re: #271 ggt

Where are the professionals and celebrities that claim Gary as their roots?

The only ones who come to mind are the Jacksons.

Up and left because they could. Leaving those that couldn’t or those that saw an opportunity to rape the city and it’s people.

Other cities in the area suffered from the loss of industry, but none is like Gary.

A good friend of mine still has a lot of family in Gary, they stay, trying to keep it going.

I think the “proximity” to Gary is a lot of the impetus for the Newton County Sheriff. We all know what the residents of that county fear …

My parents are exactly that demographic that left a city very much like Gary. The options for Black professionals in the 60s were extremely limited whether they stayed in segregation or came west to the Promised Land 9_9.

They were under pressures that their peers weren’t, somehow expected to integrate hostile neighborhoods and workplaces, then also prop up the place they left on middle class salaries (when not in grad school.) Ideally, would have been nice. In reality, no.