ the wives of Black servicemen. According to Roach, most Black servicemen would rather be based in Alabama or Mississippi, than Rapid City.[1]

Over nearly three decades, African American service members stationed at Ellsworth had pushed back against this racism. The first contingent of Black servicemen arrived in the middle of World War II, shortly after the based was opened. They were part of an all-Black truck company associated with Quartermaster Corps of the US Army and commanded by three African-American officers. As reported in the nation’s largest African-American newspaper, they were the first Black soldiers to be trained “in this part of the country.”[2] Anticipating their arrival in April 1943, the Rapid City Journal ran an article touting the contributions that Black soldiers were making to the war effort.[3] Shortly thereafter, the paper noted the arrival of the “colored” Quartermaster Corps troops at the base and quoted their Black commanding officer saying the men were “right at home” in Rapid City.[4] But not all White Rapid Citians welcomed these soldiers.

Through the 1950s, successive generations of enlisted Black airmen and officers experienced discrimination when they looked for housing off base or sought services. To ameliorate the situation in 1951, the base commander and Sergeant Wendell LaFleur spoke to service clubs in town. LaFleur asked Rapid City’s White businessmen to “Look first and see a man. Then decide whether he is the type of man you’d care to associate with. Judge him as an individual, not by his color.”[5] Despite LaFleur’s appeal, business owners, landlords, and government officials continued to discriminate.

“Look first and see a man. Then decide whether he is the type of man you’d care to associate with. Judge him as an individual, not by his color.”
Sergeant Wendell LaFleur

By 1957, there were 396 Black airmen stationed at the base; 127 were married and had their families with them. Forty-six of these Black families were living off base in cabin camps in Rapid City.[6] As these airmen attended to their duties knowing that at any moment a Soviet attack could spark a nuclear war, they faced myriad challenges because of their race. One seemed simple. They lacked a decent place to go to relax and unwind.

In the mid-1950s, only two bars in Rapid City welcomed Black patrons: the Coney Island at 216 Second Street and the Plantation, located outside the city limits to the east. “Bobby” Seale, an airman who would later co-found the Black Panther Party, was stationed at Ellsworth in the 1950s. He remembered that when they had time off, “White GIs went to the white places in town. The black GIs went to the two black places.”^[7] In 1957, both bars catering to Black patrons were temporarily unavailable: Coney Island because of a fire, the Plantation because it was placed off-limits by the Air Force because it lacked decent sanitary facilities. Frustrated by the situation and emboldened by increasing attention to civil rights issues nationally, Black airmen began pressing harder against discrimination.

Only three years after the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregation inherently unequal under the Constitution, and several years before lunch counter sit-ins in the American South would make headlines, a dozen Black airmen entered a downtown bar in Rapid City. When management refused to serve them, they spread out through the establishment occupying nearly a dozen booths. The men were “well-behaved,” according to a local attorney, and “while the management wouldn’t serve them, it knew it couldn’t evict them.” [8]

Black airmen also pushed for the right to open a private club that would cater to their tastes in food and music and leave them free to relax without having to worry about being taunted or abused by racist patrons or owners. Supporters of this concept enlisted Attorney Lynden Levitt who petitioned Mayor Fred Dusek and the Rapid City Common Council for a permit on behalf of the Black community. The proponents suggested various possible locations, including the old police station on Main Street.[9] The Rapid City Liquor Dealer’s Association endorsed the idea. [10] In the wake of the much publicized bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama and the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, some members of the Mayor’s recently established Committee on Human Relations resisted the establishment of Black-only club as a blatant concession to the forces of segregation.[11] But the committee did not represent the views of businessmen downtown.

In 1958, businessman John A. Oulman proposed to operate the new establishment, and he asked the Common Council to let him buy and move the Coney Island’s beer license. Eighteen downtown businesses signed a letter asking the common council to reject the application. [12] Faced with this pressure and despite the city’s repeated assurances to the Air Force that it would “do something about the problem of finding a ‘decent’ place for the Negro population from Ellsworth,” the council voted 9 to 1 to reject the license transfer, effectively killing the concept of a club for African Americans in Rapid City.[13] Meanwhile, the Coney Island continued to serve Black and Native American customers. In January 1959, some White residents of Rapid City tried to make it clear that they weren’t welcome by torching a seven-foot wooden cross wrapped in burlap and soaked in kerosene in the alley behind the establishment.[14]

Throughout the 1960s, Black airmen and their families continued to press for their civil rights in Rapid City, fighting for fair housing laws and an end to discrimination in restaurants and other public establishments. An informal survey conducted by the newspaper in 1961 found “a high degree of tolerance” for integration, but also evidence of substantial and persistent prejudice.[15] The Black Hills Civil Rights Committee, however, surveyed businesses in Rapid City and found that 90 percent of the city’s bars and barber shops still refused to serve Black customers, along with 30 percent of the restaurants and motels. “The problem is acute … in this city in the shadow of the ‘Shrine of Democracy,” reported the New York Times.[16]

For many Black airman, the lack of a safe place to go to relax continued to be a problem. In 1961, the city barred the Coney Island from selling alcohol. In response, the owners, George and Adella Hudson, opened George’s Jazz Cellar in the basement, but the city quickly shut it down.[17] Asserting that they were being unfairly targeted by the city because they were Black and catered to a Black clientele, the Hudson’s hired attorney Ramon Roubideaux to defend them. In court, Roubideaux’s entire defense focused on the city’s failure to provide public accommodations to Black airmen and their families. He reiterated the point, “All these people want is the right to be left alone and they’re entitled to that.”[18]

Meanwhile, Hudson made plans to open a restaurant on property the Hudson’s owned at the corner of Maple and Madison Streets in North Rapid City.[19] Segregationists asked the council to stop the project. Some ignited a ten-foot flaming cross on the property. Hudson chased them away by firing a shotgun into the air.[20] The city’s mayor personally offered a reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators. “It is time the responsible element in this city got on the ball and end the acts inspired by irresponsible radicals,” the mayor said.[21]

Worried that cross-burnings and other flagrant acts of racism would tarnish the city’s image, the mayor pushed local businessmen to support the opening of Hudson’s restaurant. After Hudson’s place opened, one segregationist pointed to the establishment as proof that the Common Council and business leaders had the best interests of Black airmen in mind. “Now they’ve got a beautiful place of their own where they can go,” explained one White restaurant owner. “We felt that we wanted to give them something. This town has bent over more than backward for them. The only thing we’re scared of is the young ones coming in and trying to intermingle.”[22] The stress of fighting the city’s segregationists, however, proved too much for Hudson. In January, 1963, the 39-year old Paris, Texas native died.[23]

With Hudson’s death, Black airmen’s hopes of having a place of their own were once again put on hold. Meanwhile, the South Dakota Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights launched an investigation into race relations in Rapid City in the early 1960s.^[24] Shortly after the Commission completed its work, the South Dakota Legislature passed a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, but discrimination in Rapid City continued.^[25] In 1969, the Rapid City Journal ran a series of stories profiling the “City’s Black Man Alone, Unhappy.” Despite significant advances in civil rights around the country and the rise of the Black Power movement, airmen continued to face prejudice even though the South Dakota Governor Frank Farrar insisted, “there’s no discrimination in South Dakota.”[26]

Sam Roach knew the governor’s statement was a lie. When the city of Box Elder refused to grant him a license to sell 3.2 percent beer, he recruited a White friend to submit an application instead, but when local officials discovered the subterfuge, Roach’s friend caught “holy hell from the town council.”[27] Frustrated by what he thought were obvious acts of discrimination, Roach called on his fellow African-American airmen to protest.

