Gary, Indiana--The Magic City?

Believe it or not, Gary was named in the Chicago Reader this month as a destination of choice when traveling off the beaten path. I read it and found places I didn't know about even though I was born and raised here. I also recognized tidbits that were left out of the story.

For one, Gary has had many other nicknames including City of the Century, Sin City, and the infamous Murder Capital. The article states that Gary "fell into a depression in the late 1960's." That's not entirely correct. Two unrelated incidents happened in 1967 and 1968 that changed Gary. The first was the election of its first Black mayor, Richard Hatcher. This caused White Flight by the droves. And when they left, their businesses left also. The second was the burning of businesses after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I think that was the final straw for many remaining White businesses. Prejudice and fear started the depression.

Gary was still considered a Model City in the early 1970's and continued to receive lots of federal dollars. It hosted a National Black Economic Summit in 1972 and people expressed how impressed they were with the city then. Black celebrities came here all the time to visit Hatcher who was also a celebrity in his own right. But when the recession hit the United States in the mid '70's it rang the bell of doom for this city and we have never completely recovered.

The article pointed out places of interest--Miller Beach, Marquette Park, the Indiana Dunes--which are beautiful, better than any beach I have visited in Chicago. It mentioned the two Frank Lloyd Wright houses here also but not the modest cottage where Michael Jackson lived before he became pop king.

Surprisingly, it was a very positive article even if it compared us to Pompeii, "a city of ruins where life seem to have suddenly stopped." Living here all my life, I know Gary as a city of opposites--churches abounding with promises of paradise when you die, vacant houses standing in memorial to broken promises of the past. The citizens who live here either have low expectations and even lower motivation or they possess middle-class aspirations with middle-class displays of ostentation. That's Gary for you, my place.