https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/4a218092aee376db501a20b98b03c6cf.jpg 87487413a606132a83f2600a4ad5a581 https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/b0f5b6ea3c8bbbe5ceaff6a5dcf2b99e.mp3 079bb0b1155d635c3899022bf401bd77 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 1 with Junifer Hall (Congresswoman Katie Hall) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/53">Congresswoman Katie Hall</a> Description An account of the resource Junifer Hall, the daughter of Representative Katie Hall, describes her mother's childhood in Mound Bayou, Tennessee, including the racial profile of the community and her mother's financial circumstances growing up. ***Transcript*** Junifer Hall: Katie Beatrice Green Hall was born on April 3rd, 1938 in the small Delta Mississippi town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and Mound Bayou is located approximately 100 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Mound Bayou was founded by two former slaves of the brother of Jefferson Davis, who we know was the president of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and my mother grew up very poor. Her family were cotton farmers in Mound Bayou. They didn’t have a lot of resources, fame or wealth, very poor as she liked to describe herself during those years. Mound Bayou is the only African American, all-African American town in the United States of America, even until this day. You will have a few Asians, but 99.9% African American, and during the days of my mother’s youth, Mound Bayou was a thriving town with African American-owned banks and businesses. A hospital was located in Mound Bayou, and even though she did not experience racism directly, she was very well aware of the segregated times in which she lived. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/6cd32e9fd34cfbfd16b7475562c99f9e.mp3 f33cf8bc497995eec199a36229e3afbb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 2 with Junifer Hall (Congresswoman Katie Hall) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/53">Congresswoman Katie Hall</a> Description An account of the resource Junifer Hall, the daughter of Representative Katie Hall, shares how her mother attended Mississippi Vocational College despite struggling economic circumstances, enrolling in college with $5 from her mother. ***Transcript*** Junifer Hall: And her mother, Mrs. Bessie May Hooper Green, told her, “I can only spare five dollars. This is all I have to enroll you in college,” so my mother said, “Let’s go. We’re going to go over to the newly formed college,” Mississippi Vocational College, as it was called at that time. It was founded in 1950, so five years later, in 1955, she and her mother went to Mound—to Mississippi Valley, and during those days, you didn’t need an appointment to talk to the college president or any of the officials, so my mother and her mom went to President White’s office. James Herbert White was the newly founded president, and they said, “I only have five dollars,” my grandmother told him, “my daughter really wants to go to college. Would you take the five dollars, and I can pay on a payment plan?” And he said, “of course.” And she could enroll, Carrie Vachon: Wow. Junifer Hall: and my mother often even likened herself to Mary McClay [McLeod] Bethune who started Bethune College [Bethune-Cookman University in Dayton Beach, Florida] in Florida with only one dollar and fifty cents. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/b3c547e344babe059e876800cf0d4c21.mp3 2fd560483d6f5210f5256b2593fb0e0a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 3 with Junifer Hall (Congresswoman Katie Hall) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/53">Congresswoman Katie Hall</a> Description An account of the resource Junifer Hall, the daughter of Representative Katie Hall, details her mother's move to Gary, Indiana and her work as a substitute teacher and eventual work as a social studies educator at Edison High School in Gary. ***Transcript*** Junifer Hall: A lot of people think, well, you were in Congress, you were in the Indiana General Assembly, but it was a long, difficult road before in the very early years. So after arriving in Gary, my mother was a political science major. She substituted for about two to three years in the Gary school system because at that time, you could not get a part-time, full-time job if you were pregnant or if you had small kids, so in the early 1960’s, I was born on March 12th, 1961, and she was still subbing, and in 1963-64, she was able to secure a position at Edison High School on Gary’s West Side teaching U.S. government and U.S. history, and during those days, Mrs. Hall, as the students fondly called her, was the second African American to teach social studies at Edison High School, which later became a junior high school. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/10c3cf514a083e1d39406db30ea8b3be.mp3 ab328658c4c5c220cd86a2dcf108b5d4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 4 with Junifer Hall (Congresswoman Katie Hall) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/53">Congresswoman Katie Hall</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/108">Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary</a> Description An account of the resource Junifer Hall, the daughter of Representative Katie Hall, shares how her mother broke down barriers as one of the first African American leaders in the Gary, Indiana and statewide community. She describes the previous two African American elected officials in the 1950s and the limited representation at city hall outside of Mayor Richard Hatcher. ***Transcript*** Junifer Hall: She told her mother as a young child that “one day I want to go to Washington. I want to serve in the United States Congress,” so as most children, my grandmother thought that was such a noble dream at that time because it was not a reality for children of color in the Deep South in the [19]50s, [19]40s and [19]50s, and even when she moved North to Gary, there were not any major Black elected officials like there are today. As fate would have it in 1967, Richard Gordon Hatcher ran for mayor of the city of Gary, but when my mother and father first came to the city—well, she would come during college vacations starting around [19]57, [19]58. Gary was very segregated at that time, and even after she moved here in 1960, Gary was very segregated, and African Americans were limited to places where they could live, and it wasn’t the city that it is today, and before Mayor Hatcher was elected mayor, of course he was elected to the Gary City Council at large, and he introduced an ordinance which passed, the Open Door Housing that allowed African Americans to live anywhere they chose in the city of Gary, but unfortunately, that was not the case because of the severe racism, and with his election in 1967 as mayor, blacks on paper could live anywhere, but the reality was totally different for them, so there were no African American elected officials, mayor elected officials. I think she said, my mother would mention, there was Mr. Mitchell, who was in the fourth district in Gary, and then there was in the fifth district, there was Cleo Westin, who was elected in the late [19]50s, but there were not a lot of African American elected officials in the city of Gary, Indiana, and she told me at the mayor’s city hall, there was one African American lady who worked the switchboard, but she was very fair in complexion and demeanor, and you could barely tell that she was African American, so city hall was even something that was far-fetched. There were no black commissioners, no elected officials, no state representatives, none of that, so the role models were very, very limited. