Like many Munsonians, I mourned the loss of Hurley Goodall last month. His oversized role in our community changed Muncie’s course for the better, and his death was felt by many. Goodall has achieved a lot in nearly 94 years of life, so much that it is difficult to know where to start when writing about him.
The fact that Goodall has achieved so much in life says a lot about his personality, his ambition, his leadership qualities, his vision and above all his competence in implementing his ideas. I didn’t know Goodall well and never had the chance to ask what motivated him, but a look at his life’s journey reveals a lot about what made this Muncie luminary great.
Hurley C. Goodall II was born on May 23, 1927 and grew up during the very difficult years of the Great Depression. His father, also known as Hurley Goodall, died in 1930 at the age of 42, leaving behind his wife Dorene (Mukes), daughter Nolene and three sons: Robert, Hurley and Fredrick. With the loss of their father and his income, the Goodall family plunged into poverty during the darkest days of the Depression.
The Goodall family, however, held out under the careful guidance of Dorene. Hurley’s mother was employed by the Ball Brothers Company and later served as shop steward for Glass Workers Local 93. When he was young at Central, Hurley began working at Muncie Malleable Foundry Co. to make ends meet. Jobs were plentiful during the war years, and Goodall, like many African Americans at the time, found new employment opportunities once closed to colored Munsonians. Goodall worked the cemetery shift from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m., followed by a full day of school.
►MONUMENT: Community members reflect on the legacy of civil rights activist Hurley Goodall
Goodall graduated from Muncie Central in May 1945. In his senior yearbook, he listed his accomplishments as JROTC, College Conference Day, and Intramural Athletics. Like many members of the Greatest Generation, Goodall then served in the US Army for two years. He was stationed in Japan during the US military occupation of that nation after World War II. The U.S. Army was separated at the time, and Goodall served as a firefighter in an all-black unit, the 1392nd Combat Engineer Battalion.
After his release, Goodall returned home and returned to work at Muncie Malleable. A year later, he married his high school girlfriend, Fredine Wynn. The couple had two sons, the late Hurley III and Fred.
Tragedy struck the Goodall family again in 1951. Hurley’s brother Fredrick was killed in a car accident that year. Hurley’s other brother, Robert, also died in 1951. Robert served in the US Army during the Korean War and died a prisoner of war. The Goodall family did not find out until 1953.
It was around this time that Goodall became an active union member (UAW-CIO Local 532) at Muncie Malleable. He has served as secretary, negotiating committee member, delegate and union president.
In 1958, Goodall and John Blair became the first paid Black Munsonians to serve in the Muncie Fire Department in the 20th century. Muncie’s Public Works and Safety Committee appointed both men after successfully completing preschool last fall. Goodall worked as a firefighter for 20 years and retired from MFD in 1978. Here, too, Goodall was active in the union, often involved in labor negotiations for his fire service colleagues.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Goodall also became a prominent leader in Muncie’s civil rights movement and served on the city’s human rights commission. In 1969, the Goodalls, along with several other African American parents, sued Muncies Board of Education to stop the proposed development of Northside High School. The board was planning this third high school in northwest Muncie, ostensibly based on some very rosy population projections.
However, the new high school would have mostly drawn students from the wealthy and mostly white neighborhoods of the city to the northwest. Muncie’s black families were right to fear that the new school would reduce resources for Muncie’s other two high schools. The federal class action lawsuit alleged racial discrimination, specifically seeking an injunction against: the construction of a third high school that will bring elementary school students to schools near their home (white children in black neighborhoods are brought to mostly all-white schools) and its use of “Confederate symbols or other ‘racially or politically inflammatory’ symbols at Muncie Southside High School”. The parents lost the case and Northside High School opened in 1974.
In the midst of that time, Goodall ran for and won a seat on Muncie’s Education Committee in 1970, becoming the first black Munsonian to do so. During his eight-year tenure on the board, he was the board secretary, vice president and president.
After leaving the MFD in 1978, Goodall worked briefly in the county’s engineering office before seeking his party’s nomination to represent Muncie in House District 38 at the General Assembly. He beat Douglas Collins and Larry Dotson in the primary and became the Democratic candidate that fall. Goodall would win the general election with 6,913 votes and defeat American party candidate June Osterman, who received only 1,681 votes.
I have no place here to adequately list the many legislative achievements Goodall achieved during his tenure in the Indiana General Assembly. If interested, I recommend reading Goodall’s 1995 book, Inside the House: My Years in the Indiana Legislature, 1978-1992.
Suffice it to say that Goodall was a strong supporter of Ball State University and the City of Muncie in the General Assembly. He was a founding member of the Indiana Legislative Black Caucus and responsible for state recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. During his 14-year tenure, Goodall also continued his civil and labor rights in legislation for Hoosiers across the state.
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Goodall did not want to be re-elected in 1992, but officially retired from public service that year. He was never idle and spent much of the 1990s on local boards. He was also appointed a visiting fellow at the Center for Middletown Studies in Ball State in 1992. It was here that Goodall continued the work he began in the 1970s, researching and publishing local black history, which eventually led to the Black Middletown project. Initially, he was instrumental in the Virginia B. Ball Center project “The Other Side of Middletown”.
What I appreciate most is Goodall’s research. As a public historian, I’m biased, of course, but Goodall’s historical work has provided our city with much-needed knowledge of Black Muncie, a subject too often overlooked in the historical record.
Hurley Goodall served many roles in Muncie: father, activist, firefighter, politician, historian, and community leader. But overall, Goodall is best understood as a luminary; someone willing to put noble ideas into practice, or as Stefan Anderson said at the memorial service, Goodall “understood what a community that could be for all people should be like, and that vision was what he was committed to 28 hours a day “.
Rest in peace, Hurley Goodall. Thank you for a lifelong guide. Your legacy will never be forgotten.
Chris Flook is a board member of the Delaware County Historical Society and the author of Lost Towns of Delaware County, Indiana and Native Americans of East-Central Indiana. For more information about the Delaware County Historical Society, visit delawarecountyhistory.org.
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