'It’s everyone’s story': Indiana Historical Society's African American historian excited to push boundaries

Growing up in Brooklyn, Susan Hall Dotson’s parents and grandparents regaled her with stories of the people and places of New York City, and, as a self-described “newspaper head,” she spent Sunday mornings reading The New York Times or Daily News and devoured Ebony, Life and Look magazines.

Museums were always accessible, and she spent countless hours at the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art. She noted that as children, “you take in more than you realize.”

As the new coordinator of African American history at the Indiana Historical Society, Dotson hasn’t missed a beat “taking in” the history of Indiana since she started her job last July. 

Dotson is carving out her own path in a position formerly held by the late Wilma Moore, who died this past spring. Moore retired from the IHS in 2017 after a 30-year career as a passionate champion of black history education in Indiana.

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Dotson has immersed herself in the stories of blacks in Indiana. She’s traveled to the early black settlement of Lyles Station and met descendants of the settlers. She also went to the site of the Marion lynchings and learned about former Indiana KKK leader D.C. Stephenson. 

The Cleveland State University graduate focused on communications for most of her career and worked in every aspect of media in her 30-plus years, from research and exhibits to radio and advertising. That includes a stint at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where she served as senior coordinator of community programs, which meant working with the likes of The Temptations, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt and Cheap Trick.

“9/11 comes, and I get laid off along with 21 people. There are no jobs in marketing, because those are the first jobs to go,” Dotson said. Her mindset of “always interested in history but not as a scholarly pursuit,” was about to change.

She returned to Cleveland State, where she received her master's degree in history with a minor in black studies. Right out of the gate, she began working as director of community relations and curator of the Western Reserve Historical Society, where she spent the past 12 years.

It's been a whirlwind year for Dotson: On the day of her going-away party in Cleveland, she became engaged to architect Olon Dotson and soon after, started a new job at the Indiana Historical Society. The couple got married at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center in November.

Dotson has set some goals in her new job: “To continue what the historical society as well as what Wilma did in collecting the stories and the requisite collections of film, photos, journals, diaries and correspondence from everyday black people throughout the state."

With that goal in mind, she is encouraging people to share their memorabilia with the Historical Society. While not everything is worthy of an exhibit, she’s happy to have her staff and the preservationists take a look at family treasures because of their value in linking history to the present. 

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As for exhibits, she said “my biggest goal is to take what we have and take it out of the box and put them on exhibit in the society’s 'You Are There' interactive exhibits like the Madame Walker exhibit that will be unveiled in this fall," Dotson said. “Indigenous stories are cool, but they can’t also be so insulated. We need to pop them out to show they had more presence outside of Indiana."

Dodson is not afraid to stir things up in her new role, too.

“Someone coming from the outside doesn’t have the boundaries,” she said. “I want more exhibits, to collect more items and not tell the same stories, and give light to the difficult stories. I don’t run from the bad stories, because bad stories are the real stories. It’s not a blame game. It is what it is, not just a black story, it's white people's story, it’s everyone’s story, but how we tell the story is important."

Follow IndyStar photo coordinator and RetroIndy writer Dawn Mitchell on Twitter: @dawn_mitchell61.