Talk:Martinsville, Indiana

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The following sentence is, at best not NPOV, and at worst grossly inaccurate. The town also had a serious racial incident involving the football or basketball team, with fans accosting the bus from a visiting school. This incident resulted in a suspension from their league for a period of time. This talk area is not a good area to argue the merits of either incident, nor to get into an argument about how racial Martinsville is and/or was. I would suggest moving this to the bottom of the page, with further research and citations.

The town has, through popular media and hearsay, (inaccurately) received a reputation within central Indiana as a racist community. This is largely due to a violent and tragic murder in the mid-20th century involving a Klansman from Indianapolis and an African-American teenager who crossed paths in the town.

--Boomcoach 16:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added the following: A year before the killing the KKK marched through Martinsville. Also Indiana has known ties to racist events. Like sundown towns, numerous kkk rallies, D.C. Stephenson, the 1990 IHSAA racism case. Some even claim Martinsville to be the home of the KKK.

Here are real facts from the Sports Illustrated in an article.......

Racial Incident In Indiana MARTINSVILLE'S SAD SEASON

Martinsville, Ind., ought to be basking in the accomplishments of the girls' basketball team at the town's namesake high school. Through Sunday the team had won 45 straight games and was ranked second nationally by USA Today. Instead, this basketball-crazy town, the hometown of John Wooden, is reeling from a harrowing racial incident during a boys' basketball game that has put Martinsville High on probation with the state athletic association and imperiled the future of the school's athletic program.

According to an Indiana High School Athletics Association (IHSAA) report, on Jan. 23, as Bloomington High North's racially mixed team got off the bus upon arriving for a game at Martinsville, about a dozen Martinsville students greeted the visitors with a barrage of racial epithets. Sue Beerman, principal of Bloomington North, said that the comments included: "Here come the darkies." Not surprisingly, the evening was marked by animosity.

During the junior varsity game several Bloomington players were bitten by Martinsville players. During the varsity game a member of Martinsville's all-white team elbowed a black North player in the stomach so fiercely that the player began vomiting. As he was doubled over on the sidelines, a fan yelled, "That nigger's spitting on the floor! Get his ass off the floor."

According to a report that Bloomington North filed with the IHSAA, epithets like "baboon" and threats such as "You're not safe in this town" continued after the game, which Martinsville won 69-66. "It wasn't just nasty," says one Bloomington North fan, an adult who was in attendance, "it was downright scary."

The severity of the sanctions handed down by both Conference Indiana (the league in which Martinsville plays) and the IHSAA, among them a ban on Martinsville's hosting conference games in any sport until February 1999, is without precedent for an Indiana high school. The IHSAA has also warned that another incident of this sort involving a Martinsville team could result in suspension of play for that team.

This wasn't the first time that charges of racist behavior were leveled against one of Martinsville's teams. In the last year at least two high schools in central Indiana have dropped the Artesians from their schedules after games were marred by brawls and racial slurs. School administrators in Martinsville--which has few black residents among its population of 12,000 and has long had a reputation for Ku Klux Klan activity--were unwilling to discuss the incident or its aftermath.

Beerman says "the matter has been resolved to our satisfaction," but the actions of her school's girls' team, which is racially mixed, speak louder: The Cougars chose to end their season and forgo a chance at a state championship rather than take part in the first of their sectional games, scheduled to be played at Martinsville High.

Source: https://www.si.com/vault/1998/02/23/239233/scorecard

FYI sources are backed by facts not opinions and selfish intentions

Here is another eyewitness account of Martinsville In.

We pulled into a mom and pop gas station. A string of Christmas lights framed the shop window. The clerk on duty, an older white man, peeked his head out. Seeing our dark bodies emerging from the car, he walked outside, slowly, with a perplexed look on his face. Presumably, because Black folks knew to steer clear of Martinsville, whites in Martinsville had become accustomed to rarely, if ever, seeing us in real life.

My mother explained what had brought us to his establishment on this crisp winter evening. I searched the man’s eyes for some tell-tale sign of his comfort level. He wasn’t outwardly hostile—I’d experienced overt racism enough times in my young life to know what it looked like. But he also wasn’t kind in that way that mom and dad’s white friends who came to the house were.

Mom and the clerk performed an awkward dance of human politeness as he led us into the gas station so mom could call my father collect. He offered us space to sit inside while we waited for my father to arrive. Aunt Janice was fixing her mouth to say “hell no!” when my mother jumped in and politely declined his offer, saying we would wait in the car. Mom and aunt Janice poured cups of the shop’s bitter coffee to help them stay alert. We made our way back to the car.