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/original/3761293d085ee96a29d7311ce3902eee.mp3 cf2005f1a1bd826a7bcb979cae895d59 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview 7 with Junifer Hall (Congresswoman Katie Hall) Subject The topic of the resource <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/53">Congresswoman Katie Hall</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/108">Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary</a> Description An account of the resource Junifer Hall, the daughter of Representative Katie Hall, details her mother's work writing legislation in support of the Genesis Convention Center spearheaded by Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary and her work on the education committee supporting educational programs for all people in Indiana. ***Transcript*** Junifer Hall: The big building, the Genesis Convention Center. She wrote the legislation for the Genesis Convention Center, Gary Deputy Mayor’s law. Chaired, while over the education committee, she wrote over 100 bills for education for all people in the state of Indiana, so it was a lot to help people, working class people, authored or co-authored a lot of legislation to help people in Indiana cities and towns, so we were very proud of her efforts here in the city of Gary. At that time in the [19]70’s, the business elite in this city did not want Gary to have a convention center, but Mayor Hatcher felt that the time was right for citizens to have something in this city that we could go to and be proud of because again, when they venture South, there were racism there, even in entertainment going to shows and things like that, and with Gary’s minority population, and for all people, not just for minorities, but for everybody to have something here that was very nice. He thought the Genesis Center would add to tourism, business and things of that nature, so it was a fight in Indianapolis just to get the Genesis Gary Center built, but eventually we got it built. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People Person An individual. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Congresswoman Katie Hall Description An account of the resource Katie Hall was born in 1938 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. She graduated from Mississippi Valley State University in 1960. She then moved to Bloomington, Indiana to start her master’s degree at Indiana University.[1] She later taught social studies in Gary, Indiana, where she lived with her husband and their three children. Hall took part in local Gary political campaigns in the 1960s.[2] She was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives from 1974 to 1976, and to the Indiana Senate from 1976 to 1982. In 1982, Hall was nominated to represent her district from northern Indiana in the United States House of Representatives. White Democrats were concerned about her electability because of her race.[3] Gary’s population was primarily black, but Hall’s district was 70% white.[4] She nonetheless won with 56% of the vote and became the first black woman from Indiana elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.[5] Veteran lawmaker William Gray III stated: “She brought freshness of approach, a spirit of reconciliation to what had sometimes been a bitter battle.”[6]   Hall supported the reduction of urban and industrial unemployment in her district, and also supported a number of measures to solve crime, alcohol and drug abuse, particularly in cities. She endorsed the Fair Trade in Steel Act, a measure designed to revitalize Gary’s crumbling steel and manufacturing industry.[7] In addition to domestic concerns, Hall became involved in the fight against famine in Africa after a visit to Ethiopia.[8] In 1983, Hall introduced a bill to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a federal holiday stating that for him “equality always prevailed.”[9] This bill had detractors that criticized the large cost of a paid  holiday for federal employees, and several Republican senators questioned the legitimacy of King’s legacy. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in November 1983, and the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Day occurred in January 1986.[10] After retiring from Congress, she served as the vice chair of Gary’s housing board and became the city clerk in 1985. Hall passed away on February 20, 2012 in Gary, Indiana. Her work and legacy is immortalized in a marker from the Indiana Historical Bureau, installed in 2019, highlighting her effort to make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a reality. <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/232">Junifer Hall interview 1</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/233">Junifer Hall interview 2</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/234">Junifer Hall interview 3</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/235">Junifer Hall interview 4</a> <a href="https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/files/show/236">Junifer Hall interview 7</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived [1] United States Congress. "Katie Hall (id: H000058)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. P.124 [2] House Office of History and Preservation. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Edited by Matthew Wasniewski. Third edition. Washington: United States Congress, 2008. P.530 [3] Ibid. P.532 [4] Catlin, Robert A. "Organizational Effectiveness and Black Political Participation: The Case of Katie Hall." Phylon 46 (September 1985). P.179 [5] Ibid. P.190 [6] House Office of History and Preservation. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Edited by Matthew Wasniewski. Third edition. Washington: United States Congress, 2008. P.530 [7] Ibid. [8] United States Congress. "Katie Hall (id: H000058)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. [9] House Office of History and Preservation. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Edited by Matthew Wasniewski. Third edition. Washington: United States Congress, 2008. P.532 [10] Origin of MLK Day Law. Indiana Historical Bureau. Accessed February 10, 2020. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Student Authors: Emma Guichon and Robin Johnson Faculty/Staff Editors: Dr. Ronald V. Morris, Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, and Christine Thompson Graduate Assistant Researchers: Carrie Vachon and JB Bilbrey Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource PHOTO & VIDEO: Katie Beatrice Hall, attributed to U.S. Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katie_Beatrice_Hall.jpg Relation A related resource <a href="http://www.state.in.us/history/markers/4447.htm">Indiana Historical Bureau: Historical Marker</a> 1950s-present Gary House of Representatives Indiana Historical Bureau Lake County law Oral History Politics Women