Before Todd Deloney arrived at the Indiana University Northwest campus in Gary, he knew what he was in for. It was 1983, and the university was known in the region as “an oasis for whites.”
“The irony of it all was that in this chocolate city, there was IU,” Deloney said.
But, he didn’t let that bother him much. This was a man who grew up in East Chicago and faced so much harassment as one of the few Black students in his fourth-grade class that he was forced to change schools. That experience left him with a desire to carve out safe spaces for young Black people.
So, when he got to IU Northwest, he went to work. He joined the school’s Minority Planning Committee — the only dedicated organization for nonwhite students at the time — and later became its president in 1985.
The first thing he did after he was elected?
“I suspended the elections and I put on the floor to change the organization’s name to the Black Student Union,” he said. “Because what we were dealing with were Black issues.”
When he sat down with some professors to get the approval he needed to officially charter the club under its new name, he faced a lot of questions. And he answered each the same — with “400 years,” referring to the centuries that Black people were enslaved in the U.S. The frustration in their eyes was clear, but Deloney won out, getting the BSU the stamp of approval it needed.
It was his one of first encounters with what he called gatekeepers at the university, but it wouldn’t be his last.
“Do the right thing”
Deloney moved to Gary from East Chicago with his family in 1979 but didn’t go to school in the city until he started college at IU Northwest. His natural ability to communicate effectively, and his interest in pursuing social justice, allowed him to wield his influence for good and inspired the nickname he later gave himself, “The Agitator.”
With Deloney at the helm of the university’s Black Student Union, he said the group was rolling. From doing community outreach to practicing mutual aid through a textbook co-op so students had affordable access to costly textbooks, the BSU was making a name for itself around IU Northwest and Gary.
The city’s first Black mayor (and the first Black mayor of a metropolitan area in the nation), Richard Hatcher, made an appearance at the club’s first banquet in 1987. And when the Rev. Jesse Jackson visited Gary ahead of his 1988 presidential campaign, it was Deloney who Hatcher called to secure a space on campus for Jackson to use.
He was on the cusp of his senior year and already carving out a name for himself.
“Then the bomb dropped,” he said. “I suffered a life-threatening stroke.”
He was only in his early 20s. Today, Deloney is 62 and works for a manufacturing company. He runs 10 miles every week. He can recall dates and details of events seemingly with little struggle. He beat the odds he was given when a doctor told him he’d likely never learn anything again.
But in the immediate aftermath of the stroke, everything was hard. Walking. Writing. Maintaining a thought for more than a few minutes. He went from full-time to part-time enrollment at IU Northwest.
Deloney wasn’t even sure he still had any drive left in him — until one fateful day in 1990. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Deloney recalled earlier this month in an interview with Capital B Gary. And “the only place open in Gary, Indiana, was this place right here,” he said while rapping his fingers on a tabletop inside of the university’s library.
Angry and impassioned after attending a King celebration at the former Genesis Convention Center, he wrote on a sandwich board sign, “Do the right thing IUN. Pay tribute to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King,” and made his way around campus.
He remembers people throwing bottles at him and yelling slurs. Some hecklers told him to go home. “This is my home,” he thought to himself and kept on. For him, it was about more than honoring a federal holiday.
The one-man march lit a fire underneath him. To keep up the momentum, he planned an unauthorized silent vigil a month later to honor the ancestors of Black students on campus. It only lasted 10 minutes, but that was long enough to put him even more squarely on the administrators’ radar.
In 1991, his fight to close campus on MLK Day gained steam and more people marched alongside him. As president of the Black Student Union again after a hiatus, he and other group members collected over 200 signatures from Gary residents who supported the campus’ closure on the day. That spring, IU Northwest decided to close on MLK Day starting in 1992 — the year Deloney graduated.
Five years later, Indiana University’s board of trustees voted to close all IU campuses for the holiday. When the announcement came, IU Northwest staff were sent a memo that said, “We believe our action quite probably had some influence in the Board’s decision.” The memo didn’t mention Deloney or the Black Student Union at all.
That wasn’t the only time Deloney would feel snubbed by the university.
He said it wasn’t until 2013 that anyone at IU Northwest invited him to speak about his contributions on campus. And it wasn’t until IUN Chancellor Ken Iwama took office in 2020 that he said he received more recognition from the campus, including videos and discussions featuring him and invites to university events.
IU Bloomington, Indiana University’s flagship campus, initially credited “student efforts” for the university system’s observance of MLK Day on its website. Deloney was only added after he sent a letter highlighting the omission.
“IUN is IU, too. … My degree does not say Indiana University Northwest, it says Indiana University, period,” he said.
Though Deloney wishes he’d gotten more appreciation from the university as a whole, IUN has made sure to pay homage to his legacy.
“We’re here for each other”
Deloney is currently featured in a few displays around IU Northwest’s library, some temporary and some permanent. On the library’s third floor lies the Calumet Regional Archives, a repository of Northwest Indiana history, and within it are dozens of materials on Deloney, including various documents and pictures.
Capital B Gary visited the archives recently with an emotional Deloney, who was moved by seeing snapshots of his time at the university.
He scanned over the items, pointing out his late mother in a photo and picking up a copy of the speech he gave during the 1991 march. Then, a surprise: Current members of the Black Student Union walked in to greet him.
The organization has evolved a lot since its founding in 1985, and after a period of inactivity, members have been working to rebuild it in recent years. Senior Jade Johnson, the group’s current president, knows she has Deloney to thank for creating the club’s foundation, which continues to provide the type of safe space for Black students that Deloney hoped for decades ago when he got the group chartered on campus.
“Having a space where I can be vulnerable, I can be comfortable, and speak with individuals that can relate to me and understand,” she said, is “a blessing, because we’re literally here for each other.”
Deloney said he has had little to no connection with the organization since he graduated. After the students told him they’d make something happen so he could speak with the club and reconnect, he broke down in tears.
“That would be the most important address I’ve ever said in all my life,” he said.