In a letter to the editor of the Rapid City Journal in March 1971, headlined “Black man’s complaint,” he noted that there were approximately 700 Black servicemen stationed at Ellsworth, but Rapid City and the nearby community of Box Elder had “refused to accept the black man into the community.” Most landlords refused to rent to African Americans. Those that did, leveled a surcharge. When Black entrepreneurs sought to open their own establishments, White city officials refused to issue them a license to sell alcohol. Roach urged his fellow Black airmen to write to their congressmen and to the President and “that the USAF either refrain from shipping blacks to Ellsworth, close the base, or place the town off limits to all military personnel.”[28]

Roach may have been emboldened to launch his protest because he knew he was leaving the Air Force. Unable to start a bar in Box Elder, he joined the Rapid City Police Department as a patrolman instead. But Roach did not give up on his dream of opening a bar or nightclub where Black servicemen could relax without fear of racism. In the summer of 1971, he began talking to Mary Long, who owned and managed the Stirrup Lounge & Café at 728 Main Street.[29]

The Stirrup was located among a series of bars in downtown Rapid City. The district was a constant source of trouble for the Rapid City Police Department and a headache for local officials who received frequent complaints from citizens, including former Mayor Fred Dusek. Some members of the council along with leaders at the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce were pushing the city to secure federal urban renewal funds to tear down the entire block. Earlier in the year, the city had suspended the Stirrup’s license to sell beer and wine because of several liquor violations and issues with disturbing the peace. Long pleaded with the council, noting that her husband was sick, and promising that she would either run the place herself or find a good manager. Instead, she decided to sell the place to Roach.[30]

When he took over the Stirrup that fall, Roach faced a number of challenges, including various code violations that had to be fixed. Sam pressed the landlord to make these improvements. When the landlord failed to act, Sam withheld rent payments and paid for some of the work himself. In January, a customer pulled a gun and Sam threw him through a glass window.[31]

Despite all of these difficulties, Roach was able to transform the Stirrup into Sam’s Ebony Club, featuring “Soul Music — Soul Food” and “Go-Go Girls.”[32] The Club catered to the late night crowd. Entertainers started their sets at 10:00 pm and played until 2:00 in the morning with the smells of cigarette smoke, grease and beer permeating the air.[33] After closing and cleaning up, Sam went upstairs to sleep in his apartment as Rapid City stirred to life and the sun began to rise in the east.[34]

Trouble started almost as soon as the Ebony Club opened. After midnight on Friday, January 21, Roach was trying to eject a 16-year old youth who had come into the bar. A number of customers began arguing with him. One was a 24-year old airman who opened his coat to reveal an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. Fearing for his safety, Roach pulled out his own .22 caliber revolver and fired, injuring the airman.

As the struggle continued, the 16-year old grabbed the airman’s gun and bolted out the door with Roach in pursuit. Out on the sidewalk, the youth turned and fired at Roach, but missed. Meanwhile, an angry crowd grabbed Roach and pinned him to the ground.

After the police calmed everyone down, the airman was taken away in an ambulance while officers searched for the youth. Half an hour later, the bar was on fire. Fire department officials discovered that gasoline and other inflammables had been poured on the back door to the alley and ignited. The Fire Department responded and extinguished the blaze, but not before it caused hundreds of dollars of damage and someone lifted approximately $185 from the cash register.[35]

Despite the “ruckus,” reported by the paper, Roach was back in business the next week, but once again the Ebony Club ran into trouble with law enforcement. Long after midnight on January 29, the police responded to three disturbance calls and ultimately closed the bar and arrested two women. As the Ebony Club’s uneasy relationship with the police department and city officials continued over the next month, the realtor who owned the property decided to evict Sam and his business at the end of February.

Sam’s 20-year old White girl friend was incensed. Donna Ethel Frenzen had grown up in Rapid City and attended Central High School. Married and divorced already, she was dating Sam in the fall of 1971 when he was planning to take over the Stirrup and was shocked by the treatment she received when she began appearing with a Black man in public. There were anonymous obscene phone calls. Her employer fired her after 14 months. Her landlord evicted her because they didn’t want a Black man in the house. In protest, Donna wrote a letter to the editor to ask why federal laws barring discrimination weren’t being enforced.[36]

Donna continued to be an advocate after the Ebony Club was evicted from the location on Main Street. In another letter to the editor titled “Our one black bar,” she chastised Rapid City’s “so-called American businessmen” for targeting a Black business owner. If fights were the issue, she said, “every bar on Main Street should be closed.”[37]

Meanwhile, Sam began looking for a new location for the Ebony Club. He rented space on East North Street and petitioned the city to let him move the club’s beer license. Then he discovered that the adjacent business owners bought the property so that they could prevent him from moving in.[38]

Donna was not about to let city bureaucrats hide what she saw as blatant discrimination. She began organizing a protest march and hoped to enlist the hundreds of Black airmen at the base. On April 4, she appeared before Mayor Don Barnett and the common council to call them out for being unfair, to chastise business leaders for discriminating, and then castigate the entire community for prejudice against Blacks and unwillingness to provide African Americans with “a place of their own.” She accused the Air Force of assigning Black men to Ellsworth “against their will and without their consent.” To put pressure on the city, she said she had written “to high officials from the President on down and asked the Air Force to declare the city off limits to airmen.”[39]

Mayor Barnett rejected Donna’s criticisms of the council and the community. He also made it clear that if she submitted the proper application for a parade, he would make sure that it was processed. [40] Three days later, Donna was able to organize 75 men and women to walk down Sixth Street carrying signs protesting the closure of the Ebony and insisting “We Want Our Own Bar Now.” But the Ebony did not reopen.

Whether Sam Roach was in the room on the night that Donna blasted the common council is not clear, but it seems likely that he had already given up on the Ebony Club and knew he needed to go back to work. That night, as the Common Council continued on their agenda, they approved a plan to hire three new patrolmen for the Rapid City Police Department. One of them was Sam Roach.

[1] “Black man’s complaint,” Rapid City Journal, March 3, 1971, 5.

[2] “Truck Company Officers in S. Dakota First Time,” New York Amsterdam News, May 29, 1943, 11.

[3] “American Negro Now Doing a Major Part,” Rapid City Journal, April 6, 1943, 4.

[4] “First Colored Troops Arrive at Local Base,” Rapid City Journal, April 13, 1943, 4. See also, “Negro Sergeant Was In World War One,” Rapid City Journal, April 20, 1943, 7.

[5] “Mutual Problems of City and Air Base Reviewed,” Rapid City Journal, December 17, 1951, 3.

[6] These figures were offered by Attorney Lynden Levitt in a hearing before the Rapid City Common Council. “Council Delays Action on Beer License Move,” Rapid City Journal, February 18, 1958, 3.

[7] Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (New York, Abrams Books, 2016).

[8] Ken Jumper, “Club License Sought to Care for Negroes,” Rapid City Journal, March 19, 1957, 2.

[9] Ken Jumper, “Club License Sought to Care for Negroes,” Rapid City Journal, March 19, 1957, 2.

[10] Ken Jumper, “Club License Sought to Care for Negroes,” Rapid City Journal, March 19, 1957, 2.

[11] “Mayor’s Committee Talks Indian Housing and Negro Segregation,” Rapid City Journal, March 23, 1957, 13.

[12] Ken Jumper, “Club License Sought to Care for Negroes,” Rapid City Journal, March 19, 1957, 2. See also, “Suggestions Heard, No Action On Main Street Beer Bar License Request,” Rapid City Journal, February 25, 1958, 3.

[13] “Transfer of License is Rejected,” Rapid City Journal, March 4, 1958, 3.

[14] “Klan Theory Discounted in Cross Burning,” Rapid City Journal, January 30, 1959, 1.

[15] Pat McCarty, “High Degree of Tolerance Found Toward Negroes,” Rapid City Journal, February 5, 1961, 3.

[16] Donald Janson, “South Dakota Northern Pocket of Discrimination,” New York Times, October 22, 1962, 18

[17] “Jazz Cellar Case Begins Wednesday,” Rapid City Journal, June 21, 1961, 3.

[18] “Restraining Order Issued on Coney Island Property,” Rapid City Journal, March 8, 1962, 3.

[19] “Restaurant, Parking Meter Issues Come to Council,” Rapid City Journal, August 8, 1961, 3.

[20] “Police probe cross burning Friday night,” Rapid City Journal, August 12, 1961, 3.

[21] “100 Reward Offered For Arrest of Cross Burners,” Rapid City Journal, August 13, 1961, 3.

[22] Donald Janson, “South Dakota Northern Pocket of Discrimination,” New York Times, October 22, 1962, 18

[23] “George Hudson Dies Saturday in Hospital,” Rapid City Journal, January 12, 1963, 3.

[24] South Dakota Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights “Report on Rapid City” (March 1963): 45–47.

[25] Vanepps-Taylor, Forgotten Lives, 186–188. Joseph T. Boone, “For Fair Housing,” Rapid City Journal, February 22, 1967. Ed Martley, “Hearing Continued on Public Accommodations Law Complaint,” Rapid City Journal, October 26, 1968.

[26] Bill Wagner, “City’s Black Man Alone, Unhappy,” Rapid City Journal, November 2, 1969, 1.

[27] “Black man’s complaint,” Rapid City Journal, March 3, 1971, 5. See also, Box Elder Board of Trustees, Minutes, November 10, 1970, Rapid City Journal, December 1, 1970, 17.

[28] “Black man’s complaint,” Rapid City Journal, March 3, 1971, 5.

[29] Display ad, Rapid City Journal, November 25, 1970, 11. The City Council considered the transfer of beer licenses from Lawrence Wardrope to Mary J. Long for this establishment on February 11, 1971. Bob Fell, “Committee questions rural fire costs, transfers of two city beer licenses,” Rapid City Journal, February 11, 1971, 3. This transfer approval was delayed over subsequent meetings pending information from the Sheriff’s Department. Apparently Long’s husband Frank had operated the Old Town south of the city. Also, Long planned to hire James L. Bush as manager, but Bush had been convicted of several liquor violations.

