ABSTRACT
In silhouette, the skyline of Gary, Indiana could serve as the perfect emblem of America’s industrial might—or its industrial pollution. The process by which the national power maintained itself, and even forced the new administration to aid it in doing so, was relatively simple. Or, to express it somewhat differently, the attempt by black forces to use the electoral process to further their national liberation was aborted by a countervailing process of neocolonialism carried out by the federal government. The decline of mass participation in the political process contributed in turn to the tendency of the new regime to solve its dilemmas by bureaucratic means or by relying on outside support from the federal government. Mayor Hatcher staffed his key positions with black men who had been schoolteachers, the professional role most closely analogous to running a government bureaucracy. In short, the city government was itself just another aspect of the institutionalized structure of racism in Gary.
