April 7, 2026, 5:30 a.m. ET
Black Indianapolis is a community in transition, and I remain hopeful about its destiny despite the emerging challenges.
Black Indianapolis, based on 2025 census estimates, consists of approximately 248,000 Indianapolis residents. If it were a city, by population, it would be more than twice the size of Evansville and nearly the size of Fort Wayne.
According to a 2018 Center for Research on Inclusion and Social Policy report, nearly half of Black residents in Indianapolis live in a majority-Black neighborhood.
Around 2019, and before the murder of George Floyd, Black civic and faith leaders lamented three types of death afflicting Black Indianapolis: spiritual, physical and economic.
Community leaders lamented that deteriorating mental health and the use of illicit drugs for self-medication were sapping the ambition of too many residents— before COVID-19 and even now.
In five of the seven years between 2016 and 2022, over 100 Black males were victims of homicide.
While the country experienced the longest period of economic expansion in U.S. history between 2009 and 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, Black Indianapolis unemployment estimates did not dip below 10% between 2010 and 2021.
The Indiana University Richard Fairbanks School of Public Health found a 16.4-year life expectancy gap between 46218, a predominantly Black ZIP code, and Fishers.
Rising tides were not lifting Black Indianapolis boats.
Then the community got to work
Advocacy from the Black community was key as it moved through a racial reckoning, COVID pandemic and an economic downturn — bearing a disproportionate brunt of each.
These efforts — the Black community’s 2019 agenda, philanthropic investment in African-American quality of life, corporate support for Black businesses and city-backed initiatives — had an impact.
There are now more resources to deal with mental health issues from culturally responsive wellness centers in Black neighborhoods to mobile crisis response teams.
Black faith leaders are having conversations about both praying and seeking mental health counseling when needed in the Black community — rather than relying solely on prayer.
While there has been troubling data for Black males born between 1950 and 1971, according to the most recent community health assessment by the Marion County Public Health Department, there was a 33% decrease in suspected overdoses among Black residents between 2023 and 2024.
Last year, 76 Black males were victims of homicide — still a number that should shock our conscience but well below the nearly perennial 100 Black homicides we’ve too often experienced in this city.
While there is still on average a $25,000 income gap between White and Black households, Black incomes rose between 2018 and 2023.
Poverty in Black Indianapolis decreased from 25% to 21% between 2018 and 2023.
Black Indianapolis also experienced a 59% surge in Black business formation, and the Black homeownership rate improved from 34% in 2018 to 38% in 2023.
The Black unemployment rate in 2024 finally fell below double digits at 6.5%. That is still too high at a time when White unemployment stood at 3.2%, but it is progress.
Martindale Brightwood, a predominantly Black community in the 46218 ZIP code, known as the heart of the city, faces a roughly decade and half life expectancy gap from more affluent communities. It now has a city-certified quality of life plan addressing community development from an asset-oriented and forward-looking perspective.
Progress.
Then the ground shifted
One might be forgiven for not remembering a time when the then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had a “Platinum” agenda focused on Black America, then-Gov. Eric Holcomb had a plan for addressing issues facing Black Hoosiers and mayoral candidates in Indianapolis started developing and debating Black agendas.
Black history has too often been one step forward and two steps back.
Enter 2024.
Only a few short years following the murder of Floyd, a U.S. Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in higher education and some anti-DEI executive orders, the focus on Black lives mattering shifted to government algorithms designed to flag so-called DEI terms in procurement and a mutating definition of the term discrimination.
We live in a real and evolving world.
Observers of socioeconomic data on Black America are noting a regression and a recession as nationally Black unemployment is up and Black homeownership is going down.
Black Indianapolis has experienced enough of its potential to continue the fight for progress — even if there isn’t always consensus on how it occurs.
The Black community has to lead this work — and the city needs it to do so.
Marshawn Wolley is a civic leader who has spent two decades working on economic and civil rights in Indianapolis.
