Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerBanners hanging along Martin Luther King Boulevard in Newark mark the area as the High Street District, the former name of the boulevard. The Krueger-Scott Mansion is in the background.
When it comes to renaming public spaces in honor of African-Americans, no modern tradition has been more successful — and often more contentious — than renaming a street after Martin Luther King Jr.
What began in Chicago a few months after the civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968 picked up steam once his birthday was named a federal holiday in 1983. Whether dubbed a street, highway, drive, boulevard, lane or circle, renamings continue to this day, said Derek Alderman, an East Carolina University geographer who has studied the trend.
There are now at least 893 Martin Luther King Jr. streets in the United States, according to his latest compilation. The majority of those are in the South, particularly in King’s home state of Georgia, which has 128.
14th in the list of states — ranking it higher than its neighboring states of Pennsylvania and New York.
Street names — while a quick way to honor someone — are more powerful than most people realize. “They’re not just ways of getting your mail delivered. People invest a great deal in their street identity. Change a street name, and you change the way people think about their city,” said Alderman. “It’s where ideology meets asphalt.”
In New Jersey, bids to name a street in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. met with little resistance compared with the battles faced elsewhere, where there have been protest marches, single-issue elections and even vandalism. Several cities in other states have backtracked to undo the honor, changing their MLK street back to its original name.
Some of that tension reflects the street’s role as a town’s de facto racial boundary line. Some comes from purely economic concerns, as businesses worry the Martin Luther King name will be bad for business.
That often-unspoken worry burst into public conversation when the comedian Chris Rock remarked: “If a friend calls you on the telephone and says they’re lost on Martin Luther King Boulevard and they want to know what they should do, the best response is, ‘Run!’ ”
That link in public perception between MLK streets and crime has cause-and-effect backward, Alderman noted. A neighborhood does not go downhill once its main drag is renamed after Martin Luther King; it’s that the city’s fathers invariably choose to rename a street already in the poorest part of town.
Sometimes that came about because African-American civic leaders wanted the street to be close to their people. Others felt his legacy should transcend those boundaries. In some cases, it’s because the powers-that-be don’t want it located in the white part of town.
In a way, Martin Luther King — the street — has been the victim of segregation.
“Often the controversy is not about whether to rename a street. King is very much embraced. It’s often more about which street to rename,” Alderman said.
One way to sidestep controversy has been for a town to designate a portion of an interstate highway as honoring King; since no houses or businesses are there, no constituency has to cope with an address change.
Alderman noted that when Riverside, California wanted to name a new high school in a mostly white neighborhood after the civil rights leader, parents expressed worry it would harm their students’ chances of getting into colleges. Ten years later, Alderman said, none of those worries has come to pass.
In Newark, local officials are now striving to honor the Martin Luther King name while tapping into the marketing clout of the original High Street.
Colorful banners hanging from streetlights walk a fine line, identifying the neighborhood as the “High Street District along Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.”
That reflects a calculated attempt to capitalize on the glory of the old High Street and fuel a revitalization of the current Martin Luther King Boulevard. The street, which runs north from Clinton Avenue to Park Avenue, is home to three colleges or universities, a hospital, two high schools, two “beer baron” mansions, along with historic churches and a synagogue.
For more than a century, High Street was an elite address as the wealthy moved there to gain a view and put some distance between their homes and fumes from riverside tanneries and breweries.
“I was amazed by how many people remember High Street for what it was back then: really special. If you lived on High Street, you really had things going your way,” said Keith Kinard, executive director of the Newark Housing Authority. “The question we faced was, ‘How do we brand the district and really showcase its historic importance and modern-day appeal?’ ”
The solution was the appelation “High Street District,” which keeps the MLK name intact. Why not Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard District? “I don’t know of any Martin Luther King Boulevard districts in America,” Kinard said.
The ability of “High Street” to live on in conversation nearly three decades after the name was changed reflects its enduring spot in local memory. After all, few in Morristown still refer to “Water Street,” the road that town chose for its MLK renaming.
Part of that is due to High Street’s topography; it runs along the spine of a slight ridge offering views of downtown Newark and the Manhattan skyline. Part of that is longevity: It is one of the oldest streets in the United States, showing up on maps dating to the time of the Puritans.
Like most communities, Newark did not rename a major thoroughfare without debate. A petition drive urging the move in 1983 met with little opposition. What debate there was did not split cleanly along racial lines. Kenneth Gibson, Newark’s first African-American mayor, expressed reservations about losing the venerated — and geographically self-explanatory — name of High Street. Street names, he said, “have a history unto themselves.”
The lone council vote against the name change came from Councilman Sharpe James, who would go on to become mayor. “We could honor Dr. King without destroying part of our city’s history,” he said. At one point, Rutgers University historian Clement Price recalls, James proposed the King honor be moved to the heart of the city, in the form of renaming Broad Street.
Price himself opposed the renaming — because it negated High Street while doing little in the way of concrete action to honor King.
“It was a cheap way to honor Dr. King,” he said recently. “It didn’t require anything but a city ordinance and a few street signs.”
At the time the street was renamed, it wasn’t a case of choosing the swankiest address for the King name. The street, cutting through the city’s Central Ward, was already going downhill, Price said. (He also objected to turning a “street” into a “boulevard.”)
In many communities, those in power who agree to a King name change do so in an attempt to placate a constituency. They often hope that will be enough to avoid addressing deeper racial problems. At the same time, activists often see a renaming as just the beginning, Alderman said. Some even oppose a renaming as being too little.
He said activists who dismiss a street naming as insignificant miss a key point.
“This is really about African-Americans and what place they deserve to have in public space. If a community is not willing to do something as simple as renaming a street, then what does it say about their willingness to do with larger issues?”
Published: Friday, February 26, 2010, 6:00 AM
By Kathleen O’Brien/The Star-Ledger
