HATCHER, Richard Gordon

(b. 10 July 1933 in Michigan City, Indiana), civil rights activist, lawyer, and five-term mayor of Gary, Indiana, who in 1967 (along with Carl Stokes of Cleveland) became the first African-American mayor of a large American city.

Hatcher, a Baptist of African-American descent, grew up in poverty. He was the youngest of thirteen children in a family that had witnessed the deaths of six of its offspring. His father, Carlton, was a semiskilled laborer for Pullman Standard and his mother, Katherine, worked in a factory. Hatcher was an introverted youth who suffered from a stuttering problem as well as blindness in one eye. Despite these physical limitations, he blossomed into a high-school track and football star.

With an athletic scholarship and financial assistance from churches and siblings, Hatcher enrolled at Indiana University in the fall of 1951. Once on campus, however, Hatcher, like most of his African-American peers, was un-prepared for college work. While many of the African-American students flunked out, Hatcher successfully juggled academic pursuits, track practice, and part-time work. During his sophomore year Hatcher joined with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter to picket Nick's, a segregated restaurant located on campus. Significantly, he and other activists picketed this segregated restaurant in Indiana seven years before North Carolina A&T students decided to launch their renowned sit-in campaign in Greensboro. When Hatcher graduated with a B.S. in 1956, he was a campus activist and a regular member of the dean's list.

In the fall of 1956 Hatcher started law school at Valparaiso (Indiana) University. He went to classes during the day, worked full time as a psychiatric aide in the evening, and still had time to participate in politics. In 1958 he and some friends completed a successful sit-in at Brownie's Griddle in Michigan City. During the same year Hatcher lost his first election when he came in fourth place as a Democratic primary candidate for Michigan Township justice of the peace. In 1959 he completed his law degree, was admitted to the bar, and headed to Gary, Indiana, where he worked in private practice. After winning a high-profile extradition case involving a black youth from Mississippi, he became a deputy county prosecutor.

As a member of the informal group "Muigwithania," Hatcher sought to loosen the stranglehold of Gary's Democratic machine. Muigwithania took its inspiration from the emerging African nations that had thrown off the shackles of colonial government, and in fact, the organization's name was the Swahili term meaning "We are together." In 1962 Hatcher became president of Muigwithania, resigned from his duties as deputy prosecutor, and threw himself into such issues as school integration, police brutality, and the open housing movement.

In 1963 Hatcher, as city councilman-at-large and then as council president, continued to champion civil rights, but white intransigence sent an omnibus civil-rights bill to defeat, and his own low-cost housing campaign produced no additional housing units. In 1966 Hatcher received much acclaim when a group of Gary citizens recruited him to run for mayor, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey invited him and several other leaders to discuss African Americans' frustration with the limited progress the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was making on civil rights.

In January 1967 Hatcher agreed to run for mayor of Gary under the slogan "New Freedom." In his campaign, Hatcher attacked what he termed Gary's "plantation politics" and defended the term "Black Power." He also critiqued the Democratic machine for a legacy of racism, corruption, and poverty, and condemned the steel companies for polluting the environment and refusing to pay their share of taxes. The incumbent mayor, A. Martin Katz, was favored in the Democratic primary, because while African Americans composed a majority of Gary's population, more whites were registered to vote. Hatcher upset Katz, however, because a third candidate, Bernard W. Konrady, divided the white vote. Traditionally, when candidates won a Democratic primary in Gary, they were guaranteed victory in the general election. However, Democratic county chairman John Krupa, after an ill-fated effort to turn Hatcher into his puppet, tried to throw the election to Republican challenger Joseph Radigan by tampering with the voter rolls. Nevertheless, Hatcher won a close election with 95 percent of the black vote and 12 percent of the white vote and shared a historic milestone with Carl Stokes of Cleveland when they became the first African-American mayors of large American cities.

After Hatcher was sworn in as mayor in January 1968, he began a first term that left a mixed legacy. His greatest success was turning Gary into an "urban laboratory" that attracted millions of dollars from private foundations and the Model City Programs in Johnson's "Great Society." With those funds, Hatcher's administration was able to establish antipoverty programs that improved housing and health care and gave disadvantaged youngsters an opportunity with "Head Start" programs. Hatcher also unflaggingly supported civil rights, fought crime and poverty, tried to revitalize the business district, and broke the power of the Democratic Party machine. Hatcher's detractors, however, could point to labor disputes with city employees, a school boycott, a threat of disannexation by the white Glen Park neighborhood, unmet expectations among African Americans, and hostile relationships with council members, county and state governments, and the local newspaper.

By the time Hatcher lost the mayoral election of 1987, he had been in office for five terms and twenty years. Over that time he had gained a reputation as a powerful advocate of civil rights and low-income residents, but as federal funding rapidly decreased in the 1970s and 1980s, he never was able to turn Gary from its path of decline. In the final analysis, Hatcher led his city at a time when "white flight," disinvestment, and increasing crime rates were ravaging cities across the United States. Though many critics demonized the African-American Hatcher for Gary's depleted economy and infrastructure, nearby cities such as Hammond and East Chicago suffered similar fates with white mayors. In 1991, when Hatcher made an ill-fated bid for a sixth mayoral term, he could find solace in the fact that at that time more than 300 African-American mayors held office.

In addition to his tenure as mayor, Hatcher had an impact on national politics when he helped organize the first National Black Political Convention in 1972 and chaired Jesse Jackson's campaigns for the presidency in 1984 and 1988. Since leaving office he has worked as a lawyer and a professor and has embarked on a campaign to build a National Civil Rights Museum and Hall of Fame in Gary. Hatcher married Ruthellyn Marie Rowles in 1976, and they have three daughters.

Alex Poinsett, Black Power Gary Style: The Making of Mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher (1970), though dated, offers the most biographical information about Hatcher's early life. David R. Colburn and Jeffrey S. Adler, eds., African-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American Cit y (2001), includes an informative introduction to the emergence of the black mayor as well as a fine essay on Hatcher by James B. Lane. Robert A. Catlin, Racial Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980–1989 (1993), emphasizes Hatcher's later terms. William E. Nelson, Black Politics in Gary: Problems and Prospects (1972), and James B. Lane, "City of the Century": A History of Gary, Indiana (1978), both place Hatcher in the broader context of Gary's history.

Alan Bloom