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Atlanta, GA (WGCL) — People living in Atlanta will get a chance to weigh in on a hotly debated question: Should the city change the name of Confederate Avenue?
Many believe overhauling the street name is long overdue. The debate has been going on for a year now here in the city of Atlanta.
Atlanta councilwoman Carla Smith has scheduled a public listening session Thursday night in council chambers. It’s a chance for those in the city to weigh in on the proposal to rename the hotly-debated Confederate Avenue.
CBS46 first told you about Joe Thomas’s efforts to rename the street. He started an online petition following the deadly protests in Charlottesville last summer.
Late last year, the city of Atlanta formed a Confederate monument advisory group. The group set recommendations to change street names and remove some Confederate monuments and it appears Grant Park’s Confederate Avenue could be the first to see the change.
“The neighbors voted a couple of weeks ago, the ones that are affected,” said District 1 Atlanta Councilwoman Carla Smith. “They voted on the name United. That was what prevailed, and so we are moving along,” she said.
Smith says East Confederate Avenue will also become United Ave. Matt Westmoreland is on the three person council committee that is taking up the recommendations for name changes and removals.
“My goal is to not have monuments and celebrations to racism and to slavery and to the confederacy in our city,” said Westmoreland, the Post 2 At-Large Atlanta City Councilman. “I think it’s important that we not have things that honor that.”
Most people who talked to CBS46 said they didn’t have a problem with the name but support the change.
For others in the community, the name matters. The council will focus on street names first. There about 7 different Confederate names on Atlanta streets at present.
Smith told CBS46, it would cost about $250 per sign to change them over.
As for the actual monuments, the city is considering contextualizing them instead of removing them completely.
Some members of the advisory committee have suggested explicitly mentioning slavery on the markers.
“I think the most important thing is we need to be a city where all of our kids can walk down the street and not walk down a street names Confederate and not walk by Confederate a monument celebrating the confederacy,” Westmoreland said. “In some instances, it is appropriate to remove those markers.”
“Just tell the truth about history,” Smith said. “And, if we do that then I think some of the monuments will stay where they are.”
There will be a public hearing September 25th at 9:30 a.m. at Atlanta City Hall. The listening session is scheduled at 6:30 p.m. Thursday night.
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