[30] Rapid City Common Council, “Official Proceedings,” August 2, 1971, in Rapid City Journal, August 7, 1971, 10.

[31] “Council asked to approve black parade on Friday,” Rapid City Journal, April 4, 1972, 4.

[32] “Grand Opening” advertisement, Rapid City Journal, January 5, 1972, 8, and “Ebony Club” advertisement, Rapid City Journal, January 15, 1972, 4.

[33] “Grand Opening,” Rapid City Journal, January 5, 1972, 8.

[34] “Shooting, arson theft involved in bar ruckus,” Rapid City Journal, January 21, 1972, 3.

[35] “Shooting, arson theft involved in bar ruckus,” Rapid City Journal, January 21, 1972, 3.

[36] Donna E. Simpson, “Discrimination,” Rapid City Journal, November 3, 1971, 11.

[37] Donna E. Simpson, “Our one black bar,” Rapid City Journal, March 21, 1972, 5.

[38] “Panel to study 40 applications for liquor permit,” Rapid City Journal, March 29, 1972, 2.

[39] “Council asked to approve black parade on Friday,” Rapid City Journal, April 4, 1972, 3.

[40] “Council asked to approve black parade on Friday,” Rapid City Journal, April 4, 1972, 3.

December 1925 – Fred & Viola Dusek

Rapid City Mayor Fred Dusek and wife Viola. (Courtesy Dusek Family Archives.)

Long before the government betrayed him, Fred Dusek believed in the essential fairness of American democracy. A child of the new century, he was born in a sod house in Nebraska on May 31, 1900, the first of his parents’ eight children.[1] His father James had come to the United States from Bohemia in 1889 at the age of 14.[2] After two years in Iowa where he worked, learned English, and saved money to help his siblings immigrate to the United States, James moved west to Nebraska and homesteaded at a place called Sweetwater halfway between the village of Pleasanton and the small railroad town of Ravenna.[3] There he met his future wife, Barbara Maulis, another Bohemian who had immigrated with her parents at the age of 19 and arrived in Ravenna in 1891.[4] After Barbara left the community to live with a cousin in Omaha and work as a housemaid in a private home, James could not forget her. In 1899, James traveled to Omaha, proposed, and they were married.

Years after he had moved to Rapid City, Fred Dusek would long for the sense of family and community he had experienced in Buffalo County where Bohemian and German immigrants greeted one another in their native languages, and on Saturdays farm families gathered in town to shop and to socialize.[5] Throughout the growing season, farmers helped one another plant and then harvest their crops.[6] Fred would later conclude that the agrarian life promoted a sense of community and cooperation. In contrast, in the city “everyone is for himself.”[7]

Likewise Fred remembered the landscape of his youth where his father had worked to not only turn a profit, but also transform his land into a place of beauty, smoothing uneven and broken banks into gentle slopes and planting fruit trees and ornamental shrubs.[8] By the time Fred was in his mid-20s, his father had built a fine home with a well and a hand pump that brought water into the kitchen. By then, he owned three farms that included eight thousand acres.[9]

James and Barbara Dusek ran the farm like a factory. The mid-day meal was always served at noon, supper was at six. The whole family worked long hours. As the oldest son, Fred carried the most responsibility. One of his many jobs was to carry water to the young trees that his father had planted to block the wind that raked across the Great Plains.[10]

Before they were teenagers, the children walked to the country school two miles from the homestead, which they attended until the eighth grade. After that, most boys in that part of the country went to work fulltime on the farm, but Fred was ambitious and restless in his youth. To continue his education, he rode his horse through the winter months five miles to the town of Pleasanton.[11]

To ensure sufficient water for the crops, the livestock, and the family, James Dusek had erected windmills. Fred had to climb these windmills to make repairs and oil the gears. Afraid of heights, he dreaded the work, but feared his father’s disappointment more. One day, however, he had had enough. After an argument with his father, Fred packed a few things and left.[12]

Fred was always good with numbers. In Omaha, he enrolled in the Dworak Business College, which was run by a fellow Bohemian. President and Director of Instructions Anton Dworak was a certified public accountant and head of the Nebraska State Board of Examiners of Certified Public Accountants. He advertised that he trained young men “to meet the demands of Modern Enterprise,” offering courses in stenography, dictaphone, Comptometer and Burroughs Calculating Machines, bookkeeping, accounting and auditing.[13] “By our training,” the school promised, “you will succeed.”[14]

Fred was intent on success. In 1920, Omaha was a city teeming with opportunity and nearly 200,000 people, including a large percentage of immigrants from Bohemia, Germany and other central European regions. Many of these immigrants worked in the slaughter and packing houses that processed meat to ship by rail to the growing cities in the east. They lived in ethnic neighborhoods where people still spoke the languages of their home countries and shops sold the processed meats and sausages and breads of the old country. Meanwhile, their children went to school, learned English, and aspired to a new life as Americans.[15]

With the skills he developed in business school, Fred found work in the legal department of the Square Turn Tractor Company.[16] Tractors were revolutionizing farming, but the business was still wide open with competition. Established in Norfolk, Nebraska in 1917, Square Turn had expanded its operations after the Armistice and sold stock locally to raise capital.[17] In 1921, however, the company suddenly stopped paying its workers, ceased manufacturing, and went into receivership owing nearly two years’ worth of back taxes.[18] Creditors reorganized the company, installed a new president, and tried to find buyers for the company’s unsold tractors.[19] In 1924, the company moved its headquarters from Norfolk to Omaha to strengthen its sales efforts.[20] The company offered Fred a job as office manager, and within weeks of starting work, he was also named assistant treasurer.[21] But Fred soon realized that Square Turn was in deep trouble.[22] Within a year, what was once touted as a $3 million company was sold at a sheriff’s auction for the payment of back taxes and $11,000.[23] By then, Fred had already moved on.

With help from his mother’s sister and her husband, Fred took a job as assistant cashier at the Farmers State Bank in the town of Witten, South Dakota, just over the border from the Rosebud Indian Reservation.[24] [25] Fred served as assistant cashier of the bank. He made loans for automobiles and tractors, wrote mortgages for farms and homes, and sold insurance.[26] He also began moonlighting to run the local pool room on Saturday nights and the Corner Drug Store on Sundays.[27]

Within a year after he arrived in town, Fred was smitten by a local school teacher. Viola Aurora Struve was a smart, outgoing, and assertive young woman with round cheeks, bright eyes, and brown hair cut to a bob.[28] The daughter of Prussian immigrants, she was born July 12, 1901 and grew up on a dairy farm west of Chicago near Joliet with her two older brothers, George and Alfred.[29] On the threshold of her teenage years in 1913, she showed a lackluster interest in school, but improved substantially over the course of the school year, earning nearly straight As and demonstrating a strong interest in history.[30]

When she was a teenager, Viola’s parents [sold the farm] moved into a blue collar neighborhood on the north side of Chicago where William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson was elected mayor in 1915.[31] For decades, Chicago’s working class neighborhoods were a battleground for the war between labor and capital at the turn of the century. With World War I raging in Europe, Mayor Thompson was an outspoken critic of US involvement. He often referred to Chicago as the sixth largest German city in the world because it had over a half million residents of German extraction.[32] Many of the city’s German immigrants, including the Struves, were proud of their heritage and actively opposed American intervention.

In 1919, in the midst of a national “red scare” sparked by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Viola’s brother Alfred refused to participate in an Armistice Day remembrance at Crane Technical High School, where he and Viola were students. His actions were reported on the front page of the Chicago Tribune. According to school administrators, Alfred acknowledged no government and would not stand for the national anthem. Defending her son to a reporter, Viola’s mother Lizzie declared that “the war has turned all of us against all governments and God.” The only reason her daughter had not protested as well, she said, was to avoid trouble. “My daughter and Alfred agree with their father that there is no God or government.”[33] School administrators promised to bring the incident to the attention of federal authorities and expel Alfred if he didn’t withdraw. Meanwhile, fellow classmates threatened violence against Viola’s brother.

“My daughter and Alfred agree with their father that there is no God or government.”
LIZZIE STRUVE

As reporters chased after her to explain her views, 18-year old Viola was unabashed. “Sure, I’m a Socialist,” she told one newshound. “I got it from reading Marx and Liebknecht and speeches of Mayor Thompson, but mostly from reading Jack London. Oh yes, Jack London did more to make me a Socialist than anyone else.”[34]

After graduating, Viola left her brief moment in the political spotlight behind. She transferred to the Lewis Institute, a coeducational liberal arts college that later became part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, receiving her bachelors of science in June 1923.[35] Perhaps inspired by London’s adventures, the intrepid 24-year old Chicago native paid a $70 fee to the Sioux Falls Teachers Agency, which found her a job teaching in Mellette, South Dakota, a farming community south of the city of Aberdeen.[36] When the school year was over, she boarded the train home to Chicago.

