Highway name review:
A state board could rename part of U.S. 60 that goes by the moniker of Jefferson Davis Highway. A change might result in honoring former Gov. Rose Mofford, who lived in Globe, instead of the president of the Confederacy.
Each time Roberto Reveles passes the Jefferson Davis Highway monument near his Gold Canyon home, he recalls his childhood.
Segregation touched nearly every aspect of it.
Reveles saw only Native and Mexican-American faces at his Miami, Arizona, school, he said. At church, his family sat on the “Mexican side.”
At the movies, Reveles could watch from the balcony but not the main floor. He could use the pool only on Saturdays, before the YMCA drained the week’s dirty water.
“That was my frame for the inhumanity that can be practiced on minority communities,” said Reveles, who later became a historian and civil-rights activist. “To me, (the highway monument) is an offensive reminder of a group that was intending to place one culture, one race, over another.”
Reveles is behind the most prominent of three citizen proposals to remove the highway-name designation honoring Davis, the president of the Confederacy.
The designation and corresponding monument, off U.S. 60 near Peralta Road, together constitute one of six Confederate memorials in Arizona.
Though the State Board of Geographic and Historic Names cannot call for removal of monuments or statues, it could make a decision on the highway name as soon as next month.
The board first must confirm the Jefferson Davis Highway name still legally exists, then determine precisely where it applies.
An initial investigation into the history of the designation — conceived by the United Daughters of the Confeder-
acy a century ago — raised doubts about both of those points, thanks to conflicting maps and relocated markers.
The board’s naming guidelines are less ambiguous: Members must evaluate all names for “appropriateness” and “acceptability.”
Reveles said the Jefferson Davis Highway falls short of those requirements, calling its history “clouded” and “confused.” He wants the board to rename the highway in honor of the late Rose Mofford, Arizona’s first female governor and a longtime friend of his.
“Rose Mofford, unlike Jefferson Davis, had a consistent, actual connection to U.S. 60, a highway she frequently traveled between her hometown of Globe and the state Capitol,” Reveles told the board on Monday. “The name change would memorialize her uniquely historic significance.”
Leonard Clark, a community activist and persistent opponent of Arizona’s Confederate memorials, wants the highway renamed in honor of slain civilrights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought the systems Davis supported.
The last proposal, from Marisa Scionti and Shannah Redmon, simply asks that Davis’ name be removed from the route.
“To modern eyes, Arizona’s choice to honor Jefferson Davis is appalling when we have seen terrorism and murders inspired by Confederate icons in recent years,” their application says. “These symbols are not neutral. … They provide a physical object for racists to rally around and cause harm to the public.”
Indeed, tensions related to Confederate memorials and flags have skyrocketed in the two years since a white supremacist killed nine and injured three black members of a Charleston, South Carolina, church.
Those who believe the monuments glorify slavery and racism have clashed, sometimes physically, with others who view them as symbols of Southern history and heritage
Though Arizona has so far avoided the violence in other states, people have repeatedly vandalized Confederate monuments here.
Last month, the Jefferson Davis Highway monument was tarred and feathered, then spray-painted with profanity days later.
“I don’t promote destruction of any historic artifacts,” said Reveles, calling his name-change application a “labor of love.”
“What I’d like to see happen is that we collect all the questionable markers people are concerned about and put them in a museum where there could be a curated, educational history put together,” he said. “I think that would be a much more positive way to proceed and to learn from history.”