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
