A year ago on June 18, Nippon Steel bought U.S. Steel and inherited its legacy. The next day was Juneteenth — the jubilee that Leviticus 25:10 calls for. As we mark that day again, African Americans commemorate the ending of formal enslavement. But here in Gary, we are still waiting for our jubilee.
As a pastor in northwest Indiana, I know too well what that waiting looks like. Ask almost anyone in my pews, and they will tell you about a father, a mother, a grandfather, an aunt and maybe a cousin who came home carrying the coke ovens in their lungs and paid for it with their health. The story of Black extraction, Black struggle and the fight for economic dignity is inseparable from the story of American steel. Nippon Steel has inherited this centuries-old debt — but so far, it shows no intention of paying it.
Most Americans think of slavery in terms of cotton and tobacco fields; few know the history of America’s iron plantations, where enslaved Africans — we were not considered citizens — kept Colonial iron forges burning day and night from Pennsylvania to the Deep South. Before the Civil War, more than 2,000 enslaved individuals were forced to work in the iron plantations in the South. Their forced labor in America’s early furnaces and foundries helped lay the foundation for the modern steel industry.
The 13th Amendment ended slavery, but convict leasing soon replaced it. A loophole in the law allowed forced labor as punishment for a crime, so, under discriminatory Black codes, Black men were criminalized for simply existing. They were swept up for walking on the wrong side of the road, for vagrancy and for failing to pay a court fee, and they were forced to labor for companies such as the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. (TCI), then one of the largest users of this human-trafficked labor. And when U.S. Steel bought TCI in 1907, it expanded the use of convict leasing. U.S. Steel still owns a cemetery at one of its old mines in Alabama, where convict laborers are buried in unmarked graves, their names lost to history. U.S. Steel never reckoned with it, and that silence is part of what Nippon Steel now owns.
Many Black Americans fled this violent system of peonage and terror in the Great Migration, moving to cities such as Gary and Pittsburgh for a better life. The steel mills beckoned. Their towering furnaces promised an escape from sharecropping, chain gangs, Jim Crow and a South that had never intended to let them thrive. They carried simple dreams of dignity, a decent wage and the means to build community with one another. Instead, Black workers were enslaved anew in the lowest-paying, most hazardous roles — tasks even their co-workers called “man-killing jobs“.
Though the indignity ran deep, our ancestors refused to bow. Men and women such as George Kimbley, Bill Young, John Howard, Curtis Strong, Jonathan Comer and Ola Kennedy — known as Black freedom fighters in steel — dedicated their lives to challenging racist seniority rules, fighting for women’s inclusion and building union democracy at Gary Works, Inland Steel, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube. Their fight is not over, and their families and neighbors are still waiting for the jubilee’s justice.
A few weeks ago, I sat with my neighbors at a town hall at the public library and talked about what’s next for Gary Works. Someone brought up the U.S. Steel CEO’s speech to the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce last year, in which he said, “Hard work means something here. Family matters here. Faith matters here. And the future matters here. Because this is where America’s next century of steel is being forged.” Then, a few months ago, Nippon Steel announced a $1.9 billion investment in a direct-reduced iron plant in Arkansas, not in Gary.
The CEO said that faith matters. I agree, but the Book of Micah is clear about what that should look like: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
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If these leaders truly believe faith and work build America, then the community that built this industry deserves the same justice and mercy being delivered to Arkansas. But so far, none of the $3.1 billion Nippon has promised Gary Works is committed to the kind of clean steelmaking transformation happening in Arkansas. Instead, Gary is on track for 15 to 20 more years of burning the same coal that is killing an estimated 93 to 187 of our neighbors prematurely every single year. And the jobs will keep vanishing, with Gary Works on track for zero steel jobs by 2034 if it doesn’t change course.
The jubilee promised an end to extraction. But from iron plantations to convict leasing to coal-burning blast furnaces, this industry has never stopped taking from Black communities. Truly fulfilling the promise of Juneteenth would mean clean air; good, secure, dignified jobs; and the freedom to determine our own future. And Nippon Steel now has a chance to play a part in making that possible. Over $2 billion of its commitment to Gary Works remains unallocated, enough to begin the clean steelmaking transition this community has earned. It will not repay the debt, but it could be an honorable beginning.
Gary has been waiting far too long for what God’s people are owed.
The Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson Sr. is founder and senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Gary.
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