NC town asked to rename street with racist ties. This activist’s name was suggested.

Thousands of students and staff walk the brick sidewalks and cross the busy street every year through the heart of UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus that honors a former trustee and North Carolina’s largest pre-Civil War slaveholder.

On Wednesday, a group seeking to remove the vestiges of white supremacy from local streets asked the Town Council to consider renaming Cameron Avenue. The road is named for Paul Cameron and stretches from Coker Arboretum and Country Club Drive to Carrboro.

Residents and local groups aligned with The Change the Names project suggested “Pauli Murray Avenue” instead. The new name would honor the late pioneering Black activist who grew up in Durham, overcoming racism and sexism to earn law degrees and become the first female Episcopal priest and a force for social justice.

The petition was signed by Cameron Avenue property owners, with support from Binkley Baptist Church, Chapel Hill NOW, the Chapel Hill Friends Meeting and local civil rights attorney Barry Nakell, among others.

Joyce Sandy, with Change the Names, noted other cities in North Carolina that have renamed streets honoring racist figures, including in Hillsborough and Carrboro, where the Town Council recently voted to remove the name of Julian Carr, a noted white supremacist.

Carr Street will officially be renamed Braxton Foushee Street on March 27 to honor a local civil rights leader and the town’s first Black member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen (now the Town Council). Foushee, who now serves on the Planning Board, is the husband of Barbara Foushee, the town’s current and first Black female mayor.

Chapel Hill’s street signs “should mirror and uplift” its residents, Sandy said.

“We can’t change history, but there’s no reason to drag the atrocities of history into the 21st century by honoring racists on our street signs. They are signs of shame,” she said. “Your silence is complicity, because doing nothing enables the damage of racism to continue unchecked.”

What is the process for changing a street name?

The town’s Naming Committee could discuss the Cameron Avenue petition with staff when it meets later this month, Mayor Jess Anderson said.

Chapel Hill last changed a street name in 2019, renaming a portion of U.S. 15-501 South, from N.C. 54 to Dogwood Acres Drive, as “South Columbia Street.” The procedure for renaming a collector or arterial street, such as U.S. 15-501, is more complex than the procedure for a residential street, because it generally affects more people and businesses.

The town tends to avoid naming streets or facilities for a living person, although it can be “considered under extraordinary circumstances,” according to town staff.

Requests to rename residential streets are submitted to the town manager for approval. The town manager could consult with staff, and the decision can be appealed to the council.

Requests to rename a collector or arterial street can be submitted in writing or orally to the council by the public, the mayor, a council member, or a town advisory board or commission. Cameron Avenue is a collector street, with fewer lanes and more stop signs or roundabouts.

The steps to consider the name change are outlined in the Council Procedures Manual:

▪ A Naming Committee that includes two or more council members reviews the proposed change and can ask town staff, advisory boards, community organizations, and the public for input before making a recommendation to the council.

▪ The council can hold a public hearing and accept written comments while reviewing the name change and the committee’s recommendations.

▪ The council makes a decision during its business meeting, and the manager orders new street signs and makes other necessary changes. Public Works staff estimated in 2019 that new street signs could be installed in three to four weeks after a council decision.

Why name a Chapel Hill street for a Durham activist?

Murray has family ties to Chapel Hill through her grandmother, Cornelia, who was born to an enslaved woman named Harriet Day and her enslaver’s son James Sidney Smith, living on Smith Level Road, according to her niece, Rosita Stevens-Holsey. She’s the founder of Preserving Pauli Murray LLC and sent a letter supporting the change.

Murray rose to prominence as she earned law degrees from Howard University and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. She was the first Black person to earn a doctorate of law degree from Yale University.

Her law school thesis led to the legal theory that future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall used to win the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case in 1954.

However, Murray was denied entry to UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Sociology graduate program, because “members of your race are not admitted to the University,” according to the petition for the name change, quoting from Murray’s rejection letter.

In 1977, Murray led her first Holy Eucharist as the first ordained female Episcopal priest at Chapel of the Cross Church on East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. She also was a founder of the National Organization for Women.

She died in 1985 at the age of 74.

“It would be a fitting, redemptive tribute to change the name in honor of Pauli’s contributions to American democracy and global human rights and Pauli’s family history, as it represents our shared history and models how we can stand up to the degradation and dignity of all our ancestors,” said Jesse Huddleston, board vice chair at Durham’s Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice.

What other streets could be renamed?

The Change the Names project is also asking the town to consider changing these street names with racist history:

▪ Kenan Street: Between West Franklin Street and Cameron Avenue, the street honors William Rand Kenan Sr., a former Confederate soldier and a leader in the 1898 Wilmington massacre that killed over 60 Black residents and destroyed a Black-owned newspaper.

▪ Vance Street: Located in a residential area off Pittsboro Street near UNC’s campus. Named for former N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance, who also was a Confederate officer and U.S. congressman and senator. He claimed in an 1860 speech before the House of Representatives that Black men would marry white women, polluting white blood “with the putrid stream of African barbarism.”

▪ Cameron Court: Located off Cameron Avenue, Cameron Court is a dead-end residential street also named for Paul Cameron.

▪ East Barbee Chapel Road: Loops through Meadowmont off N.C. 54 and is named for Chapel Hill slaveholder Sydney Barbee, whose family owned at least 100 enslaved people buried in Barbee Cemetery at the Rizzo Center in Meadowmont.