When you visit a neighborhood, you really don’t expect to find a “wall of death.” Especially not in a breezeway, next to the only grocery store and fast food restaurant in the whole neighborhood.

But that’s how it goes in Altgeld Gardens, the CHA housing development where Barack Obama did his early community organizing.  Back when he was Barack, who??

Last Thursday, photographer Richard Cahan and I spent the day at Altgeld.

You have to walk through this breezeway to get from one place to the next, and so most times Altgeld folks don’t much notice the names on this wall. But when outsiders come and ask about the place, you don’t have to dig deep to catch the reverence for it.

Some residents call it the ‘Memorial Wall.’ It carries the names of people from the ‘Garden’ who’ve died — going back decades. Some people here say it started as a memorial to cancer victims who got sick from the toxic surroundings. (Altgeld is surrounded on all sides by landfills, a sewage treatment plant and the highly polluted Calumet River. )

It’s a tradition at the Gardens to write the names at the wall, so the person’s name will be “set on stone” and never forgotten.

At least that’s what Steven Diggs says. He’s a 20 year old who we just happened to meet at the wall. He also told us what he’s heard about the latest wall entry, dated 8-24-09.

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DIGGS: These are my family.

LP: Some of the people on this wall died a natural death and some died of violence?

DIGGS: MOST of these people died of violence. Like most of ‘em up there. They mostly died just a regular death. Most of the people down here died of like guns, beat to death, and the last one down there, the big one, he died cuz he was locked up. He had a seizure while he was in jail and he was beating on the door. That was the last death right there. To tell the officers… and the officer didn’t come to the door… and he died in his cell.

24 year old Courtney Bardney is the one who brought us over to see the wall in the first place. He says this wall is in danger of being obliterated.  Decades of precious history, ground into dust …

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BARDNEY: I don’t look at it as just some wall. I look at it as something more than that. This is where my family at. This what we used to remember them. Think lotta people would feel same way, but if nobody fight for it — it’s gonna be gone.  The only thing we gonna have is those pictures he’s taking . It’s gonna be over with for this wall, and the history from it.

So here’s my question—when the CHA hatched the ‘Plan for Transformation’ did that include plans to save this wall? Anybody over there think to save parts of the CHA that are historic and precious?

Here’s the audio slideshow that Linda and Rich put together: