Gail Brodie, west side community organizer

Gail Brodie lived her entire life in her beloved west side community. She even has an honorary street named after her. 

Her mother, Annette Brodie, was a long-time community activist during the late 1960s. Annette pushed city leaders to provide basic services, like paving their dusty, dirt streets. Gail took on her mother’s community work and became as trusted, and as vital a resource. 

As a generational homeowner, Gail had a privilege and a perspective of the west side of South Bend, Indiana different than some of her neighbors. 

In 2007, Doctors Les Lamon and Monica Tetzlaff, along with student Derek Webb, sat down with Gail. They talked about her upbringing in the shadows of her mother’s community leadership, her unique perspectives on the community’s evolution, and how she answered her own call to community service. 

This episode was produced by Nathalie Villalobos by George Garner from the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center. 

Full transcript of this episode available here.

Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/. 

Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/.