A 70-year collection of yearbooks from Shortridge High School in
Indianapolis is the latest addition to the Indianapolis-Marion County
Public
Librarys digital library available online at
http:// <
http://www.imcpl.org/> www.imcpl.org .
Entire yearbooks of most years from 1898 to 1968 are represented,
giving viewers an opportunity to see photos of famous Shortridge alumni,
including author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Don Mellett, civil rights lawyer and activist
Henry
J. Richardson, and Madelyn Pugh Davis, who wrote for the popular
television
show, I Love Lucy. Photos of clubs, athletic teams, administrative
personnel, and other school activities are also featured.
Shortridge High Schools list of achievements includes the first
daily
student newspaper in the country, a school radio station which began in
the
1940s, and the first American Field Study exchanges in Indianapolis high
schools.
Vonnegut is famously quoted as saying of his alma mater, . . . we
had
a daily paper, we had a debating team, had a fencing team. We had a
chorus,
a jazz band, a serious orchestra. And all this with a Great Depression
going
on. And I wanted everybody to have such a school.
From the beginning, Shortridge was an innovative educational force
in
the city. It was the oldest free public high school in Indiana, opening as
Indianapolis High School on the Circle downtown in 1864. Its first
superintendent, Abram C. Shortridge, took the unusual steps at the time of
hiring female teachers and allowing admission of African-American
students,
as well as lengthening the school year from 3 ½ to 9 months and
introducing
a graded system. After a second high school was constructed in 1897,
Indianapolis High School was renamed Shortridge in his honor. In 1928, the
school moved from downtown to its current location at 34th and Meridian
Streets, where it now serves as a magnet high school for law and public
policy.
Users of the digital collection will find many features to help them
get the most out of the collection, including full-text searching
capabilities, creation and printing of PDF files, and the ability to crop,
save, e-mail and export images. The collection can be accessed from the
Librarys homepage by clicking on the Digital Library link.
The collection is presented in partnership with IUPUI, with funding
from the Central Indiana Community Foundation.
Other historic collections available in IMCPLs Digital Library
collection include the Indianapolis Postcards collection, artifacts from
The
Childrens Museum, the May Wright Sewall Papers, the World War One Poster
collection, the Free Soil Banner newspaper, programs from Englishs Opera
House, and actual recordings of poems read by beloved Hoosier poet James
Whitcomb Riley.
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