After three years of discussion, the City Council in Alexandria, Va., voted Saturday to remove the name of Jefferson Davis from a city highway.
Jefferson Davis Highway, named for the only president of the Confederacy, will be renamed Richmond Highway, council members decided in a 6-0 vote.
The change that will take effect Jan. 1 of next year, a city news release said.
The old name offended many residents of Virginia’s seventh-largest city, which has an estimated population of about 160,000 and is roughly 8 miles south of Washington D.C.
“It’s offensive. It’s offensive to those moving in, those who have been here. So, it’s time for a change,” resident Amanda Mitchell told Washington’s WJLA-TV.
The change will reportedly cost the city $27,000 for new signage and other related expenses for the road, which is also part of U.S. Route 1.
A deadly massacre in 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., kick-started the name-change process, the Washington Post reported. Nine people died in the shooting.
That shooting, and incidents such as a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year, have had many communities in the South reconsidering the legacy of the Confederacy.
Many of the communities have been removing statues of Confederate figures, or changing names of streets or buildings — although not without objections from those who say the tributes help communicate the history of the region.
Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg, however, supported the highway name change.
“It speaks to who we are. That we are a city of kindness and compassion, a city where we’re not just tolerant but embracing and accepting where diversity is a core value,” Silberberg told WJLA-TV.
A community task force unanimously recommended the new name, “Richmond Highway,” which came from hundreds of suggestions, the Post reported.
“The change will reportedly cost the city $27,000 for new signage and other related expenses for the road, which is also part of U.S. Route 1”
Another way to skim some cash for themselves, and their joo butt buddies…
Hatr’s Finger!!!
May the south rise again but more powerful than ever and this time may the people win their country back from the tyrants in Washington.
Bunch of bastards, all of them.
Why not Martin Luther /Sammy Davis king freeway?
Trotsky causeway??
Would you please shut up?! Your giving them ideas!!! For gods sake dont say Stalin highway- never mind too late.
27 k for a highway ???
That’s pretty cheap by government standards.
Well.. I paid about 40k to cut my road in here.
I still have to put a sign up on it.
That says…
No trespassing.
No niggers ..
No crackers…
No gooks.
And no Kikes.
I
“Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg, however, supported the highway name change.”
’nuff said.
.
Well, just a bit more stirring:
Every time a monument comes down or a street name is changed I feel something die inside me. Ya mess with my past ya mess with me, who I am, where I came from.
Everybody’s still frikkin’ offended, even when we’ve shown how un-cool it is to be EASILY OFFENDED, how passe’, how weak.
I guess it feels bad ’cause I myself can’t rebuild the monuments or change the street names back, or get rid of the bastards who are doin’ the deeds. Maybe one day it’ll all level out. Lee will sit tall, perfectly imperfect. Jefferson Davis, too, and all the rest, and no one will forget there was a righteous fight and some had the pure motives and some did not. But it was what it was, and it ain’t no lie. To willfully forget is to lie.
.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
~ George Santayana