Racism in The Raw In Suburban Chicago

By TED GUP

Last year residents of Cicero, a Chicago-area community notorious for its racism, called the police to report that a black man was impersonating a police officer, wearing a police uniform and driving a squad car. That was patrolman Wesley Scott, the town's first and only black policeman. Almost ! daily, he endures racial insults and humiliation, not only from the people he has sworn to protect but also from some of his fellow officers upon whom his life may depend.

Four miles away in Melrose Park, a working-class suburb of modest but tidy homes, live Donald and Stephanie Sled. This summer they packed up their few belongings and moved out of Chicago's westside ghetto, delighted to have found an affordable apartment in Melrose Park. In their excitement to escape the squalor and fear of the ghetto, the Sleds gave little thought to what it might mean to be the first black family in their neighborhood. "This was like heaven," recalls Donald, a 44-year-old handyman who sometimes stutters when excited. "It was so quiet and peaceful." But the Sleds have found anything but peace in Melrose Park. Instead, their new home has been under siege. Vandals have taunted them with racial slurs. They have shattered their windows, punctured their tires, torched their car and driven a blazing cross into their lawn.

The Scotts and Sleds are stark reminders that despite the enormous civil rights gains of the past three decades, even the rawest forms of racism persist. Reports to the Community Relations Service of the Justice Department indicate that racial incidents nationwide increased by 55% from 1986 to 1987, and more than 400% since 1980. In the first six months of 1988, racial incidents against blacks were recorded in at least 20 states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There were 4,500 housing-discrimination complaints last year in the U.S., up from 3,000 in 1980. Racism is most likely to erupt when white homeowners feel threatened. Neighborhood segregation in northern cities is the most stubborn remnant of racial division in America. Often the bias is subtle. But on the front line are families such as the Sleds and the Scotts, whose experiences are shard-sharp examples of how overt and brutal racism in the U.S. can still be.

In March 1987, two days after Wesley Scott graduated from the police academy and joined the force in suburban Cicero, he discovered a photo of the Ku Klux Klan pasted to his locker. "Who's going to kill Wesley?" one of the robed Klansmen in the picture asked. Another replied, "I'm going to kill Wesley." Across the bottom was written "The Ku Klux Klan is going to kill you." Recalls Scott: "A few of the guys were shaking their heads, but a lot of the guys were laughing." Scott did not report the incident to his superiors, one of whom was among those laughing. Stephen Zalas, deputy superintendent of the Cicero police, said he was unaware of the incident. "Rookies do put up with some harassment," he said. "Some of it might be in bad taste."

At 27, Scott stands just under 6 ft., his granite biceps tattooed when he was eleven. He is the oldest of 16 children. A gentle man and a voracious reader, he rarely lets his guard down with his colleagues. He has taken a private oath that he will not allow himself to be goaded into any actions that might jeopardize his position. As a patrolman, he makes $22,500 annually. But his objective goes well beyond police work. "My purpose is to bridge the gap between those who espouse racism and those who are at least liberal enough to understand this is the 20th century."

It has not been easy. "There is not a day that I haven't gone through some kind of hell," says Scott. "Practically every day, someone calls me a nigger." He sits in his modest apartment in a suburb called Justice, about four miles southwest of Cicero, ironing his five-year-old son's jeans for school. On the wall hangs a prayer: "Lord, help me to realize that nothing can happen today that you and I can't handle." Scott's wife D'Andrea tries to comfort him after each racial incident by saying, "Don't worry about it, that person was sick."

An A student before dropping out of high school after his junior year, Scott spent long hours preparing for the statewide police exam. He was sick with chicken pox when he took the test. A few weeks after the exam, he received a letter on official letterhead from deputy superintendent Zalas telling him that he had failed. "I was heartbroken," said Scott. The next day he went to Zalas and asked if he could take the exam again. When Zalas asked why, Scott handed him the letter. Zalas said he never wrote the letter. "Someone was just clowning around with him," says Zalas. A few weeks later, Scott was officially notified that he'd passed the exam.

Scott has problems both in the station and on the streets. One of his superior officers has called him a "stupid nigger" in front of fellow officers. On one occasion the officer asked someone he was arresting, "Do you want this nigger to see you crying?" Sometimes citizens who call for help will rebuff Scott and ask for a white officer -- a request the department denies.

Scott grew up in an integrated neighborhood in southwest Chicago. "I always believed I could go anywhere and mingle with anyone," said Scott. "It just didn't occur to me that Cicero could be so prejudiced." Still, it was impossible not to have heard of Cicero's reputation. Scott recalls how his family was appalled when Martin Luther King Jr. was forced to postpone a march through Cicero in 1966 because of the threat of violence. Scott was five years old at the time. Since then, there have been numerous assaults against blacks who attempted to live in Cicero. "Cicero unfortunately has become synonymous with racism," says U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas. "It is a symbol of standing tall, guarding the borders."

