What constitutes “history?”

It is somewhat interesting to know that U.S. officials on Monday cooperated with officials in Montreal have decided to erect a bilingual plaque at an apartment where Jackie Robinson lived during the one year he played minor league baseball – prior to joining the Brookyn Dodgers in 1947 and ending the concept that pro ball was for “white” people only.

Some may have their qualms about U.S. officials designating a historic site in Canada, although that doesn’t bother me so much as the idea that we’re honoring an apartment – one that is at least six decades old – or that they waited until the absolute last day of Black History Month to do this.

WITH THE EXCEPTION of that one summer of 1946 when Robinson was with the Montreal Royals of the International League and lived there with his new wife, Rachel, I doubt there is anything about this particular place that is different from any other apartment building still standing from that era.

Or from any apartment building still standing in Chicago, or any other city in this country or on the North American continent.

The one-time student of history in me fears that by going out of our way to designate every single bit of minutia related to Robinson’s life, we’re taking steps toward trivializing it.

The “great” things that Robinson did were accomplished because of his activity on the ball field (where local officials long ago placed a plaque marking the spot of the old Delorimer Stadium to honor Robinson and the Royals), not after work when he ate and slept. Do we really learn much from a bilingual plaque whose contents can be summarized as “Jackie (once) slept here.”

WHICH IS WHY a part of me was always glad to see that city officials have never tried to turn 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. into anything resembling a historic site.

For those of you too young (or too absent-minded) to remember, that was the address of an apartment building where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., lived for one year of his life – at $90 per month for rent. It was the summer of 1966 (I was not quite one year old back then) that King was going to make the country realize that racial segregation wasn’t just a Southern problem.

While the Northern states never had the blatant “Jim Crow” policies written into the law, the separation of the races and tensions between them could be just as bad. And King chose our very own Chicago as the first place to demonstrate it.

Of course, we lived up (or is it “down”) to King’s expectations by being the city where he got hit in the head with a brick during a local protest march. Places like Marquette Park, Gage Park and Cicero (the suburb, not the avenue) are where King made his presence felt locally.

I’M NOT SAYING we place a plaque on the spot where King stood when that brick came crashing upon him. But it would be more intriguing to know how many of the locals have a clue what once happened in their midst, rather than seeing the place where the reverend ate breakfast,.

Of course, the building is long gone. It wasn’t much to begin with, and after the urban riots that followed King’s assassination in 1968, much of the North Lawndale neighborhood was reduced to vacant lots that no real estate developer would even dream of touching.

Which is why we have had for decades the joke about Dr. King living in a vacant lot. In fact, one website devoted to Chicago tourism goes so far as to include an entry for the empty lot, and telling us that one of the highlights of this particular attraction is “free admission,” while also telling us that we should also check out the church at 3413 W. Douglas Blvd. – where a church at which King once spoke still stands.

That might be a better sight to see than the one-time apartment lot, which actually is finally being “filled in,” instead of being the equivalent of a cavity in the teeth of urban planning.

CONSTRUCTION BEGAN LAST year on a proposal for the “Dr. King Legacy Apartments,” which would include 45 units of housing and some retail space, which is something the neighborhood could use more than just a plaque that way too many tourists would be too scared to come see anyway.

Now in the current economic climate, I’m not sure how quickly the housing will go. While there is a need, there also is a chance that developers could get too greedy and price themselves out of what the market would bear.

It also is what makes me reluctant to think much of the talk in recent years of the MLK Historic District – meant to turn the entire area around 16^th and Hamlin into a destination of sorts.

But at least someone is trying to think of the neighborhood’s future. If it were to work, it would do more for its surroundings than that plaque being erected at Jackie Robinson’s old apartment ever would.

  -30-

Dart’s deed gets him his “15 minutes”

Getting the lead story in the Chicago Tribune was the least of Sheriff Tom Dart's news coverage for his refusal to enforce evictions in apartment foreclosure cases.

