Richard Hatcher

Richard Gordon Hatcher was born on the tenth of July 1933 in Michigan City, Indiana, one of thirteen children of Carlton Hatcher, a laborer at the Pullman-Standard plant, and Catherine Hatcher. He rose from a large, working-class family to become a lawyer, earning his law degree from Valparaiso University and entering public life through the office of the Lake County deputy prosecutor.

In November 1967 Hatcher won the mayoralty of Gary, Indiana, and on the first of January 1968 he took office as the city's first African American mayor. Alongside Carl Stokes of Cleveland, he was among the first Black Americans elected to lead a major American city, and he did so in a steel town amid fierce resistance. He would be re-elected again and again, serving five consecutive terms across two decades, until 1988.

Beyond Gary, Hatcher became a national figure in Black political life. In 1972 he was instrumental in bringing the National Black Political Convention to Gary, presiding over a historic gathering that drew thousands to forge a shared agenda. He later served as a vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee and remained a mentor and elder statesman to generations of Black officials.

Richard Hatcher died on the thirteenth of December 2019, at the age of eighty-six. May the trail he broke, and the dignity with which he governed, be remembered for as long as the story of American democracy is told.