Racist Names, Beware | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Racist Names, Beware

By Adam Lynch Wednesday, April 28, 2010 5:25 p.m. CDT
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Kenya Hudson

Jackson's Ward 2 Councilman Chokwe Lumumba's motion to add exclusive raises for some city employees was the only budget motion passed at yesterday's special meeting.

Ward 2 Councilman Chokwe Lumumba said he voted with a majority of the council to remove a controversial petition requirement for the renaming of city streets or facilities because he felt city residents deserved a "more fair system" for changing street and place names.

Prior to the April 20 meeting, city ordinances required petition approval from 75 percent of residents and property owners within 150 feet of a public facility or street to approve changing the street or facility's name. Lumumba agreed to side with Councilmen Kenneth Stokes, Charles Tillman and Council President Frank Bluntson to approve the city ordinance removing the petition requirement, but only after assuring the council that he would help put together a new ordinance creating a petition requiring only 51 percent approval from local residents.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the petition exists to keep things as they are," Lumumba told the Jackson Free Press during the April 20 council meeting that eliminated the petition requirement. "The face of the city has changed, but there are plenty of places in the area that still bear the names of people who didn't always embrace the needs of the kind of people who now live here."

Lumumba then referred to many of the current names on city streets as products of racism. Lamar Street, in downtown Jackson, bears the name of Confederate officer, plantation owner and Associate Justice Sen. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, for example.

"A lot of the people were getting streets named after them a long time ago, when nobody with darker pigmentation were sitting up here on the council, and we did not have a black mayor, and it was a quite different city—and in many respects a very racist city. To lock us into a 75 percent petition requirement is not good," Lumumba added.

Author Todd Sanders, who wrote the book "Jackson's North State Street," said many places in Jackson commonly got their names from people who lived around them, but that many of the more controversial names currently on city signs typically arrived prior to the 1930s—well within the age when segregation was required by state law.

"The majority of them were only named for people who lived around them, or developed it or had property there," Sanders said. "This was a different time when segregation wasn't recognized as bad (by whites)."

The entire issue stemmed from Councilman Kenneth Stokes' continuing crusade to name streets and city facilities after community figures from the last three decades, many of whom are black. Stokes succeeded in leading an effort to name a library on Northside Drive (which was not in his ward) after Jackson Advocate Publisher Charles Tisdale. Opponents of the Tisdale name on the building argued that Tisdale was not a book author, as requested by the Hinds County Library Commission, and frequently referred to black leaders as Uncle Tom.

The issue strikes home with Jackson resident Ineva May Pittman, who campaigned hard for naming the city airport after slain civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, and for re-naming a library on Northside Drive.

"I feel offended by some names on city streets and buildings," Pittman said, referencing the name of Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi segregationist, on the federal courthouse in downtown Jackson. "I even took offense at the name of Lynch Street near JSU, until the council clarified the name as John R. Lynch Street, a prominent black historian."

Stokes pressed the issue last week to rename two Jackson streets after Jackson resident Dr. Robert Smith and former Jim Hill High School coach Fred Harris before the Jim Hill senior class graduates May 30. Stokes said he needed to remove the time-consuming 75 percent petition to do this.

The petition removal could also facilitate the renaming of streets after more contentious personalities, however. Stokes seeks to name a section of Pascagoula Street after controversial former Jackson Mayor Frank Melton. The city's legal department is still attempting to settle a lawsuit over Melton's 2006 illegal demolition of a home on Ridgeway Street. Members of the council who oppose the removal of the petition claimed at the last council meeting that removing the petition requirement was a strike against democracy. Ward 6 Councilman Tony Yarber, in particular, warned that removing the petition requirement entirely would anger Jackson residents who want more influence over the street and facility re-naming process.

After Lumumba voted for changing the ordinance, Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. pointed out that the petition removal would not take affect for another 30 days unless the council voted unanimously on the issue. Bluntson offered to revisit the issue in the same meeting in hopes of garnering unanimous council support, but the remaining council members who formed the opposing minority refused to revisit the issue, leaving the city without a petition requirement for now.

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