Tempe picks new names for streets, parks linked to KKK

Pioneers, activists to be honored; cost still unclear

Tempe has honed in on new names for two of its city roads, Laird Street and Hudson Lane, and three of its parks — Hudson, Harelson and Redden parks — whose original namesakes were members of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s.

It’s part of a lengthy renaming effort that began in 2021 shortly after resident Drew Sullivan, and staffers at both the Arizona Historical Society and Tempe History Museum confirmed that five former Klansmen had their names on city property:

● Hugh Laird, a politician who was Tempe’s mayor for 14 years, a city official for nearly four decades and also served in the state legislature.

● Harvey Harelson, a member of the Tempe City Council from 1924 to 1928 who also sat on the Tempe Union High School board.

● Estmer Hudson, a cotton mogul who held a leadership position in the KKK.

● The brothers Byron and Lowell Redden. The former served on the same school board as Harelson.

Tempe City Manager Andrew Ching said their membership in the KKK’s Butte Klan No. 3 was proven beyond any doubt using a 1922 grand jury investigation that listed names of known KKK members, official membership forms and even order receipts for Klan robes.

“When our team of historians began to do their research and discovered what we learned, the council and myself felt it was important to act,” said Corey Woods, who became Tempe’s first black mayor in 2020.

On Feb. 9, Tempe officials settled on a slate of replacement names aimed at “representing those who were harmed.” They include civil rights activists, black and Hispanic pioneers who lived in the area, and a local couple whose 1925 lawsuit paved the way for desegregation in schools nationwide.

City Council members were expected to finalize the new names during their meeting on March 2, but the actual name changes will happen sometime this summer. Staffers still need to sort out the logistics, including how to reimburse residents who have to update their addresses.

“This is really touching to me because I’ve had people (in my family) who have died by hanging by the Ku Klux Klan, so I understand what this means emotionally,” said Tempe City Councilmember Berdetta Hodge, the first Black woman to sit on the council.

Pioneers and activists to replace KKK namesakes

Ching began heading Tempe’s Street and Park Renaming Ad Hoc Committee, a 20-person team that met four times at the end of 2022 to identify viable replacement names.

Its members ranged from former Mayor Neil Giuliano to tribal representative Reylynne Williams to Monica Trejo, a board member in the Tempe Elementary School District where three schools were renamed for similar reasons.

The committee had a small set of criteria for choosing new names: the proposed namesake had

to be dead, had been a member of groups that were targeted by the KKK or had spent their lives fighting against the kind of racism that defined the Klan.

Officials and committee members ultimately chose six new names for the city properties in question:

● East Laird Street will now be called Obregon Street for pioneer farmer Pedro Obregon. The city’s web page says he was an upstanding Tempe resident who was known as Don Pedro “for his work to take care of others.”

● West Laird Street will be named Romo-Jones Street. It honors pioneers Adolfo Romo and Joaquina Jones, who won a desegregation lawsuit against Mayor Hugh Laird’s brother William, who represented the Tempe Elementary School District, which allowed the couple’s Hispanic children to attend school with white children.

● Hudson Park will be renamed Parque de Soza for the “multigenerational Latino pioneer Soza family” that was “instrumental in agriculture and canal construction of the Roosevelt Dam.”

● Redden Park will be called Michelle Brooks-Totress Park, after Brooks-Totresss, a “community activist, philanthropist and volunteer” who passed away last year and is the most modern namesake on the list. She served on Tempe’s African American Advisory Committee for 14 years.

● Hudson Lane is set to be replaced by Thomas Lane for African American pioneers Maggie and Theodore Thomas. The business owners rented housing to black ASU students who were barred from living on campus, and Theodore is believed to have been a buffalo soldier.

● Harelson Park will be named Mary and Moses Green Park after a couple who were the first African American landowners in Tempe.

Tempe City Council members renamed some additional properties on Thursday in an effort to not exclude some of the viable names put forward by the committee.

Sixth Street Park will be renamed Ragsdale-MLK Park, for example. Lincoln Ragsdale was a prominent local Civil Rights activist, businessman and veteran who worked to bring Martin Luther King Jr. to ASU’s campus in 1964.

“I think it tells a really powerful story about what Lincoln Ragsdale’s role was in bringing Martin Luther King Jr. to the city of Tempe, but it’s also very much a story about who we are as a community and who we strive to be,” Woods said. “We don’t currently have a street in Tempe named after MLK like a lot of other cities. I think that is something that we should address.”

The other added renaming will take place on a 160-acre ranch east of Rural Road that was once owned by the Latino pioneer Sotelo family. Prominent members include frontierswoman Manuela Sotelo, who was known as the “Mexican Mother of Tempe.”

The site was originally called Rancho de Sotelo-Soza, but a descendant of the two families asked that they be honored separately. The site will be dubbed Rancho de Sotelo and recognized with signs.

Cost still unclear, logistical questions to sort out

The renamed areas won’t affect any businesses, but the 173 nearby residents will likely have to update their licenses and change a number of other documents to reflect their new addresses.

City staffers expect that the cost for each resident will only be about $12 for a new license, but will be offering up to $100 in reimbursements and could shell out more if there are “unforeseen circumstances.”

Tempe was still organizing the reimbursement process and said residents will have one year to file their claim after the properties are officially renamed, which will likely take place over the summer.

Officials are prepared to spend a maximum of $17,500 on those repayments, although they expect it will be much lower given that only 10% of residents requested reimbursements when Phoenix took on a similar renaming effort.

Tempe leaders said the city will update certain records for residents, including utility bills. But some residents who oppose the renaming contend that the change will be too much of a headache for locals, creating a big to-do regardless of whether the city covers the costs.

Aside from reimbursement, staffers don’t know how much the name change will cost. Ching contends that it won’t be too expensive, however, and most of the expenses predicted in city documents are likely to be minor ones for things such as new signs and honorary plaques.

Tempe staffers will also have to contact the affected residents, update internal city systems that need accurate street names to be effective, and notify outside groups such as Google and the U.S. Post Office whose services rely on up-to-date addresses.