As communities across the nation grapple with the racist symbols of their past in the form of statues and monuments, in University City, Missouri citizens have embarked on their own journey of racial reckoning, centering the debate on a less discussed, but more common form of memorial. As part of the Renaming Streets Task Force, seven citizens had 120 days to research over 200 street names and determine which ones should be targeted for change. Join Change Agents hosts Victoria Benefield and Emily Soto for The Road to Reclaiming History.
As communities across the nation grapple with the racist symbols of their past in the form of statues and monuments, in University City, Missouri citizens have embarked on their own journey of racial reckoning, centering the debate on a less discussed, but more common form of memorial. As part of the Renaming Streets Task Force, seven citizens had 120 days to research over 200 street names and determine which ones should be targeted for change. Join Change Agents hosts Victoria Benefield and Emily Soto for The Road to Reclaiming History.
Narrator: [00:00:00] Change agents.
Victoria Benefield: Communities across the nation have been grappling with the racist symbols of their past. In University City, Missouri, citizens embarked on their own journey of racial reckoning as part of the Renaming Streets Task Force. Seven citizens had 120 days to research over 200 street names and determine which one should be targeted for change.
I'm Change Agents host, Victoria Benefield. Join me and my co host, Emily Soto, for the Road to Reclaiming History.
Holly Ingram: Dr. King had a quote about why people hate each other. And they hate each other because they don't know each other. And they don't know each other because they don't speak to each other. And they don't speak to each other because they're separated.
And, University City is a unique community [00:01:00] in that we are one of the more diverse, although still separated, communities. So, it's an opportunity to dialogue, if nothing else. Um, this whole process that I believe can help us move forward as a community and as a country.
News Clip: Protest.
Protest.
A ban on certain books.
Parents protesting
critical race theory. Protests turned violent across America.
Victoria Benefield: Battles over how we remember history are raging across the country. In schools, how to teach complicated history like slavery and colonialism has divided parents and educators. Some states have introduced bills that would limit or ban teaching of certain topics that may cause, quote, discomfort in students.
In Florida, these topics include the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. These laws are essentially censorship, allowing lawmakers to shape how history is both remembered and taught.
Emily Soto: But looking back, schools push narratives to students that brand people of [00:02:00] color as weak, inferior, submissive, or even criminal.
More damage is done when these same students look up to find themselves surrounded by racist, historical symbols of an American past. While I grew up in Wisconsin, seeing the confederate flag was a regular thing. I even knew people who fought hard against any effort to ban them. I never understood why some people resonate with something that stood for the oppression of other people.
Victoria Benefield: I'm from California, so I didn't grow up seeing Confederate flags. I do remember a trip to Savannah, Georgia, when I was 17, and visiting a park where I was stunned to find a Confederate statue towering over me. I wondered how a huge monument honoring individuals who fought for the enslavement of Black people could still stand today.
Although that statue is still up in Savannah, many Confederate statues across the country have come down, including 73 just last year.
Emily Soto: The removal of these statues is one step towards [00:03:00] reckoning with our nation's past. But there's a less obvious way that racist historical figures are celebrated in towns across America.
Street names.
Victoria Benefield: They're not something we think about consciously, but we hear them on Google Maps. We say them out loud when we're giving directions, we see them as we're walking and driving.
Emily Soto: That's right, they're a part of our everyday lives. And when a street is named after someone, it's a way to honor and remember them.
So what do we do when that person's past violates the values of today?
Victoria Benefield: That's exactly the question asked by the government of University City, a town of 35, 000 people right outside of St. Louis, Missouri. When Emily and I visited what residents call U City back in February, it was recovering from a snowstorm.
When we arrived, the streets were mostly empty. As I stepped out of the car onto Pershing Avenue, I noticed the sidewalks were unplowed, and cars windshields had several inches of snow on them. University [00:04:00] City was in hibernation. I stomped through the snow and up unshoveled steps to meet Susan Armstrong.