Viola was on fire to learn, and that summer she took classes at the University of Chicago. While she was there, the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom held its “summer school” on campus to organize and advocate for the abolition of the armed forces. Veterans organizations protested their presence.[37]

At the end of the summer, Viola returned to South Dakota to teach English, drama, public speaking, and history in the town of Witten. She also oversaw the Glee Club and directed class plays.[38] In Witten she met the handsome young Bohemian banker. One can only imagine what they saw in each other at the time. He was ambitious and hard working, smart enough to be looking for the angles to get ahead, but also grounded in the importance of family and community. She was equally driven and looking for a man who would give her the freedom to pursue her intellect and passions. Where he was stiff and taciturn, she was boisterous and affable.

On Sundays, with Fred dressed in a suit and tie and Viola in a dress, they took drives into the countryside in a Ford Model T and stopped to take pictures. When the school year was over, Viola returned to Chicago again to take more classes. For Fred the relationship was serious from the beginning. During the summer he wrote to Viola several days a week. It was a curious epistolatory courtship, expressions of affection mixed with homilies, moral admonitions, and financial advice. He told her that he had negotiated for a raise, but had not gotten what he wanted. He had another job offer at a higher salary, but he was not going to take it, noting that he was making a financial sacrifice to be near her. Unabashedly, he recounted how others in town had said he was a hard worker and trustworthy.

In his letters he explored the framework for a life they might share together. He confessed that he had not been raised in any particular faith and had been taught to respect all nationalities. Nevertheless, he had a strong moral code. Growing up, he was expected to be forthright and tell the truth.

Much of what he wrote foreshadowed the partnership they would develop as husband and wife and as entrepreneurs. On one hand, he articulated a conventional view of a wife who followed her husband’s ambition and supported him along the way. “I believe a man’s position in life depends a great deal on the backing that he gets from his wife,” he wrote, but he also noted that “the advice she gives him” was essential to success. He promised to be faithful to her and to have a marriage of equals. “I would like to see a home with the closest cooperation,” he wrote, “and no one boss.” “I am willing that you name your goal,” he wrote, “and I will work towards that end.”

Fred was both attracted to and intimidated by Viola’s education, intellect, and energy. While he sought to convince her that he would respect her independence and embrace a marriage of equals, he was also unsettled by her “eastern ways” and her perception that there was no opportunity in the West. If they were going to make a life together, one of them would have to compromise, he wrote, with the clear implication that it should be her. But even as he adopted a paternalistic tone in one letter, he confessed in the next, “I often think I can handle anybody else better than you. Let’s be pals, study, think, plan, love, and fight together.”[39]

He pushed back against her desire to live in Chicago or some eastern city, saying “city life and environment destroy cooperation. Everyone is for himself in the city.” After two years teaching in rural South Dakota, Viola must have become enamored of rural life. Maybe Mellette and Witten reminded her of her childhood in the countryside near Joliet. Or maybe she idealized the sense of community that Fred also found compelling. But he could see that she was still uncertain about where she imagined her future, and he was afraid. “If I lost the only girl that I ever loved,” he wrote, “I would be through with matrimony for life.”

For Fred, the secret to success at home and in his career was self control. “There are a number of things which are important such as perfect control of the mind so as to make me a better husband and pal,” he confessed. “This I feel comes first because success in business never comes without success in a home.” Indeed, he said, with her love, he was bound to be successful in business. “A kiss and a hug form you will close more collections than all my efforts, a million “no’s” cannot stop me when my mind is free and carries the love of you.”

While she was in Chicago, he wrote to a dealer in Los Angeles to buy a diamond ring. The dealer sent him a ring by mail. In a series of letters, Fred pointed out flaws in the stone and bargained for a better price. Then apparently, he was satisfied with the deal.

Three days before Christmas in 1925, Fred and Viola eloped and were married in Stanley, South Dakota. They kept the marriage secret so that Viola wouldn’t have to quit her job as a teacher. The couple remained in Witten for another year, but these were hard times to be banking in farm country. In 1925, as agricultural commodity prices plummeted and farmers failed to make mortgage payments, the life of a rural banker got very difficult. That year, 174 banks in South Dakota failed. Newly married at the age of 25, Fred worried about his career and the future of his marriage.[40]

[1] https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/16772673/person/1632533870/media/53c904b3-1fd7-4cc5-af11-e958f0995df0?_phsrc=gyn699&_phstart=successSource. See also, Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[2] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[3] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[4] Mrs. Vernonica Maulis Dead,” Ravenna News, September 18, 1925, 5.

[5] Winona Snell, “Ravenna, Buffalo County,” University of Nebraska, Lincoln. https://casde.unl.edu/history/counties/buffalo/ravenna/

[6] Interview with Barbara Dusek Knott, September 13, 2021.

[7] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[8] “James Dusek Farm One of Most Modern in State,” Kearney Daily Hub, May 11, 1925, 6. Note, the paper later published a correction saying this story was about Joseph, not James, Dusek. The two were brothers. “Error in Name,” Ravenna News, May 22, 1925, 2.

[9] Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr., Encyclopedia of Bohemian and Czech-American Biography, Volume 1, 2016. Entry for Joe Dusek (1866-1943).

[10] https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/16772673/person/1632533870/media/53c904b3-1fd7-4cc5-af11-e958f0995df0?_phsrc=gyn699&_phstart=successSource. Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[11] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[12] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[13] “Rise to a Good Position,” display advertisement, Omaha Daily Bee, August 21, 1922, 8.

[14] At the end of 1920, Fred was injured [or sick] and had to spend five weeks in a hospital. “Ravenna News Notes,” Kearney Daily Hub, January 25, 1921, 4.

[15] Lawrence H. Larsen et. al., Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha & Council Bluffs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

[16] “Buffalo County Boy Has Good Position,” Ravenna News, January 4, 1924, 1.

[17] “Square Turn Tractor Co. Assets Are Sold,” Norfolk Daily News, September 12, 1925, 5.

[18] “Proceedings of Madison County Commissioners,” Battle Creek Enterprise, April 14, 1927, 9.

[19] “Creditors Will Run Square Turn Tractor Plant,” Norfolk Daily News, March 16, 1921, 5.

[20] “Square Turn Offices Moved to Omaha,” Wausa Gazette, August 21, 1924, 1.

[21] “Buffalo County Boy Has Good Position,” Ravenna News, January 4, 1924, 1.

[22] “Personal and Otherwise,” Ravenna News, February 8, 1924, 7.

[23] “Nebraska News,” Lincoln Star Journal, March 20, 1925, 12.

[24] Fred Dusek to William & Leon Snyder, June 5, 1959 in in Folder: Mayor’s Office-Fred Dusek-Personnel in Box 1, Dusek Archives. Fred had an aunt and uncle living in Witten, Mr. and Mrs. Fred J. Toman. See also, “Mrs. Vernonica Maulis Dead,” Ravenna News, September 18, 1925, 5.

[25] Banks in Witten seemed to have had a troubled history. The German-American State bank in Witten suffered along with the rest of the state during the terrible drought year of 1911. When farmers and local businesses failed, the bank took back worthless land and property, including the Witten Hardware store. As the hardware store lost money, bank deposits slowed to a trickle, and the bulk of the bank’s remaining assets were tied up in so-called “Indian notes,” the bank failed in September, 1912. “Witten Bank Fails,” Rapid City Journal, September 25, 1912, 4.

[26] Fred Dusek to William & Leon Snyder, June 5, 1959 in in Folder: Mayor’s Office-Fred Dusek-Personnel in Box 1, Dusek Archives. Fred had an aunt and uncle living in Witten, Mr. and Mrs. Fred J. Toman. See “Mrs. Vernonica Maulis Dead,” Ravenna News, September 18, 1925, 5. Note that 1925 was apparently not a good year for business in Witten. The Atlas State Bank suspended payments on October 26 and had to be taken over by the South Dakota Department of Banking and Finance. See South Dakota Superintendent of Banks, 1932 Annual Report, 216.

[27] Interview with Barbara Dusek Knott, September 13, 2021. Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[28] Photos in Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[29] George came to the US in 1882. Lizzie came in 1870. George was born in 1862. Lizzie was born December 31, 1868. (Find a Grave) US Census 1900. Chicago Ward 21. The 1930 Census, however, says they both immigrated in 1882.

[30] Lombard Public School, Annual Report, Viola Struve, 1913-1914. Box ea001, Dusek Archives.

[31] The Struves were living at 832 Newport Avenue in 1919. “Red Activities Taint Schools; Boys Dropped,” Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1919, 1.

[32] Dennis Thompson, “The Private Wars of Chicago’s Big Bill Thompson,” Journal of Library History, 15:3 (Summer 1980), 261-280.

