Chapel Hill Should Stop and Think Before Renaming Streets

Cameron Avenue in front of the South Building on UNC’s Campus. Photo by Ildar Sagdejev.

In Carrboro, many residents of Carr Street made their voices heard against a recent move by the town council to rename Carr Street after community activist Braxton Foushee. The residents noted that they had only been contacted a few days before the meeting about the proposal to change the name. Carr Street, for those residents, referred to their multiracial community rather than the white supremacist Julian S. Carr, also the namesake of Carrboro.

Yet the Carrboro Town Council still decided to go ahead with the renaming despite these objections. Their solution to alleviate the concerns of the residents is to create a fund for financial assistance, which gives $100 to every low-income resident of Carr Street who applies to offset “direct and indirect costs.”

$100 isn’t a lot when one considers that residents are being asked to change their address in the online DMV system, with the IRS, for Social Security payments, and a wide range of financial and insurance documents. There’s also the non-monetary costs: people being confused about where somebody lives, the increased possibility of errors with utilities and mail, etc. For somebody being paid the Orange County Living Wage of $17.65, $100 is equal to what they’d earn in about five and a half hours of work. Yet I would expect this process to take more time than that and affect even residents above 80% of the area median income.

Now a similar campaign is coming to Chapel Hill. Change the Names, a grassroots organization that started in 2021, has brought a petition before the Chapel Hill Town Council asking for Cameron Avenue, a major street near UNC’s campus, to be renamed to Pauli Murray Avenue. So it’s up to the Town Council to decide if they will mishandle the renaming as was the case with Carrboro’s approach to Carr Street, or learn lessons from their neighbors to adequately weigh the costs and benefits of renaming. However, Chapel Hill is instead being urged to rush the process.

“Part C of your petition guidelines allows immediate action,” Joyce Sandy of Change the Names told the Town Council. “I know because I read it. Start now to devise and implement a plan.”

But the case of Carr Street in Carrboro shows that rushing to make changes can come with pitfalls, such as lacking resident support. The first step should be to ascertain, exactly, what the costs and the benefits are of street renaming and who gets them. Change the Names has given a few different arguments in their petition for who benefits and why.  

The strongest argument is that street names like Cameron Avenue harm residents, particularly African-American residents, by reminding them of slavery and historical injustice. Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board chair Rani Dasi made this argument in the case of the renaming of Carr Street.

However, even this argument isn’t without its flaws. The petition calls more attention to streets being named after enslavers, which doesn’t fit neatly with the goal of letting people not think about them. Furthermore, far and away the most prominent connection between slavery and local names is the name of Carrboro, which hasn’t been changed despite many calls for alternate names, in large part because of costs and logistical hurdles. The existence of streets with names like Cameron, Vance, and Kenan is just the cherry on top.

Still, it’s much better than the other arguments advanced by Change the Names. They argue that Chapel Hill’s progressive reputation is being imperiled as cities like Durham and Raleigh move forward to change the names of their streets. Besides the obvious if-Durham-jumped-off-a-cliff-would-you-too nature of their argument, Chapel Hill should prioritize having a reputation of competent municipal government — the kind of government that makes sure its supposedly anti-racist policies actually have anti-racist impact — over a reputation of being progressive.

Furthermore, they argue that it’s good to have street names that honor women and people of color. This is a solid argument, but it could be achieved at a much lower cost through other ways. New streets are popping up all the time in Chapel Hill, and they’re naming them things like Elliott Road Extension and Estes Road Extension. Instead, the Town Council and Change the Names could try to name new streets after Pauli Murray and the other deserving local heroes that Change the Names has identified.

This also suggests another way to eliminate streets named after white supremacists: rename them after diverse historic figures with the same last names. This has already been suggested for Carrboro, replacing Julian S. Carr with civil rights leader Johnnie Carr. This style of naming would let Chapel Hill honor people who deserve those honors, repudiate racism, and go some distance to not remind people of the enslavement of their ancestors.

And it would also show respect for the time and effort that residents must invest in changing their addresses. Carr Street is a small residential street, as are many of the other roads named for bigotry in Chapel Hill, but Cameron Avenue is a relatively important thoroughfare. Thus, it having two names would be a repeat of the confusion and high costs that came to the fore in Chapel Hill’s 2004 renaming of Airport Road to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. For an indication of how long it takes for names to change in public consciousness, I’ve still heard people calling MLK Airport Road in the last few years.

It’s a welcome sign that Change the Names has gotten support on their petition from one person who would actually have to change their address, and they mention doing work to canvas other residents thereof. But the town needs to hear from the people who are most directly affected before making any change. In the case of Cameron Avenue, at least one resident already opposes it. In Carrboro, it took unanimous consent from property owners to rename Phipps Street to Lavender Street; this bar is higher than necessary, but it’s more in the direction that Chapel Hill should be aiming for.

Further consideration might show that renaming Cameron Avenue is or isn’t the best option for the community of Chapel Hill, but it would be irresponsible for the Town Council to rush into it under the assumption that anything done with anti-racist motives will turn out well. I wouldn’t want it to take priority over more important issues on the town’s agenda such as a proposed referendum on an affordable housing bond on the ballot this November. However, it’s still wrong to operate under the assumption that address changes are only a minimal irritation, or that residents might not have positive associations with the current name. 

Chapel Hill shouldn’t follow the route of Carrboro and run roughshod over the wishes of actual residents to appease vague arguments to deal what might feel like a blow against racism. Instead, it should consider the actual facts of the matter and recognize the importance of resident consent in renaming streets.