Chicago Tribune on West Haven Safe Summer Basketball League

Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune
Published: September 14, 2010

Click here for original link. Written by Dawn Turner, Chicago Tribune on 9/6/2010

In a summer in which gang violence seemed to dominate the headlines, about 240 teenagers, some self-professed gang members, quietly played basketball several times a week from June to August in the West Haven Safe Summer Basketball League on the West Side — and without incident.

No shootings. No fighting. No drama.

"We had young men who crossed gang lines to be there," said Earnest Gates, 58, the executive director of the nonprofit Near West Side Community Development Corporation, which runs the league and years ago helped bring in the United Center. "Soon, the police detail that was assigned to the games was there as a spectator like the rest of the crowd. We didn't tolerate any nonsense."

In a way, last month's basketball tournament, held at Crane High School and Malcolm X College before 400 to 600 spectators, was the culmination of the league's activities and ended with several players winning awards named after slain Chicago police Officers Thomas Wortham IV and Thor Soderberg, and Blair Holt, the 16-year-old gunned down on a Chicago Transit Authority bus.

But beyond that, the entire season is a testament to years of hard work from a man who grew up in the West Haven community, went to college and could have chosen to leave the neighborhood. Instead, he stayed put and worked to transform it.

Becoming a resident

In 1954, Gates' family was among the first black residents to move onto the 300 block of South Leavitt Street. Back then, most of the neighbors were Italians, Jews and Greeks, and West Haven was stable, with booming residential and business districts. But Gates remembers that change came swiftly.

"The white residents started selling their properties, and the city services slowed," said Gates, from his West Side office. "And when properties didn't sell, the owners carved them up into kitchenette apartments that held too many people.

"Then after the rioting (that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.), banks wouldn't lend to residents for rehabbing and insurance companies wouldn't insure homes."

Gates said he realized early on that the only way for the neighborhood to "come back" would be for people like him to resist the urge to leave.