[33] “Red Activities Taint Schools; Boys Dropped,” Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1919, 1.

[34] “Schools Oust Red Advocates,” Buffalo Enquirer, November 15, 1919, 3. See also, “Charged With Sowing Seeds of Radicalism,” Vancouver Daily World, November 18, 1919, 2.

[35] Lewis Institute Diploma, June 21, 1923 in Dusek Family Archives.

[36] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[37] “Women’s Peace League Rapped By Legionnaires,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 8, 1924, 3.

[38] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[39] Barbara Dusek Stock, student report on Fred Dusek, June 28, 1984. Dusek Family Archives.

[40] SWCA Environmental Consultants, The History of Agriculture in South Dakota: Components for a Fully Developed Historic Context (Pierre: South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, 2013), 21.

January 1951 – “I Am No Red!”

On Monday morning, Ben American Horse and his wife Julia, also known as White Cow Woman, sat with the other tribal elders in the waiting area of the new Rapid City Municipal Airport. Despite the radiators ticking away under the windows and in the corner of the room, cold air emanated from the north-facing glass or blew across the asphalt tile floor when the gate attendant opened the door to step out and check on the plane.[1]

American Horse and his wife had never flown in an airplane before. None of his Lakota companions had. But American Horse was no stranger to travel. As a boy he took the train from South Dakota to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1892. At Carlisle as an All-American on Pop Warner’s famous football team, he traveled to places like Washington, DC to play. After Graduating in 1894, he joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and in 1906 he and other Lakota sailed to Europe to perform.[2] Even after he returned to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he worked as a policeman, American Horse occasionally traveled to Washington, DC to testify before Congress as president of the Sioux Treaty Council.

As he waited, American Horse could hear the group’s handler, a local artist and Lakota-speaker hired by the Hollywood producers to organize this trip, talking to a reporter from the Rapid City Journal. The man noted that none of his traveling companions seemed concerned about their first trip in an airplane, but he joked that he was worried about what he would do if one or another of them got “panicky” at 20,000 feet.[3]

The reporter’s story about a group of Native elders was unlikely to make the front page of the newspaper. In Korea, American and U.N. forces were engaged in heavy fighting with the communists near Wonju south of Seoul. Congress, the White House, and the United Nations were all arguing over next steps in the war.[4] As an active Republican who had attended the party’s national convention in Chicago in 1944, American Horse had no sympathy for the communists in Korea. Nevertheless, the war unsettled him, especially when he thought of the young men he knew from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who were in the thick of the fight.[5]

All of the Native men traveling with American Horse that morning had experienced war, though for most of them it had been deep in their childhood. John Sitting Bull, Jr., the 91-year old son of the famous Hunkpapa chief, was a teenager at the time of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Ben Black Elk was the son of the famous spiritual leader Nicholas Black Elk, who had also fought against Custer. Meanwhile, Howard Bad Bear was an 80-year old survivor of the Wounded Knee massacre. The women traveling with them—White Cow Woman, Pretty Leaf Woman, and Black Elk’s 25-year old daughter, Olivia—understood the burdens of this history, but they were also caught up in the nation’s collective effort to romanticize the violence and oppression that it reflected.[6]

The group was beginning a month-long tour of American cities in the East to promote the movie “Tomahawk: The Glory Story of the Great Sioux Indian Uprising.” American Horse and his friends had played bit parts in the film, but they would play a bigger role in promoting it. This morning they were on their way to Chicago for the film’s official premiere on Thursday.

As the group sat in the waiting area, they could hear the hum of the waist-high, red Coca-Cola vending machine and the overhead fluorescent lights as well as the wind buffeting the windows.[7] For the gate agent, the wind posed a problem. The new Rapid City Municipal Airport had opened for business only five months earlier, but in an effort to economize, city officials had paid for the creation of only one poorly drained, dirt runway. As a result, the winds had to be blowing in the right direction for the Western Air Lines DC-3 prop planes to take off and land. Already Western Air Lines had notified city officials that they might have to terminate service to Rapid City because the airport failed to meet the newest safety standards promulgated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Having exhausted the $300,000 budget that voters had approved for the new facility, the city commission was scrambling to figure out how to pay for these improvements.

In the meantime, passengers and crews waited for favorable winds.

On that Monday morning, American Horse and his companions were eventually able to board the flight and take off. American Horse later noted that they traveled “a rough road” through the air at other points on the tour, but that first flight was apparently uneventful.[8] The aging Lakota leader undoubtedly marveled at the views of the snow-covered prairie below as the plane turned east over the Badlands with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation visible to the south.

Two days later, in full regalia, American Horse and his companions trudged through the snow in Chicago to get to the Stevens Hotel for a press conference. He and Howard Bad Bear were no strangers to these kinds of events. As actors in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the turn of the century, they had learned to perform their Native identities to entertain large crowds of Europeans and Non-Native Americans.[9]

For the press conference that day, the South Dakota visitors posed for photographs. Then they joined several of the movie’s stars, including Van Heflin and Yvonne de Carlo, for the premiere, laughing when they recognized themselves or their friends in the movie.[10] Afterwards, they were besieged by autograph seekers, a phenomenon that would follow them throughout their multi-city tour. [11]

“Tomahawk” was not the first movie made in the Black Hills to exploit viewers’ fascination with Native Americans and the American West. In 1912, only two decades after the Wounded Knee massacre, Buffalo Bill Cody hired a movie crew and used members of his show to recreate the scene at Wounded Knee.[12] Other movies had followed, but “Tomahawk” was special. It was one of a handful of movies made between 1925 and 1951 that depicted Native Americans from a sympathetic perspective. As Ben Black Elk told reporters, it was “the first film I know of where the Indian is shown as an Indian ought to be shown. All the other pictures depict the red man running around killing women and children and scalping old men. We don’t have it too easy even now. But thank goodness, in spite of the white man, the Indian has not forgotten how to keep alive.”[13]

Critics were not kind to the film. Although the movie offered the local tourism industry in the Black Hills a way to advertise the region and further link it with the romantic myth of the American West, a local critic who got to see a sneak preview at the Rapid City Air Force Base noted that the film “wanders through a series of poorly connected sequences which do little to enlighten the audience on the story of Jim Bridger and the betrayal of the Sioux by the whites in Wyoming territory.” Histrionic scenes combined with dull performances by the movie’s white stars playing Native Americans contributed to the reviewer’s disappointment. The Technicolor cinematography, however, depicting the beauty of the Black Hills and the Badlands was probably worth the price of admission. And for the Saturday matinee crowds of children, there was “lots of ridin’ and shootin.’”[14]

American Horse and his companions undoubtedly heard about the reviews, but they were focused on the next steps in their journey. Traveling by plane and train, they went to Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Providence. In Detroit, Sitting Bull enjoyed a visit with his nephew, John B. Sitting Bull, who worked for the Ford Motor Company.[15] In New York, the group appeared at the Loew’s State Theater for the Saturday and Sunday matinees. They offered displays of native handicrafts, met with a troop of Boy Scouts, and passed out “Lucky Indian” key chains to the first 500 children.[16] In several cities, the group visited the studios of the local television station, and their images flickered on the black and white screens of viewers at home.

Two cities proved to be especially pivotal for the tour. American Horse had been to the nation’s capital many times. When he was at Carlisle, the football team had played against the Georgetown Hoyas. As an adult, he had come to Washington, D.C. a number of times to lobby on behalf of the Lakota people. In 1934, when the government tried to get tribes to adopt constitutions, American Horse led the opposition to the charter proposed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[17] American Horse had also become active in the Republican Party. In 1944, he attended the national convention in Chicago wearing his buckskins and a feathered bonnet.[18]

On this trip, American Horse and the others were met by Senator Karl Mundt as they descended the airstairs to the tarmac in their regalia.[19] They posed for more pictures and visited the office of newly elected Congressman E.Y. Berry, who had lived most of his life on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where Sitting Bull had been killed. Berry posed with the group wearing a feather bonnet.[20]

Everywhere he went, Non-Natives referred to American Horse as “chief,” a word they borrowed from dime novels and Western movies and associated with an image of Native Americans that was fixed and romanticized in the distant past. At times, this misconception created problems for American Horse and his companions because in the real world he represented the Medicine Root District in the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council and had both a cultural and political responsibility to speak on behalf of his community.

