[lbo-talk] Racial Economics of Renaming Streets for Martin Luther King, Jr.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The City Council of Zephyrhills, Florida renamed a street to honor 
Martin Luther King, Jr. on October 26, 2003, but it reversed the 
decision and removed his name on April 26, 2004, caving in to white 
protests. The Council earned a white supremacist website's praise. 
White protestors argued that "they did not want the bother of 
changing their addresses," and "[a] business owner told local 
newspapers that property values would fall, saying streets named 
after Dr. King were a guarantee of economic blight" (emphasis added, 
Abby Goodnough, "Honor for Dr. King Splits Florida City, and Faces 
Reversal," New York Times, May 10, 2004). This is a small episode 
that can illustrate a larger issue of how oppressions based upon race 
and class mutually reinforce each other. . . .

The rest of the posting is at 
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/racial-economics-of-renaming-streets.html>.
-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: 
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, 
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>