The DIY Tour Guide Unearthing Black History Right Where You're Standing
Sampson Levingston leads walking tours in Indianapolis that cover histories even locals are surprised by.
You don’t “meet” Sampson Levingston, as much as you experience him. My first encounter is in early April, on the weekend of the solar eclipse, in Indianapolis. He’s hosting a last-minute Walk and Talk Black History tour of Indiana Avenue—the neighborhood that was once a bustling hub of Black life and entrepreneurship—for the influx of tourists in town. Looking around our group of 15 or so he asks, “You’re all here for the eclipse?”
The former athlete and marketing major is upbeat and high energy, dressed in an oversized puffy black vest, and a jaunty yellow knit hat with blue pompoms sticking out from the sides (a remnant from the recent NBA All-Star Weekend, I later learn). Jazzy music wafts from his phone, which he amplifies with the microphone he uses to project to the group. He bounces while he stands in place, occasionally pulling out a dance move as he waits for the whole group to file in.
“I was immediately struck with just how passionate he was, the work that he does and the stories that he's trying to tell, his unapologetic commitment to the truth even when that makes people uncomfortable,” says Ryan Huntley, a designer who moved to Indianapolis in 2006. Though Huntley was not on my particular tour, in his estimation he has participated in about 10 of Levingston’s offerings.
“I think that's what I love the most about him— it's that he's not scared to make people uncomfortable. And he understands in moments of discomfort, things actually change.”
During the tour, which covers the avenue and a few side streets, Levingston holds up copies of the The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide for roadtripping Black Americans published between 1936 and 1967 which catalogued safe spaces to eat, stay, and recreate. He points out where locations listed in the book would be today. He stops in front of the marker for the Senate Avenue YMCA, dedicated by Booker T. Washington and once one of the largest black YMCAs in the US. He asks if we can identify anyone in the mural of jazz musicians on the side of the 75-year-old Musicians' Repair & Sales building on Capitol Avenue and tosses a bouncy ball if we get it right. He lists David Young, David Baker, JJ Johnson, Freddie Hubbard, and others who were instrumental in the city’s thriving jazz scene in the 1950s and 1960s and points out that their faces are painted on a shop that once supplied instruments to many of them.
He talks about the razing of the neighborhood once the “Big Trifecta” came in: a new interstate was built, along with a predominantly white university, combined with the expansion of a hospital. It’s this razing that Indianapolis residents are usually most surprised about, that Indiana Avenue didn’t always look the way they know it today. “A lot of people just assume that college campus has always been there or there was nothing there before the college campus,” says Levingston. “Figuring that out is powerful.”
Like many tours that launched in the pandemic, when people were figuring out how to play tourist in their own backyards, Levingston quickly found that local residents were interested what he had to offer. “People realized that there’s a lot in their city that they just don’t know,” says Levingston. The tours themselves were spurred by the Black Lives Matter protests—after attending one, Levingston was struck both by the energy of the crowd and the polarization of ideas. “I was like, ‘Man, I wish these people here knew a little bit about what I knew when it comes to Indianapolis,’” he says.
He’d always been interested in the city’s history, but previously kept his passion confined to a blog. When he decided to do a tour, he posted an announcement on Facebook. “I said, ‘For those that are interested in going downtown for the protests or don't really know what to do, how about we do a walking history tour downtown and I can talk about what happened here in our neighborhood?’” he recalls. “It was a way to get people back together and let them know how Indianapolis fits in with the narrative of Black Lives Matter and restorative justice.”
Nineteen of his friends and family signed up, and somehow the local news station caught wind. They asked him to do another one so they could film footage. But during that filming, they asked him when the next tour would be. “I was like, ‘Uhhhh, Saturday,’” says Levingston. “So I went home and put more tickets up.”
When Levingston starts researching a new tour, he first thinks of a question he wants to answer, typically through the lens of the underdogs of history, whether it be Black figures, influential women, or indigenous heritage. He then looks at the records of the Indiana Historical Society and goes through back issues of newspapers in the Hoosier State Chronicles like the Indianapolis Recorder, which, established in 1865, is currently the fourth-longest running Black newspaper in the US.
History is about the unseen, he explains, a quality he likes. It reminds him of the waters that run under the city, literally what lies beneath. “I thought, man, I wonder what flows beneath the surface of me, this living, breathing, entity. What’s inside me that people don’t see, but is there?”
“I didn't know that not everybody stops to read historical markers, or wondered why they were renaming the street.”
Levingston’s Indiana Avenue walking tour has now expanded to eight tours around the city, with more in the works. He does one-off themed walks for special occasions like All-Star Weekend and the recent Olympic team Swim Trials, held in Indianapolis. He’ll lecture at institutions like Newfields Art Museum, and do “Hawk and Talks” at local schools, covering everything from sports to nature.
The Indiana Avenue tour is the only one taken from a strictly Black history point of view, whereas the others are more of a “Sampson Levingston” lens. That is, whatever he finds the most compelling. It still surprises him that people seek out his knowledge and expertise. “I thought we just kind of knew this,” he says. “I didn't know that not everybody stops to read historical markers, or wondered why they were renaming the street.”
We begin and end our tour near the corner of Indiana Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd., where a large triangular brick building envelops the whole block. One one side there’s a protruding black marquee, lit with bulbs. The bricks are accented with green, red, and terra cotta designs and a sign that says WALKER THEATER, is propped up on top of the building in large red capital letters.
“The building was named for Madame C.J. Walker, a daughter of former slaves and the first self-made female millionaire in the world,” says Levingston. Considered the wealthiest Black woman and self-made woman in America at the time of her death in 1919, Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing cosmetics and hair care products for Black women.
The building was conceived as the corporate headquarters of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Community but by the time it opened the plans expanded to include a theater, movie house, drugstore, beauty salon, restaurant, and beauty school. It became a hub of the neighborhood, a community center bustling with commerce.
“She put the focus on Black people and Black women at a time where she kind of had to, but when it wasn't quite expected for her to get that big doing what she did,” Levingston says, making it clear to me why he chose to begin and end his tour with this theater. “One thing I really admire about her is how she catered to her community.”