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MY HOMETOWN GETS INTO THE RE-NAMING BUSINESS

Arlington County Votes To Remove Confederate President’s Name From Highway

By: Joran Pascale

WAMU/NPR

26 April 2019

Arlington County is one step closer to renaming Jefferson Davis Highway.

The Arlington County Board voted 5-0 late Thursday night to formally request the name change to Richmond Highway.

Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board will make the final decision in coming months. If approved, the name would be changed no later than October.

The board says the Postal Service will continue to deliver mail addressed to Jefferson Davis Highway indefinitely if senders forget to change the address. Street numbers wouldn’t change, but street signs would be swapped out costing about $17,000.

County officials say they plan outreach efforts to property owners, residents and businesses in coming months.

In 1922, Virginia General Assembly designated Route 1 as Jefferson Davis Highway at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy group.

Arlington County had long wanted to remove the Confederate president’s name from their 2.5-mile portion. Alexandria was allowed to change its portion of the road in 2018.

“Renaming our portion of the highway will make it easier for drivers heading from Fairfax County through the City of Alexandria and then Arlington should be traveling on a highway that bears one name,” Board Chair Christian Dorsey said.

State law treated road naming differently for cities and counties. The county first thought it had to win a vote of the legislature to change a road name.

That is until last month when the Attorney General ruled on the wording of the law. He said the decision rests with the transportation board.

The highway was thrust back into the spotlight last fall when Amazon announced it would set up shop in Crystal City along the thoroughfare.

NOTE:  This removal of Confederate statues and re-naming streets that bear the names of Confederate Generals, has always made me uncomfortable.  To me it smacked of the old Soviet Union's efforts to re-write history. Frankly, I don't want to be in this arena since history is history (at least when it is honest history) and attempting to eliminate embarrassing events and personages from our past seems disingenuous at the very least. 

In addition to Jefferson Davis Highway in the Virginia suburbs of my former home of Washington, D.C., is Lee Highway, another major artery named after the Confederacy's top General that I frequented.  What bothers me is, if we removed every trace of the Confederacy, what would it change?  It wouldn't change the fact that the Civil War was a our bloodiest war.  It wouldn't change the fact that slavery was the status quo until the North prevailed over the South in that four year long conflict.  It wouldn't change the fact that a President, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated by John Wiles Booth as a result of that war.  It wouldn't change much of anything, anything that was real about the Civil War except that we would no longer have reminders as we went about our daily lives. 

 This is what's troublesome. How will subsequent generations of children know that Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederacy and that Robert E. Lee was it's military leader?  Sure, one hopes that through their history classes in public schools they would at least come across these individuals.  But for me, I too was exposed to the Civil War and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, but until I moved to Washington, I had no idea that so many statures, highways, parks, historical sites, roadside plaques buildings had been created and named in honor of the Confederacy and its heroes.  

It made me realize that in Virginia, at least, there was still an aura of veneration for Confederate personages that gave me a much deeper understanding about how the aftereffects of the Civil War still resonated, still acknowledged the South's admiration for their Confederate leaders was extant.  It was one thing to read about the Civil War but quite another to be confronted and reminded on a near daily while driving Jefferson Davis Highway and Lee Highway.  

I never objected to these reminders and still don't, since they are manifestations of the reality of our history.  It also clued me into any number of more current events from Brown vs. Board of Education or Loving vs. Virginia all the way up to the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" demonstrations.  I remember traveling though Farmville, Virginia, during my youth.  The town seemed deserted.  When I found out why that,  subsequent to Brown vs. Board of Education, in 1959 the County Board of Supervisors would not appropriate any funds for the public school system rather than integrate with the result that Farmville's public schools were closed for a decade, I understood just how strong were feelings against integration, a direct result of the after effects of the Civil War.  

White students went to private academies established as a result of this action while Black students had to find schools outside the county or forgo their education altogether.   This was the legacy of the Civil War and the attempts to integrate African Americans into American society.  There is no way to erase this history, even if the entire events in Farmville were excised from our textbooks.  It happened and it was real and it had real impacts particularly for African Americans who lived in Farmville.  

All those plaques, all those highways, all those buildings and parks named for Civil War Southerners, reminds us all of the fact that we went through a Civil War and its effects are still with us today and helps us to understand why.  Removing statues and re-naming highways is not going to change the reality of our history but will just erase reminders that might help us to understand our history better.

Take Care.       

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