Little Rock officials weigh renaming Confederate Boulevard

Source: AP

By CLAUDIA LAUER

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — While only a short stretch of Confederate Boulevard remains, to some it is a glaring reminder of Little Rock's checkered racial past.

City officials are expected to consider a petition Thursday to rename the boulevard's last few blocks after one of the area's first black property owners. Coincidentally, the planning commission's vote comes 58 years to the day that 1,200 troops arrived to escort nine black students to their first day of class during the integration of Central High School.

While many debates over Southern symbols are decades old, others have emerged in the months since nine black church members were shot and killed this summer at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The white man charged in the killings, Dylann Roof, posted photos before the shooting of himself with a Confederate flag and symbols associated with white supremacy.

Since then, South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its State House and Memphis, Tennessee, voted to remove from a public park a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early leader in the Ku Klux Klan.

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FILE - In this Nov. 29, 2004 file photo, traffic passes a road sign designating Confederate Boulevard near downtown Little Rock, Ark. The Little Rock Planning Commission will consider a request to erase the remaining four blocks of Confederate Boulevard from city maps Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, the 58th anniversary of 1,200 federal troops arriving in Little Rock to help ensure the integration of Central High School. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)

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