1963 Roosevelt graduate Gwen Hemphill with Indiana State Gary Roosevelt Historic Marker

Roosevelt has a future with historic preservation designation

Contributed By:The 411 News

Saturday’s unveiling of the Indiana State Historical Marker for Gary’s Theodore Roosevelt High School was another milestone in its 90-year history.

The marker recognizes Roosevelt’s place as an institution that was built to deliver the promises and fruits of education to students who were Black and unwelcomed in Gary’s other schools. The marker notes the school fulfilled that promise.

The building on 25th Avenue and Harrison or “2 5” as the neighborhood came to be known, was not just a school, it was an anchor in the city’s Midtown section. Drawn by jobs in the north, Gary was a destination for Black Americans leaving the south for a better life.

Gary’s motto as a melting pot existed at work but housing was segregated, crowding Blacks into Midtown.

Midtown thrived, a city within a city where its residents could find the majority of goods and services it needed. They visited the main business district in downtown Gary for items when they couldn’t be found in Midtown.

If COVID-19 had not interfered, September 2020 would have drawn thousands upon thousands, from all corners of the nation, to homecoming and class reunion celebrations on the school’s grounds and to event spaces around northwest Indiana.

And rightly so. For decades after it opened in 1931, Roosevelt was the school for Gary’s growing African-American population. That population’s continued growth led to Roosevelt’s physical plant expansions in each decade from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Judy Leek-Mead, a 1963 graduate and a leader in the efforts that gained state and national historical recognition for the school is among tens of thousands of current Gary residents and ex-Gary residents who followed parents and grandparents through the halls of Roosevelt. “My parents and their 13 children were educated at Roosevelt,” Mead told attendees at Saturday’s celebration.

Pauline Tatum, a 1984 graduate spoke about her Roosevelt family members – aunts, uncles and the school’s first principal, H. Theo Tatum.

Roosevelt alumni and Gary citizens were thinking about the school’s future even before it closed in February 2019 due to a failed heating system that the Gary school district said was too costly to repair. Mead and Tatum are among the members of a coalition of alumni groups that partnered to erect the marker: ’63 Lady Panthers and Supporters, Roosevelt Adult Booster Club, and National Gary Theodore Roosevelt Alumni Assoc., Inc.

They also recognized how state education policies were affecting the Gary Community School Corporation. In 2011, Roosevelt came under state control because of continuous years of failing grades. EdisonLearning, the state’s takeover partner operated the school until its closure in 2019.

Alumni answered the needs of students during the state takeover, helping to support their extracurricular activities.

EdisonLearning failed to improve learning and was also hampered by the costs of maintaining the school’s physical plant, eventually ending the state takeover and returning Roosevelt to the school district.

Roosevelt alumni didn’t want to see their school join the abandoned, vandalized, and shuttered school buildings that have become eyesores across Gary’s landscape. Alumni helped spark a movement in Gary, succeeding in bringing Gary’s citizens to its side.

Responding to the feelings of the public, the Gary school district’s emergency manager put Roosevelt under 24-hour security. The Gary school district has committed to providing resources to keep the building safe and sound until a decision is made on its reuse.

Indiana Landmarks added Roosevelt to its 2020 list of Indiana’s Most Endangered Historic Places.


Side 2 of the Gary Roosevelt Historic Marker

Story Posted:09/20/2020