BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " RICHARD GORDON HATCHER " WAS THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN MAYOR OF GARY, INDIANA : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

                        BLACK                SOCIAL                 HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Richard Gordon Hatcher (born July 10, 1933, Michigan City, Indiana) became on January 1, 1968, the first African-American Mayor of Gary, Indiana. He was the first elected Black mayor of a U.S. city larger than 100,000 people and the first in the state of Indiana. Carl Stokes was elected days later as the mayor of Cleveland, and was sworn into office prior to Hatcher's inauguration.

Biography

Hatcher was born on July 10, 1933, in Michigan City, Indiana. He received a B.S. degree in business and government from Indiana University and a bachelor of law with honors in criminal law in 1956 and a J.D. from Valparaiso University School of Law in 1959.After moving to Gary, Indiana, Hatcher began practicing law in East Chicago, Indiana. In 1961, he began serving as a deputy prosecutor for Lake County, Indiana, until he was elected to Gary's City Council in 1963. He was the first and only freshman elected president of the City Council in Gary's history.

Hatcher was inaugurated mayor of Gary in 1968 and served until 1987. During his tenure as mayor, he became internationally known as a fervent and prolific civil rights spokesman. Hatcher was known for developing innovative approaches to urban problems and for being a national and international spokesman for civil rights, minorities, the poor and America's cities. He often delivered speeches alongside Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and other historic proponents of the civil rights movement. On April 5, 1968, he addressed President Lyndon B. Johnson, along with a collection of politicians and civil rights leaders, on the topic of the recent King assassination and pending civil unrest.^[1][2]

In the 1984 U.S. presidential election, Mayor Hatcher served as the chairman for Jackson's campaign. He served as the Vice-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. In 1988, Hatcher started his own consulting firm, R. Gordon Hatcher & Associates. From 1988 to 1989, he worked as an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He also began teaching political science at Roosevelt University in 1989 and later became a senior research professor at Valparaiso University, in 1991. In the summer of 1996, Hatcher taught a law course at Cambridge University in England. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Indiana University-Northwest.