The city was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant. The city was named after the chairman of U.S. Steel, Elbert Henry GaryElbert H. Gary. Among U.S. cities of 100,000 or more, Gary has the highest percentage of African-American residents (as of the 2000 U.S. census). Gary had one of the nation's first African-American mayors, Richard G. Hatcher, and hosted the ground-breaking 1972 National Black Political Convention. At the same time, Gary suffered the urban phenomenon of "white flight" as many affluent and middle-class residents left Gary and relocated to the surrounding towns and cities. Gary's fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry. In the 1960s, like many other American urban centers, Gary entered a downward spiral of decline. Gary's decline was brought on by drugs, crime, and layoffs at the steel plants. US Steel continues to be a major steel producer, but with only a fraction of its former level of employment. While Gary has failed to re-establish its manufacturing base since its population peak, two casinos opened along the Gary lakeshore in the 1990s. Today, Gary faces numerous difficulties, including unemployment, major economic problems, and a high rate of crime, though the city has made some progress in addressing these issues since the 1990s. Meredith Willson's 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man featured the song, "Gary, Indiana," describing the alleged alma mater of lead character Professor Harold Hill ("Gary Conservatory, Class of '05!"). The joke in Hill's claim, of course, is that the city of Gary wasn't founded until '06. Wilson's musical, set in 1912, was later made into two movies. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary%2C_Indiana