Wardella Fields Roby relaxes in the den of her comfortable brick ranch and mentions that it’s her birthday — her 91st birthday. And then the phone rings. A friend is calling to wish her a happy birthday and asks to get together to celebrate.
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Earlier in the recent weekend — because of the bad weather and roads — Roby discouraged her son from driving up from Indianapolis to his childhood home in Gary’s Miller section, a neighborhood rich with history and located a short distance from Marquette Park and Lake Michigan.
Roby is one of a dozen Miller residents featured in “Vanguards: Moving ‘Out Here’ to Miller: Black Perspectives on Joining the Miller Community in the ’60s and ’70s” through Feb. 28 at the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts, 540 S. Lake St.
“We wanted people to have the opportunity to share their experiences,” said Meg Roman, executive director of the Miller Beach Arts & Creative District.
Looking back, longtime resident Roby recalls a happy life.
“It was very pleasant,” Roby said of her 47 years as a Miller resident. “In 1968 we bought this house and we moved in, in February of 1969.”
A lifelong resident of Gary, Roby is the daughter of the city’s first black police officer, Wardell Fields. He was hired the year she was born, 1925. Fields worked as a detective, she said.
Roby, who worked as a teacher in the Gary schools, graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School, Illinois State University and Indiana University in Bloomington.
When she retired in 1994, U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville, paid tribute to her career in the June 10, 1994, Congressional Record.
“When we moved back from California (in 1961) we lived at 13th and Lincoln until the drug folks moved in. We had to find a place to move,” she said. “My son was 9 years old. We had to move.”
By the time the Roby family had decided to move to Miller, overcrowding in the Midtown neighborhood was a community crisis, according to an article in the baiduhai, July 16, 1967, headlined: “League Pushes For Housing Cites Jam in Gary’s Midtown.”
The city had become a magnet for African-Americans moving from the south to north in search of jobs and the Gary Urban League said the need for housing should take precedence over all other city problems. In a city with the similar land-area as San Francisco, Gary had only one neighborhood that permitted black families: Midtown, according to Cullen Ben-Daniel, president of the Miller Historical Society.
“White families were moving to the suburbs and African-American families were looking for jobs in northern cities,” said Ben-Daniel. “All blacks were pushed into Midtown and there was overcrowding. Horrible overcrowding. Then Richard Gordon Hatcher became city’s mayor in 1967 and he pushed for an open occupancy ordinance.”
Ben-Daniel said once the open occupancy ordinance was in place, blacks were still wary of moving to places like Miller. The baiduhai of Thursday Jan. 25, 1968, reported Hatcher took action to “force a showdown with the Gary Realtors Association over the city’s open occupancy ordinance.” The ordinance was the subject of an injunction and Hatcher filed a petition 1968 with the state attorney general to ask the Supreme Court to move the case to the top of the docket.
“They thought of moving to Miller as moving out to the boonies. The recognized black institutions, churches and social organizations, were still in Midtown,” Ben-Daniel said.
From a historical perspective, Miller Beach was a remote location — swamp land. It was incorporated as town in 1906, following the incorporation of Gary as a city. But prior to that, it was mainly home to a Swedish community who built a community and the Bethel Lutheran Church — now Lakeshore Baptist Church. The Swedish community’s ranks swelled following the Chicago fire in 1871, when folks left the city to build new homes among their family members in Indiana.
According to Ben-Daniel, the town had a few black families as late as 1918, but when the City of Gary annexed Miller, it was turned into a “whites-only enclave.”
The first modern black family moved to Miller in 1964, Ben-Daniel said.
“Everyone’s individual experience is different and may be different based on what street they moved to,” Ben-Daniel said. Some neighborhoods were more progressive and liberal than others.
A family moving to Miller might have a different experience than a family moving to Aetna, the adjacent neighborhood. There were racist incidents and the Gary Urban League initiated a campaign to underscore the African-American residents’ right to use Marquette Park.
“Miller by the 1960s had a reputation as a liberal, progressive and even hippy-ish — but not everyone felt that way,” said Ben-Daniel.
“From ’64 to ’74, there was a huge population switch. There was a lot of white flight and people were moving out. All of Gary was in transition. All over Gary you had areas that were all white and then black families were moving in and white families were moving out. Realtors wanted to sell houses. They don’t care what color the buyers are,” said Ben-Daniel. “They were living in overcrowded situations in Midtown and so you had a lot of people—especially the professional class and more skilled workers who wanted out (of Midtown)–and had the money to buy.”
Ben-Daniel said Realtors would approach homeowners and encourage them to sell.
“Before you knew it an entire street would be for sale,” he said. “They were able to get higher prices from the black families than from the white families. During that period of white flight, when the upper middle class moved out, the people who took advantage of that were the affluent blacks and the middle class whites. And some people stayed.”
Some of Roby’s neighbors didn’t stay.
But she recalled at least one neighbor who returned to visit her on occasion. That neighbor told her he was very sorry that his family had moved away.
Roby stayed and aims to stay. She raised two sons in Miller and recalled happy times when her yard and home were filled with her children’s friends. Now she has five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. After she retired, she took a position as the manager of the Marquette Pavilion and she continues to stay busy as a religious school teacher.
“Gary is not going anywhere because of that lake out there,” she said with confidence. “It is a nice place. Miller in particular will be here.”
She said her neighbors are all of various ages. “My neighbors across the street are in their 40s. This is an integrated neighborhood. None of them are as old as I am,” she said with a smile.
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Ben-Daniel said he sometimes hears from people who are coming back and buying houses.
“I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve been contacted by someone who said, ‘I wish I hadn’t sold’ or ‘I’ve been looking and now I can’t afford to buy.’ They are kicking themselves in the butt.”
Nancy Coltun Webster is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Vanguards exhibit
“Vanguards: Moving ‘Out Here’ to Miller: Black Perspectives on Joining the Miller Community in the ’60s and ’70s” is a photographic exhibit featuring portraits by photographer James Derek Oliphant. Each photo is accompanied by a short Q&A offering the subject’s perspective on the move to the Miller section of Gary. The exhibit is featured at the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts, 540 S. Lake St., through Sunday, Feb. 28. The exhibit also features paintings by Edna Laverne Freeman of the Tolleston neighborhod.
The following Miller residents are featured in the exhibit:
Wardella Roby
Russell Cundiff
Mary Ann Torian
Marianita Porterfield
Evelyn Reaves
Dorothea Rouse
Kroger Jeane Williams
Stephen and Janet Johnson
Eric Reaves
Hazel Lang Mace
Joseph Winfrey