Susan McCray Armstrong: I'm Susan Armstrong, chair of this task force. I've been a resident of the University for 30 years. About 20 years in the first ward on Pershing. 10 years on the third ward on Chamberlain. In September 2020, University City Mayor Terry Crowe called and asked if I was interested in being the chair of the city's Renaming Streets Task Force.
After the protests that started that summer, city leadership began to think about what they could do to address the injustices in our own city. They decided to create a task force whose job was to research the street names to determine if any of them were offensive. We used five foundational statements that emphasized diversity and inclusion and condemned white supremacy in order to judge whether these street names qualified as offensive.
The task force was made up entirely of residents. including the chair, me, with two [00:05:00] residents from each of the city's three wards. From the first ward, Andy. Andy Wool, would you like to introduce yourself to the community?
Andy Wool: Um, let's see, to keep it short, Andy Wool, class of 1987, New City High School.
Holly Ingram: My name's Holly Ingram.
I have been a three time University City resident. I also serve in the community as Executive Director of Cultural Leadership.
Susan McCray Armstrong: From the second ward, Elsley Hamilton.
Elsley Hamilton: I've lived here since 1972, so it's 48 years now. I've been a historian for St. Louis County Parks for 40 years.
Don Fitz: Uh, my name is Don Fitz. I have been a University City resident for 33 years.
And, uh, I have quite a bit of experience stirring up as much trouble in University Cities as I can.
Susan McCray Armstrong: From
the third ward.
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: My name is Mimi Taylor Hendricks. I have been a resident of University City since 1983, [00:06:00] and currently involved, um, both with my church and the Committee of Social Justice, and with the University City organization called SHED.
Alice Boone: Again, my name is Alice Boone. I've been a resident here in University City since 1988, so it seems like it's been forever.
Susan McCray Armstrong: The first meeting was on October 5th, 2020 on Zoom.
Judge?: If I could have the, uh, task force members to please raise your right hand.
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: I, I, Mimi Taylor Hendricks.
Andy Wool: Andrew Wool do solemnly swear,
Task Force Members: do solemnly
swear
Judge?: that I possess all of the qualifications.
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: Well, when it all started, um, we had 120 days in the resolution to complete the study and get back then to the council and the mayor. So [00:07:00] At our first meeting, we were talking about how best to approach this. And I made a suggestion that since we had representatives from all three wards, that why not divide the city up by ward?
And so that's how we broke up the work to begin with.
Susan McCray Armstrong: We conducted most of our research online, especially because we were doing this work in the middle of a pandemic. We looked at books, articles, journals, and even census records from the 19th century. Every few weeks, each member would pick a couple of streets to research on their own and then would share their findings with the rest of the task force during our meetings.
Jackson Avenue, are you prepared to talk about that today?
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: Yeah, a lot of people believed at first that it might have been named for Andrew Jackson, but the research showed that it was actually named for General Thomas Stonewall Jackson, who was [00:08:00] probably the second most famous general in the Confederate Army behind General Lee.
Susan McCray Armstrong: Jackson was a professor before the start of the Civil War. He was instrumental in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. As well as other battles, he quickly rose to prominence as a key figure in the Confederate army before his death in the battle of Chancellorsville. He also owned six slaves.
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: Um, so that became a real concern because of his direct connection with the Confederate army and the support of slavery within, within the South and throughout the country.
and all of that was associated with it. So that became probably the larger street that we were concerned about.
Victoria Benefield: Jackson Avenue runs through all three wards in University City. There's even an elementary school named Jackson.[00:09:00]
Every day black students are confronted with the name of an individual who fought to enslave their ancestors.
Mimi Taylor Hendricks: We need to take a look at where we are and where we've come from. Um, I think what was acceptable at one time in many aspects of our lives is no longer acceptable. We change and we grow when we learn.
And so I think it's appropriate to apply that to all aspects of our life, including the parks or the names of streets that we hold up. So I, I think, I think it's a natural kind of a part of, of learning and growing and not being afraid to make the changes as our priorities or, or our values shift.
Susan McCray Armstrong: Mr. Fitz, you sent in a, a piece about, uh, the street Wilson.