I might have been persuaded to think that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart was acting irrationally with his decision to be selective about which evictions his office will enforce – that is until I read that the Illinois Bankers Association called Dart’s actions the equivalent of “vigilantism.”

The association is upset that Dart made a public spectacle – one that has gained international attention for our county’s sheriff – out of his decision to refuse to evict people from apartment buildings where it turns out the building owner was in default on their mortgage.

DART IS TAKING the viewpoint that the people who live in the buildings are innocent victims who often paid their rent to landlords, only to find out that the landlords did not fulfill their financial obligations to the banks that held the mortgages on the apartment buildings.

He thinks that throwing people out of their residences for someone else’s improper act is a despicable act on his part, and Dart admits he would not be the least bit upset if his actions were to pressure political people in Illinois to make changes in the law to penalize the landlords – or at the very least protect the renters.

But in issuing their statement, the bankers’ association is making it clear that it is not concerned about changes in the law. It is taking the viewpoint that it is not for the sheriff to decide which evictions are proper.

“He is carrying out ‘vigilantism’ at the highest level of an elected official,” the association said in its statement. “This cannot be acceptable to anyone, regardless of their viewpoints.”

BUT IN TRYING to compare the acts of our county’s sheriff to those thugs who try to take the law into their own hands, it gives me the impression that the bankers association thinks police in general ought to be the thugs who enforce their policies – even if they come at the expense of the people.

That is a view of law enforcement that is so un-American as to be despicable.

So I have to give Dart some credit.

Following a failed attempt in 2002 to get elected as Illinois treasurer, Dart recovered by winning the countywide post of sheriff, which makes him the administrator for the office that provides law enforcement for the unincorporated portions of Cook County and also oversees the county jail at 26th Street.

TO DATE, DART’S most visible act as sheriff has been dealing with federal officials who are critical of the manner in which the jail is run (crowded conditions for more than 6,000 inmates).

But now, Dart is the guy who got worldwide attention for putting up the image of standing up for the people against greedy bankers who could care less about the public.

Personally, I woke up Thursday morning and turned on the television for a news jolt – only to see Dart being interviewed live on CNN about his decision, which was announced at a press conference in Chicago on Wednesday.

That was far from the biggest news outfit to cover Dart. He got picked up by all the major international news wires (whose stories will be seen in publications and on websites based around the globe).

A SEARCH OF Google News found stories turning up in, among other places, The Age of Australia, and ShortNews.com of Germany.

I’m not alone in thinking this. Reading through the commentary sections of various websites, Dart is getting comparison from some people to the sheriffs of the Depression era of the 1930s who would refuse to perform evictions of people who had fallen behind on their mortgages.

While some people think the “letter of the law” is more important than the “spirit of the law,” Dart has managed to boost his profile. I’d go so far as to say for one day this week, Dart was as well known a Chicago-area political figure as Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

I don’t expect him to maintain such a high profile. Within a week, he’ll be the Chicago-area sheriff whose name people can’t quite remember, and within a month people will just remember some cop from somewhere (Was it Chicago, or maybe St. Louis?) who did something related to evictions that they can’t quite remember what it was.

SUCH ARE THE realities of the ongoing news cycle. Stories continually fade away.

But considering that I have taken my share of potshots at Dart throughout the years in which I have observed him at work (I was a City News Bureau courts reporter back when he was an assistant state’s attorney at the courthouse in Markham, and also saw him up close when I wrote for United Press International and he served in the state Senate and Illinois House of Representatives), I felt the need to write this commentary giving him a little bit of praise.

It is an instance where a law enforcement official puts the needs of the public at the top of his pile of priorities. That deserves recognition.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Tom Dart offered up this commentary in defense of his actions (http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1211633,CST-NWS-evict09.article) in the Chicago Sun-Times.

These are two (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4987TJ20081009) of the global perspectives (http://www.theage.com.au/world/sheriff-shuts-the-door-on-evictions-20081009-4xkh.html) on Dart’s actions with regard to evictions.

The Cook County sheriff’s office is willing to risk an injunction forcing it to take action (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/09chicago.html?ref=business) on evictions.