There’s always an issue we can quarrel over with regards to city street names

Aldermen this week signed off on the idea of making the street name “Congress Parkway” as obsolete as the one-time “South Park Way” that most of us now merely think of as Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive (that is, when we think of it at all).

Soon to be Wells and Wells? Or Ida and Wells?

For that strip of a few blocks of street at the southern edge of the Loop will now bear the name of Ida B. Wells, the one-time activist whose cause was to make people think of lynching as a crime – rather than justice being carried out.

BUT JUST AS some people got all worked up and fought it out when plans to turn Balbo Drive into Wells Parkway were proposed (seeing it as a slur against people of Italian ethnic origins), I’m sure even this attempt at political compromise can cause a brawl.

For Chicago already has a Wells Street, and it intersects with the soon-to-be former Congress Parkway. Meaning we will soon have an intersection of Wells and Wells. And I don't mean one of those brown "honorary" street designations. I'm talking about a full-on renaming; green street sign and all!

Mass confusion? I’d hope not! Even though one alderman has suggested we ought to refer to the former Congress Parkway as “Ida Drive” to eliminate all doubt.

Personally, I’d like to think the people of Chicago are intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference between a north/south running street and an east/west running one – particularly since the latter will only exist for a few blocks. Besides, I also think it will be an interesting quirk to have the Wells and Wells intersection. It will be something that the kind of Chicagoans who take great interest in the city’s historical oddities will take great pride in.

IDA B.: Anti-lynching activist, suffragette

WE’LL ENJOY THE confused look that out-of-towners will get on their faces at the very concept that two intersecting streets can have similar names. We’ll even start using it as a test, of sorts, to be able to figure out who is a real Chicagoan – and who is just a pretender from a place like Schaumburg.

Maybe we can even argue it out over which Wells has greater merits to have a street named for them. For Ida B. is the woman who was a reporter-type person back in the days when black women were supposed to be nothing more than domestics.

While William Wells was a U.S. Army captain assigned to the early 19^th Century military base Fort Dearborn (where Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River now intersect) and who died in the Aug. 15, 1812 fight with Potawatomi Indians.

WILLIAM: Indian fighter in pre-Chicago days

You just know it’s a matter of time before someone suggests that William is unworthy (in today’s day and age) of having his name at the same intersection as Ida B.

ALTHOUGH IT SHOULD be noted he was of the Miami Indian tribe and fought with them during the Indian wars, before eventually becoming an Indian agent with the developing United States. Meaning this could become a brawl with American Indian activists if anyone seriously tried to remove the “Wells” name from Wells Street.

All the more reason the idea of a Wells and Wells intersection would work in Chicago – because it would (unintentionally) wind up showing the way so many groups have combined into the one entity we now know of as the Second City (which is really third and may someday soon become Number Four).

Of course, we could always think that streets being named for people creates too much cause for conflict and offense to be taken by somebody. Which is why a part of me always thought the South Side bore the most sense in Chicago, with all the streets from downtown all the way south to the Hegewisch neighborhood bearing numbers.

Is anyone up for renaming Wells Street “Fifth Avenue” – the name it had between 1870 and 1912 because some thought William’s reputation would be besmirched by having his name on a street that was, at the time, the city’s “red light” district.

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A black neighborhood-only Mandela Road almost reeks of apartheid

MANDELA: Soon to have West Side tribute?

I don’t have a problem with some sort of permanent tribute to the late South Africa President Nelson Mandela.

I just happen to think that the proposal currently under review by the General Assembly is lame and borders on a sense of separation that brings to mind the whole concept of apartheid.

THAT, OF COURSE, was the name for the old structure of South Africa by which the overwhelming non-white majority were separated into specific camps away from everyone else.

It was the structure that Mandela fought his life in opposition to, spent more than two decades of his life in prison because of, but ultimately prevailed. Even though some people still want to spew the old rhetoric that Mandela’s opposition to segregation somehow made him a Communist.

The same thing they used to say all the time in this country about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – for what it’s worth.

Since Mandela’s death last year, communities all around the globe have expressed desires to memorialize the man – even Chicago, which doesn’t have a direct connection to his life (although Mandela’s mentality is something that ought to prevail the Earth).

THAT IS WHAT is behind state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, and the bill of his that the Illinois House of Representatives approved last week – the one that renames a part of Cicero Avenue for Mandela.

Mandela Road would stretch from Roosevelt Road north to North Avenue. Which means “Mandela Road” would be purely a creation of the African-American neighborhoods of the West Side.

Will sign someday differentiate Cicero from Mandela?

Just as “King Drive” is something that only exists in African-American neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side.

It’s already a tacky-enough joke that you’ll never find a white person who lives on King Drive. Do we really need to do the same to Mandela’s image?

ADMITTEDLY, THE BILL had a larger goal in mind when Ford came up with the idea back in December.

He wanted to rename the entire length of Illinois Route 50 for Mandela. That route stretches from near Kankakee north to Skokie – and includes the whole length of the Chicago street known as Cicero Avenue.

Also too isolated from rest of Chicago

Which used to have the pedestrian name of 48^th Avenue (because it’s 48 blocks west of State Street). But the Cicero label has been around long enough that it’s a part of Chicago’s character.

That fact, and the idea that there are people in Will and Kankakee counties who have no enthusiasm for the idea that one of their major roads would have the “Mandela Road” label, is what caused Ford to scale back his proposal.

WHICH COMES ACROSS as a lame gesture now. A “Mandela Road” that exists only on the West Side somehow isolates the West Side from the rest of Chicago even moreso than it already is now.

If anything, it goes against the idea of bringing people together that Mandela touted throughout his life.

It probably would be interesting to see how the reaction would be if the bill in question had still kept some non-black neighborhood in the stretch of road under consideration.

Illinois Senate still to decide Mandela Road fate

Perhaps making Mandela Road a stretch across the entire length of Chicago, if not Cook County as well.

THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY shame the people in Will and Kankakee counties who wouldn’t get included in this project. But some people have no shame. I’m sure we’d get some rhetoric about how memorializing Mandela is fine – so long as it’s done somewhere else!

Then again, we’d probably have people in Chicago and suburban Cook who’d express the same sentiment. That might be the real shame – Mandela died before his work was complete.

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