Walk into Hinkle Fieldhouse, and you feel it--that palpable sense of history known as the Hinkle mystique. Indiana's basketball cathedral has stood in all its glory at Butler University since 1928. John Wooden, Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird played on its floor. Jesse Owens sprinted to a record at Hinkle, and athletes from around the globe have brought Olympic-level competition to crowds gathered under its steel arches. It was the setting for the...

"Built during the ugliest decade in Indiana history, built when the Ku Klux Klan ran the state and Hoosiers' everyday racist roots pushed deeper still, all-black Crispus Attucks High School was intended to isolate, to denigrate, ultimately to fail. Instead it produced generals and scholars, surgeons and scientists, world-class musicians and athletes -- generations of contributors to a society that initially scorned them. Most important, Attucks...