Richard Gordon Hatcher was an American attorney and politician who served as the first African-American mayor of Gary, Indiana, for 20 years, from 1968 to 1988. At the time of his first election on November 7, 1967, he and Carl Stokes were the first African Americans to be elected mayors of a U.S. city with more than 100,000 people. Hatcher also served as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the early 1980s.