Richard Gordon Hatcher was an attorney, politician and the first Black American mayor of Gary, Indiana. Hatcher served  as mayor for 20 years from 1968 to 1988. Hatcher was born on July 10, 1933, in Michigan City, Indiana. Hatcher and Carl Stokes, who was mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, where the first African Americans elected to U.S. cities of more than 100,000 people.

Hatcher received got his bachelor’s degree in business and government from Indiana University. Hatcher BA degree was with honors in criminal law was awarded in 1956 and was followed by a Juris Doctor from Valparaiso University School of Law in 1959. He would later become the first and only first term city councilman elected president of the Gary City Council in 1963.

During his time as mayor, Hatcher reduced illegal gambling to near zero, purged the Indiana Police Department of corruption and cronyism, and had innovative approaches to the city’s problems. Hatcher was one of the first big city mayors, to use federal funding to build both afford0able housing and public housing. His administration funded job training, rehabilitated dilapidated streets, and provided regular trash pickups in poorer neighborhoods that had long been neglected by previous administrations.  A decade after he was first elected, many of the city’s department heads, including police and fire chiefs, were Black.

Hatcher was instrumental in organizing both the 1972 and 2016 National Black Political Conventions in Gary. The one in 1972 was the first in the history of the United States. In 1979 Hatcher and seven other mayors sent a telegram to then President Jimmy Carter opposing a Republican proposal to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Hatcher served as Vice – Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. In the 1984 U.S. presidential election, Mayor Hatcher served as the chairman of Jesse Jackson’s campaign.

Unfortunately, Hatcher could not prevent the already steadily declining steel industry. During his during his term in office steel mills either closed or reduced their work force which resulted in rising poverty and crime. The city’s population declined as more people moved to the suburbs or away from the state altogether. As a result, Gary became the national symbol of post-industrial America.

After leaving office in 1988 Hatcher founded his consulting firm, R Gordon Hatcher & Associates and in 1989 started teaching political science at Roosevelt University and law at Valparaiso University. In 1991, he ran again for mayor, but lost the race. Richard G. Hatcher died on December 13, 2019, at Mercy Hospital and Medical Centre in Chicago at the age of 86.

Sources:

Tom Coyne and Rick Callahan, “Richard Hatcher, trailblazing black mayor elected in the 1960s, dies at 86,” USAToday.com, Dec. 15, 2019, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/15/gary-mayor-richard-hatcher/2656349001/:, Jon C. Teaford, “King Richard” Hatcher: Mayor of Gary,” https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2717557; Meredith Colias, Carrie Napoleon and Michelle L. Quinn, “Richard Gordon Hatcher, Gary’s 1st black mayor, dead at 86.” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 14, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-gary-richard-hatcher-dead-st-1215-20191214-ctwul66nqze3npyyl7yzur2pnq-story.html; Joseph P. Fried, “Richard G. Hatcher, Ex-Mayor of Gary, Ind., and Champion of Urban and Black Issues, Dies at 86,” New York Times, Dec. 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/us/richard-hatcher-dead.html

Karousos, M. (2022, January 19). Richard G. Hatcher (1933-2019). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/richard-g-hatcher-1933-2019/

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