The story of Sam Dargan exemplifies the personal drive of and challenges faced by Black entrepreneurs of the 1930s and 1940s.

His biography is a celebration of how one short, remarkably talkative young Black man achieved marked success and recognition at Indiana University.

Sam Dargan’s early strivings

Born in South Carolina in 1870, Samuel Saul Dargan grew up in a period when whatever gains garnered by emancipation were being legislated away by white leaders. Dargan almost certainly had supportive parents who valued education. Obtaining an advanced degree was a particular challenge, only managed by young Black men and women of unique drive and determination. Sam Dargan was one such young man.

Dargan set his sights on high caliber institutions, attending Cornell University and MIT before finally finding stability and enduring success at Purdue University in Indiana. His strong sense of perseverance insured his graduation from Purdue in 1905 at the age of 35.             

Upon graduating, the Purdue yearbook lists Dargan’s nickname as “Julie” and lists his hometown as Rochester, New York. Obtaining a B.S. in Science, Dargan’s thesis was on “The Economical Relations of Certain Garden Insects.” His choice of topic gave no clue as to his future, but the description provided reflected that he was extroverted and loquacious from the very start. “He is like a repeating alarm,” it read, “for once started he never knows when to stop.

After graduating from Purdue, Dargan briefly worked as a waiter at one of Davenport, Iowa’s better hotels. There he had the opportunity of waiting on Teddy Roosevelt at a large banquet. Sam was in charge of the champagne, 27 bottles of which were served. Dargan knew just the sort of detail to lend veracity to his many stories. (“Hoosierland,” Indianapolis News, 5-31-48, p. 12″)

From Purdue, Dargan moved a few hours south and entered Indiana University’s Law School. A gifted speaker who could be disciplined in speech when he needed to be, Dargan soon won a special oration award for a speech on “Tariff in the United States.” Popular with his peers, despite the racial divide, Dargan earned his law degree in 1909, the first black student at IU to do so.

Sam Dargan, Curator of Law

At that point, the question confronting all graduates was, “Now what?” The question was particularly poignant for a particularly rare entity, a black attorney. A position apparently was available to him in Washington, D.C. but there must have been some uncertainty attached to it. A trusted advisor encouraged Dargan to take a position as assistant law librarian at Indiana University. Dargan loved books and he was already known and respected at IU. Dargan did just that and there is no evidence he ever regretted it.

Sam Dargan was both gregarious and generous by nature. He enjoyed working with the young law students who came to the library, joking and gossiping with them, even as he supplied them with precisely the help they needed.

By 1920, Dargan was so popular with law students that they devoted an entire page to extolling his virtues in decidedly affectionate verse.

“Ho Cerberus of legal Lore,

Who guards the Law Libe’s volumes musty,

May you be with us evermore,

With age-old texts and jokes so rusty…

Want the ‘dope’ on some exam,

On latest scandal, new professor?

Just saunter up and question Sam,

You’ll think you’re his death-bed confessor.”

The poem was accompanied by a full body shot of a decidedly dapper Dargan posing on stone steps.

Not only was Dargan popular, he was also apparently quite effective at his job. In 1924, he accepted a promotion and earned the title as Curator of Law.

The new law dean, Paul McNutt, soon unofficially took to calling Dargan “the father of IU’s Law School.”

A Black entrepeneur is born

With his position assured and his financial situation improved, Dargan—now 54—turned some of his attention and indefatigable energy towards his other passion, assisting black undergraduates at IU. Housing was a particular challenge. Denied residence at IU’s campus dormitories, Black male students were forced to live in a rather shoddy fraternity house some distance from the campus. Black female students had to find rooms to rent from homes on the west side of town, literally on the other side of the tracks in Bloomington’s Black neighborhood. Not only was it a terribly long walk to Indiana University, nestled in the east side of town, the conditions they had to live in were far from ideal.

Sam Dargan decided he was going to do his best to remedy all of that. He began buying up properties on the upper east side, just a few blocks away from the IU campus. He did so with savings from his position with the library and profits from a side business of selling law books.

The laudable efforts of Dargan and the Black students at IU were significant enough to garner a decidedly positive article of some length in the June 8, 1929 edition of The Indianapolis Star. The article began by noting that Kappa Alpha Psi was “leading all the fraternities in scholarship” at IU. There were 72 Black students enrolled in the university at the time.