The city of Cicero (pop. 61,000) has given Scott -- and all its municipal employees -- until Sept. 30 to move within the city limits. Scott is afraid for his three young children and his wife. Reluctantly, he has joined other officers in challenging the city's residency requirement. "The people he's afraid of are the people he's here to protect," says Cicero's attorney, Dennis Both. "If he has a fear, it's not founded."

Despite the city's hate-filled past, there are signs of real change in Cicero. Even Valukas, who sued Cicero for discriminatory hiring practices in 1983, says he detects a new willingness to confront the issue of racism. Scott too is hopeful. "I am slowly making some headway with the people in the community," he says. People on the street are beginning to call him "Officer Scott." A number of fellow officers have invited him and his wife home to dinner. Even the officer who once called him a "nigger" is now supportive. Scott's superior, Zalas, says both Cicero and Scott are maturing. "He's going to grow into a fine officer," he says. Scott still does not want to live in Cicero -- at least not so long as he considers his family in peril. But he is determined to work there and, in the process, win over those who hate or fear him because of his race.

The Sleds are equally determined. When they moved into their $250-a-month apartment in Melrose Park, they were welcomed by Donna Wilbur, a widow who lives downstairs with her teenage son. But two days later, a car nearly knocked the Sleds' 14-year-old nephew off his bike. "Nigger, what are you doing around here?" the driver shouted. A week later, two wooden fence posts crashed through Wilbur's dining room window, the penalty for welcoming the Sleds to the neighborhood. "It doesn't seem like America with people acting like this," she says.

The Sleds thought their troubles would be financial, not racial. Together they make $16,000 a year -- less than Melrose Park's $22,000 median family income. Donald operates an elevator in a downtown bank. Stephanie, 35, works the midnight shift as a cashier in a filling station.

Three weeks after they arrived, arsonists set a fire beside their car. The next night Donald kept a vigil at the back-porch window. Then he dozed off. He was awakened at 1 a.m. to find their 1976 Chevy Impala in flames. Across the street four young men laughed and shouted, "Let the car burn. Niggers don't need to be in Melrose Park." One night as Stephanie set out for her cashier's job, several youths waved a rope and taunted her with threats of a lynching. Later a crude wooden cross was burned on the lawn.

The Sleds tried to laugh it off. "You know how we feel?" asks Stephanie. "Like a couple of black-eyed Susans in a field of corn." Donald sits uneasily in the kitchen, rising every few minutes to survey the street. "You have to be alert," he says. Early on he repainted the living room, but he has decided not to finish the other rooms. Too many uncertainties. Boxes are stacked against the back windows so that they might stop a fire bomb. Beside the telephone is the number of the FBI. The Sleds have warned their relatives that it is not safe to visit them. "Half of these people have more schooling than I could ever get, and yet they do this," says Donald, his eyes shaded by a Chicago Bears cap. "I can't understand."

The Sleds wonder if Melrose Park's all-white 65-member police force will protect them. The commander of operations is Lieut. John Carpino. "I don't think there is a racial problem here," he says of the Sleds' problems. "I just don't see it. We're treating it as vandalism. These are pranksters." For a couple of days the city deployed an unmarked car to watch the Sleds. Says Carpino: "Come on, this is 1988. Who's going to lynch who? This is the Midwest. This is nothing to excite anybody about."

U.S. Attorney Valukas takes the matter more seriously. He has sent FBI agents into the Melrose Park neighborhood to protect the Sleds. Two weeks after the Sleds moved in, Melrose Park's building commissioner, C. ("Sonny") Stamatakos, cited the house for ten housing-code violations. Stamatakos says the timing was unrelated to the arrival of the Sleds. Valukas says he finds the timing "very curious."

In 1985 the Justice Department sued Melrose Park (pop. 23,000) as well as , twelve other suburbs for discriminatory employment practices. Of 217 city employees, none were black. Melrose Park contested the suit and lost in court.

White families living near the Sleds insist they are not racists. But, they say, they are afraid that the Sleds may be followed by other black families, that white residents will move, then property values will plummet, and the neighborhood will deteriorate. "I'm afraid of what could happen," said one 75-year-old woman. Until 1972 she and her husband lived in Austin, a Chicago suburb that went from predominantly white to predominantly black. "We had to sell our home for nothing," she said. "What happens if this whole doggone neighborhood gets up and leaves? We're too old to move again." She does not know if she can trust her neighbors not to panic and move out. "It's all white people's fault," she said. "Blacks have a right to live where they want."

In recent weeks the incidents against the Sleds have tapered off. A neighbor across the alley has offered to keep an eye on the Sleds' car. Larry Pusateri, the son of the owner of the house, has told the Sleds, "Don't worry, I'm not going to let these bastards move you out." The Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, an organization that helps minorities find housing and attempts to ease racial tensions, has also come to their aid. Neighbors are talking among themselves about what the violence means for a community that prides itself on its neighborly ways. As for the Sleds, they say their minds are made up. They are staying.