One More In the Name of Streets

It must have seemed odd for people in the late nineteenth century to see streets named for a President they were all able to remember, Abraham Lincoln, and so many people who are alive today and remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a name in the news mentioned in the same breath as Dean Rusk or Barry Goldwater probably aren't used to the idea of him being honored with street names.

So, on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let me say right here and now that I have no objection to any streets named for Martin Luther King. Jr.  But I have some objections to which of them or named and how they're named.  Let me explain.  Whenever a street is renamed for Dr. King, the original name obviously gets tossed aside in the process.  If the original name was something like Main Street (too generic) or Maple Street (where there are likely no maple trees left), no problem.  Or how about South Parkway in Chicago, which was also  renamed for Dr. King? Again, no problem.  South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive) isn't a name, it's a description.  But I have issues with some other examples.  In Lansing, Michigan, community activists persuaded the city council to co-rename Logan Street as Martin Luther King Boulevard in 1991, and the old name was completely dropped a few years later.  The former Logan Street had been named for John Logan, a Union general in the Civil War who was the Republican candidate for Vice President in 1884.  He was also the chap who started Memorial Day.  Why does Logan's memory have to be pushed aside in favor of someone else's?  Good grief, he started a day to honor our war dead, which sadly has been turned into a three-day weekend for barbecuing, and this is the way his memory is treated - having his name wiped off the map of Lansing, Michigan?  And couldn't those community activists have done something else to honor Dr. King - like, get active in the community? If they wanted to rename a street in Lansing after him, why not Jolly Road on the southern edge of town?  Jolly Road?  What kind of a name is that? It sounds like a street in Toonville in Who Framed Roger Rabbit! Yes, honor Dr. King, but don't wipe out someone else's honor.

And while we're on the subject, how does every street named for Martin Luther King suddenly become a boulevard?  Okay, the street in Lansing is wide enough to be considered a boulevard, but Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey - co-named Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard - is rather narrow, one lane each way.  A boulevard it ain't.  Ironically, it's wider in neighboring Orange, where it's still just called Main Street, and in East Orange, Main Street was never considered the city's most important commercial district - Central Avenue was.  (Central Avenue in East Orange was once considered the most elite shopping district in Essex County, New Jersey, a distinction since ceded to a mall in suburban Short Hills.) Also, naming Main Street (or a street anywhere else) after Dr. King makes sense, but his full name? What other famous people named King would Dr. King be confused with? A signer of the Constitution (Rufus King)? A Vice President from the 1850s (William R. King)?  Dude, I don't think that's going to be a problem.  If there's already a King Street or King Avenue in your town - presumably named for the title, like Queen Street or Duke Street - then maybe using Dr. King's full name would be a good idea.  All I'm saying is that "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd." takes way too long to write or type on an envelope.

If your town has numbered streets, any one of them would be the best street to rename for Dr. King, because unless it designates a highway (Route 66), no one has warm feelings about a number used to identify a thoroughfare.  Not even 42nd Street.  I had no problem whatsoever when, in a similar situation, the city of Detroit renamed Twelfth Street Rosa Parks Boulevard - because Rosa Parks moved to Detroit in her later years and no one cares if a number is replaced with a name.  My only problem with that was that it was done when Rosa Parks was still alive. Call me old school, but no public entity should be renamed for the living, just as we don't put living people on our stamps and coins.

There's still one other problem I have with streets named for Dr. King, and the comedian Chris Rock has pointed this out.  Any street named for Martin Luther King is almost always in the worst part of town.  Now, as I understand it, Dr. King devoted his life to breaking the cycle of poverty that is manifested in these very neighborhoods and cities where there's a street named in his honor.  It's almost a cruel joke to rename a ghetto street for him.  Why aren't there more streets named for Dr. King in nice neighborhoods?

Oh, yes, just to make it clear, I'm not a big fan of how many streets were renamed for John F. Kennedy, either.  Many streets named for the thirty-fifth President of the United States got elevated to boulevards in the renaming process (though, to be fair, John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Philadelphia had already been designated as such - it had been named Pennsylvania Boulevard), and even when some of these streets were still called "streets," as in Cambridge, Massachusetts, JFK's full name - John F. Kennedy Street, not simply "Kennedy Street" - was used.  (It had formerly been called Boylston Street, after the family of John Adams' mother - another example of wiping out established history to honor the more recent past, rather than finding a way to honor both.)  In Bloomfield, New Jersey, John F. Kennedy received an honor he probably wouldn't have liked - the street named for him there, John F. Kennedy Drive, is both a series of ramps along the Garden State Parkway and a two-lane divided road following an old canal bed.  But that's not as bad as having a horrible airport named for you.  Change the name back to Idlewild, already.

And I don't want to see any more streets or anything else named for Ronald Reagan.