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Wait for MLK Street has been long enough

By Times editorial
Published February 9, 2007

Safety Harbor Mayor Andy Steingold says there was a good reason the City Commission decided Monday to delay voting on whether to drop the dual name for "M.L. King Street N/Fourth Street N."

"Goodwill," he said. The property owners along the street deserved notice that the dual name might be dropped.

However, when a segment of the Safety Harbor population already has waited 16 years for the road to just be named "M.L. King Street," another delay only creates more ill will. It sends a message that the African-American residents of the city, who have had to wait and wait and wait for city services and attention for decades, will have to wait some more.

Commissioners seemed in agreement that the street should immediately be known as Martin Luther King Street, but they couldn't or wouldn't do the deed Monday night. Instead, they plan to vote at a meeting Feb. 19. Fortunately, the commission didn't seem to agree with the suggestion of Commissioner James McCormick to delay the change a few months so businesses could update their stationery.

"Sixteen years is notice enough," Steingold said.

It was in early 1990 that a group called Citizens United for Progress and its then-leader Carl Devine asked the city to consider renaming Fourth Street for the late civil rights leader. Cities throughout the country had done so, including St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tarpon Springs.

Devine said that Fourth Street was suggested because it cuts across Safety Harbor from McMullen-Booth Road to Phillippe Parkway and passes through different types of neighborhoods and commercial areas. The renaming would help unify those disparate areas, just as King would have liked. Devine also called the request "a symbolic test of whether the door to City Hall is really open to our concerns."

Open? Not really. Devine had to wait a month for then-City Manager John Downes to respond. Downes said he needed to get petition signatures before talking to the City Commission or should even consider a much shorter, less significant street for renaming. Downes also told a Times reporter, "oftentimes there are people who can't identify with Martin Luther King," which spawned accusations that he was a racist.

After weeks of controversy, commission meetings that drew hundreds, and the forced resignation of Downes, in part because of his handling of the controversy, the City Commission voted for the dual name for the street over the opposition of many white residents.

One commissioner's motion to drop the dual name after five years died for lack of a second, but Devine and others left the meeting believing the dual moniker would be eliminated within five years.

It wasn't. A formal request from resident Barbara Bronson and the Safety Harbor African Alliance last month resurrected the issue. Some black residents said the dual name had hurt them for years and they wanted it changed.

They expected that vote Monday night. Surely, they finally will get it Feb. 19.

The black community of Safety Harbor has suffered from benign neglect by City Hall for many years. This request is one of the few the community has made, and it is way past time to grant it.

[Last modified February 9, 2007, 07:17:33]