But the author article soon asserted that the story of these Negro students could not be told without telling the story of Sam Dargan, “officially the curator of the Indiana University law school library and unofficially the dean of Negro students.“ The article described Dargan House as “a pleasant and comfortable home in which all Negro girls are required to live unless living with relatives or working for board and in room in homes approved by the dean of women.”

The article also detailed that “Mr. Dargan’s present work is on plans for a new fraternity home for Kappa Alpha Psi which is now located in a rented house not well suited to fraternity needs.”

The plan was for the new Dargan House to be ready for occupancy that Fall.

John Lee Stewart remembers

The most detailed and personal account of Sam Dargan’s role as landlord and informal godfather of IU’s black students is from the autobiography of John Lee Stewart. In the Fall of 1935, Stewart was a transfer student to Indiana University. Naturally, the first place he went to set up lodgings was Kappa Alpha Psi where he first met Sam Dargan, now 65.

Stewart recalled arriving at the Kappa House on a Sunday evening. “There I found Mr. Dargan in the process of renovating and cleaning rooms for incoming students. An unusually talkative little sweltering man … After he had engaged in considerable discourse on the subject of not being able to find anyone on whom he could depend to do the work, he paused, looked up at me from his paint brush with the indication that he would give me a trial.” (Stewart, p. 228)

Stewart worked with Dargan until midnight that evening, receiving two dollars for his efforts. His more meaningful reward would only emerge in the coming days, as he learned that Dargan was going about town talking him up as fine and dependable young man. Dargan specifically recommended him to a black premed student who just happened to be headwaiter at the Delta Gamma Sorority House. Stewart had his first ongoing job.

Although Stewart had no way of knowing it, Dargan forever served as an informal advisor for students, both Black and white. He would set them up with whatever resources he could, whether academic in the law library or practical with the students who lived in his houses.

The number of black students at IU when Stewart enrolled—78–had barely changed since 1929.

There was, perhaps, an institutional effort to keep the number stable. Whatever the case, Stewart also described how Black student life revolved around the Dargan properties.

“The Dargan House, the residence for Negro coeds, was the main social center for Negro students, and the girls were constantly planning some sort of activity.” Referring to the girl he was dating at the time, Stewart recalled how “we were invited to most of the dances that were sponsored by Negro students, and we looked forward to seeing each other once in a while during that precious social hour at the Dargan House on Sunday evenings.” (Stewart, 260, 265)

Before accepting a position as President Wells’ “houseboy” and informal major domo, Stewart spent most of his free time at the Dargan owned fraternity house.

Struggles with administration

Dargan wasn’t perfect of course. Herman Wells and Kate Hevner Mueller, the Dean of Women during the late thirties and early forties, found him frustrating to deal with a times. Wells and Mueller often pressed him to make improvements on his properties, which they considered not up to needed standards. Dargan always promised to comply, but needed repairs were often slow in being implemented. Wells, in one administrative memo, even accused him of taking advantage of others of his race. Given a lifetime of service and his status as a beloved figure in both the black and legal community, this accusation seems unfair.

An early summary of Dean Mueller’s interactions with Sam Dargan give some sense of the administrative position.

“In the summer of 1939 a complete inspection was made of the Dargan House and the annexes and a shocking situation was revealed. After this inspection in a long letter to Mr. Dargan the main improvements which should be made in order to make the houses livable were set forth.” Among other concerns were a lack of closet space and in some instances no doors present in the doorways. “A few of these he was able to take care of immediately and the remainder we have been working on ever since. There has been considerable improvement and the the negro girls now have a much better place to live.” (Mueller, Kate Hevner, “Report of the Dean of Women,” p. 7)

The administration, of course, was hardly blameless, enforcing a separate and less than equal policy for its Black students. That said, IU’s president Herman Wells is well known for pushing for greater integration at the university throughout the forties.

Dargan clearly loved his students. It likely was also true that as a businessman it was hard to make ends meet. Repairs were expensive and the properties he could afford to buy were often rundown to begin with. It also appears he accumulated debts along the way that he was unable to manage in his lifetime.

