Street name changes get easier

50% approval OK, Hollywood says

HOLLYWOOD — A small bit of progress was made Wednesday night in the glacially paced effort to rename three city streets that honor Confederate war generals.

City commissioners agreed it will now take only 50 percent approval from property owners responding to a mail-in ballot to rename the streets. The rule being replaced required a two-thirds vote.

“I am not opposed to renaming all three streets,” said Commissioner Linda Sherwood. “I want the people who live on those streets to be notified.”

The three streets in question are named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee and John Bell Hood. The push to rename them first arose more than 10 years ago, but faded when commissioners ignored critics’ pleas.

The controversy made headlines again in 2015 after vandals painted over signs on all three streets. Forrest is also known as one of the founders of the KKK.

Longtime Hollywood resident Benjamin Israel, an African American and Orthodox Jew, has taken the lead in demanding the streets be renamed. He now has help from

community activists and the Anti-Defamation League.

“Nobody wants to live on a street named after Charles Manson,” Israel said late Wednesday. “Yet a bunch of us are living on a street named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.”

But not everyone favors changing the names.

Hollywood resident Cynthia Baker told commissioners she grew up in Richmond and was taught to preserve history, even when she was not proud of that history.

“These streets are a teaching opportunity,” she said. “We should not get rid of them.”