Naming public places after private people
Tuesday, October 25, 2022 at 08:54AM
The highest point east of the Rocky Mountains until you get to the Alps is Black Elk Peak near Custer, South Dakota. Prior to 2016, the mountain with its distinctive fire tower was called Harney Peak.
The name change was overdue. The Black Hills are considered sacred to the Lakota Sioux and replacing Harney’s name with that of tribal leader Black Elk is appropriate, especially since General William Harney is reported to have led the massacre of Native women and children in Nebraska in 1855.
Over the past few years, there has been a great “renaming” of many public places. Here in Minnesota, Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis is now Lake Bde Maka Ska. Sibley High School is now Two Rivers High School. There are rumblings in Mankato MN about renaming its Sibley city park.
There is a Justice Alan Page elementary school in suburban Maplewood MN. Mankato schools named its newest elementary school after Rosa Parks. There is now a Barack and Michelle Obama Elementary School in St Paul. This morning's newspaper reported a movement to name a federal building in downtown Minneapolis after Senator Paul Wellstone who died in a plane crash 20 years ago.
I suspect the naming and renaming of public buildings, streets, parks, and natural features will continue. I can think of no persons more worthy of such recognition than Page, Parks, the Obamas, and Wellstone. Of course others of a different political stripe may disagree.
However I wonder if someday the worm might turn. Might our “heroes” of today be less heroic to tomorrow’s activists? Might some dirt be uncovered about Rosa Parks? Might the Obamas be reviled for being non-vegetarian? Could a MAGA-controlled government seek to obliterate the memory of notoriously liberal Wellstone?
Given the controversy over naming buildings, streets, parks, schools and the expenses involved when renaming them, let’s just agree not to dedicate any public resource to a human being, no matter how honorable they now appear.
I know I would rather live on Oak Street than on Butt Street anyway.
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