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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2019)
January 16, 2019 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 5 Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Streets cont’d from pg 4 King. … It is no longer a solid Black street. … It is no longer a residential street or rundown busi- ness street. It is a top class business street.” Many cities have re- sorted to dedicating a road to King, rather than force a full name and address change. Several cities such as Zephyrhills, Florida, and Statesboro, Geor- gia, also created re- naming ordinances in direct response to King street-naming efforts. While these policies now apply to all renam- ing efforts, they were created with the orig- inal intent of limiting how and where citizens remember King with- in their communities. These policies echo a long history of Black disenfranchisement, procedural injustice and segregated public spaces. In places such as Tul- sa, Indianapolis and the North Carolina city of Greenville, King roads have doubled as memorials and bound- aries between King’s supporters and those who do not identify with or desire to be associat- ed with him. Extending King’s name even a few blocks can become con- tentious. For many African Americans, the fight to have a voice in King street naming par- allels recent activ- ism against Confederate monuments and sym- bols of white suprema- cy. In the same way, it is about claiming and ex- erting one’s right to be- long, and remembering and being remembered in communities where rights were denied for generations. Roads of resilience The neighborhoods through which many King streets run re- flect both the resiliency and precariousness of Black American life. In the words of journal- ist Doug Moore, King’s road in St. Louis, Mis- souri, is “where hope and despair collide.” King streets host dis- proportionately high numbers of churches, government offices and schools, as well as beau- ty parlors and barber shops. These provided valu- able refugee and mobili- zation spaces during the civil rights movement and today serve as hubs of resourcefulness, aid and creative community building. These institutions ex- ist alongside high crime rates, poverty, aban- doned buildings, food deserts and sputtering redevelopment efforts. Revitalization is on the minds of many King street activists. They want to raise incomes, property val- ues and quality of life without the forced dis- placement of gentrifi- cation. These efforts, while more formal- ized than in the past, have moved slowly if not failed without pri- vate and public support. These activists believe that convincing the larg- er public to care about King streets is of criti- cal importance. King’s namesakes don’t just memorialize. They can open up crit- ical discussions of the continuing power of racism. They can be av- enues — literally and figuratively — to con- tinuing the civil rights leader’s work of battling racial and economic inequality and the cre- ation of a black sense of belonging and place in the U.S. Langston Hughes’ Hidden Influence on MLK Martin Luther King Jr.‘s dream — which alternated between shattered and hopeful — can be traced back to Hughes’ poetry. By Jason Miller The Conversation or years, Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes maintained a friendship, exchanging letters and favors and even traveling to Nigeria together in 1960. In 1956, King recited Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” from the pulpit to honor his wife Coretta, who was celebrating her first Mother’s Day. That same year, Hughes wrote a poem about Dr. King and the bus boycott titled “Brotherly Love.” At the time, Hughes was much more famous than King, F who was honored to have become a subject for the poet. But during the most turbulent years of the civil rights movement, Dr. King never publicly uttered the poet’s name. Nor did the reverend overtly invoke the poet’s words. You would think that King would be eager to do so; Hughes was one of the Harlem Renaissance’s leading poets, a master with words whose vers- es inspired millions of readers across the globe. However, Hughes was also suspected of being a communist sympathiz- er. In March of 1953, he was even called to testify before Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. Meanwhile, King’s op- ponents were starting to make similar charges of communism against him and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, accusing the group of being a commu- nist front. The red-bait- ing ended up serving as some of the most effec- tive attacks against King and his Southern Chris- tian Leadership Confer- ence. It forced King to dis- tance his organization from men with similar reputations — Bayard See HUGHES on page 7
