Over the last month, a new name for Chicago’s iconic lakefront thoroughfare has entered the city’s lexicon. On June 25, the city council voted to change the road’s name to Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive. It’s one of a number of moves in U.S. cities to rename streets over the last year in recognition of Black historical figures. 

Chicago’s new street moniker recognizes Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a Haitian-born Black pioneer and trader who was the first non-Indigenous settler of what is now the third-largest U.S. city. The notion of renaming Lake Shore Drive in his honor dates back years, and the push to honor him in other public spaces goes back decades to the 1980s administration of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor. 

But as in other cities, the movement gained greater momentum in the year since George Floyd was killed under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

“This is a bit of a catch-up going on,” said Derek Alderman, a professor at the University of Tennessee who specializes in culture, race, memory and historical geography. 

Alderman, who tracks streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., said news alerts on name changes used to land in his inbox a few times a week but now arrive multiple times a day. He says the frequency and intensity of the struggle to change names is reaching new dimensions, the diversity of the figures is expanding and stories of America’s origins are broadening.

In Virginia, the Arlington County Board is expected to vote to rename part of a highway named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee for John Langston, the first Black man to represent the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. The New Orleans city council voted to change Caffin Avenue, named for a local plantation owner and slave holder, to honor Fats Domino, a founder of rock ’n’ roll. Dallas is renaming a street for Botham Jean, a 26-year-old Black man who was shot to death in his apartment on that street when a former white Dallas police officer mistook the apartment for her own.

Kansas City is working to alter some names in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Charlotte will rename nine streets linked to racist figures, and Florida has changed the name of a state road to Harriet Tubman Highway after initial opposition from one community. 

The trend extends past U.S. borders, too. Toronto’s city council voted this week to rename a street and other landmarks named for Henry Dundas, a key obstructionist in Toronto’s early quest to abolish slavery.

Street names are just one aspect of recognizing figures who have been historically marginalized — and in some cases replacing the names of figures who perpetuated racism. In addition to campaigns against monuments, names of schools and parks have come under scrutiny, , particularly those named after Confederate leaders. Streets, however, have a different level of visibility and ability to add legitimacy, say proponents of road renaming. “Street names have a way of incorporating themselves into people’s daily language,” Alderman said.

David Moore, the Chicago alderman who introduced the initial ordinance to rename Lake Shore Drive in 2019, said he was first spurred to act after he noticed that a boat tour guide mentioned several figures associated with Chicago, including gangster Al Capone, but not DuSable. Driving the length of the lakefront road from the city’s North Side to the South Side — regions with different demographics — should serve as a uniting experience, he said.

“Symbolism matters,” Moore said. “When these symbolic changes occur you bring about unity and hope.”

Before Chicago decided to rename the street, it already had a museum, high school and bridge named after DuSable. But for Alderman Sophia King, a co-sponsor of the ordinance to rename Lake Shore Drive, putting DuSable’s name on a roadway that is identified with Chicago shows what the city wants to remember and celebrate.

In calling for aldermen to vote for the name change, King noted that previous Chicago aldermen had blazed a trail when they renamed South Park Way in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, just a few months after his assassination. Other streets named for the civil rights leader subsequently popped up around the country, said King, who a few years ago also successfully advocated to rename Chicago’s Congress Parkway to Ida B. Wells Drive to honor the Black woman investigative journalist and activist.

The recent name change to Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive, which will affect about 16 miles of the outer portion of the road, was a compromise between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and aldermen who had proposed fully replacing the old Lake Shore Drive moniker. Lightfoot and other opponents of the change initially had said that it might cause higher costs and confusion to change the name of a street that helps to frame the city’s skyline. Lightfoot had put forth an alternate proposal to name a riverwalk and festival for DuSable but that idea alone didn’t gain enough support.

Some criticisms of street renaming elsewhere have come from racial justice advocates, who worry that granting new names to streets and landmarks can allow cities to boost their image without first investing in reforms that narrow racial disparities.

But to King, both can be accomplished and names carry their own significance. 

“What’s in a name?” she said before the council voted to approve the change on June 25. “History, education, pride, healing, racial reckoning and hopefully unity.”