Eddie Melton

01/21/2026

03/03/2024

L-R: Mayors Rod Roberson, Ron Morrell, Angela Deuitch, and Eddie Melton

02/22/2024

02/09/2024

“We have the recipe for success,” said Eddie Melton, the newly elected mayor. “We have to change the narrative and make it clear to the world that Gary is open to business.”

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Gary, Ind., home of U.S. Steel’s largest mill, is seeking a fresh economic start under a new mayor determined to draw new businesses and residents.

01/17/2024

On Thursday, January 25th, join 1st District Councilwoman Lori Latham for a 1st District Community Forum at Miracle Temple COGIC.

***Bring a receipt from a local , 1st District business to be entered in a raffle for prizes***

01/16/2024

Today is !

95 years ago today, a King was born.

He was a dreamer…and so much more.

A defender of those being oppressed and a challenger of oppressors.

A student of the human condition and a strategist for humane change.

A teacher, a thinker, a truth teller.

King.



SOURCE: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center

01/16/2024

MLK IN GARY Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Gary in April of 1959. During the visit, Gary Mayor George Chacharis gave King a key to the city.

01/16/2024

MLK IN GARY, INDIANA During his visit to Gary in 1959, following the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. The 30-year-old minister talked about integration and defined it as "intergroup and interpersonal living which is accepted by all because it is right and natural and not because it is the law," according to a Post-Tribune story from April 23, 1959. During the visit, Gary Mayor George Chacharis gave King a key to the city.

The young minister returned to Gary in June 1962 to speak at the Citywide Freedom Rally, an event sponsored by the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance at the Memorial Auditorium. More than 1,500 came to hear him speak. He told the crowd that lynching in the South had almost been erased, but other injustices — just as bad — were happening. Those included bombings of homes, schools and churches as well as unfair voters' registration practices and the lack of attention given to eliminate the causes of segregation.

King visited Gary again in 1966 when he spoke to 275 clergymen of various faiths at St. John the Baptist Church, 2457 Massachusetts St. The pastor, the Rev. Julius James, was a classmate and longtime friend of King's from Morehouse College. At the event, King was introduced by Bishop Andrew Grutka of the Gary Roman Catholic Diocese as a "man who is desperately trying to make us all good neighbors."

King called on the group to support a major freedom rally — "a bi-racial nonviolent assault on the problems of second class citizenship" — to take place in Soldier Field in Chicago and told the group that Gary and Chicago are interrelated because residents live in one city and work in the other, according to a July 8, 1966 story in the Post-Tribune.



Martin Luther King, right, with the Rev. Richard O. Bass, Gary Mayor George Chacharis and the Rev. Julius James, June 11, 1962, during Gary visit. (Calumet Regional Archives)

01/16/2024

As we look forward through 2024, we pause to honor the memory of Dr. King and are continually inspired by his life and dedication to nonviolence.

01/15/2024

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others”-MLK