No one bothered us. Not even the clerk, who had returned to his mundane shop duties. But my mother and aunt began sharing stories with me—some joyous, some utterly terrifying—about what is was like to be college students in Klan country during the peak years of the Black Power movement.

This was more than a mere passing of the time. This was two Black women trying to work through fear and trauma, sharing their vulnerability with me, a girl of a different era, of a different generation, but of the same blood.

In 1968, just four years before my mother arrived on IU’s campus, a twenty-one-year-old Black encyclopedia saleswoman named Carol Jenkins was brutally murdered in Martinsville by a Klan member. The murder went unsolved for more than three decades. Meanwhile, hundreds of young Black women like my mother left their homes each year to attend IU, the specter of Jenkins’ murder a constant reminder that they could never—and would never—feel or be safe.

The racial violence of the area was even more explicit for my family. My mom told me her brother, my uncle Howard, was beaten bloody in Martinsville when he, not being from the area, stopped to get food on his way to visit her at college.

The IU campus wasn’t even a refuge from anti-Black harassment. My mom told stories of the KKK marching on public streets. University police officers would harass Black students for gathering on the yard in groups considered “too large.” White professors assumed that Black students were not prepared for the rigors of college, often grading them more harshly than their white counterparts. Many of these stories of racial discrimination on campus were chronicled in the IU Arbutus yearbook, given titles such as “Black Life in the Ivory Tower.” These stories mirrored those written on the pages of Essence in the early ’70s, by and about Black students at predominantly white institutions.

Up until that Christmas Eve, the only depictions I’d seen of the Klan were in films, like the scene in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), in which Klan members attack Billie Holiday’s tour bus, hitting her in the eye with the butt of a wooden stake. But here I was, now, hearing of my own family’s encounters with these enigmas in white hoods. I now understood that there were fleshy bodies underneath those hoods—real people—who hated us simply because we were Black.

But in the quiet spaces of their dorm rooms and apartments, mom and her peers could dance out their rage, they could style out their rage. I could hear it in their voices, in the ways they told their stories, but it would not truly sink in until I was much older: survival then—as it is now—was about stealing moments of intoxicating pleasure amidst many more that were singed by violence.

I heard tales of Black, sweaty bodies doing dances like “the dawg” and “the hustle” at the annual Omega Psi Phi Mardi Gras party. Mom and her friends would go decked out in elephant-leg pants—bout the widest bell bottoms you’ll ever see—and lace-front dresses and knee-high boots, with their Afros picked just so. Those parties were safe havens where young Black folks, who were few in number on campus, could dance and listen to soul and funk tracks—unapologetically young and Black.

My mom and my aunt had gotten into a rhythm, telling their stories, feeding off of each other like a well-trained performance duo. Black girl hand gestures abounded. Aunt Janice would let out her signature screeching cackle when things got really funny. Mom’s voice would boom when she told one of her “bet not no one mess with me” stories. They laughed as they tried to remember the name of “so-and-so’s boyfriend” who did “woopty woop” at “such-and-such’s” apartment “that one night.” I learned of the men my mom loved long before she and my father became a thing.

I would interject here and there with questions, wanting more details to add to the mental movie of the past that I was directing in my head. But for the most part, I knew to keep quiet because something big, something important was happening here. This was more than a mere passing of the time. This was two Black women trying to work through fear and trauma, sharing their vulnerability with me, a girl of a different era, of a different generation, but of the same blood. Through them, I experienced the full range of Black emotion, their stories offering a context for my aunt’s fear earlier that evening. It came from a real place.

By the time my father dashed up to the gas station in his big, mint green Mercury Cougar to rescue his wife and daughter, I felt a little older, a little less innocent. I had come face-to-face with white supremacy, learning at a young age that people will do anything—including taking a life—in order to maintain some semblance of power. It was a rite of passage that, even then, I knew my white peers did not have to experience. Their privilege shielded them from ever having to learn about this real American horror story. Yet, the trauma of the past was now etched into my skin. To be a Black girl in this world meant pain would be part of the experience.

But my passage also taught me about Black resilience, Black joy, Black creativity. Something about sharing the tiny space of the old Mustang with my mom and my aunt helped us to bond. For those few hours, we were on equal footing. All of us scared, and them telling stories to keep the haints away. The stories were our survival. The air never went silent. ■

https://beltmag.com/traveling-black-indiana/ Tanisha C. Ford

Here is another source of Martinsvilles due title as a racist town.

Earlier this year, a 2013 photo of a Martinsville, Indiana, mayoral candidate wearing blackface resurfaced.

Acts of racism and bigotry in the city have made it into stories from local and national news organizations, giving the community a reputation for being intolerant. With this happening two years after the city held a memorial for a victim of an act of racism, the photo has opened wounds the community has been trying hard to heal.

