This series was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.
Kimmie Gordon sat in her car, watching the sky darken as she waited for her 15-year-old son, Kaleb, to finish football practice. It is one of five sports her teenager plays despite living with chronic asthma. Over an hour stretched on, but Gordon barely noticed. After a long day of juggling the responsibilities of being a single mom and an environmental activist, her thoughts circled back to a question that had haunted her for years: What did it cost for her son to be born in Gary, Indiana?
“I’m the Black mother of a child who’s born into a health disparity with no other option and no other reason than because his mom, who he didn’t choose, incubated him in the city of Gary,” Gordon said. “I mean, that’s what it boiled down to, and so now he has to live out the rest of his life being asthmatic.”
Gordon’s voice faltered as she recounted her pregnancy, much of it spent cleaning out her late mother’s house on Burr Street, just a stone’s throw from a decades-old industrial dump, noisy railroad tracks carrying coal-filled cargo cars and two neighboring steel mills.
“I didn’t think about it while I was pregnant, but I wonder now if that played into it. The toxic dust, the trucks, the trains — it’s been part of my life since childhood. And now I think, what are we really doing to protect the women and babies here, already breathing 150 years of contamination in our Gary air?”
Kimmie Gordon says she draws a link between her son’s asthma and Gary’s environmental pollution. (Javonte Anderson/Capital B)
Gary, Indiana, a majority-Black city, grapples with an intersecting crisis of environmental, social, and economic issues. Home to the largest integrated steel mill in North America, the city’s industrial legacy pollutes the air, soil, and water. This, alongside inadequate health care infrastructure, and widespread food insecurity, has created a perfect storm for Black mothers, who face some of the most severe health disparities in the nation — and among the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
The Gary Works steel mill looms in the backdrop of downtown Gary and City Hall. (Javonte Anderson/Capital B)
While national attention on the country’s Black maternal mortality crisis has recently increased, there is less consideration of how environmental contaminants multiply maternal health risks. In a first for the region, Capital B Gary will explore the compounded effects from generations of environmental neglect and economic disinvestment on Gary’s Black mothers and their children.
This is the first story in a multipart series, exploring the cumulative toll of Gary’s environmental and maternal health care crisis. Through personal stories, data analysis, pollution testing, and expert insights, we will explore the systemic failures disproportionately affecting Black mothers and their children — holding key entities accountable and pushing for urgent change. Additionally, Capital B Gary is hosting several community events to engage residents, distribute resources, and put the voices of those most impacted before local and state stakeholders to create more community-focused solutions.
Out of Indiana’s 92 counties, Lake County, home to Gary, has the ninth-highest maternal mortality rate in the state, according to the Indiana Department of Health. However, Gary-specific data isn’t readily available, fueling the urgency behind this series. In light of this, Gary Health Commissioner Janet Seabrook stressed the critical need to expose these alarming disparities for the city.
“I don’t think that people realize the disparity that has happened in northwest Indiana, particularly in Gary in regards to maternal mortality,” Seabrook told Capital B Gary. “Numbers aren’t real to people. Numbers don’t mean a lot to people. It literally has to impact them in their community and in their neighborhood.”
In September, Capital B Gary organized an intimate community dialogue focused on the challenges of Black maternal health care to gather insights into community needs from the people who were most impacted themselves. To embody the importance of listening to Black women, the newsroom hosted a women’s circle of 18 moms, grandmothers, and expecting mothers, from Gary, northwest Indiana and Chicago, who were asked a series of questions, including: What does being a Black mom mean to you?
In the candid and emotional two-hour discussion, participants embraced having a space to open up about their experiences, exchange resources, and propose solutions for supporting expecting moms. The women found community among one another, as they shared similarities in their individual experiences and challenges. While some had positive experiences, others shared they had often felt unheard or advocated for, or found hostility with their doctors.
Capital B Gary hosted a focus group where mothers, grandmothers, and expecting mothers shared the challenges of Black maternal health care. (Javonte Anderson/Capital B)
“Oftentimes, when they look at African Americans or women of color, they think we’re ignorant, or just dismiss what we’re saying,” said Dr. Tiffany Jamison, who revealed that while giving birth to her child, she went into cardiac arrest. “So we do have to educate and advocate for ourselves.”
Another mother chimed in, voicing an opinion that resonated throughout the room: “But when you advocate for yourself, you’re the angry black woman.”
“But when it’s your life on the line,” Jamison responded, “you have to be the angry black woman.”
One mom said she felt neglected after her doctor, who helped her with her birth plan, became unexpectedly unavailable right before her due date. Many said that there was a distinct difference in caregiver quality between the different locations of Gary’s only hospital. One expecting mom shared that her family will only allow her to give birth at one of the locations because of the alternative’s poor quality. While some mothers shared that they gave birth successfully in Gary, others sought care elsewhere. A few, after having their first child in Gary, decided to deliver their next in neighboring areas.
A history of pollution
Understanding the injustices Black mothers face in Gary requires understanding the history of the city itself.
