I have
attempted to make sense out of Black America’s deafening silence regarding the
death of Richard G. Hatcher, the first Black mayor of Gary, Indiana. In many ways, this silence is
yet another reminder that far too many Blacks have little understanding of a
historical record that holds indispensable lessons regarding what will and what
will not work in the struggle for Black liberation.
If
nothing else, Black America should know who Richard G. Hatcher and Carl B.
Stokes, the first Black Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as they were living symbols
of a “Black Power” politic that failed to uplift Black America from an all too
familiar position of economic marginality.
Those
well-versed in a volatile identity politic driven 1960s that witnessed Richard
Hatcher and Carl B. Stokes’ election as the first Black men to lead major
American cities will tell you that by the mid-sixties non-Southern Black
activist communities had abandoned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. non-violent civil
disobedience and pursuit of integration with a hostile White community in favor
of a yet to be fully defined “Black Power” politic.
There is
no more prominent example of shifting political winds than the fact that the Watts
Rebellion began August 11, 1965, a mere five days after President
Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. While many Americans
displayed optimism regarding a potential path to racial reconciliation, Black
America abandoned gradualism in favor of an impatient Black Power politic.
Black Powerites rallied behind one of two goals.
- The
overthrow of America via revolutionary action.
- The
seizing of central cities via political participation and economic solidarity.
Ironically, the vanguard organization of the 1960s, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would travel down both of these paths during their existence.
While
outlandish Black Powerites issued threats that they had no power to execute, Richard
G. Hatcher became the Mayor of Gary, Indiana.
Parliament
beautifully articulates this unprecedented moment as the arrival of “Chocolate
cities and Vanilla suburbs.” This moment of Black political hope was born of equal
parts White flight and Black political naïveté.
The ascension of Black men to political power in cities such as Gary, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Atlanta was a test case regarding the utility of the vote. Unfortunately for Blacks, this test of political theory would prove that there was not much that Black Mayor’s could do to reverse the steep economic decline each of these embattled cities would experience.
Gary, Indiana, much like Maynard Jackson’s Atlanta, suffered mightily as a result of
the racial slur that it was now a Black city. While White citizens fled the
central city, they carried their businesses and much-needed taxable income with
them. It soon became apparent that not even the election of a Black Mayor could
significantly alter the fortunes of Black urbanites. During a late-seventies
interview, Hatcher addressed the worsening struggles of cities such as Gary in the following way.
There’s
almost a vested interest among a lot of powerful business people, the tax
assessors and other county officials who keep business taxes low here, in
proving that a city run by a black will fail.
Unfortunately for Blacks who dedicated their
lives to expressing “Black Power” via electoral participation, it became
increasingly clear that such efforts were incapable of staving off poverty,
violence, or other social maladies that flowed from the river of economic
inequality.
In the wake of his ascension to the apex of local politics,
Hatcher shared lessons learned during the journey. According to Hatcher, there
was no balm for the suffering that the ‘powerless’ experienced at the hand of
“affluent elements of our society.” In fact, this nation’s central cities were
nothing more than “repositories for the poor, the Black, the Latin, the
elderly.” Hatcher now understood that such groups were incapable of
accomplishing significant change. Hatcher now believed that the only hope for
meaningful change would occur via a coalition of liberals, Black Powerites, and
radical Whites who were truly committed to concepts such as “power to the
people.”
Unfortunately, it appears that such concepts are as meaningless to present society as the death of Richard G. Hatcher, a man whose political life once held so much promise.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2019.
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