Kevin Coryell, 52, is a longtime resident of Martinsville who works in aerospace and is running for mayor. A photo of Coryell in blackface, specifically dressed as Mammy from “Gone With the Wind,” from 2013 recirculated on Facebook at the beginning of this year.

The photo can be found in the comments of one of Coryell’s public posts from March 29, 2014. The post is of a person with a beard wearing feminine clothing.

Coryell’s comment on the photo reads, “Question: is it a female with a small facial hair issue or a man that likes to cross dress. I just don't know any more.”

The post was met with more than 60 comments of people saying things such as, “That’s just a bit messed up! Lol!” and “Either way, it seems to be very comfortable with itself. Personally, I find it disturbing. j/s.”

A screenshot from a 2014 Facebook post shows the photo of Kevin Coryell dressed as Mammy from "Gone With the Wind" for Halloween in 2013. SCREENSHOT Buy Photos SEE the Photo HERE (https://www.idsnews.com/article/2019/04/blackface-photos-of-martinsville-mayoral-candidate-resurface-months-before-election)

Coryell is one of three Republican candidates on the ballot along with one Democrat candidate. The mayoral election for Martinsville is May 7.

Anthony Woodside, a reporter from the Reporter-Times and The Mooresville-Decatur Times, said conversations about Coryell only lasted for around three weeks before the issue was brushed aside.

“Vote Coryell for Mayor” signs can still be seen lining streets in Martinsville.

The African American population in Martinsville has always been sparse. A New York Times article shows there were only 11 African Americans out of a total population of almost 12,000 people in 2000 in Martinsville.

Now, that number is only 1.6% of the total population. That’s still less than 200 people who identify as black or African American.

Martinsville has a long history of racial tension. It has been deemed a “sundown town,” which means black people were not welcome in the area after the sun went down. Rumors have also harmed the city, such as the belief Martinsville was a headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan, even though it wasn’t.

Recent events in the city have made it difficult for people to look past the city's history and rumors.

Only a few people in Martinsville have been outspoken about Coryell and the blackface photos. Shannon Kohl, the current mayor of Martinsville, is one of them.

Kohl said she doesn’t think the photos were taken with malicious intentions, since it was a Halloween costume, but it still shocked her how the city reacted to them. People made jokes on Facebook and said it was funny that he dressed up as the “maple syrup lady.”

Kohl has received negative feedback for speaking out against the incident.

“Doing the right things is hard because here, you pay a price for it,” Kohl said in an interview.

Kohl, who is also a Republican, isn’t happy with any of the Republican candidates who are running. She said she was hoping someone more qualified would jump into the race.

She is not running for reelection for personal reasons, though she said Martinsville has been good to her.

Coryell declined to speak on the record about the situation. He did say the story has already been written by the local paper and he has already addressed it in a video and in Facebook posts. Though the story has been written, columns continued to be written and some people who live in Martinsville still don't know about the photos.

After the photos resurfaced, the Reporter-Times wrote an article Feb. 8 about him addressing the photo in his video. The video came after he was allegedly told Fox 59 in Indianapolis had the photo.

The news station didn’t do anything with the photo, and Coryell hasn't done anything concrete to make up for the photo.

“I own it,” he said in his video. “I did it, I wore it.”

A "Vote Coryell for Mayor" sign sits April 29 in the yard of an administration building in downtown Martinsville, Indiana. Coryell is under scrutiny for a photo of himself in blackface from 2013. TY VINSON Buy Photos Carol Jenkins, an African American woman from Franklin, Indiana, was selling encyclopedias in September 1968 when she was stabbed to death with a screwdriver in Martinsville. She was 21.

The man who killed Jenkins was also found to not be from Martinsville. He wasn’t arrested until police received an anonymous tip in 2002, almost 34 years after the murder. The case has even appeared in an article in the New Yorker.

Another incident which highlighted the city's complicated relationship with race was the Jan. 23, 1998, basketball game between Martinsville and Bloomington High School North.

Bloomington North had won the championships the previous year. Steven Philbeck, the assistant basketball coach at Bloomington North at the time, said his players were used to other teams being hostile toward them.

They weren’t expecting what they would be greeted with in Martinsville when they arrived that day.

Around 10-12 male students ran to the bus and lined the sidewalk. The Martinsville team, which was all white, knew there were black players on the Bloomington North team. As the players exited the bus, the boys started chanting.

“Dark, dark, dark,…”

Throughout the junior varsity game, Philbeck said the Martinsville players were incredibly violent. The coaches even asked each other if Bloomington North should take the forfeit and just go home.

Philbeck said when the varsity game started, things got uglier.

The Martinsville players became more violent, and one of them elbowed a black Bloomington North player in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit. A man in the audience yelled for the player to be taken off the court and shouted a racial slur.

