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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."