To Recognize Black History, Cities Rename Their Streets

Over the last month, a new name for Chicago’s iconic lakefront thoroughfare has entered the city’s lexicon. On June 25, the city council voted to change the road’s name to Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive. It’s one of a number of moves in U.S. cities to rename streets over the last year in recognition of Black historical figures.

Chicago’s new street moniker recognizes Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a Haitian-born Black pioneer and trader who was the first non-Indigenous settler of what is now the third-largest U.S. city. The notion of renaming Lake Shore Drive in his honor dates back years, and the push to honor him in other public spaces goes back decades to the 1980s administration of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.