Roosevelt High School, Gary's Black Wall

In nineteen twenty-seven, an Emerson School student strike against integration prompted the city of Gary, Indiana to build a separate high school exclusively for Black students. The new Roosevelt High School, designed by architect William Butts Ittner in Colonial Revival style, opened in April of nineteen thirty-one. It was the first and only school built exclusively for the Black community in Gary, and for decades it was a center of Black community life there.

Its alumni included George Taliaferro, the first Black player drafted into the NFL, actor Avery Brooks, and basketball star Glenn Robinson. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in twenty twelve. The school closed in twenty twenty.

It stands today as a monument to what a community built under segregation and what segregation cost.