“It really was an awful experience,” Philbeck said.

The Indiana High School Athletic Association banned Martinsville from hosting any conference games for a year, and the incident made it into an issue of Sports Illustrated with the headline, “Martinsville’s Sad Season.”

The city has attempted to seek closure and move past these situations. In 2017, a memorial was organized for Carol Jenkins and her family. Shannon Kohl, the current mayor of Martinsville, dedicated a "memorial stone" in Jenkins' honor at the entrance to City Hall, according to an IndyStar article.

Kohl said she thought the memorial was healing for the family and for the community. Jenkins’ father died soon after the memorial.

Kohl said the photos of Coryell makes her worry for the future of Martinsville.

“I felt like it set our community back a little bit,” Kohl said.

Martinsville High School is located on the outskirts of downtown Martinsville, Indiana, near State Road 37. The high school is the location of the 1998 basketball game between Martinsville and Bloomington High School North. TY VINSON Buy Photos Like Kohl, other members of the community have spoken out about Coryell and received backlash. Some are also leaving their positions in and around the city.

Before he announced he was running for mayor, Coryell and his campaign created a Facebook group called "Porch Time" to engage with the community. It began with posts to organize and announce fundraisers, but it quickly became a page for people to talk about the election and post political memes. Kohl and others believe it was created with political motivation from the beginning.

For months, Coryell was given permission by Michele Moore, the superintendent of the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, to make Facebook Live videos on Porch Time of events and games at Martinsville High School. After the photos of Coryell resurfaced, Moore banned Coryell from accessing games and players.

Though she isn’t originally from Martinsville, she knows of the reputation surrounding the city.

“Martinsville has a history of intolerance,” Moore said.

Moore reached out to the school community before she made the decision to cut ties with Coryell. She specifically reached out to the group of African American students, which is only around 30 students, and the group of African American employees of the school district, which is only four or five people.

Once they expressed they were uncomfortable with how Coryell apologized for the photos, she made the decision.

“I felt like it was the right thing to do to speak up,” Moore said. “It’s important to stand up for things you feel strongly about.”

Soon after, Moore decided to look at the curriculum being taught in her schools. During a principals meeting, she made sure diversity in America and Black History Month were being taught. There was no mention of Martinsville’s history being in the curriculum.

Moore is stepping down as superintendent of Martinsville at the end of this school year. She believes she has accomplished what she set out to do.

Community members who don’t hold any sort of office or position have also faced scrutiny for being outspoken about Coryell and the photos of him in blackface.

Justin Drake, 40, has lived in Martinsville since he was 5 years old. Drake has been publicly outcast for speaking out against Coryell. He was blamed by Coryell and others on Facebook and in person for sending the photos of Coryell in blackface to Fox 59, even though he said he didn't.

Drake has biracial family members and said he fears for them being in Martinsville. He said the backlash was a large part of why he and his family are moving to Pennsylvania this year.

“I can’t be stuck in the 1950s,” Drake said.

Drake said he believes the city needs a mayor that stands for all its people, not just those they think deserve it.

Drake recognizes that Coryell has done many good things for families in Martinsville, such as food drives and fundraisers. But Drake believes they were done to gain attention.

Drake said he feels like he doesn’t belong in Martinsville anymore.

“We can’t continue to fight for something we love that doesn’t love us back,” Drake said.

IU freshman Devin Coryell sits April 29 outside Herman B Wells Library. Coryell said she didn't know about the photos of her dad in blackface until this February because she was blocked on Facebook when they were originally posted. A previous photo caption stated Devin is a sophomore. The IDS regrets this error. TY VINSON Buy Photos In a video in February, Coryell said he owned what he posted. He recognized the costume was insensitive and said he didn’t know the connotations of blackface.

“I apologize if it offended people,” he said in the video.

Some believe since Coryell “owned” the photos he has gained more support.

Despite this, others believe he knew what he was doing and that he shouldn’t be a mayoral candidate.

Coryell’s daughter Devin Coryell, a freshman at IU, said she can’t believe her father is still running for mayor.

Devin Coryell said she has not been close with her father in a long time. She had no idea Coryell posted photos of himself wearing blackface. She was blocked on Facebook at the time because her parents had just gotten a divorce.

Devin Coryell found out about the photos of her dad Feb. 7, and the next day she told him and his campaign she could no longer support them. Soon after, people began to reach out to her.

When she posted on Facebook about how she couldn’t support her father, people attacked her in the comments, accusing her of going against her family.

“With how he’s been acting and the stuff he’s done, I don’t think he should be mayor,” Devin Coryell told them in a Facebook comment.

