Black Middletown project records

The Black Middletown project was conducted by Rutledge M. Dennis from Virginia Commonwealth University and Vivian V. Gordon from the University of Virginia between 1980 and 1982 as part of the Middletown III project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Officially titled "Black Middletown: A Community Study of Social Progress," the research project was designed to be a comprehensive study of Muncie, Indiana's African American community similar to and employing the same type of methodology used in the previous sociological studies of Muncie carried out by Robert and Helen Lynd in 1924-1925 (Middletown I) and 1935 (Middletown II). Though in 1925 nearly six percent of Muncie's population was comprised of African Americans, the African American community was entirely omitted from the Lynds' original studies. As explained in the project proposal, the Black Middletown project examined "contemporary Black Middletown by means of participant observation and survey research in order to describe and interpret the changes that have occurred in each major cultural sector and with respect to the changing patterns of stratification, cultural differentiation, and the relationship of Black Middletown to the surrounding community and the larger outside world."