More Greenville, NC

This article about MLK signage in Greenville, NC, seems fairly routine. But the comments from readers that follow at the end are interesting.

Like this:

I just moved to town to expand a business enterprise. But when I read about political resources spent like this I feel this is a community divided.

This:

I feel that this is ridiculous. MLK is becoming very generic. It’s everywhere! How about honoring someone local? I really feel that this could easily become a n issue of race. It’s like a test. How much will you put up with?

This:

I was in Greenville last week and spotted the MLK sign right off the bat. Maybe some need glasses or maybe they need to get a life and stop complaining about everything that has been given to them already. Not all races get free everything, some have to work for it. I’m sick of the blacks complaining in the Pitt area. They need to get a job. Oh by the way, pull up your pants and learn how to talk.

And this:

The root of the problem is that a street was renamed and after the fact people realized that because of the new name it might hurt the revitalization(Gentrification) project that is going on in that area. Plus many of the business owners on Fifth street objected to the name change.

Disagreements in North Carolina

Marchers traveled down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on Saturday denouncing the city’s street-renaming effort and promoting a movement for social and economic equality.

On Friday, the U.S. 264 Bypass will be named Martin Luther King Jr. Highway and the current road named for King will revert back to West Fifth Street following a 5-4 vote by the Pitt County Board of Commissioners in February and a 4-2 Greenville City Council vote in December.

The rest of the story here.

Hoping to find some Greenville, NC, Flickr users or others…

MLK, or West Fifth?

In Greenville, North Carolina, there is debate about Martin Luther King Drive, and it sounds unpleasant. This column in The Daily Reflector, written by the paper’s executive editor Al Clark, says the decision “years ago” to rename the city’s West Fifth Street after MLK, but leave East Fifth Street’s name as it was, was “a mistake.”

“This decision did as much to split Greenville’s black and white communities as the name change split the street itself,” he writes.

The details are probably clearer to the paper’s readers than to a non-resident of Greenville, but basically it seems there’s back and forth about whether to drop the MLK name and return it to West Fifth Street. Clark describes a recent city council meeting on this subject as a “raw,” temper-flaring affair.

“The council ultimately voted 4-2 that night along racial lines to reaffirm a previous resolution to return the name of West Fifth Street to Martin Luther King Drive. This came up after the state Department of Transportation apparently reversed itself on whether the city could have more than one street named for King. The board first voted in December to name the U.S. 264 Bypass after King and change MLK Drive back to West Fifth.”