Negro Ben Mountain, Dead Indian Creek, Jim Crow Sands.
You might think they are names in literature from another era. But they’re not. They are the actual names of places throughout Oregon.
These and many other places in Oregon today bear the offensive names given to them throughout the state’s history despite efforts over recent years to rename them. But a wave of change, seen now more than ever, is forcing organizations to reconsider long-standing offensive monikers that promote negative stereotypes.
Recent Black Lives Matter protests, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, have brought renewed scrutiny of systemic racism in Oregon and nationwide. Amid that movement, pressure to have racist names and artifacts removed has taken hold.
Kerry Tymchuk, executive director for the Oregon Historical Society, views the moment positively. He said what’s most important is that people have accurate information about history, including “the good, the bad and the ugly.”
“Anytime people are talking about history, it’s a good thing,” he said.
Efforts in Portland
Names were being changed in Portland before the protests, but since June more negative names and artifacts are being re-examined.
In 2017, Lynch View, Lynch Meadows, and Lynch Woods elementary schools lost the “lynch” part of their names. Lynch View was renamed Patrick Lynch Elementary School. No connection exists between the Lynch family and the racist practice associated with their name, but the district believed it was still negative for students and changed it.
More recently, the former Lynchview Park was renamed in June to Verdell Burdine Rutherford Park to honor the woman who fought to pass Oregon’s civil rights law in the 1950s.
Several statues have been taken down by protesters recently, including the Thomas Jefferson Statue in front of Jefferson High and the George Washington statue on the lawn of the German American Society.
The Portland Public School District announced this week it will start Wilson High School renaming efforts in September, prompted by the racist policies of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the U.S. A petition for the effort has received thousands of signatures in support.
Community support and petitions for renaming other local schools have gained traction, as well, including Jefferson High and Jackson Middle. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the U.S, was a slave owner, and Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, signed the Indian Removal Act.
Kurt Krueger is a part of Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, the organization in charge of Portland city street names. As Portland’s development review manager, he has received calls and emails about few street changes, but the city has not seen any official applications yet. Among the possible changes are North Calhoun Street and Southeast Harney Street.
“There’s definitely been more interest than I’ve seen in some time,” Krueger said.
Harney, and the nearby park with the same name, is named after William Harney. Harney and troops he led killed a significant number of Native Americans. He was also accused of being disloyal to the Union in the Civil War.
Calhoun, in the St. John’s area of North Portland, is named after John C. Calhoun, the seventh vice president of the U.S. and a defender of slavery. A Change.org petition, started a month ago, calls to rename the street DePreist Avenue after James DePreist, a Black music director of the Oregon Symphony who died in 2013.
The city code only allows one change a year, so Krueger said he is working with Portland commissioners on how to approach the anticipated influx of proposed changes.
“Usually we see one at a time, not several at a time coming out,” Krueger said. “So, that’s the unique situation we have right now.”
Portland city code section 17 lays out the rules for Portland street names.
“The name of the street proposed for renaming shall not be changed if the existing name is of historic significance, or the street is significant in its own right,” the code reads.
A board of historians is appointed in each street renaming process to help determine the historical significance on a case-by-case basis.
“If community members and city leaders determined that there are streets that don’t reflect our community’s values, we were ready to work with city council members and community members on how to address that,” Krueger said.
Efforts statewide
Names with racist histories extend beyond Portland, and so to do the efforts to change them.
On the University of Oregon’s campus, it was announced in late June that Deady Hall will be renamed, countering a decision made in 2017 against the effort. Matthew Deady, president of Oregon’s constitutional convention in 1857, advocated for racist policies in the state’s constitution. The building will temporarily be called University Hall, the university said.
Oregon legislation formally called in 2001 for the removal of “squaw” seen in many names of lakes, rivers and other natural features. The process, spearheaded by the Oregon Geographic Names Board, has been slow but successful at removing 118 of the 182 “squaw” named places in the state.
Historian Chet Orloff, a member of the Oregon Geographical Names Board, said no new name change requests have come to their board in the months of protests and calls for reform.
A pending application, submitted in July 2019, requests that Negro Ben Mountain in Jackson County be renamed to Ben Johnson Mountain. That would be the most recent name change for the mountain, which, before being changed to “Negro” in the 1960s, included another racial slur.
Ben, referenced in the name, was a blacksmith who operated a shop in the area, according to the book “Oregon Geographic Names.” The man’s last name had been unknown, but in 2003 a historian discovered information about someone they believed to be the same man, Ben Johnson.
“We know his last name, it’s appropriate and respectful, in 2019, to call it Ben Johnson Mountain, not ‘Negro Ben Mountain,'” the application reads.
An application submitted in January asks for a place in Clatsop County named Jim Crow Sands to be renamed Pillar Rock Sands.
Various geographic features in Oregon with “Dead Indian” in the name are also in the process of being renamed. Dead Indian Creek, Dead Indian Mountain and Dead Indian Soda Springs are proposed to be renamed after the Latgawa to honor the tribe historically from the area.
The board is reactive, so it doesn’t change geographic names on its own prerogative. Rather, it depends on a member of the public submitting an application. Once the application is reviewed by the state board, the final say is given by a federal board, and approval can take time.
Then, Orloff said, the process to have a place renamed takes about a year, and then even longer before signs and maps are changed.
The debate
President Donald Trump has been outspokenly opposed to national moves recommending forts do away with names of Confederate generals.
“The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Therefore my administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”
Orloff has a different opinion.
“Just because something has the name of someone doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the history of that,” he said.
He said sometimes places are just named by “picking a name out of a dustbin,” citing Fort Bragg. Braxton Bragg was a Confederate general, and not much more than that is known about him, Orloff said, but his name has still been memorialized for over 100 years.
Orloff advocates instead for naming places after people who have had an impact on history in that area.
Tymchuk feels the world has changed and people are working to decide how to address that, but not seeing eye to eye on it always. He quotes another historian’s idea.
“It was historian David McCullough who said, ‘History is who we are and why we are the way we are,'” Tymchuk said. “As people look at history now, they want to define who we are and why we are now, and that’s the debate that’s going on.”
