Aldermen debate renaming Outer Drive
DuSable, the Black man credited with founding Chicago, would be honored
The famous song lyrics about Chicago’s iconic lakefront roadway might soon need to be amended to “slippin’ on byon Jean Baptiste, Friday night trouble bound.”
Aldermen on Friday debated naming Lake Shore Drive for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the Black man who’s credited with founding Chicago.
The proposal would rename about 17 miles of the Outer Drive, from Hollywood Avenue on the north to 67th Street on the south, to honor DuSable, a Black explorer of Haitian descent who’s credited as the area’s first nonnative settler for establishing a trading post along the Chicago River in 1779.
South Side Ald. David Moore, 17th, said he was moved to introduce the plan last fall after taking a boat tour downtown and noticing DuSable never came up as the guide mentioned the many honorees in Chicago’s public places.
“That just hurt me in the heart, and I said, ‘I have to do something about this,’” Moore said.
The DuSable Museum of African American History, DuSable High School and a bust of DuSable along Michigan Avenue north of the DuSable Bridge downtown aren’t sufficient, the alderman said. “That’s not enough for the founder of this great city,” he said.
Moore noted the killing of George Floyd, who was Black, by Minneapolis police this past spring, which set off widespread unrest in Chicago and elsewhere, as a turning point in the discussion of honoring DuSable and other Black Chicagoans.
“I am not going back. People say we need to go back to normal. What we were dealing with wasn’t normal,” Moore said.
After initially calling for Lake Shore Drive in its entirety to be renamed, Moore changed his proposal to just the Outer Drive so residents and businesses on the Inner Drive don’t have to go through the cost and hassle of changing their addresses.
Nonetheless, Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, raised concerns about the thousands of residences and businesses on the Inner Drive that would need address changes if that part of the roadway were renamed, prompting an angry response from Moore because the Inner Drive is no longer included in his ordinance.
“For you to start with fear mongering, that’s ( b———-),” Moore said. “We removed the residents fromthis discussion.”
There’s recent precedent for such a change. The City Council last year renamed Congress Parkway downtown to honor crusading Black investigative journalist Ida B. Wells.
City Department of Transportation Commissioner Gia Biagi spoke favorably of the DuSable idea Friday. “Iwant you to know, I understand the great power in the naming of our public spaces,” Biagi said during the hearing.
The city work to rename the Outer Drive would be significant, from changing street signs to updating computer geolocation systems, Biagi said. “This is not to say it cannot be figured out or carried out,” she said.
Ald. Howard Brookins Jr., 21st, said he will hold an up-or-down vote on the plan by April in the Transportation Committee he chairs.