The home of late Gary Congresswoman Katie Hall has been awarded a $10,000 restoration grant as part of ongoing efforts to create a historic district in the city’s Midtown neighborhood.
The Indiana Landmarks Commission Black Heritage Preservation Program awarded the grant to the Katie Hall Foundation, which holds events that honor the legacy of the late Congresswoman, who led efforts that created a national holiday named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Hall lived at the 3-bedroom, 2-bath ranch-style house at 1937 Madison Street in Midtown, Gary’s historic and oldest Black neighborhood. The community was established during the Great Migration at the time of segregation.
The neighborhood has iconic historic sites that include the Jackson Family home, Roosevelt High School and First Baptist Church, Gary’s oldest Black house of worship, which celebrated its 117th anniversary in May.
Midtown also includes the house of William Marshall, the actor who starred in the blaxploitation classic Blacula films. Marshall’s home is located less than a mile from Katie Hall’s residence.
Eunice Trotter, director of the Indiana Landmarks Commission Black Heritage Program, is spearheading efforts to create a Midtown Historic District to educate tourists and younger generations of the neighborhood’s contributions and significance to Gary’s history, culture, and Black identity.
“It’s so important that places like Congresswoman Katie Hall’s house is preserved and included in the Midtown Historic District,” Trotter said. “She was and remains an important figure in Gary’s history and America’s history.
Hall’s daughter, Junifer Hall, who heads the Katie Hall Foundation, said her mother’s house is “is right in the heart of Midtown. We’re close to other historic locations in the area.”
Katie Hall died in 2012. Her husband, Attorney John Hall still lives in the house.
The home is located on the border of the Means Manor neighborhood, which consists of a group of bungalows and ranch homes built by Andrew and Geter Means when Blacks could not afford to buy homes in Gary during segregation. The brothers founded the largest Black-owned home real estate empire in the Midwest with just $90 and a typewriter.
Trotter and Junifer Hall said the grant will be spent redesigning the home’s large front yard. The women are working with landscape artists at Ball State University; they have released a rendering of the project. It shows benches and trees centered around a historic marker that describes and honors her mother’s legacy.
Hall said her mother loved spending time on the front lawn. She added that her mother hosted barbeques, church gatherings and events on the front lawn. The renovation project will begin in the fall according to Hall.
The historic marker currently in front of the home was dedicated in 2019, more than 50 years after late Michigan Congressman John Conyers who, moved by the assassination of King, four days later introduced legislation for a national holiday in honor of the civil rights leader, gunned down at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
The legislation sat in Congress for decades until 1983, when Katie Hall helped convince lawmakers to pass the bill and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.
An iconic photo shows Katie Hall, along with King’s widow, Corretta Scott King, and Vice President George H.W. Bush looking on as President Reagan signs the King Holiday bill into law.
Today, the King national holiday is celebrated every year on the third Monday in January, one week after his birthday. It is the only federal holiday that celebrates the life and legacy of a Black American.
Junifer Hall, who grew up in the house, said her mother had lived there since the home was built in 1964. Junifer said Katie lived in the home until she died in 2012.
Katie Hall was born April 3, 1938, to Jeff and Bessie Mae Hooper Green, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. One of 12 children, Hall attended public schools in Mound Bayou; she graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi Vocational College, now known as Mississippi Valley State University, a Historically Black University, in 1960. In 1957, she married John H. Hall, and they had two children: Jacqueline and Junifer.
The day after she graduated from college in 1960, Hall and her young family moved north to Gary, Indiana, an industrial city on the south shore of Lake Michigan, in pursuit of work and political freedom. Hall and her husband launched themselves into local politics and registered to vote.
The Halls met attorney Richard G. Hatcher at a NAACP meeting in 1962. The next year, Katie Hall worked on Hatcher’s campaign for the Gary city council, and in 1967, she was part of the team that helped elect Hatcher, one of the first Black mayors of a major American city. During this period, she taught high school social studies in Gary and pursued a master’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, graduating in 1968.
A historic marker in front of the house of Congresswoman Katie Hall honors her legacy and successful efforts that created a national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Photos by Erick Johnson)
Katie Hall ran unsuccessful campaigns for a seat on the Gary city council in 1970, and the Indiana House of Representatives in 1972, but won a seat in the state House in 1974. Two years later, Hall was elected to the state Senate, where she served from 1976 until 1982.
She also led the Lake County Democratic committee from 1978 to 1980 and chaired the 1980 Indiana Democratic convention.
Hall dedicated her efforts in the state legislature to supporting development in and around Gary, securing funds for conventions, sports centers, and the Gary/Chicago International Airport. She also helped establish the position of deputy mayor for Gary in 1975, according to the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art & Archives.
In September 1982, Indiana Democratic Representative Adam Benjamin Jr. died of a heart attack. As party chair of the Democratic Committee, Hatcher cast the deciding vote to nominate Katie Hall after some members opposed her nomination. She defeated her Republican opponent, Thomas Krieger, with 63 percent of the vote to win election to the remainder of the 97th Congress. She simultaneously won election with 56 percent of the vote for the 98th Congress. Hall was the first Black woman from Indiana to serve in the U.S. Congress.
Hall’s legacy grew as chair of the Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittee on Census and Population, which held jurisdiction over federal holidays. In July 1983, Hall introduced a bill to make the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a public holiday. Since King’s assassination in 1968, similar measures had been introduced annually, but all had failed.
Although Detroit Representative John Conyers Jr. had regularly sponsored the measure, the Congressional Black Caucus selected Hall as the floor manager for the measure. Representative William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania said Katie Hall “brought a freshness of approach, a spirit of reconciliation to what had sometimes been a bitter battle.”
As part of her efforts to honor King with a national holiday, Katie Hall held hearings on the measure, welcoming testimony from Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts, Stevie Wonder, and King’s widow, Coretta Scott King.
Many opponents argued the bill would be too expensive, citing the estimated cost of the holiday to the federal government, while others disparaged King’s character as unworthy of celebration.
Hall negotiated with opponents by moving the holiday from a fixed date, King’s January 15 birthday, to the third Monday in January, preventing government offices from having to open twice in one week and thereby saving money.
She introduced a new bill on July 29, 1983, which was referred to the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service and swiftly sent to the House Floor under suspension of the rules. Hall opened debate in the chamber by reminding her colleagues, “The legislation before us will act as a national commitment to Dr. King’s vision and determination for an ideal America, which he spoke of the night before his death, where equality will always prevail.”
On the House Floor, most opponents continued to object to the bill’s cost. Some accused King of being a Communist sympathizer and cited King’s sealed FBI surveillance records to impugn his character. After one day of contentious debate on August 2, 1983, more than 15 years after King’s assassination, the bill passed the House by a vote of 338 to 90.
In the Senate, the measure faced an uphill climb as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms threatened to filibuster. Leadership in both parties criticized Helms and quickly offered Helms a vote on tobacco legislation crucial to North Carolina to end the standoff.
On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan abandoned his opposition to the measure and signed it into law.
Hall also sponsored a bill creating a federal commission to encourage commemorative events on the first observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which was scheduled for January 20, 1986. It was signed into law in 1984.
In 1984, she lost her bid for reelection. In 1986 and in 1990, she tried unsuccessfully to win her old House seat. She became the Gary City Clerk in 1988. She resigned in January 2003 after pleading guilty to charges of federal mail fraud. Katie Hall died on February 20, 2012, at the age of 73 in Gary.