Louisiana State University has renamed the street on which the African American Cultural Center is located. Till this past week the center's address was
3 Raphael Semmes Road
Yes, that Semmes...the Alabama (almost) native Confederate Civil War Admiral/General who commanded the CSS Alabama.
WWL News reports the new name will be Veterans Drive. Others streets are being renamed as well, a dozen of them named for people...but Semmes is the only Confederate name being banished.
That also raises the perennial question for Montgomery, which has more than its share of Confederate named places, including Jefferson Davis High School (now an almost all-black school), and Jeff Davis Avenue, which cuts across a mostly black neighborhood from Decatur Avenue to Hill Street, running parallel to---ironically--the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway---otherwise known as I-85.
"The Dean" of The Alabama Legislature--Rep. Alvin Holmes sponsored the resolution naming a stretch I-85 in Montgomery for Dr. King some four decades ago.
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