Imagine living in a small town nestled in the Sierra foothills, on “Jim Crow Road,” and a black UPS driver comes by to drop off a package. Or you call “some public agency” they ask for your address, “and you go ‘Jim Crow Road,’” resident Jim Steinbarth says. Tom DeJonghe, who owns a rustic resort on Jim Crow Road, said it’s hurting his business. “Guests have not found the Jim Crow name acceptable,” he says.
All four property owners on the road wanted the name changed. A local resident who doesn’t live on the road — meaning the name isn’t her problem — thought changing it would be bowing to “cancel culture.” Yep, folks, that’s how stupid conservative ideology has become. (I remember when political fights were over things like big vs. small government, more vs. less regulation, higher vs. lower taxes, etc.; seems like a long time ago.)
At first, I thought it wouldn’t happen, because,
“Three of the supervisors spoke out against renaming the road, with one of them questioning why someone would buy property there if they took issue with it. Another said he felt there were ‘better things to worry about than changing names of roads and changing names of things because it’s a racist thing.'”
and as the board has only five members, that’s a majority.
“Supervisor Sharon Dryden said Crow ‘was a real guy, an immigrant to this country,’ adding that she wanted to ‘respect that legacy that he left. I think if I lived on Jim Crow Road I’d be pretty proud of it, probably, because of what his contributions were.'”
(That “real guy” was a Hawaiian, a forty-niner prospector, and it’s a leadpipe cinch that “Jim Crow” was an alias, not his real name. As for his legacy, his mining partner thought very little of him after “Jim Crow” absconded with their provisions.)
But credit Dryden for putting the issue in perspective, explaining exactly what it’s about, and making clear us where she was coming from:
“’The issues over racial equality, which is why we’re having this discussion right now, have nothing to do with a little road in Sierra County that honors a man that was one of the early settlers,’ Dryden said during the public hearing.”
The issues over racial equality had everything to do with it, which is why they spent more time on it than anything else on their Tuesday, June 1, 2021, meeting agenda — and then voted 4-1 to change “Jim Crow Street” to “Crow City Street.” (This doesn’t necessarily mean the holdout is racist; “insensitive” and “pigheaded” are equally plausible explanations of her vote.)
The story came to my attention in the Seattle Times; read the original story here, and the updated story here.
The county supervisors certainly didn’t seem enthusiastic at first, or very receptive to the complaints, but apparently they know a bad look when they see one, and decided keeping the “Jim Crow Street” name isn’t the kind of national news they want to make, or what they want to be remembered for.
In October 2020, the Placer County Board of Supervisors changed a Tahoe street name from “Coon Street” to “Raccoon Street.” Read that story here.
Photo: The Sierra County Board of Supervisors, left to right, Lee Adams, Peter Huebner, Paul Roen, Sharon Dryden, and Terry LeBlanc (the only “no” vote)
Lee Adams, chair
It seems a simple thing to change a name, but it is not. Even if changed some of the locals will still use the old name for decades. Then there is what do you change the name to. I for one don’t think we should change names to make some thin skinned folks happy. They need opportunities to build character. Ugly place names do that. In this case there was a guy with the name. [This comment has been edited.]
Change it to “Crow Street.” How many people know it refers to a local miner, not despicable segregation practices? How do racist-sounding place names “build character?” Someone who calls people who object to racism “thin-skinned” sure doesn’t have more character than they do.
I was close; they changed it to “Crow City Street.” I wonder how long they argued over that name.