Devin Coryell and her friends were told by Coryell’s followers and friends they were part of the problem, not her father. Some of Coryell’s followers changed their profile pictures to photos of people in blackface with the caption, “Just for you crybabies.”

“I was confused, whenever I was being attacked for saying blackface was wrong, I was like, what?” Devin Coryell said. “Like, anywhere else, that would be right. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Her father's apology disappointed her. In the video and in several posts he said he was going to use this as a learning opportunity. He said he hoped to be able to educate others on similar issues, but he hasn’t done any of that so far.

Devin Coryell said she has worked hard to not have the same image as her father.

“Growing up, you’re instilled with those beliefs,” Devin Coryell said. “But I feel like I tried to educate myself to become more inclusive and not be racist and stuff.”

This story has been updated with a screenshot of the Facebook post from 2014 of Coryell dressed as Mammy from "Gone With the Wind" from the previous Halloween.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2019/04/blackface-photos-of-martinsville-mayoral-candidate-resurface-months-before-election

In Indiana, there were several areas that were considered to have a strong concentration of Klan memberships, mainly in central Indiana around Martinsville, Noblesville, Indianapolis and the other was in Daviess County in southwest Indiana. The Klan attracted many otherwise decent citizens by presenting itself as a “lodge” dedicated to being god-fearing and 100 percent American and quite often was known to march, white robes, hoods, and all, into a church laying a large offering on the altar then filing out single file without saying a thing.

This was known to have actually happened in Odon and Washington. From the turn of the century, to the mid 1930’s, private clubs and organizations became extremely popular and it became quite fashionable to belong to the Masons, the Odd Fellows, Redmen, Knights of Pithios, The Woodsman of America, all openly tolerating Klan activity, and all could be described as secret closed organizations, often with suspected dual membership of several of their members as Klansmen.

It was quite common for a man to spend two or three nights a week with lodge activities. It is a documented fact that several Klan rallies, membership initiations, including cross burnings and parades were conducted, not only in Washington but Odon, Plainville, and Elnora. One such cross burning and parade was held on the side of a hill at Campbell Hill in Washington on May 30, 1923. Also in 1924, thousands of KKK faithful descended upon Washington with a parade and ceremony.

In his Daviess County history, Rex Myers described quite ably, several other Klan incidents locally, including the Klan related murder of William Gilley and his funeral at Aikman Creek Cemetery which was attended by numerous hooded Klansmen.

The Klan had fashioned a structured organization where their members were required to swear to an oath of loyalty and allegiance to the Klan, to secrecy, swearing to never reveal the words and grips or any other secret information of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Klan also required a most solemn signed pledge to “Klanishness” to never slander, defraud, deceive or do any manner of wrong to any other Klansman or any member of a Klansman family. They had secret hand shakes and grips, signs and greeting of a fellow Klansman. They even had a secret Klan vocabulary calling themselves the “Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, devised by the Imperial Wizard of Georgia and the hierarchy of his fifteen Genis, all of whose title began with “K.”

The “Kludd” did the praying; the “Kligrapp” was the secretary; the “Klarogo was the inner guard; the “Kleagle” was the organizer, the “Klabee” was the treasurer, etc. A cavalcade according to the Klan was spelled with a “K” and was a Klan parade.

Regional Klans were known as Klaverns, therefore there was the Odon Klavern, the Washington Klavern, the Petersburg Klavern etc. Each Klavern had its own chain of command and was subservient to the Grand Dragon of Indiana, who at that time was D. C. Stephenson.

Check out the Indiana Klan March in 1922 HERE https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Hoosiers-and-the-American-Story-ch-08.pdf

Furthermore this website can be edited by anyone. So it can never be 100% fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.102.151.73 (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Later discovered evidence showed that the act was perpetuated by someone passing through the town, and that the racist tag was largely manufactured. Several instances since that time in the city of Martinsville, and the increasing minority population in the community proves that Martinsville has shucked the racist label and is in fact a welcoming community of all races and cultures.

It is POV and not phrased in a manner appropriate to the Encyclopedia. I would certainly welcome cited information about what really happened in the 60's. The article already mentions that the reputation was inaccurate, but the text removed comes down to blatant propoganda.

Are there any IndyStar references available from the court case a few years back, that can be cited for more information? Boomcoach 14:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have revised to add link to Indy Star Article. I still believe your entry is as biased and POV laden as any other, and have revised it again. If we cannot agree upon it, perhaps we should remove the reference altogether? As a local resident, I see your statement as biased and propoganda as well, so we need to either reword this, or drop the reference altogether as this time. Your choice, as I'll push this as far as I have to in order to clarify your words, which appear biased and incomplete. <Doctrpt 05:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)>[reply]

Your article was just what was needed. I attached the link directly to its mention in your first sentence, thus removing the need for the second sentence. The main terminology I was objecting to was Martinsville has shucked the racist label and is in fact a welcoming community of all races and cultures which was not worded in a way that seemed appropriate to this venue. I think that giving the link was excellent. I am a former resident and I know that story has been spread far and wide, so I think it is better to addressm and clarify it, than to simply ignore it.

