CHICAGO POLICE TRY TO VANQUISH STAIN OF '68.

Byline: Don Terry The New York Times

As part of their training to keep the streets calm and the ghosts in the graveyard, 2,500 local police officers recently prepared for the Democratic National Convention here by sitting in the dark. In groups of 50, they watched a documentary of the bloody clashes between the police and anti-war demonstrators in 1968, the last time the Democrats had the courage to hold a convention in the Windy City.

``The average age on the department is 40,'' said Paul Jenkins, the Police Department's spokesman. ``Most of our officers now don't know much about '68. They were little kids then. It's not something they really teach in Chicago schools, so we wanted to make sure they know what happened.''

The brass also wanted to make sure that the rank and file saw what not to do. It has taken the city nearly 30 years to get the Democrats back to town after its downtown streets were turned into a battlefield, shrouded in a fog of tear gas and the sound of police billy clubs cracking open the heads of protesters. Chicago and the Democratic Party do not want to be that embarrassed ever again.

But the Democrats are returning to a much different Chicago, even though the city is once again being run by a man named Daley. The city is smaller, calmer, less white and more open to change. A new generation is operating the city more like a business than a back room. Latinos head both the Fire Department and the Police Department, whose members are better trained and educated than ever before. The African-American middle class has exploded in size and influence. And the city has had a female mayor and two African-American mayors.

Still, in some ways Chicago is the same, as if time had been frozen in one of the city's wicked winters.

Local politicians are still going to jail for corruption in a parade of civic shame. The Cubs have not won a pennant. Many of the schools are factories of failure. Chicago remains one of the most segregated big cities in the nation with bulging pockets of poverty that breed fierce street gangs and busy undertakers.

The bridge connecting these two Chicagos is the name Daley. In 1968, Richard J. ``Boss'' Daley played host to the Democrats in the old International Amphitheater near the stockyards. Today the stockyards are gone and Richard M. Daley, the son of the Boss, is mayor and will welcome his fellow Democrats at the shiny new United Center. It's the center that Jordan built, the arena where the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan play basketball.

``What we had in 1968 was municipal totalitarianism,'' said Leon Despres, a former member of the Chicago City Council who often was the only voice of opposition to the Boss. ``The local government we have today is not utopian and not a great reform movement, but there is much more freedom and fairness in government. The city is much more relaxed than it was 30 years ago.''

The city is also smaller. At 2.8 million residents, Chicago has about 700,000 fewer people than it did in the late '60s, and there are now almost as many African-Americans as whites. Chicago also has nearly 550,000 Latino residents, the fastest growing ethnic group in the city.

One of the biggest changes to Chicago came in 1983, when a multiracial coalition elected the city's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington.

Under Washington, significant numbers of racial minorities, gays and women got high-ranking jobs and city contracts, making local government much more reflective of the population.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) California Sen. Tom Hayden of Los Angeles rec alls the Democrats' 1968 convention in Chicago.

(2) A Chicago police officer, Patrick Nolan, watches two successors of the '60s Yippies Saturday at Grant Park.

Associated Press