History can march down a fictitious dirt road in a wool uniform, speak in the voice of a Civil War veteran and invite a visitor into the battlefield.
That’s how I met Khabir Shareef. I was in the fifth grade on a school field trip to Crown Hill Cemtetery’s Spirit of Freedom. He was portraying Major Martin Delaney, the first Black field officer in the U.S. Army. Shareef, wearing his navy Union Army uniform costume and brandishing his fake muskets, transported my 9-year-old self to 1863. I didn’t know that Black soldiers had fought in the Civil War.
I also met him a year later. Baba Khabir, as we called him, was a caring, gentle, tall man. My African dance troupe performed with his Griot Drum Ensemble at Central Library events, during memorial dedication ceremonies and an Art & Soul showcase.
Baba Khabir was still drumming and storytelling until his death Nov. 8, 2019.
Shareef’s legacy and his work as a historical reenactor are part of a larger industry of living history museums, where people recreate people, places and events through performance. Many go far beyond memorizing dates, often digging through history and doing primary and secondary research to make their clothing, language, routines and stories as accurate as possible.
I spoke with six people who have made history either a career or a lifelong hobby. These keepers of the past are taking on making history something people can see, hear and experience for themselves.
Black history in Freetown Village
Shareef played one of the first characters for Freetown Village, a history museum that tours around the state. It was founded by Ophelia Wellington in 1982.
He played Isaiah Cuffee, a barber from the year 1870 in Indianapolis. Wellington developed the character using U.S. Census records and books. Wellington remembers Shareef shaking on stage at first, but bringing the character to life, whom she said he emulated, anyway.
From there, Freetown created other composite characters, including teachers, ministers and attorneys.
Wellington was looking to leave the teaching profession before she was laid off in 1980, due to an uptick in busing inner-city Black students from public schools in Indianapolis to public schools in neighboring townships.
She started praying and reading the Bible for direction. The Old Testament spoke to her when she read about God “wanting the children of Israel to know their history.” She connected that to Black Americans not knowing theirs.
Wellington didn’t know there was an industry for living history museums. Choosing a time period of Black history was important.
She looked to her Bible again. This time, she compared the end of slavery in the U.S. to Israelites leaving Egypt for the Promised Land. Newly freed African Americans were establishing themselves during Reconstruction and founding HBCUs, starting businesses, buying property and running for elected office.
“Most of us don’t even realize the political power and business savvy that we established in this country,” Wellington said. “A lot of it was erased from our memory. But it was a short period of time in our history that I thought, ‘We need to celebrate what these people who were first-generation free … were able to accomplish.’”
After 44 years in existence, Freetown Village has performed in and visited all 92 Indiana counties, plus surrounding states.
A daughter of the American Revolution
Elaine Sholty was introduced to the living history scene in the early 1990s. She and her husband were leaving a movie theater after catching “Gettysburg,” featuring Richard Jordan and Martin Sheen. On the way out, they passed a group of Civil War reenactors with a canon prop.
The couple began doing reenactments together as a hobby. Sholty portrayed northern and southern women of the Civil War era in her mid-century day dresses — at places such as Crown Hill Cemetery. At a gun salute, she met members of Daughters of the American Revolution, where she is now the Indianapolis chapter president.
After retiring from AT&T and leading a Boy Scouts troop, she began portraying suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Grace Julian Clarke. For 18 years, she has portrayed Caroline Harrison, the former first lady and wife of the 23rd U.S. President Benjamin Harrison. She’s been doing it alongside Charles Braun, a lawyer who portrays Harrison at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site.
Clothing is a point of focus for Sholty. Details, such as types of time period-correct corsets and undergarments, put her in history. For example, women during the Revolutionary War would’ve worn stays, not corsets. A stay’s purpose was not to cinch the waist, but to support the torso and help with a woman’s posture.
“It appealed to the detail side of me … having people see, learn and hear as close to the facts and times as you can make it,” she said. “If you’re wearing tennis shoes, it doesn’t come off as authentic.”
Mrs. Whitaker in Prairie Town
Most elementary school students on field trips to Conner Prairie come into contact with historical interpreters. Interpretation coordinator Anne Coffey plans all programming on the historic grounds at the museum in Fishers. She also plays a few characters such as Mrs. Whitaker. Mrs. Whitaker is loud and outgoing, and her husband owns a general store set in 1836.
Coffey said all of the characters in Prairie Town are composite characters, meaning they’re not based on one real person, but a mix of facts and of perspectives of people who lived in Hamilton County during the 1830s.
Coffey said she likes to play Mrs. Whitaker as an early suffragette. (Men earned the right to vote in 1787.) It’s a way for her to introduce disenfranchisement to young girls and women who visit on school field trips.
“There’s something of value to talking to interpreters and learning about history that isn’t a boring book, that doesn’t make sense where you can’t ask questions,” she said.
Coffey prepares by learning all there is to know about the year 1836 and also staying up on her improv skills for questions kids will ask. Mrs. Whitaker is often asked: What do you like to eat? How do you take care of your family? What do you use for toilet paper?
One of the more rewarding moments for Coffey is when guests are able to connect cultural moments and references to their own lives.
“When you see in the guests’ eyes that something makes sense — ‘I never knew what that meant’ or ‘Something I’ve known about my entire life comes from history’ — that is a great day on the Prairie.”
Women’s history on stage
Actors Donnice Robinson and Tracey Wynn met in 2019 while working as characters in the Madam C.J. Walker exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society. Wynn played Madam C.J. Walker, and Robinson portrayed Candace Pinkston, who was one of Walker’s sales agents.
When the exhibit closed, the duo didn’t want to see “those people go to sleep.” In 2022, they founded Soulful Journeys of Women. The company has a contract with the Indianapolis Public Library to perform History on Stage.
In addition, they developed three other sets of characters: Ida B. Wells and Harriet Tubman; Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth; and Ida B. Wells and Madam C.J. Walker.
Many might ask if the paths of these historical leaders would have crossed, and to that, Robinson and Wynn say yes. During their research, they’ve found conferences and private meetings the two people would’ve attended.
“We take historical facts and create a conversation that could’ve possibly happened,” Wynn said. “People don’t know that Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman (knew each other) because of (their) age difference, but their paths crossed at an abolitionist meeting of John Stewart Rock.”
Wynn and Robinson have done 53 shows since 2022, including performances at women’s history conferences and at the Southern District Court of Indiana.
Louis Armstrong’s first studio recording
Tristan Ross has always been a “history dork.” Even his email address calls on the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe known for making the most accurate astronomical observations before the invention of the telescope. He described his previous role as an interpreter and facilitator at the Indiana Historical Society for eight years as “a spoonful of sugar that helped the lesson go down.”
“For the past decades, the humanities have been an academic punching bag ever since STEM became a hot button thing. There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from what has happened in the past,” he said.
Ross has had a chance to reenact male figures throughout Indiana history. He’s been everything from a small-town traveling preacher to a German businessman who worked with Col. Eli Lilly in the 1870s. One of his favorite characters to portray is Fred Gennett, founder of Gennett Records.
The recording laboratory — located in Richmond, Indiana — is where legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s first recorded solo on the track “Chimes Blues” with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923. According to Ross’ research, Gennett would allow members of the Ku Klux Klan to book studio time to record white supremacist hymns.
“Personally, I wouldn’t care for the man. He was all about business … but the business they created fostered an art form (jazz) that I personally love,” Ross said.
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Mirror Indy reporter Mesgana Waiss covers arts and culture. Contact her at 317-667-2643 or mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
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