Thanks also for the Mineral water information, as I don't think the section on racism needs to dominate the article.Boomcoach 15:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't think this is NPOV. It takes the position that the racist reputation is undeserved, without any real evidence. A negative argument like "no documented ties to the KKK" just isn't sufficient. There's also no evidence cited that the reputation emerged primarily from the 1968 murder. Beyond the murder, in recent times, there's the basketball bus incident and the assistant police chief's letter. A balanced treatment of this would say something like: "Martinsville has a reputation for racism. [68 murder] [basketball incident] [letter]. Local residents deny this claim. [murder was by an outsider] [no documented kkk ties]." That way, the rebuttals can remain without the article seeming to endorse them. --Rmlucas 16:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Added discussion regarding reputation as City of Mineral Water to description of town. Can be found any number of places on net, including http://www.scican.net, and following links to local history. <Doctrpt 05:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)>[reply]

What is the point of this addition? I find the letter reprehensible, but an encyclopedic entry does not need to discuss the various idiotic comments by various members of the town, even if they have some sort of official position.

I have deleted the following:

==The 2001 Dennis Nail Letter==

In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks and press coverage of the military presence in Afghanistan following the attacks, assistant police chief Dennis Nail wrote to the Martinsville Reporter-Times in October of that year:

If some of the major networks can only show sympathy for the enemy, I might suggest they move their studios and equipment to the end of oblivion with the rest of the cave-dwelling rats that opened death’s door to our countrymen on Sept. 11.

Offended? I, too, am offended... It offends me when I have to give up prayer in school. Once again because it might upset Hadji Hindu or Buddy Buddha. I don’t believe the founding fathers were either of these. They were Christian and believed in the one true God of the universe… .

Talk about majority. When I look around and I see no Mosque, or fat bald guys with bowls in their laps. I see churches. I’m offended when I turn on a television show and without fail a queer is in the plot just like it’s a natural thing.

America put God in the closet and let the queers out. When the planes struck the twin towers I never heard anyone utter, ‘Oh Ellen.’ I heard a lot of ‘Oh my God.’ Now we want to pull God off the shelf, rub His head and expect a miracle.

Offended? Well, get over it, because it’s time the dog started wagging the tail. Let’s not be led around by a minority of weirdoes and feel-gooders. I, for one, am tired of it.

According to an article by the Souther Poverty Law Center [1], Nail's letter was signed as a private citizen, but his position in the local police force was common knowledge. Some national news attention was paid the letter's publishing, and 2 weeks later the City Council held a public meeting attended by 80 people. It is said 21 people voiced their support of Nail (there was 1 speaker who criticized the assistant police chief and the City Council's handling of the situation) and that when Nail addressed the council, he received a standing ovation (it isn't noted what Nail said.)

An article on the incident including a quote from Nail's apology (Source: People For the American Way)[2]

If a reasonable discussion determines that this is appropriate for this forum, it is available to be re-added. Boomcoach 18:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If an article is considered erroneous or misrepresentative of the facts, than I agree it should be removed. This incident was reported by reputable sources and is part of the recent history of Martinsville. Deleting it outright is the same as attempting to cover it up. I'm sure it was your civic pride more than your editorial judgment at work when you deleted my post.

Not at all. I am no longer a resident. I am not a particularly big fan of the city, but I think that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia entry about a town, not a commentary on one of its residents. I don't doubt that Mr. Nail's comments represent an embarrassingly number of the residents, but I don't think that it belongs in an encyclopedia entry.

Looking at entries for other towns, I do not see the entries about individual citizens foibles and idiocies, and it is hard to make a claim that Mr. Nail has any real importance to the world at large (as opposed to, for instance, details about Mayor Daly in an entry about Chicago.) I have no intention to foster any sort of coverup, I lived in Martinsville for about 6 years, in the 70's, so I am not suffering under any sort of "Civic pride" in regard to it. Boomcoach 19:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This'll shock you, Boomcoach, but you've convinced me. I won't repost. However, I do feel the Martinsville article paints the town in a particularly forgiving light. I think perhaps it is due its own article (there's whole pages devoted to college quarterbacks who threw hail mary passes) so I don't think it's inappropriate for Wikipedia. The incident bespeaks the town's recent cultural climate, but it doesn't single-handedly encompass the municipality's history.