In Washington, the group had lunch in the Vandenberg room of the Capitol where they were joined by various senators and representatives, many of whom were focused on the fate of American troops fighting on the Korean peninsula. After most of the group had finished their lunch, White Cow Woman stood and spoke in Lakota and Ben Black Elk translated. She talked of the poverty on the reservation and the misery among the Native Americans on Pine Ridge. Her own family survived on $540 a year ($5,643.28 in 2021 dollars)—$40 a month from her husband’s pension as a reservation police officer and $80 a year from rental of her allotted pasture lands. Implicit in her speech was an appeal to the assembled legislators to honor the treaty obligations of the American people and address the urgent needs of the Lakota people.[21]

American Horse also pushed back against non-Native efforts to celebrate Native culture as part of the melting pot of America while denying the very real legal and political claims of Native people. At one point on the trip, he suggested that the United Nations should recognize the Sioux as a sovereign nation and admit the tribe as a member of the world body.[22]

Despite the seriousness of their appeals, the group from Pine Ridge maintained their sense of humor. Visiting the empty Senate chamber, American Horse sat in the chair of the vice president of the United States, surveyed the empty seats, and then quipped, “I am vice president now; what can I do for you poor Indians?”[23]

After the lunch, on the east steps of the nation’s capitol, the 91-year old Sitting Bull danced as drummers played and sang.[24]

In Washington, American Horse attended the Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day celebration held in the red brick Uline Arena in back of Union Station. With members of the Grand Old Party hoping that 1952 would be their year to finally break the Democratic lock on the presidency, speakers railed against the policies of the Truman administration and fed the nation’s Cold War fears of the Soviet Union and communism. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy blasted Truman’s “Fair Deal” as a “sellout to Communism at home.” When American Horse took to the stage in his full regalia, his thick glasses covering his eyes, the 12,000 attendees went wild. [25]

“We red men have had too much New Deal red tape,” he said. Undoubtedly referring to the recently concluded perjury trial of accused-spy Alger Hiss, he exhorted the president to “kick out Joe’s Stalin’s Red men who have sneaked into our teepee.”[26]

Ben American Horse, LIFE Magazine, February 19, 1951. — Ben American Horse speaking to Lincoln Day dinner, Washington, D.C. LIFE Magazine, February 19, 1951.

From Washington, the tour continued to Boston where the group attracted weekend crowds to the Jordan March department store.[27] The Boston Globe ran a heroic profile picture of the aging American Horse and White Cow Woman with a caption that described them as “100 Percent Americans.”[28]

In Boston, however, American Horse’s ability to dissent was put to the test. At a press conference, the Korean War once again loomed in the background. Noting that his son-in-law had lost his legs and arms fighting in World War II and his nephew had been wounded in Korea, American Horse told reporters that Native servicemen were making great sacrifices on behalf of the nation, but their rights as citizens were not being protected at home. Benefits extended through the GI Bill of Rights were being denied to Native ex-servicemen who could not get loans to build homes on their tribal lands. Until these issues were resolved, American Horse suggested, Native soldiers should be returned home.[29]

Unbeknown to American Horse, the Communist Party’s Daily Worker picked up on his remarks and published an article highlighting the chief’s comments about Native American servicemen. The newspaper suggested that American Horse had called on the United States to pull out of Korea entirely. The article came to light when American Horse and his companions landed back in Rapid City almost a month after they had departed. A Rapid City Journal reporter confronted him over the story.

Keeping his frustration in check, American Horse noted that 1,500 Native people on the Pine Ridge Reservation had served in World War II, three-quarters of them as volunteers. [30] Though he did not say it, he was also aware that many Native men were fighting and dying in Korea.[31] He denied suggesting that the United States should abandon the fight against the communists in North Korea.

Then, as if to underscore all these points, with a chuckle belying his own recognition of the irony in what he was about to say, he told the reporter, “I’m no Red!”

[1] Description based on pictures used in the Brezina Construction advertisement in the Rapid City Journal, August 26, 1950, 3.

[2] American Horse was born in 1875. He married Julia American Horse. In the fall of 1905, Julia gave birth to a son, Ben American Horse, Jr. in New York, while Ben was working for Pawnee Bills Show at Brighton Beach. The child died seven months later of broncho-pneumonia. (Ancestry) American Horse was about 31 years old when he returned from Antwerp, Belgium on board the Zeeland. https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7488&h=4013537071&tid=&pid=&queryId=e88d9120d5667ce67f1f9f31c63694e6&usePUB=true&_phsrc=gyn607&_phstart=successSource

[3] “Indians Fly Away to Ballyhoo Hills Movie,” Rapid City Journal, January 22, 1951, 3.

[4] “Allies Stab Back Into Rail Center,” Rapid City Journal, January 21, 1951, 1.

[5] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/korean-war/casualty-lists/sd-alpha.pdf. One press story said that Sitting Bull’s grandson, Charles Walking Bull, Jr., had recently been killed in action in Korea. But his name is not on this official list of servicemen killed in the Korean War.

[6] “Son of Sitting Bull Among Sioux Indians Here for Film Debut,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1951, 6. See also, Joe Jackson, Black Elk: The Life of An American Visionary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 468.

[7] Description based on pictures used in the Brezina Construction advertisement in the Rapid City Journal, August 26, 1950, 3.

[8] “Chief in Jocular Mood,” Pittsburgh Press, February 9, 1951, 32.

[9] Monika Siebert, Indians Playing Indian: Multiculturalism and Contemporary Indigenous Art in North America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015), 12.

[10] Mae Tinee, “Indians Whoop It Up Here at Film Premiere,” Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1951, 155.

[11] Bob Lee, “Sioux Chieftain Blasts Daily Worker Reporter,” Rapid City Journal, February 20, 1951, 3.

[12] Bob Lee uncovered this information in his research for the Rapid City Journal. “Hills Mecca for Movies,” Rapid City Journal, March 30, 1969, 33.

[13] Harman W. Nichols, “Ben Black Elk Knows Thing or 2,” Columbus Republic, January 31, 1951, 3.

[14] “No ‘Oscars’ Sighted By Critics for ‘Tomahawk,” Rapid City Journal, January 22, 1951, 3.

[15] “Kinsman on Indian Visit,” Detroit Free Press, February 8, 1951, 19.

[16] “Injun Key Chains for 500 Children at Loew’s State,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 15, 1951, 5. See also “South Bergen Scouts Meet Indians at Show,” Passaic Herald News, February 19, 1951, 13.

[17] Akim D. Reinhardt, Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics From the IRA to Wounded Knee (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007), 96-97. See also, Kenneth R. Philip, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981), 165.

[18] “6 G.O.P Delegates Pass Out From Heat,” Joplin Globe, June 27, 1944, 5.

[19] Photo and caption, Sheridan County Star, February 15, 1951, 5.

[20] “Indians Go to Washington,” Rapid City Journal, February 1, 1951, 1.

[21] Dillon Graham, “Chief Sitting Bull’s Son Does War Dance on Capitol Steps,” Rapid City Journal, February 9, 1951, 4.

[22] “Chief of Sioux Wants G.I.’s Brought Home,” Boston Globe, February 2, 1951, 28.

[23] Bob Lee, “Sioux Chieftain Blasts Daily Worker Reporter,” Rapid City Journal, February 20, 1951, 3.

[24] Dillon Graham, “Chief Sitting Bull’s Son Does War Dance on Capitol Steps,” Rapid City Journal, February 9, 1951, 4.

[25] Red Republican Becomes Red Hero,” LIFE magazine, February 19, 1951, 36.

[26] Red Republican Becomes Red Hero,” LIFE magazine, February 19, 1951, 36.

[27] Display advertisement, Boston Globe, February 1, 1951, 9.

[28] “Chief of Sioux Wants G.I.’s Brought Home,” Boston Globe, February 2, 1951, 28.

[29] Bob Lee, “Sioux Chieftain Blasts Daily Worker Reporter,” Rapid City Journal, February 20, 1951, 3.

[30] Bob Lee, “Sioux Chieftain Blasts Daily Worker Reporter,” Rapid City Journal, February 20, 1951, 3.

[31] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/korean-war/casualty-lists/sd-alpha.pdf. One press story said that Sitting Bull’s grandson, Charles Walking Bull, Jr., had recently been killed in action in Korea. But his name is not on this official list of servicemen killed in the Korean War.

Summer 1954 – Exhale Under Water

Public swimming pool, Waverly, Iowa. (Photo: L.L. Cook, Co. – CardCow.com)

In the summer after her junior year, Millie and her sister Bernice, who had just finished her freshman year at Wartburg, were offered jobs painting archery targets and making bow strings for a man who supplied sporting goods companies in Chicago. They worked out of his home. It was tedious piece work, but not very difficult, and he paid them more than they could make back home in McLaughlin.[1]

One day, Bernice said to Millie, “You know, Miss Langrock is teaching a swimming course. Maybe we should take that.”

