Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center Oral History Project


[Irving Allen]: The house is very big for the neighborhood. I mean, it stands out. It’s supposedly some Sears type pre-fab house, for whenever it was built in the early 1900s, but… 

Our house was open to Notre Dame students, black students’ cause… there were very few at Notre Dame, first of all. 

I could read anything and everything that was in the house. There were never any restrictions, and I think my becoming a reader certainly saved me, but… I mean, they were a hub for these kinds of ideas, and debates, and background kinds of materials. They were voracious readers. They bought everything in the way of books.