Sam Dargan, World War II and after

World War II found Dargan finding new ways to be of assistance to his community. He served on Bloomington’s draft board. His inclusion there was likely to increase the trust of young black men who needed to register. He also was a member of a group that worked to see that black men and women who were interested might find national defense work.

It was only after the War that the shape of Sam Dargan’s life began to change. Though it took nearly a decade of active effort and gradual enlightenment, President Wells’ finally achieved the integration of campus dormitories. The need for Dargan House and the entrepreneur’s other properties gradually diminished though didn’t immediately disappear.

The last ten years of his life, Dargan found a reliable handyman to take care of matters he could no longer physically manage.

Two years earlier, Sam Dargan—well into his seventies—was finally pressed into retirement. The Board of Trusties took the unusual step of seeing to an unfunded pension of one hundred dollars a month. (Thos. A Cookson to Samuel Saul Dargan, 6-29-1946).

Sam Dargan honored

But law school faculty and students need not have worried that Dargan would disappear from their lives. He showed up every day at the library, volunteering his services and working nearly as many hours as he did when he was being paid. The library, the law school and the Black students that attended IU were his life. What else could he possibly do?

Now 78, caretakers increasingly took care of his properties. And with the opening of a separate but equal dormitory for Black co-eds, demand for them decreased. Ironically, racial progress was eating away at his livelihood. The alumni of the Law School felt they needed to do more than being sure to seek out Dargan whenever they returned to campus.

At the annual law school alumni dinner on June 5^th, 1948, Dargan was a special honoree. A portrait of Dargan, commissioned by the alumni association was unveiled on the occasion, and presented to the law school library to be hung in a place of honor.

News of the event appeared in both the Indianapolis News and Indianapolis Star. The coverage in the News was particularly glowing.

“To any man, or woman for that matter, who ever attended the Indiana University School of Law at Bloomington , there are certain things , I mean people, places and customs, which they will never forget,” the notice read. “But none is more of an institution than the one and only Samuel Saul Dargan.” (“Hoosierland,” Indianapolis News, 5-31-48, p. 12; “Law School Alumni to Honor Curator Emeritus of Library,” Indianapolis Star, 6-7-48, p. 5)

Despite his retirement, Dargan continued to come in mornings to help out on a volunteer basis. He lived a life of service to others to the end.

When Sam Dargan died in 1954, students were excused from classes to attend his funeral.

Closing thoughts

Dargan never married. Nothing about his sexuality, or lack of it, is mentioned in the various accounts of his life. Not all lifelong bachelors are gay, of course, but a few details suggest that possibility is reasonable to entertain. Many closeted gay men of that era devoted their lives to be of assistance to younger men, though it must be said Dargan helped both young men and women. He was a stylish dresser and loved to gossip. While stereotypes now, they were less so in his day. His college nickname was Julie, a girl’s name, though that may not have been the reason for its use. As gregarious as he was, if straight, it seems odd that he never married. But at this late date it is difficult to confirm one way or the other.

Sam Dargan, appreciated in life with informal honorary titles, continues to be remembered with distinction. His portrait still hangs in IU’s Law Library where Dargan’s spirit surely lingers. And in 2018 the block of Indiana Avenue that houses IU’s law school was rechristened Samuel Dargan Way.

Mark Carlson-Ghost

References

Clippings of obituaries, possibly from Indiana University’s Daily Student, dated 11-30-1954 and 12-2-1954.

“Hoosierland.” Indianapolis News, 5-31-1948, p. 12.

“Law school alumni to honor curator emeritus of library.” Indianapolis Star, 6-7-1948, p. 5.

“Law students remembered: Curator’s concern to continue,” Indianapolis Star, 12-16-1962, p. 21.

Mueller, Kate Hevner, “Report of the Dean of Women, 1941-42,” p. 7 retrieved from Indiana University Archives Online.

“Sam Saul Dargan (2016). Notable Alumni. 20. https://reposity.law.indiana.edu/notablealumni/20

Stewart, John Lee (1976). Yesterday Was Tomorrow: Autobiography of John Lee Stewart. Durham, NC: self-published, pp. 227-230, 250, 260-261, 265, 299.

Treanor, Aline-Elizabeth. “72 Negro student form progressive units at Indiana University; Seven will be granted degrees Monday.” Indianapolis Star, 6-8-1929, p. 7.