Adeline Langrock was a favorite with many of the students. The former Miss Osage was ten years older than Millie. With her short, cube cut hair, she was tall, outgoing, theatrical and an accomplished singer. She played competitive tennis and held a state record in women’s bowling. In high school and college, she had been a swimming instructor for the American Red Cross.[2] After graduating from Iowa State, she was hired in 1952 as the director of women’s physical education at Wartburg—the only woman on the faculty in the Division of Biological Sciences.[3]

Millie liked Miss Langrock. As a freshman, Millie had joined the women’s intramural athletic association, and Adeline Langrock had been the advisor to the group. But Millie wasn’t sure about the idea of learning to swim. Bernice insisted that the course would be good for them. It was offered through the “Learn to Swim” program sponsored by the American Red Cross and included water safety as well as basic instruction. Looking across the room at her sister, Millie said, “We don’t have any swimming suits.”

Bernice insisted that they go to JC Penney or one of the other department stores downtown to buy suits.[4] After Millie agreed to sign up for the course, the two women went shopping. Millie picked out a smart-looking, one-piece black suit with red trim.

The 20-year old Waverly Public pool had been built in the middle of the Depression. A low chain link fence surrounded the perimeter of the pool area, and a small concrete block building offered changing areas and restrooms. When Millie entered with the other students, she confessed to Miss Langrock, “I have never been swimming in my life.”

“You will do fine,” the teacher reassured her.

Minutes later, Langrock lined the students up on the edge of the pool and said, “Jump in!”

For a moment, Millie hesitated. But as the other students leaped into the water, splashing her as they went, she followed suit.[5] Floundering for a moment, she heard Langrock say, “Just hold on to the edge of the pool.”

Millie clutched for the concrete lip, holding her head above water.

“Practice bobbing up and down,” Langrock urged, “holding your breath and letting your face go under. When you are comfortable, let your legs float behind you so that you can kick.”

Everyday Millie and Bernice went to the lessons. Afterwards, they would dry off and go back to their jobs painting targets and making bow strings.

As the lessons progressed, Millie learned to swim down the lane, stroking with her arms, putting her head under water, and then lifting it up above the surface.

“Exhale under water,” Langrock called to the swimmers. “Inhale when you come up for air.” [6]

Millie struggled to get it right. Sometimes she gulped the pool water in her eagerness to breathe. But gradually she improved.

When the lessons were almost over, Langrock tested her students on what they had learned. Millie had to show that she could swim at least 100 feet using the overhand crawl, tread water, complete a surface dive, and jump in feet first, level off and swim for at least 50 feet.[7] Langrock also taught them about water safety, explaining what to do if they went overboard from a boat in turbulent water.

Eighteen years later, Millie would remember the sound of her voice calling to the swimmers. “Exhale under water. Inhale when you come up for air.”[8]

[1] Interview with Mildred Dieter, August 27, 2021, 56:00-57:00.

[2] Newspaper.com research.

[3] Yearbook, Wartburg College, 1954, 22. Accessed through Ancestry.com.

[4] The name of the program comes from this article, “Swim Lessons Will Be Given at Waverly,” Waterloo Courier, June 11, 1957, 17.

[5] Interview with Mildred Dieter, August 27, 2021, 57:00-58:00.

[6] Rapid City Public Library, “Millie Dieter Oral History,” Flood of 1972, accessed August 23, 2020, https://1972flood.omeka.net/items/show/222, 08:59.

[7] The basic components of the Learn-to-Swim program in 1954 are outlined in “’Y’ Opens Summer Swimming Program for Women and Girls,” Eau Claire Daily Telegraph, June 4, 1954, 5.

[8] Rapid City Public Library, “Millie Dieter Oral History,” Flood of 1972, accessed August 23, 2020, https://1972flood.omeka.net/items/show/222, 08:59.

May 1950 – Engineer in a Bomber Jacket

When the two men walked over holding their beers, Stella Maris Buthe didn’t think much of them. As the only daughter in a family with five boys, she knew something about men and boys. The one in the leather bomber jacket was full of himself. Her body language and expression communicated her lack of interest, but he was not deterred. When he asked if there was room in the booth to sit next to her, she shifted slightly, and he settled in. His friend slid in next to her roommate Patricia.[1]

Stella thought the one who sat beside her was not bad looking. He introduced himself as Leonard. With brown hair and deep, recessed blue eyes, his Swedish heritage was evident in the strong features in his face. Although he was not a tall man, he was still a head taller than she was. He was fit and very social.

Over the big band music and the sounds of the other patrons in the Marine Club, Stella listened to him talk and tried to put the pieces together. Like many of the other men in the bar, he was a veteran. He enlisted late in the war. As a buck private, he was on a troop transport in the middle of the Pacific Ocean headed for the invasion of Japan when the United States dropped the atom bomb in August 1945. The war ended weeks later, so he never dodged a bullet. After spending a few months in Okinawa, he returned stateside and was discharged near the end of 1946.

As Stella knew, the government of the United States was grateful to every man who served. It didn’t matter whether you fought in the trenches, navigated a bomber over Berlin, manned a turret on a battleship, or changed bed pans in an Army hospital in Maryland, when you got your discharge papers you were eligible for the GI Bill. Returning home, Leonard enrolled at South Dakota State in the College of Engineering and was just finishing his junior year.

Like Stella, Leonard had grown up on a farm, and his family had struggled during the Depression. Where her family had always been poor, however, his had been prosperous with a large, Sears and Roebuck catalog home and plenty of land for crops and livestock. But in the Depression, they lost everything. Moving closer to the city of Sioux Falls, his parents rented a smaller farm, and Leonard enrolled at Cathedral High School.

Leonard had dreamed of becoming an engineer since he was a child, but even with the help of the federal government, he still had to work to make ends meet. During his three years in college, he had been a garage mechanic, cleaned up in a barber shop, and worked as a cashier in a small store that sold tobacco, ice cream, candy and beer. Stella got only a few of these details that night, but she sensed that he was ambitious and not easily deterred once his mind was made up.

For his part, Leonard Swanson was already smitten. At the age of 23, Stella had a full, round face with prominent cheeks and wide-open eyes. Her brown hair was parted in the center and cut to her neckline.[2] She had grown up in the farming community of Carthage, South Dakota, about 90 miles west and north of Sioux Falls. Her German-born father was 17 years older than her mother and worked as a farm laborer. [3] Stella graduated in 1945 with a handful of classmates from Argonne High School, where she was voted “School Queen.” At the suggestion of her school counselor, she joined the US Cadet Nurse Corps. But with the end of the war, the nursing corps was shrinking.[4] She moved to Sioux Falls and in 1947 found a job with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company as a long distance operator.[5]

The phone company was growing. Long distance call volumes from Sioux Falls had nearly tripled since the start of the war, and the company was hiring dozens of young farm women to pull and plug cables on its switchboards. In fact, the company was in the middle of installing a new 100-foot switchboard with positions for 44 operators working side-by-side in a long row.[6] During the busiest times, the women hardly had time to talk to each other, but Stella and Patricia had become good friends. They shared an apartment on West 12^th Street, three blocks away from her older brother and sister-in-law who worked for the Morrel’s meatpacking company.[7] And when they had time off together, they went out on the town.

Leonard asked if Stella wanted to dance. Half-heartedly she agreed. When it was time to go, he asked if he could see her again. She hesitated, but gave him her phone number. As he and his friend Tommy Thomsen headed home that night, Swanson knew he was in trouble. He had made a date to see her next week, but he was also committed to working a construction job in Aberdeen for the summer. By the time he returned to school and could see Stella again, the flicker of interest he had seen in her eyes might be gone.

[1] Leonard Swanson, “Stella Maris,” poem, nd.

[2] See wedding photo, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, April 1, 1951, 21.

[3] Record of Marriage, Mitchell, SD, October 8, 1923. Ancestry.com. Mary Harings was 17 years younger than Henry.

[4] US Cadet Nurse Corps Membership Card, 1945, Ancestry.com.

[5] “Stella M. Buthe, Leonard Swanson Exchange Nuptials,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, March 28, 1951, 16.

[6] “Long Distance Switchbboard in S.F. Replaced,” Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, May 31, 1950, 11.

[7] Sioux Falls City Directory, 1951, 78. [Stella lived at 115 W. 12^th. Clemence (her older brother born 7.16.1924) and Edna Buthe, who both worked for Morrell’s meatpacking company, lived three blocks away at 410 W. 12^th]. See also Sioux Falls City Directory, 1948, 75. Stella’s father was Henry Buthe.

Leonard Swanson

April 1948 – Race and Beauty in Rapid City

Atlantic City was eighteen hundred miles away. But distance was not a barrier to a Lakota girl aspiring to be crowned Miss America. Race was the issue.

Shortly before the arrival of the Freedom Train in April 1948, the Rapid City Musicians union announced that it would sponsor the first-ever “Miss Rapid City” beauty pageant. Contestants would appear on stage three times: once in evening gowns, then to show off their talent, and finally in bathing suits.

The women would be judged by nine Black Hills civic leaders, including the executive editor of the newspaper, several local drama and music teachers, the president of the local labor association, Rapid City’s new mayor Earl Brockelsby, and the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who had recently announced plans to carve a mountain to honor the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse.

