Dudley Square rename goes to voters

Question to go on ballot

Residents will be able to vote on whether Dudley Square should become Nubian Square in the latest move to change a Boston landmark’s name because of its racial history.

The city council unanimously OK’d the petition for a ballot question, which is backed by Mayor Martin Walsh.

The question on the Nov. 5 ballot will be: “Do you support the renaming/ changing of Dudley Square to Nubian Square?”

City Councilor Kim Janey, who represents Roxbury and the square, said, “The residents of Roxbury deserve the right to determine for themselves what they would like to be called.”

The square is named after a family that includes a governor of what then was the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Proponents of the name change say the family presided over a period of slavery in Massachusetts, making it a particularly inappropriate name for the business district of majority-black Roxbury.

Nubia is an ancient African empire in present-day Sudan, where members of the Nubian ethnic group continue to live today. Proponents including the Nubian Square Group say this name would better fit the populace and push back against the tendrils of gentrification creeping into the area.

Some in the community, including Roxbury community paper The Bay State Banner, have supported the name change but pushed back against the square becoming “Nubian,” as Nubians owned slaves and modernday Sudan, the territory of historic Nubia, doesn’t have a stellar human-rights record.

The mayor’s office backs the move to include the ballot question, but isn’t taking a position on how people should vote.