> 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. . . .
Renaming streets is a tricky business that has very little to do with race. A few months ago I read a story in a local PA paper about a guy renaming a country road in rural PA to honor his daughter killed by a drunk driver. The lane was adjacent to his property and he decided to name the lane after his daughter first name and erected a signs to that effect. That pissed all his neighbors who used the exact same arguments as the folks in the above story and started a legal fight. No personal animosities of any sort, racial or otherwise, were involved, the neighbors liked the guy and felt sorry about the death of his daughter - they just did not want the name of the street changed.
I come from the part of the world where street and locality names change with every regime change - so I personally resent the practice of renaming. I think it is a sign of the lack of civility - a "grab what we can while we can" mentality of barbarians. When the Soviets asserted their control of Poland, there was a rush of street renaming to Stalin or Lenin street. After 1989, these streets were renamed again - so my parent's home address at Karl Marx street became General Haller street - after some crypto fascist Polish general that nobody heard of. Personally, I liked the old address better.
In the same vein, the National Airport in DC was re-named Reagan National Airport. How uncivilized.
Wojtek