5/10/2004

Residents of Zephyrhills, FL, home of "Pure Water from a Pure Place," explain their zealous opposition to naming a street after Dr. King: Sixth Avenue residents said that the Council had railroaded the plan without consulting them and that they did not want the bother of changing their addresses. A business owner told local newspapers that property values would fall, saying streets named after Dr. King were a guarantee of economic blight. ...Cullen Smith said he would have preferred to name the street after Abraham Lincoln, who he said had done "more for the black people than just about anybody." But let it not be said that they're the only predominately white community which wants its street names white: Most of the [MLK] streets are in the South, in places where the population is at least 30 percent black. Georgia, Dr. King's birthplace, has the most, Dr. Alderman said. Many run mostly through black neighborhoods, he said, often because efforts to name a central thoroughfare for Dr. King fail. "The second choices are often not the most prominent, the most healthy streets," Dr. Alderman said.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home