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Brian Bixby's avatar

Much of the Pacific Northwest was settled by southerners, and we have King and Pierce counties in Washington who were named after slave holders. When they changed the name to Martin Luther King County there was a lot of resistance. The former Empire Way in the south end of Seattle took years of controversy to rename MLK Boulevard, with activists changing street signs themselves.

https://crosscut.com/2019/0...

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rlcornelius's avatar

Thank you! I've always wondered. I wonder who Chandler was then? Chandler St is in between Grant and Robinson St, so I've always assumed it was part of the set.

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Daniel_Oriordan's avatar

Lincoln should have publicly hanged all the leaders, military and civilian, of the Confederacy. As we have seen, as long as they aren't held accountable, white supremacists will continue to push their agenda, down to the present day.

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SterWonk's avatar

You laugh, but in recent years, people in India have started creating shrines to the guy who assassinated Gandhi. Because Gandhi was making too many concessions to the Muslims, you see, 😢🤢😱🤬

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Daniel_Oriordan's avatar

If these statues were erected solely to commemorate and remember important moments in a locale's history, there should be a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in front of the Atlanta city hall.

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twinkie223's avatar

Atlanta Race Riot = legitimate political discourse

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Daniel_Oriordan's avatar

A friend lives on a small u-shaped street that's always been known as Thelma City. Turns out there was once a trolley car stop at the main street the u-shaped street dead-ends at, and a hooker named Thelma used to give blowjobs there for a quarter.

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Daniel_Oriordan's avatar

My girlfriend in college dragged me off to see GWTW when they showed it in a student auditorium. Aside from the burning of Atlanta, I was never so bored in my life. It's a fucking soap, nothing more.

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Daniel_Oriordan's avatar

Red shoes? Are you out of your mind? Those are the baby killers and adrenochrome eaters.

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AlanInSF's avatar

Careful. My local school board is being subjected to a GOP dark money recall on the grounds that they had a horrible Covid response (i.e., the same response as everyone else), which was due to their obsession with renaming schools named after racists or slaveowners. Too much concern about Wade Hampton and all of South Carolina governance could crumble like a four-day-old pork rind.

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AlanInSF's avatar

I grew up in Maryland, and the one thing I remember learning about Reconstruction is CARPETZBAGGERZ!!!11Z1ZZ!!!!

Also George Washington Carver was a smart guy, even though he was Black.

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JustDon'tSayHambriston's avatar

Did you hear the KQED piece this morning about the recall? At no point did I hear a real reason to remove those people from the board. It almost sounded like, "let's do it just cuz we can."

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Wookie Monster's avatar

I grew up in Pennsylvania and the one thing I remember about my US history class was how they skipped over the reconstruction entirely. It was like nothing happened between the end of the Civil War and McKinley’s assassination.

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DisplacedCTYankee's avatar

The magazine I wrote for 30 years ago just hired a new managing editor whose name is Robert E. Lee Jr. They are listing him on their masthead as Bob Lee.

I do not make stuff up. See www.arrl.org, QST magazine.

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TakingAmes's avatar

I wonder if it's still restricted.

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Wookie Monster's avatar

But how will kids learn about history if we don’t have streets named after genocidal white nationalists and traitors? I mean, we can’t have schools teach children about what they actually did! Heaven forbid! It might make white kids (and their parents) uncomfortable.

Anyone else find it weird that the right has staked out this position that we must preserve the names of these people at all costs but we can’t talk about the people behind those names?

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