I agree. I will certainly read the article you linked to, and I think leaving it on the Talk page is a good thing. Boomcoach 20:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The links to martinsville high school link to the wrong martinsville high school. —The preceding

The article for Martinsville High School was deleted, and is now a link for the school with the same name in Virginia. I removed the linkage, but left the text. Boomcoach 13:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I edited the Martinsville, Indiana page. I apology for the formatting as I am just learning Wikipedia's code. I am used to HTML. Give me a week and I will have the article corrected.

Some errors I corrected or deleted:

• There were over 12 sanitariums in Martinsville including the first black sanitarium. It may have been the first black sanitarium in the United States, but I cannot verify that at the moment and am still looking for that source.

• The person murdered in Martinsville was not a teenager, but a 21-year-old woman.

• There was no Klan rally and march in Martinsville 1967. The city leaders refused to allow it, but they found no legal way to stop the Klan's motorcade from driving around the square. The city leaders asked that all residents not go to the square and ignore the Klan's actions. As a result the Klan's visit to Martinsville was a nonevent, which is perhaps that is why the Klan never returned to Martinsville (last sentence simply my comment, not something I added to the article).

• I deleted the following, "According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate Groups Map for the state of Indiana from 2005[2], there is no Ku Klux Klan Chapter in Martinsville, although it does refer to a group called 'Council Of Conservative Citizens'." I could not find anything to substantiate the comment except the old (2002 I think) blurp on the Southern Poverty Law Center's Web site. I checked Reporter articles, the Council Of Conservative Citizens' Web site, which has no listing for Martinsville at all, and the only reference I could find was to a scheduled meeting (no evidence as to whether it actually took place) on Southern Poverty Law Center Web site. I cannot even currently locate that reference on their Web site. Barring any proof that the meeting actually took place and that this organization has a presence in Martinsville/Morgan County I see no reason for the inclusion of this information. The information is not verifiable.

Added new historical information:

I am the digital archivist for the Morgan County Library and I added a lot of new historical information and added to the list of names of notables.

I will be contacting members of the historical society and city leaders to see if they will add information.

NOTE: Regarding the African American/racial incidents in Martinsville, while I admit it is much more titillating to focus on the very few racial incidents that has occurred in the area, IMO it gives a much factual picture of Martinsville, the surrounding area and its residents if those incidents are balanced with the hundreds of African Americans who have safely lived and worked in the area for over a hundred years.

There may be facts that the other authors here might be unaware of. Here is an article by one of Morgan County's historians - http://scican3.scican.net/bh/index.html.

VLH2375 10:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

VLH2375 added a ton of excellent information. I have started to reformat the various links and cites throughout the article. My goals are:

• Add reference section
• Change links that should be citations to reference format
• When possible, change external links to textual links (see Historical Photographs example in opening)
• Wikilink internal articles.

This should allow the numbered citations to be actual citations, reduce the numbers. The article was up to citation 26, the vast majority of which were not actual citations.Boomcoach 14:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Broomcoach is there any way I can just send you the material I have and can get? I can write the copy and provide verification, but since I have yet to learn the code Wikipedia uses it might be helpful if we could work together. Please, do not misunderstand I fully intend to learn the code. I am just in a time crunch right now. VLH2375 10:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted the anonymous deletion of the information about the murder. As many people who have some familiarity with Martinsville know of the incident, it seems wrong to ignore it, and the explanation clears up misconceptions. Boomcoach 01:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The racial makeup of the city was remarkably homogeneous, with 98.62% of Martinsville's residents claiming White

What? How is a town's being nearly pure white remarkable? Your use of the language has lost me.IanHistor (talk) 18:54, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to go ahead and explain my changes on the main page to avoid any kind of edit war. First of all I think the Carol Jenkins murder, if it deserves mentioning under Martinsville's history (and frankly I don't know that it is quite THAT notable, but whatever), it should have its own section. As it was it just kind of came out of nowhere right after normal run-of-the-mill factoids.

Second, I removed and changed two bits that seem to indicate a certain bias or slant. The first part was that I changed the sentence about Martinsville "enduring charges..." Using the word enduring and thus describing Martinsville as a poor victim of enormous persecution that had to endure this terrible burden is a little bit over the top. Yes it added to the perception that Martinsville is racist, so just leave it at that unless you can provide sources that Martinsville was targeted or its citizens had to "endure" something out of the ordinary as a result of this murder. Also, while I see no reason to speculate that the cops dragged their feet or refused to investigate the crime, saying the murder was nearly impossible to solve is idle speculation. Cops solve crimes all the time when the criminal is from out of town or where there is little initial evidence. Saying it was nearly impossible is as much baseless speculation as saying they should have been able to solve it. Bottom line here is without some source saying that these conditions made it very difficult to solve the case, it's just an unsourced opinion and should be removed.

