Alexandria City Council has decided to hold a public hearing on the topic of renaming its stretch of U.S. Route 1 from the Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway, reports the Washington Post.
While I vigorously oppose the removal of statues of Civil War generals, I have no problem with changing the name of a highway named after the president of the Confederate States of America. Indeed, I endorse the removal of the ridiculous anachronism.
Jefferson was not a native Virginian. Neither was he a military hero celebrated for martial virtues worthy of admiration in any society or culture. Most importantly, changing the name does not require tearing down a magnificent work of public art.
I am tangentially involved with an initiative that is working to “reinterpret” the public statuary in Richmond as part of a larger effort to think about race relations and the struggle for individual liberties, and I think it would be a crime to remove statues that are such visible reminders of — and prods to conversation about — a by-gone way of thinking. I also subscribe to the idea that more is better. Instead of tearing statues down, let’s build memorials to people whose struggle for freedom and equal rights might have gone unrecognized a century ago.
But renaming public places — roads and schools most notably — does not require ditching priceless artifacts. Making the change will cost the city a mere $27,000, the Post says. And unlike the Civil War statues, place names will never become a starting point for stimulating an open dialogue about Virginia’s painful past of slavery and Jim Crow. So, as far as I’m concerned, replace the signs.
