Pekin - "It's a racist town" is a phrase that describes the reputation Pekin city leaders has been dealing with for decades.
 
    The city  is home for nearly 34,000 people and quietly overlooks the Illinois river. It's city slogan is "What a pleasant surprise," but what's not so pleasant is it's racial history.   
 
  In the early 1920s the Ku Klux Klan owned its paper, The Pekin Times, for a short time.

  Beginning in 1938 Pekin Community High School students were known as the "chinks" and proudly wore that name for more than 40 years.
   
Embedded in year books, "chink" and "chinklette" handbooks or memorabilia the  slur is a stain that's been hard to remove.

Those that didn't mind carrying on the name, and ceremonies that mirror "black face" for Asians found it hard to let go. 

It wasn't until 1980 that the high school changed its nickname from the "Chinks" to the "Dragons"
 
The immanent change continued as Melinda Figge created The Coalition for Equality in 1989.

"We have privileges based by virtue of the color of our skin," said Figge.

She and other leaders striving to change Pekin's image sat down with me to discuss why the stigma still exists.

"Until you've been the subject of this hatred or discrimination, it's almost as though you can't do enough to try to make sure nobody else suffers that," said  Dr. Rhodora  Lee Ho.

Lee Ho spent part of her youth in Pekin and hesitated to base her family practice in the city after moving away. One reason: A vivid memory of what's now called the Planet X Roller Rink.

"When we got here, 8th grade, it was the "chink rink." I don't think it was the actual formal name of it, but that's what it was called," nodded Lee Ho.

The other is harsh memory Lee Ho has is of what her siblings went through as they ran laps in this Sunset Hills neighborhood.

They passed by a house with a couple of kids playing in a yard and as they ran by suddenly rocks started flying at them.

Stories like Lee Ho's are what Figge says should serve as a reminder that white-privilege is real.

"If someone throws rocks at me, it would never cross my mind that they're doing it to me because of the color of my skin, yet it you're a minority, that is the very first thing that's probably going to cross your mind," noted Figge.

That view inspired Mayor Rusty Dunn's Human Rights Committee, which was appointed in October.

"If it were just as simple as pressing a button or flipping a switch [we] probably would've done that by now, but this will absolutely be an on-going effort," said Dunn.

An effort that can go beyond history but may never erase scars in Lee Ho's mind.

"Because of the history of that stigma i think Pekin does have to work harder to make sure that people remember," nodded Lee Ho.

    Tune in Tuesday at 10 p.m. on WMBD  for part II of this series when we'll bring you insight from Pekin's first African American teacher and whether what she experienced there is keeping her from going back.