Martin Luther King Jr.'s name removed from historic street by Kansas City voters

Good work!

A historic 10-mile road in Kansas City, Mo., will no longer be 
known as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., after having nearly 
100 signs erected with his name stand for only nine months.

The proposal to remove the celebrated civil rights leader’s name 
received overwhelming support from voters, with 70 percent 
casting ballots Tuesday in favor of restoring the boulevard back 
to its original name, The Paseo, according to unofficial results 
reported in the Kansas City Star.

Renaming the roadway sparked a tense battle among residents, 
local leaders and national politicians in a major city that will 
go back to having no streets named after the civil rights icon.

A majority of city council members voted in January to rename 
the boulevard, which runs through Kansas City’s predominantly 
black East Side, to honor King.

Save The Paseo, a grass-roots movement, formed in response to 
the city council’s waiver of a requirement that 75 percent of 
residents approve changing a street’s name. Objections centered 
largely on whether residents and businesses along The Paseo were 
given enough notice or didn’t want the street renamed, the 
Associated Press reported.

Organizers and supporters argued that the old street name held 
historical significance for Kansas City and that there were 
other ways to honor King’s legacy, they said.

The hotly debated boulevard is part of the city’s original plan, 
and the north side of the street is under the National Register 
of Historic Places, according to the Associated Press. The 
Paseo’s namesake derives from a street in Mexico City that 
loosely translates to “Reformation Walk,” the Kansas City Star 
reported.

The Paseo was the third option to honor King.

The Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board refused a suggestion 
to replace The Paseo signs with King’s name in 2018, according 
to KCUR, noting that streets were to be named after people who 
had made significant contributions to the city and that the 42-
acre Martin Luther King Jr. Park has honored the civil rights 
leader since 1978.

In response, ministers of the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference, which King once led, started collecting signatures 
to place the question on August or November 2018 ballots, but it 
didn’t get enough votes, according to the Associated Press.

Then-Mayor Sylvester “Sly” James (D) formed a commission that 
allowed citizens to give their recommendations for King sites, 
and the group favored giving his name to a new terminal in the 
Kansas City International Airport. Airport officials weren’t in 
favor of the suggestion, either, according to the Associated 
Press.

Renaming 63rd Street, which cuts through very wealthy and very 
impoverished neighborhoods, was also an option, according to the 
Kansas City Star.

On Sunday, Save The Paseo staged a silent protest at a black 
church that was holding a rally for the street to remain named 
after King after allegations of racism from pro-King streets 
surfaced, according to the Associated Press.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), who has been trying to get the 
street renamed in honor of King for years and who first proposed 
in 1976 that the park have King’s name, asked Save The Paseo 
protesters to sit down and to consider if their actions were 
appropriate for church, according to the Associated Press.

It was a chance for black church leaders to call Save The Paseo 
group members racist to their faces, one of its organizers told 
the Associated Press. Members in gray shirts with the green and 
white “Save The Paseo” logo that looks like street signs, 
appeared to be of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, 
though King Street supporters allege that the group is majority 
white, according to the Associated Press.

Kansas City is nearly 60 percent white and 29 percent black, 
according to census data.

There are more than 900 streets named after King in the United 
States with most of them being concentrated in Southern states. 
Living on a street with King’s name means one is more likely to 
be black, poor or both, researchers have found.

Street-naming shows where the country stands on issues of race 
relations because street names connect visual facts with 
emotions, according to researchers at the University of 
Tennessee who studied Martin Luther King Jr. street naming and 
the politics of belonging.

“For the African American activist, place naming can be an 
emotion-laden and politically charged spatial tool for 
redefining the scale at which they belong in the American city 
and the right to stake a claim to urban space,” they wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/11/06/martin-luther-
king-jrs-name-removed-historic-street-by-kansas-city-voters/