Kansas City voters to decide if road will continue to be named for Martin Luther King Jr.
Voters in Kansas City will decide Tuesday whether a major boulevard will continue to be named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. less than a year after the 10-mile road was renamed in his honor.
The City Council voted 8-4 in January to name the road for King, but many were upset by the decision to rechristen the historic thoroughfare formerly known as The Paseo, which was completed in 1899.
The new street signs were installed in February. And by April, a grassroots group called Save the Paseo had gathered more than the 1,700 signatures required to get an initiative on the ballot to restore the old name.
More than 50 years after his murder, Kansas City was one of the last major U.S. cities not to have a street named for King, according to The Kansas City Star. Prior to that, a park named for King was one of the city's only memorials to the civil rights icon. But critics said the park was in poor condition and was not enough to commemorate a historical figure of King's stature.
The council voted to change the road's name to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard after a yearslong campaign led by black pastors and officials of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Those who wish to see the name changed back to The Paseo deny that race has anything to do with their opposition to naming the boulevard after King. They say it is about historic preservation. And they are upset that the council made the change without input from those who live along the street, which they say was required by a city statute.
"We want Dr. King to have an honor and we have been pretty clear about that," Kellie Jones, a spokeswoman for Save the Paseo told the Star. "This is about how it is done."
"No one I’m working with is against Martin Luther King," Diane Euston, a Save the Paseo member, told The Associated Press. "We honor him and respect him as a great leader. We don’t want this to become a racial issue. It’s a democratic process and history issue."
Rev. Vernon P. Howard, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City, rejected the argument that race was not at the heart of the opposition to naming the street after King.
"This is a white-led movement that is trying to dictate to black people in the black community who our heroes should be; who we honor; where we honor them and how we honor them," Howard told the Star. "That is the pathology of white privilege and that is the epitome of systemic structural racism."
On Sunday, a group of people who wanted to change the name back to The Paseo staged a protest at the Paseo Baptist Church, where a rally was being held in support of naming the street after King. The protesters stood silently in the church's aisles and ignored calls to sit down.
"I am standing here simply begging you to sit down. This is not appropriate in a church of Jesus Christ," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who was one of the speakers at the rally, told the protesters.
"If tonight, someone wants to characterize what we did as hostile, violent, or uncivil, it’s a mischaracterization of what happened," said Tim Smith, who organized the protest. "We didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything, we just stood."
Jones said they "were symbolically standing for the people that were unheard in this process" and that they "wanted to stand up for justice."
"If this is some kind of perverted attempt to demonstrate a spirit of protest and activism, then it is evil, wrongheaded and harmful to race relations, to the spirit of Dr. King and certainly to the Paseo Baptist Church," Howard said of the protests.
Contributing: The Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Voters weigh keeping Martin Luther King's name on Kansas City street