To ensure that the winner would be eligible to compete for the title of Miss South Dakota and ultimately Miss America, the musician’s union announced that the contest would follow the Miss America guidelines. It would be open to any young woman “in good health and of the white race.”

When Eileen Keegan, a school teacher and local dance instructor, heard about the rules for the pageant, she immediately sent a letter to the editor of the paper. Even if the rules were made by the national committee, she wrote, “do Rapid City people have to be represented in something so narrow?”[1] Two days later, the chair of the Miss Rapid City Beauty Contest responded, agreeing with Keegan’s sentiments and urging that “all letters of protest regarding racial discrimination in beauty contests” be forwarded to the Miss America Pageant committee.

When Eva Nichols read about the racial restrictions, she decided she had had enough. An enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, Nichols was born in Lyons, Nebraska in 1902. Like many Native children in her generation, she was separated from her family and sent to boarding school. After graduating, she relocated to Sioux City, Iowa where she went to business college. Nichols was more interested in teaching than typing. She joined the staff of a boarding school on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and also taught at the Pierre Indian Boarding School and the He Dog School. In 1923, she married Roy Roubideaux, and the next year they moved to Rapid City.[2]

The marriage did not last, but it produced a son, Ramon, who would later become a prominent civil rights attorney and Native American activist. While Ramon was young, however, Eva took government jobs in several states in the northern Great Plains. In 1942, following the US entry into World War II, she returned to Rapid City and landed a job as payroll-personnel clerk at the Sioux Sanitorium. Two years later, she married George Nichols.

During the war and afterwards, Nichols Increasingly became an outspoken advocate for Native people. She organized economic assistance for low-income Native families in Rapid City and on nearby reservations. Earlier in 1948, she was elected president of the Black Hills Council of American Indians. In public and in private, she was unafraid to challenge prevailing white prejudice and discrimination, even if it meant taking on the Miss America Pageant.

With patriotism in the air days before the arrival of the Freedom Train, Nichols delivered to the newspaper a copy of the letter she sent to the Miss America Pageant committee.[3] She described the pageant’s racial restrictions as “one of the most un-American forms of discrimination this western part of the country has seen in all its history of contests.” She noted that many of the members of the Musician’s Union in Rapid City were young Native men “who are outstanding musicians in the area” and “make no apology for their race.” Nichols also praised “the beauty of Indian girls” and noted that Darlene DeCory, a Native student in Rapid City, had been crowned “Snow Queen” in a statewide contest that winter.[4]

Nichols understood how racism against Native people in 1948 fit within the larger picture of discrimination in America. Suggesting that Atlantic City was close enough to the South to be imbued with Jim Crow attitudes, she wrote, “you may feel justified in segregating your contestants and denying the Negroes the right to enter the contest. But our Indian population is rising up in arms against this kind of discrimination. It is our aim to fight this, not only locally, but nationally as well.”

Nichols’ protest was well-timed. Several weeks earlier the Chamber of Commerce in Ephrata, Washington, in open defiance of the national rules, refused to discriminate against a Native entrant to its beauty contest.[5] Organizers in Atlantic City in 1948 might also have been aware of how the Miss America Pageant itself had celebrated Native women in its first competition 22 years earlier when it featured Jesse Jim, the Spokane Indian Congress’s reigning Princess America II, on the stage with the pageant’s first winner.[6]

The day after her protest was published, the Rapid City Musicians Union’s board of directors met and voted unanimously to drop any restriction tied to color or race. In open defiance of the national contest, the group also pledged to support the winner in the state pageant regardless of any discriminatory ruling on race. In a statement to the press, the head of the union noted that the American Federation of Musicians had a long history of advocating for racial equality and combatting discrimination and segregation. The chairman of the event urged “all girls” to consider entering the contest. When contacted by the press, the director of the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce, sponsors of the state pageant, promised that they too would fight the “white race” rule in the national pageant’s regulations.[7]

Pageant officials in Atlantic City quickly responded to the insurgency in western South Dakota. Executive director Lenora S. Slaughter told the press that the Miss America Pageant would welcome entries by Native women. In a letter to Eva Nichols she wrote, “We can be proud and happy to accept a candidate with Indian blood.” [8]

For African American women, it was a different question. “We have eliminated the negro from this contest due to the fact that it is absolutely impossible to judge fairly the beauty of the negro race in comparison with the white race,” Slaughter said. Six more years would have to pass before the US Supreme Court ruled that separate was inherently unequal. In the meantime, Lenora Slaughter asserted that Black women had the Miss Sepia America contest, and she could congratulate herself and her organization by writing, “We have assisted the people running this contest at all time[s] and they understand fully our position.”[9]

Eva Nichols shared this letter with the newspaper and announced that “several local Indian girls are considering entering the [Miss Rapid City] contest. Obviously relieved to have the issue resolved, the head of the musicians’ union said “it would be impossible to hold a real Miss America contest in Rapid City without having representation of the Indian race.” [10]

[1] Eileen Keegan, “Beauty Contests,” Rapid City Journal, April 12, 1948, 9.

[2] Dick Rebbeck, “Indian activist Eva Nichols dies,” Rapid City Journal, February 22, 1994, 11.

[3] “Local Indian Protests Beauty Contest Rules,” Rapid City Journal, April 15, 1948, 2.

[4] “Rapid City Cracks ‘Miss America’ Ban,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 25, 1948, 31.

[5] “Beauty Contest Race Ban Outlawed,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 27, 1948, 1.

[6] https://wyostatearchives.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/princess-america-ii-jesse-jim-visits-cheyenne/

[7] “Musicians Eliminate Contest Race Clause,” Rapid City Journal, April 16, 1948, 2.

[8] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.

[9] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.

[10] “National Beauty Pageant Okays Indian Entries,” Rapid City Journal, April 24, 1948, 1.

April 22, 1948 – The Freedom Train Arrives

The first curious patriots arrived just after dawn and began to form a line. Standing near the low, wood-shingled, hipped roof depot of the Chicago and North Western railway, they felt the sun rising, casting its light westward onto the grass and ponderosa pine-covered Black Hills and the hogback ridge that split the city like the body of butterfly. Through a gap in that ridge, between the body and the head, the snowmelt swollen waters of Rapid Creek pressed against the burnt yellow and red rock of Cowboy Hill, before flowing through the heart of Rapid City.

As the line grew, locals and visitors from throughout western South Dakota craned to catch a glimpse of the enormous red, white, and blue streamlined diesel-electric locomotive. Behind the “Spirit of ’76,” a series of cars, each built “like a giant safe with 20 tons of high carbon steel,” contained the sacred texts of American democracy—the Mayflower Compact, the Bill of Rights, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and George Washington’s copy of the Constitution.

By 8 a.m., the depot was jammed. A line stretched several blocks, getting longer every minute. The crowd included “all walks of life, the young, the old, the rich and poor.” Many had been anticipating this day for months. Some were school children who had been given the day off with the hope that like pilgrims restored by the bones of the saints, they would be inspired by the documents of the founding fathers. Others were veterans of two world wars who hoped their suffering would be redeemed by words that gave meaning to their shared sacrifice.

A sound system played announcements. Dressed in their red and white uniforms, with drums pounding and brass blaring, the band from Rapid City High School performed for the crowd. Boy Scouts directed traffic, while officers of the Rapid City Police Department, assisted by military police from nearby Weaver (later renamed Ellsworth) Air Force Base watched for out-of- state pickpockets and “angle boys” who traveled the country following the train hawking buttons, badges, pennants and decals as souvenirs. Some of the vendors chafed at these restrictions on free enterprise, especially when they resulted in a short stay in jail for violating some local ordinance. But the Freedom Train organizers had made it clear that they didn’t want a “carnival atmosphere” to surround the near sacred nature of the experience.

Well before the exhibits opened, 48-year old Mayor Fred Dusek arrived. A restless and energetic man who owned and operated a furniture store downtown with his wife Viola, he had lived in Rapid City since 1927. Born and raised on a farm in the sandhills of Nebraska, he had worked briefly as an accountant for the Alex Duhamel Co. before going into business. By 1948, he was a familiar figure in Rapid City government. He served as a city commissioner longer than anyone in the city’s 72-year history, before being elected mayor by his fellow commissioners in 1946.

With a strong city manager form of government, Rapid City’s mayor fulfilled mostly ceremonial duties—like presiding over the festivities surrounding the Freedom Train. But Dusek had a vision for the city and the role of government in shaping that future. It was a vision shaped by his childhood on the rural Great Plains – highly pragmatic, anchored in personal responsibility, but also committed to the collective efforts of farmers to watch out for one another and contribute to mutual prosperity.

Like a Train in the Night

Disaster & Democracy in Rapid City, 1948-1978