Third, part of my problem with the whole "Martinsville endured accusations..." is that the paragraph seemed to have a tone that suggested that this murder was somehow the only accusation of racism or racial problems in Martinsville. Anyone from Martinsville is full of it if they suggest that there have been no other episodes of racial tension, and you know you are full of it. Martinsville has a long running (and well deserved) reputation of racism and general bigotry, and no it wasn't just because of the Carol Jenkins episode. So I added the fact that the Jenkins murder wasn't the sole basis of Martinsville's reputation (with a valid source) lest the reader get the idea that somehow a racist town like Martinsville has been completely exonerated just because Jenkins's murderer turned out to be from another county.Jdlund (talk) 19:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize if I offend anyone by moving the entries from the first section into the businesses section, as it was becoming just a list of businesses, rather than emphasizing anything specific about Martinsville itself. It also was implying that any businesses listed were popular, due to choice of wording. I realize the editor was attempting to add content, hence me explaining my choice here. My actual addition to the businesses entry is generic, I realize, and I welcome people to fix that. If I had more time, I'd add things about shelters and activity areas in Martinsville.

I've also moved the Carol Jenkins murder down, but not to de-emphasize it. I've looked at other wiki pages as examples, and many place notable events near this area. This also allows a spot for articles on events like the recent shooting, which I tried to write out myself but had trouble finding unlocked news articles on. The name 'Notable Events' itself is in lieu of a better choice of words; I just used the title commonly used for this area.

I've also started a festival section with the few I could think of off the top of my head. I invite others to add entries and links. Tanyuu (talk) 03:57, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Someone has removed my reference to the murder of Carol Jenkins. I am not making up things I am only quoting from the program. If you like you may view the program here http://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/injustice-files and you will see I am not making up any of this. Injustice Files Episode "Sundown Towns" (premiered on February 24, 2014) on |Investigation Discovery hosted by Keith Beauchamp Apriv40dj (talk) 20:08, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hey! I don't think the reason they deleted it is that they think you're "making things up". More like, it's not really appropriate for this particular page as well as several issues with the way it's written (I think I saw you mention in Teahouse that you were new here). I am not familiar with this particular story, but it may be notable enough to have its own page. If the story is notable, it may be worthy of a 2-3 sentence blurb on the Martinsville page, but it otherwise doesn't fit with the flow of this particular page, not to mention the point of it to put in a really long description of the murder there. Why don't you copy and paste the story in your sandbox and I'll help you edit it there. When it's up to snuff, I'll help you post it as its own page. :-) Bali88 (talk) 03:39, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, I reread the article, and I think the blub just doesn't fit at all. I created the page for you: Murder of Carol Jenkins You can edit it there. Let me know if you need any help! Bali88 (talk) 04:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should the 2008 flood be mentioned? It's an event that still has marks on the city today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Hugsy McFur (talk • contribs) 19:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Something that may be considered for achieving notability guidelines is the fact that the majority of the town is a superfund site. ^[1] I would argue that this is notable because it affects every citizen and has been a political point of contention for the city's memorable history, the groundwater plume(s) having existed since at least 1986. It contributes to Martinsville's County, Morgan, having the second highest cancer rate in the state due to the presence of PCEs and TCEs in the municipal water. ^[2]

There have been some major changes to the various population figures on the page in the last few months, I've unilaterally made some changes because of how drastically incorrect the figures were, but someone with more experience and know-how should probably clean it up further. My source for the numbers came from the 2020 Census: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/technical-documentation/research/evaluation-estimates/2020-evaluation-estimates/2010s-cities-and-towns-total.html

The >30k figure is wildly wrong, I've seen a few numbers floating around all in the 11-12k range and they're all vastly more reasonable then whats been on the page for months now. GuyFox5 (talk) 00:40, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I noticed too. If you look in the history, there's a series of edits by an anonymous account that were semi-corrected, but then another account (likely the same person) came in and added more made up numbers. It's hard to tell what parts remain from the prank, but hopefully they'll get ironed out. Tanyuu (talk) 23:11, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Read many years ago about an Indiana town that was about to be abandoned, left as a ghost town, because, of the over-abundance of mosquitoes. Then, someone heard that Purple Martin birds loved eating mosquitoes. Special birdhouses were put up, designed to attract these birds. The birds came; the town survived. In honor of the birds, the town was renamed as: "Martinsville". Don't remember if previous town name was given. According to the Martinsville website, the town's surveyor was named John Martin(s), and, the town was named after him. It doesn't seem logical that both stories of how the town was named could be right, so, which way was it? 97.130.175.2 (talk) 21:19, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]