Theodore Roosevelt High School, Gary

Theodore Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, opened in nineteen twenty-one as a high school for Black students in a city that was already reshaping itself demographically. As the Great Migration brought tens of thousands of Black steelworkers and their families to Gary from the Deep South, Roosevelt became a predominantly African American institution while the city's other high school, Emerson, remained white through deliberate segregation. Roosevelt produced remarkable alumni, including Jackie, Tito and Rebbie Jackson of the Jackson family.

The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its history is a microcosm of Gary's larger story: a city built by Black labor, governed by white power, briefly integrated in nineteen sixty-seven under Mayor Richard Hatcher, then abandoned by capital as the mills went quiet.