North Carolina was very bad about this, too. A favorite spot was where Airport Drive crossed with Airport Boulevard in Chapel Hill.
Eventually, people noticed that this was confusing (particularly since the airport there is tiny and not used for, well, anything) and renamed it. It is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Not to be confused with the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Raleigh.
At the time of the renaming, there was an editorial (I forget which paper ran it, but probably the Tarheel Gazette) about the great opportunity here to promote awareness of black culture and local history by naming the boulevard instead after one of any number of local black heroes rather than naming it after one of the two activists that everyone already knows about.
The general response of the local public (based on letters written to the editor) was that anyone who didn't want to name a road after Martin Luther King Jr. was racist scum.
This is the sort of thing that fascinates me... when it's far, far away and happening in someone else's city.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-04-17 01:19 (UTC)North Carolina was very bad about this, too. A favorite spot was where Airport Drive crossed with Airport Boulevard in Chapel Hill.
Eventually, people noticed that this was confusing (particularly since the airport there is tiny and not used for, well, anything) and renamed it. It is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Not to be confused with the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Raleigh.
At the time of the renaming, there was an editorial (I forget which paper ran it, but probably the Tarheel Gazette) about the great opportunity here to promote awareness of black culture and local history by naming the boulevard instead after one of any number of local black heroes rather than naming it after one of the two activists that everyone already knows about.
The general response of the local public (based on letters written to the editor) was that anyone who didn't want to name a road after Martin Luther King Jr. was racist scum.
This is the sort of thing that fascinates me... when it's far, far away and happening in someone else's city.