The 1967 Gary, Indiana, mayoral election, held on November 7, saw the election of Richard G. Hatcher.
This was, along with the
coinciding election in Cleveland, Ohio,
the first election of an
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
as mayor of an American city with a population over 100,000. Hatcher would also become the first African-American mayor in the state of Indiana.
Nominations
Primaries were held on May 2.
[
]
Democratic primary
Hatcher unseated incumbent mayor A. Martin Katz in the Democratic Party primary.
Republican primary
General election
Usually, in the heavily-Democratic city, winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election
A safe seat is an electoral district (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combinati ...
. However the race was much closer in 1967 due to intense racial politics and the Democratic machine's anger over Hatcher's nomination, being a reformer. Although Republicans had given up on seriously contesting elections in Gary in the 1940s, it was believed that white voters in Gary had shown they were willing to abandon the Democratic Party if they believed that Democratic politicians were too accommodating to black voters when George Wallace performed well there in the 1964 Democratic Presidential primary (in which he challenged incumbent Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
); hence, when Richard Hatcher was the Democratic nominee for mayor in the 1967 election, the election was bitterly fought between Hatcher and the Republican nominee Joseph B. Radigan.
Due to the intense racial divide and the desire of white ethnic Democrats to maintain their grip on power over the city's Democratic machine and patronage system, prominent Democrats in the county machine (including the chairman of the Lake County Democratic Party) endorsed Republican Joe Radigan and worked to purge black voters from voter registration rolls and replace them with non-existent white voters, smashed voting machines in black-majority precincts, and employing white police officers to intimidate black voters from entering voting stations.
References
{{1967 United States elections
Gary 1967
Gary mayoral
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the sou ...
November 1967 events in the United States
History of Gary, Indiana