Taking a new look at Black convention in Gary
Scholar talking with attendees about racial injustice
Forty-nine years ago, Black Americans across every spectrum gathered at West Side High School in Gary to hash out an independent Black political agenda.
The late Gary mayor Richard G. Hatcher organized and welcomed the assembly that drew about 10,000 people from March 10-12. Unrest simmered in the Black community after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as civil rights leaders struggled to identify a new leader.
Bearing a sense of disillusionment and abandonment by the Democratic and Republican parties, more than 3,000 delegates determined to forge a new path to bring them independence from the traditional parties.
The issues and impact of the landmark convention are being explored in a research project by independent scholar Nicole Poletika, who recently received a $2,500 grant from Indiana
Humanities as part of its commitment to confront social injustice.
“We created this fellowship program to deepen our efforts to bring to light, analyze and discuss race-related issues in Indiana,” said Keira Amstutz, Indiana Humanities president and CEO. “We are deeply committed to using the tools of the humanities to better understand our world …”
Poletika, of Indianapolis, has already begun talking with local residents who attended the convention.
Her project, called “Tired of Going to Funerals: Transforming Protest into Policy at the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana,” will culminate in the publication of her research and a podcast episode for the Talking Hoosier History conference.
The beginning
In 1972, Hatcher welcomed the convention to Gary after failed attempts to locate it in larger cities.
The disparate group spanned the spectrum of 1970s Black America. What they shared was discontent.
Coretta Scott King, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, and politicians Barbara Jordan, Carl Stokes and Julian Bond all came to Gary.
Muhammad Ali served as sergeant-at-arms, and entertainers James Brown, Harry Belafonte and Dick Gregory performed.
Remembering
Dena Neal was a 17-yearold West Side High School senior and the convention collided with the Cougars’ trip to the Lafayette basketball semistate. A week later, West Side lost a racially-tinged state championship game to Connorsville and received a year’s suspension from the state athletic association.
Neal, the daughter of James Holland, then a special assistant to Hatcher, watched her team play and then came to the convention.
“For me, it’s something that remains on the top of the list of events in my life,” said Neal, whose father later became deputy mayor.
“There were so many people with so many different ideas about where we needed to go.”
Hatcher set the tone.
“In our infinite patience, we have tried year after year, election after election to work with the two major political parties,” he said. “We believed the pledges, believed the platforms, believed the promises, each time hoping they would come true. Hoping we would not again be sold out.”
Hatcher recited a list of demands calling for the end of employment discrimination, a vibrant public school system, quality health care and an increase in the minimum wage.
If their government failed them, Hatcher said Black Americans could form a third political party.
“Will we walk in unity or disperse in a thousand different directions?” he asked.
Wearing an MLK medallion and trendy wide-collared shirt, Jesse Jackson emboldened the crowd and fixed the convention theme.
“For 7.5 million registered Black voters and 6 million unregistered Black voters, what time is it?”
“Nationtime,” the crowd roared.
“For Black Democrats, Black Republicans, Black Panthers, Black Muslims, Black independents, Black business owners, Black professionals, Black mothers on welfare, what time is it?”
Raising fists, they responded: “Nationtime.”
For many, it was a coming out moment for Jackson, who would later modify his views in a 1988 presidential campaign.
“He had a knack for doing that,” Neal said of Jackson’s connection with the audience. “It comes out of the Black church, it’s call and respond. He was showing his roots in the church.”
Jackson’s demand for “Nationtime” is the title of a forgotten William Greaves documentary that was re-released last year.
In 1972, state Rep. Vernon Smith was a 26-year-old teacher, starting his first term on the Gary City Council.
Smith’s job on the convention planning committee was to find housing for college students, who often ended up in family homes because the city lacked hotels. Former mayor Karen Freeman Wilson’s family hosted attendees.
Charlie Brown, a Hatcher ally, retired longtime state lawmaker and current Lake County councilman, was amazed at the organizers’ focus on getting Blacks elected and Hatcher’s determination to bring the convention to Gary, despite its lack of lodging.
Although aspirations for a third political party fizzled amid divided factions, many credit the convention with propelling Blacks to run for office.
“There was no consensus — everybody agreed to disagree,” said Brown.
Brown would go on to run for office and serve in the state legislature for 35 years. Smith followed a similar path and still serves in the Indiana House. State Sen. Lonnie Randolph, of East Chicago, also followed the road to the Statehouse.
The number of Black elected officials has increased steadily and some political observers suggest there’s a direct line from the 1972 convention to Barack Obama’s presidency.
Turf wars
In the 1970s, Poletika said two ideologies emerged after the King assassination. The NAACP didn’t attend the Gary convention because it opposed the move to back a separate political party.
U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first Black running for the Democratic presidential nomination, boycotted when delegates waffled on endorsing her.
“Members of the NAACP and National Black Caucus members wanted to work in the system and the nationalists wanted to create their own nation inside the U.S.,” Poletika said.
Hatcher managed to corral the factions with skill and diplomacy, she said.
“He was good at mediating and conversing with the integrationists and nationalists. He was an integrationist, although he did invoke Black power and did emphasize some of the goals of the nationalists.”
On May 19, two months after the convention on Malcolm X’s birthday, the Black Agenda was released with a clarion call for self-empowerment.
“So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention question of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system … Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choices,” it read.
As the convention approaches its golden anniversary, America still roils with racial unrest from controversial police killings to Confederate statues.
Now an education professor at Indiana University Northwest, Smith blamed former President Donald Trump for sanctioning white extremism.
“Donald Trump made it fashionable again and gave it a green light,” Smith said.
State GOP lawmakers booed Smith, 76, on the House floor Feb. 18 when he called a school disannexation bill racist because it would result in white students leaving a racially diverse district.
The experience turned his thoughts to those March days in the West Side gym in 1972.
“I think all of us stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us … I
think we owe it to our predecessors to speak up when we see racism, bigotry or discrimination,” he said.