STREET AND SANS?
Pair of aldermen to propose renaming controversial Balbo Drive for civil rights activist Ida B. Wells
Balbo Drive would be renamed for Ida B. Wells, an iconic figure in the African- American community who led an anti- lynching crusade, under an aldermanic plan that is certain to stir controversy.
South Side Ald. Sophia King ( 4th) and downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly ( 42nd) plan to launch the effort atWednesday’s City Council meeting.
They will introduce an ordinance to rename Balbo Drive in honor ofWells. If colleagues go along with the idea, it would be Chicago’s first permanent street renaming since 1968 and the first street in the Loop named after a woman and a person of color, according to King’s staff.
“Countless individuals are recipients of Ida B. Wells’ tireless and fearless advocacy which has had an insurmountable impact on the women’s and civil rights movements,” King said. “This street naming is a small homage to a woman who greatly impacted quality of life for people not just in Chicago butwhose ripple effect is felt throughout the world today.”
King and Reilly said they have the support of more than 30 civic organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Chicago — and the enthusiastic backing of one of the civil rights icon’s descendants.
“My great- grandmother, Ida B WellsBarnett, who was born a slave, spent over 45 years of her life fighting for justice and equality for women, African- Americans and other marginalized people,” said Michelle Duster. “This change will be a representation of what our city values— truth, justice and equality.”
Renaming Balbo was proposed before — but it went nowhere after facing a buzz saw of opposition.
It happened last summer, when the national furor that has prompted many southern states to tear down or cover Confederate monuments swept into Chicago, but in a different way.
Chicago Sun- Times columnist Michael Sneed reported thatAldermen Edward Burke ( 14th) and Gilbert Villegas ( 36th) were reviving a long- standing campaign to remove a monument to Italo Balbo, an Italian Air Force marshal famous for making the first transAtlantic crossing from Rome to Chicago and helping to bringMussolini to power in 1922.
Balbo served as Mussolini’s air comandante. The monument was Mussolini’s gift to Chicago in 1933.
To “right a wrong,” the aldermen further demanded that Balbo Drive, one of the most heavily traveled streets on the lakefront, be renamed.
“I’m amazed the citizens of Chicago have not demanded that these symbols of fascism — a street and a statue bearing Balbo’s name — donated by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, a sidekick of Adolf Hitler, be removed decades ago from the city’s landscape,” Burke said then.
The proposal to rename Balbo Drive went nowhere amid stiff opposition from ItalianAmerican civic leaders.
Dominic DiFrisco, president emeritus of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian- Americans, could not be reached about the latest effort to rename Balbo Drive.
When Burke suggested the idea last summer, DiFrisco joined Lou Rago, president of the Italian American Human Relations Foundation, in writing a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun- Times defending Balbo’s honor.
They wondered why the memory of Balbo’s “remarkable accomplishments” was being “swept up into the national wave of removing the past.”
“We want to be perfectly clear. Italo Balbo was an outspoken opponent of the Mussolini tilt towardsHitler andwas not the enemy that many in the Chicago City Council are portraying he was,” they wrote.
“Despite being a general under Mussolini, when Balbo saw where Mussolini was going with his pro- German policies, hewas horrified. He was one of the only fascists in Mussolini’s regime to openly oppose Italy’s anti- Jewish racial laws and Italy’s alliance with Germany.”