Don Fitz: Yeah, um, I remember I, I had seen things, [00:10:00] uh, saying Woodrow Wilson was a racist president, but I didn't know that. You know, I had never delved into it before. So this really got me to delve into the history and see what was happening. There were a lot of federal offices which has been integrated for decades, like I said, since 1870s.
He instituted the policy of segregation in the federal government, and he humiliated black workers as much as he can. They were not allowed to go to bathrooms. The bathrooms that white workers were, those were segregated, and sometimes they even had cages built around them. So they could not work, uh, and they had to be walled off from white workers.
He fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors that he ran across in the federal government. Not a lot of black supervisors in 1912, but he found the ones he could and fired almost all of them. And someone wrote, Woodrow Wilson has allied himself with every torture, every [00:11:00] oppressor, every perpetrator of racial injustice in the South or North.
He was steeped in the lost cause mythology of glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. He described Southern black people as an ignorant and inferior race. He had a showing of the film of the nation, which was, uh, critical in America. Film development is originally titled The Clansman. And of course, it glorifies the KKK.
Victoria Benefield: In this infamous scene in The Birth of a Nation, a man in blackface is shown chasing a white woman after she refuses to marry him. He chases her to the edge of a cliff where she falls to her death. Her angry brother gathers a mob of white men to capture the black man. They hold a speedy trial, pronounce him guilty, lynch him, and leave his body on the lieutenant governor's porch.
This vigilante justice is depicted as the start of the KKK.[00:12:00]
Emily Soto: This film is still widely studied today. In my own media classes, it is recognized for advancing cinema through dramatic storylines and superior performances, while regarding the creator, D. W. Griffith, as the father of cinema. Yet there's only brief mention of the harmful and racist content and its impact on the revival of the KKK.
I've always wondered if we even need to talk about this film. Couldn't there be other, Non racist films that display the advancement of cinema?
Don Fitz: In 1914, when he was president, the civil service began demanding photographs to accompany employment applications for the first time. It was widely understood that the only purpose of this requirement was to weed out, uh, black applicants.
So I think we could safely say that Woodrow Wilson violates each one of our standards of, uh, equity. [00:13:00] Most streets are named after people who did something, uh, memorable. To not re rename streets and get rid of racist names, to put in, uh, names of black people who are memorable. That's just denying reality.
You know, that's denying the obvious fact that streets are named after important events and people.
Susan McCray Armstrong: Anyone else have any kind of street reports to give out?
Holly Ingram: I was not aware that Amherst College and the town of Amherst are all named after, whether directly or indirectly, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, and I didn't know his story. One of the long lasting legacies of that individual, as we know it from the history that we've uncovered so far, is He was the person who promoted the use of smallpox blankets to eradicate Native Americans.
It was a cruel practice, [00:14:00] no matter what time period it was used in.
Don Fitz: You could think of him as the grandfather of biological warfare. I don't know, I don't know how much more racist you can get.
Holly Ingram: And that was disconcerting to know that, and it makes me Think every day about the people that I know that attended Amherst and do they know this and What would you do with that?
Victoria Benefield: I go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois The town is named after John Evans and the school was founded by the same man Evans was head of Indian Affairs in the Colorado Territory when the Sand Creek Massacre occurred 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people mostly women and children were murdered by American soldiers I'm reminded of this often when I'm walking around Evanston.
It's strange to me that it is John Evans name that is honored, Remembered and repeated in this town, not the names of the innocent Native Americans who died in anguish.[00:15:00]
Susan McCray Armstrong: I took a look at Pershing Avenue, and we do share with St. Louis City, and it's named for General John J. Pershing.
Emily Soto: In 1898, General John J. Pershing, served as commander of the 10th Cavalry, a regiment of black soldiers. He led this regiment in both the Indian Wars and the Spanish American War, earning the nickname Black Jack because of his association with these black men. He was even known to praise them, which was pretty unusual at the time.
But then came World War I.