Gary, now home to nearly 70,000 residents, was founded in 1906 by U.S. Steel to provide a residence for the new Gary Works steel mill and its workers. Over the years, the 51-square mile city, comparable to San Francisco, blossomed into a cornerstone of Black history, giving rise to icons like the Jackson family, electing Richard Hatcher, the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city, and hosting the nation’s first Black national convention.
As Black political power surged, white flight hollowed out the city, fleeing to neighboring areas and contributing to the city’s steep economic disinvestment.
Gary sits on the edge of northwest Indiana, less than an hour by train from Chicago, along Lake Michigan’s shoreline and sandwiched between two major steel mills that have encompassed the city in environmental exposures.
In 2022, U.S. Steel’s Gary Works released over 182 tons of 24 types of hazardous air pollutants — the most of any steelmaker in Indiana. The same year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deemed the steel town an “environmental justice” city, citing the majorly-Black community’s compounded exposures to Superfund sites, particulate matter, lead paint, and air toxins, which lead to various carcinogenic and respiratory health risks.
Due to these emissions, Gary residents are in the top 10% of people in the country at risk for developing asthma, according to an Industrious Labs report. Despite this, the city has only one hospital and a handful of health clinics.
Methodist Hospital, the only hospital in a city that spans 52 square miles, stands as Gary’s primary health care facility. (Javonte Anderson/Capital B)
Gordon says her family does not have a history of respiratory conditions, so she draws a unique link between her son’s asthma and Gary’s environmental pollution. However, the issue of maternal health and mortality effects in Indiana are all too common.
This year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed Indiana as the 10th highest for maternal mortality rates in the nation, with 31 deaths per 100,000 live births. Comparatively, Indiana was ranked third in the nation for maternal mortality rates in 2022, according to Indiana University Public Policy Institute. However, annual reports by the Indiana Department of Health’s annual Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) provide more detail, distinguishing differences between pregnancy-related and pregnancy-associated deaths in the state. Pregnancy-associated deaths occur within one year irrespective of the cause, whereas pregnancy-related deaths occur within one year from a pregnancy complication.
In its latest report, the MMRC found that 77% of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable. Similarly, 71% of pregnancy-associated deaths were preventable in 2021.
But for Black women nationally, and in the Hoosier state, the mortality rates are worse.
“Black women are dying at higher rates in Indiana,” said Cameron Willett, the state Health Department’s maternal mortality programs director, during an interview at the MMRC Indianapolis office. “We have data that will clearly show that.”
In 2021, Black women made up 21% of the state’s 80 mortality cases, yet experienced the highest rate of pregnancy-associated mortality, at 156.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, per the MMRC’s report. In fact, over the past four years, Black women have consistently died at higher rates than white moms in both pregnancy-associated and pregnancy-related deaths, despite making up a smaller number of births.
When asked why Black women experience such disparities in Indiana’s maternal health, Jamie Smith, the department’s director of family health data and fatality prevention, responded: “I mean, if we knew the answer, we would know what to do to address it. But I think, nationally, the answer is something we’re all still trying to find out.”
“Indiana or not Indiana, it’s a really hard issue to tackle,” Willett added.
At the September community engagement event, participants were presented with MMRC data, sparking a discussion on Indiana’s maternal health inequities.
“The level of disparity is unbelievable,” Jamison said. “In 2024, we should not be having this many women dying in North America at this rate.”
Another mother shared her frustration: “Even when we tell them about an ache or pain … they’re not really listening to what we need, or what we’re experiencing.”
Porchea McGuire, a Gary mother, pointed to what she believes is a deeper, systemic problem.
Porchea McGuire said her doctors dismissed her concerns after she gave birth, resulting in her postpartum depression going untreated. (Javonte Anderson/Capital B)
“I have a couple friends that are doctors, and they still teach [at] these medical schools that Black people have a different pain tolerance,” she said. McGuire shared that her postpartum depression went untreated because her doctor didn’t recommend care, dismissing her concerns.
“They complain that we are being dramatic,” she said.
McGuire also reflected on the troubling history of gynecology. “The whole field of gynecology was based on them experimenting on Black women,” she said, referring to the unethical experiments conducted on enslaved Black women by J. Marion Sims, deemed the father of Western gynecology. ”So they don’t take [our] complaints seriously.”
A post-event survey revealed that 80% of participants found the session “impactful,” with many appreciating the opportunity to hear others’ birth stories and find community in their similar experiences. The same percentage said the event helped them connect to new resources in the area. Overwhelmingly, the women concluded the community engagement event was a positive and necessary discussion, and wanted to continue to have discourse about the roots of these disparities, and solutions that can be brought to Gary.
“There’s not one answer,” Willett told Capital B Gary. “There’s not one root cause, there’s not one way to help every woman.”
Capital B will continue to explore community oriented solutions by highlighting the work that locals like Gordon are doing to combat these environmental and health disparities, provide for their own community, and display the resilient spirit of Gary that beats through the heart of its residents.
“Black mamas like myself, we’re not falling for the okey doke anymore, whether it be our communities, our children, our schools … with my son, with work. I’m not doing it anymore,” Gordon said. “That’s what it’s about for me as a black mama.”
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