"This Is a Battlefield"

Marquette Park in southwestern Chicago is one of the city's largest green spaces--a 321-acre expanse of grassy meadows, tennis courts, fishing lagoons and a golf course. Surrounding the park is a white "ethnic" community of 11,000 Lithuanian, Irish and Polish families--a vigorous old neighborhood that has tenaciously barred blacks and preserved itself as one of the city's last desirable white areas.

Two weekends ago a ragtag line of some 150 blacks and whites, members of an obscure group called the Martin Luther King Jr. Movement, decided to challenge the discriminatory patterns in the Marquette Park area. Their tiny demonstration brought Chicago to the brink of its worst racial outburst in ten years.

When the marchers neared the park, they were met by 1,500 whites, including many beer-sotted youths who hurled jeers, curses and debris. Only 300 policemen were on hand, half as many as were needed to keep the marchers and the mob apart. One cop was felled when a 3-lb. chunk of concrete hit his head, and another was struck in the groin by a missile; 16 policemen and 16 civilians were injured. The demonstrators huddled in terror at the edge of the park while rocks rained down on them. After a few minutes they fled behind the protection of a paddy wagon.

Behind the furor in Chicago is a combustible mix of race and economics that has left the city, like many other American cities, divided into separate black and white enclaves. A few blacks move in, the whites begin to panic, and within several years the white neighborhood has turned completely black. "Blockbusters" take advantage of the turnover by buying up houses cheaply from departing whites and reselling them at high prices to arriving blacks.

Marquette Park residents seemed to consider the King march as somewhat akin to a probing action by an approaching enemy. Over the past few years blacks have moved inexorably westward until they reached Western Avenue, a gritty commercial thoroughfare only a few blocks from the park. Declared Store Owner Tony Caprio, 53: "This is the battlefield. We know that if we give up the park, it's the end of the Southwest Side. The blacks aren't going to get in."

This fierce resistance permeates the park's ethnic clans. Many of Marquette's homeowners have already moved out of other neighborhoods that turned all black, taking heavy financial losses in the process. Less than four years ago, Carol Smith, a secretary, and her husband Bill, 33, a truck driver, sold their dwelling in now black West Englewood, a few blocks away, at a substantial loss. Says she: "Many of us have fled two or three times before. We have nowhere else to move."

Nor do most residents want to leave the clean, well-kept neighborhood, the litter-free streets, the bungalows with freshly painted shutters and the largely crimeless environment. The median income is $15,000, and houses average $30,000 in value. Youngsters play in safety on the elm-shaded streets, and families frequently leave their car,doors and garages unlocked. Observes Housewife Gail Cichanowski, 28: "People feel this is one of the last really good white areas in the city."

Ineffective Tool. Many whites remain genuinely torn over the issue. Says the Rev. Francis Kane, a Catholic priest in Marquette: "The people feel caught between being exploited [by blockbusters] and being labeled as bigots." Adds Chicago Daily News Columnist Mike Royko: "The racial inequities of this country weren't the making of the people in Marquette Park. So they don't understand why, if the rest of society finds a way to duck out, they should bear the brunt of change."

Most black leaders are no more certain about what to do than are the whites. Indeed, most of Chicago's civil rights leaders opposed last week's march. Explains James Compton, executive director of the Chicago Urban League: "Tactically, it was a mistake. Marches and demonstrations have not been an effective tool of the '70s."

Moreover, the King marchers never focused their goals clearly. They talked at one point about open housing; at another, about the right to peaceful assembly; at other times, about better education, jobs and self-determination. Nonetheless, the uproar they created at Marquette Park did illuminate Chicago's racial problems like a bright flare in a dark sky.

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