Victoria Benefield: From 1917 to 1918, Pershing was with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He chose to have the black forces integrate with the French and fight alongside them, but not integrate with American soldiers.[00:16:00]
Emily Soto: The black troops who fought with the French were successful in the war, and returned home believing they would receive better treatment from white Americans after supporting the cause abroad. But that was not the case.
For Susan, Her connection with Pershing Avenue is a little more personal.
Susan McCray Armstrong: I live on Pershing Avenue in University City's 1st Ward. Historically, Black people were prohibited from living in this ward. I was always proud to live on this street. It felt like an accomplishment. When I interviewed for jobs, people were impressed by the street name.
Emily Soto: But a successful bid to change the name also holds deeper significance. General Pershing occupies a dark part of Susan's history.
Susan McCray Armstrong: My grandfather was a World War I troop. The story that I was raised [00:17:00] with about him was he drank himself to death. So in this, uh, story about Pershing, I knew my grandpa was a troop, celebrated, came back to the state, and then when he went back to Rock Island, Illinois, he was denied the right to buy a home.
So he had a wife and five children, my mom, and he, he could not buy a home, even though he could afford it. So they put them on the poor side of town, where he, he pretty much died in a boarding home. Celebrated black troop, World War I, no rights whatsoever. The leadership at that time had a say about that, and Pershing was one of them.
He was sending sons to war for the parents of America. He's making decisions about black troops, how they would not get the rights that the white troops did, no matter what the bravery. He promised them dignity, but he didn't guarantee it.
The name Pershing carries [00:18:00] capital, and if street names were meant to convey honor, then the names in the U. S. don't reflect the reality of our history. So what can we do about it?
Victoria Benefield: For the task force, the answer to that question is to change the street names. But it's not up to them how, or even if, that actually happens. Their job was to research the roughly 200 street names in University City and present their findings to the City Council. This is what Mayor Terry Crow had to say about the task force in his State of the City on March 4th of last year.
Mayor Terry Crow: They have worked tirelessly to examine street after street after street. The City Council will be taking up their report in the next month and again it'll be public information to everyone. The four streets that probably have garnered the most attention are Jackson, Pershing Amherst [00:19:00] and Wilson. I will say on behalf of council, we want to hear from you as to how you think we can best address this issue that we face.
Victoria Benefield: It has been a year since the report was submitted. As of this recording, the council is working toward changing only the name of one street, Jackson Avenue. When asked, the city was not available for further comment.
Emily Soto: Throughout the task force's process, they collected citizen comments. Many of them even offered new names for streets. They are the names of people who led slave revolts, headed tribes, wrote poetry and music. One was even the first Black student to attend University City High School. They represent parts of American history that are often left out, and these are some of the names the residents of University City would like to honor.
Task Force Members: James Bighart.
Nat Turner [00:20:00] Andrea Scott.
Angela Davis. James Baldwin.
George Woolley. Robert Cohn, U City High School class of 1957. Genora Jones, in my same graduating class, the first African American, the first Black student. To graduate University City High School in 1957.
Victoria Benefield: These names could replace Jackson,
Holly Ingram: Wilson, Amherst, and finally, Pershing.
Victoria Benefield: The four names the task force determined were offensive and did not align with University City's diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. While this process could take years, Susan, Holly, Mimi, and Dawn are still determined to see that all four street names are changed.
Don Fitz: I think any time you have a social upheaval, you know, people rename streets. Rename streets, taking down statues and putting up new statues, renaming parks. Now there is [00:21:00] virtually every city in the United States has a street named Martin Luther King Jr. So it's, you know, it's part of the historic process.
And also, to not rename streets, just to say nothing happened, this, and so for us, it was like saying that George Floyd's murder was a non event. It's not something that United States needs to respond to. And for us, we were saying, yes, it is a historic event. And it is something that needs to be, uh, the source of Renaming Streets.
Narrator: Thank you for joining Change Agents. Produced by Juneteenth Productions. With funding support from the Chicago Community Trust. And the Food Bank. Field Foundation, please subscribe to our series on Apple [00:22:00] podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. Do you have a story to share? Join us in the ongoing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our website, changeagentsthepodcast.com.