American Notes Racism

Drivers on the Tri-State Tollway just southwest of Chicago were startled last week by a billboard plugging the Afro Country Club, "where only the ball is white." They were even more startled the next day, after overnight vandals wrote NIGER (sic) and K.K.K. and daubed a swastika on the sign. Similar racist graffiti were sprayed on road signs in the town of Justice, the racially mixed bedroom community of 11,500 where the billboard was located.

Designed by artist Mark Heckman, who has put up other activist posters, the tollway sign touting the mythical club was intended as a sardonic comment on the exclusion of blacks from many of the nation's golf courses.

"I wanted white people to get the feeling of what discrimination is like," says Heckman, who is white. "A lot of people don't think racism is there. In many subtle ways of course it is."

Within 48 hours, following a flurry of protest calls and a personal request from Mayor Edward Rusch of Justice, the billboard's owners took the artwork down. A satisfied Heckman said, "The sign accomplished its goal, and I'm more than pleased."