A visibly worn green-and-white street sign hangs to one side of an equally weathered utility pole in North Lubbock.
For nearly 20 years, just a little downstream from University Avenue in the Canyon Lakes System, it stood – and still stands – as a symbol of the community effort recognizing a civil rights leader and the farm laborers he labored to elevate.
The day this battered street sign was photographed; dark grey clouds covered the afternoon sky – dulling its appearance more than usual. The letters, deformed by the passage of time and the unrelenting West Texas winds, are still legible: Cesar E. Chavez.
His legacy has been soiled. What will Lubbock do about the street name?
For some, it might echo the memories of when Lubbock changed a street name for another civil rights hero, erasing a word that was a blight to Lubbock’s African American community.
New York Times investigation
In mid-March there was a sudden nationwide push to remove the name Cesar Chavez from street names, event names or other landmark names like public schools – including Lubbock.
The New York Times had just published an investigative article that Chavez – widely regarded as a civil rights hero – was credibly accused of sexually abusing women. The accounts from the early to mid-1970s included two who were underage girls at the time.
I took it really personally.
christy martinez-garcia
The early discussions for renaming Austin and San Antonio in Texas and California cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Fresno – the San Joaquin Valley city where Chavez and Delores Huerta founded the United Farmworkers Association in 1962.
The name of a March 28 Lubbock event was stripped of Chavez’s name and replaced with “CommUNITY Day of Service.” But movement on Lubbock’s Cesar E. Chavez Drive has been slower.
“I took it really personally,” Christy Martinez-Garcia said of the day the Times released its article.
Martinez-Garcia is the city councilmember for District 1, the publisher of Latino Lubbock Magazine and an event organizer for the CommUNITY Day of Service.
“Knowing the Chavez family personally … the brother of Cesar Chavez came to Lubbock when we did the street renaming. And I got to know the family really well,” Martinez-Garcia said.
Lubbock renamed a portion of Canyon Lake Drive in 2007 to get Cesar E. Chavez Drive. Now there’s a “very heartbreaking” discussion, said Martinez-Garcia, of renaming it again.
“I led the effort and organized folks from the community – got a lot of input. And annually we were doing the Cesar Chavez March so that we could recognize folks, our farm workers in the area. It took us a couple of years,” Martinez-Garcia said.
“We covered it with a sheet. When it was time to unveil it … it wouldn’t come down. So, they lifted a little boy up and he untangled it and it was unveiled. And to me, that was symbolic, even at the time, because it showed how we needed to support one another,” Martinez-Garcia said.
“And now we’re reversing all that,” she said.
Clock ticks slower in Lubbock
Martinez-Garcia wants to slow down any discussion of renaming. Mayor Mark McBrayer felt like there was a sudden public push to make changes.
“I was surprised and trying to make sense of why – what I would call – far more liberal cities than Lubbock were making a mad dash to change it immediately,” McBrayer said.
I figure it’s going to be revisited in the next one-to-two months.
mark mcbrayer
McBrayer and other city officials need time to figure out the process since it’s been nearly 20 years since this issue came up, he said.
“I figure it’s going to be revisited in the next one-to-two months,” McBrayer said.
Martinez-Garcia said, “One of the recommendations that I’m going to make is that we have a committee that can be respectful and with different perspectives, just so that it’s fair.”
McBrayer said, “I’ve never particularly liked the idea of naming streets, whole streets, after people who really didn’t have any connection directly to our city. … I’ve never been real comfortable with the Cesar Chavez name change.”
“I understand the desire to acknowledge and commemorate our Hispanic heritage in our community. And I want us to find good, positive ways to do that,” McBrayer said.
Lubbock has a way to rename portions of a street with honorary names while leaving the official street name alone.
McBrayer mentioned Suzanne Aker Avenue along a portion of Avenue L as an example. The street signs get brown and white “toppers” to designate the honorary name while the official name stays the same.
“I kind of prefer that,” McBrayer said – pointing out that businesses incur expenses when they have to change their mailing address.
He’s not suggesting changing any more names that already exist.
I know people have also said they wanted to name it after Dolores Huerta, but I think right now all of that is controversial.
christy Martinez-Garcia
A city ordinance emphasizes the need for a local connection on honorary names.
“The proposed name must reflect or represent Lubbock, Texas in a significant and positive manner in a field of government, education, medicine, athletics or the arts,” Lubbock’s street ordinance said.
Lubbock Democratic Party Chair Margie Ceja said in a statement, “We call on our community to take action and rename the street currently honoring Cesar Chavez to Dolores Huerta. Lubbock must stand for truth, accountability and the courage to do what is right.”
Martinez-Garcia responded, “I know people have also said they wanted to name it after Dolores Huerta, but I think right now all of that is controversial.”
Huerta is a national figure, not local.
Some local names mentioned in interviews for this article included Oralia “Lala,” Lauro and Richard Cavazos along with Maggie Trejo, Richard Lopez and Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.
While McBrayer prefers local names, he felt there was one exception.
“Martin Luther King is not a person who lived here or was raised here, but … he’s sort of an almost unique character in our nation’s history, at least to me, he is. And so, he might be the one exception to that rule. I guess every rule has to have an exception.”
The story of Quirt Avenue
The first time Lubbock renamed a street in honor of a civil rights giant was 1993 – Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. David Langston was mayor at the time.
“The name of the street was Quirt, and there was, as you can imagine, quite a strong feeling among the African American community that that wasn’t a very appropriate street to be right there,” Langston said.
A quirt was, according to dictionary.com, “a riding whip consisting of a short, stout stock and a lash of braided leather.”
An Internet search showed that quirts were sometimes used to beat slaves.
T.J. Patterson, a city councilmember at the time and a local civil rights leader, led the effort to rid the city of the name Quirt Avenue.
LubbockLights.com publisher Scott Mann shared a pair of stories illustrating why this was so important.
“My great-great-grandfather, whose name was William G. Nairn, was one of the founders of Lubbock. He was here when it was founded. His name is on that sign at Avenue A and about 19th,” Mann said.
He remembered years ago an older man at Broadway Church of Christ telling him about Nairn, Mann said.
“‘We thought that he was rich because all we had was a Model T, and he had a black surrey with two matched ponies pulling it. And it just looked like the finest thing in all the world,’” Mann recalled the old man saying.
It’s what they used to beat my people. And I don’t want a street running through my district named Quirt.
Scott Mann, quoting T.J. patterson
“That stuck with me because I could see my great-great-grandfather driving that buggy. And I can promise you what he had in his hand. It was a quirt,” Mann said.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. Mann was the local Republican party chair, and Patterson was building support to change the name of Quirt Avenue.
“‘Mr. Republican.’ That’s what he called me. He said, ‘Mr. Republican, do you know what a quirt is?’ Yeah, I know what it is. And I had in mind my great-great-grandfather driving that buggy with a quirt in his hand,” Mann said.
“Well, I only got my answer half out before he said, … ‘It’s what they used to beat my people. And I don’t want a street running through my district named Quirt.’ And then he said, ‘I need your help,’” Mann recalled.
Mann didn’t believe Patterson needed any help. He was just giving folks a chance to do the right thing.
Mann had prepared reasons in advance to say no, he said. They didn’t matter.
“When T.J. Patterson approaches you like that with that kind of power, and with that kind of rationale, your petty little reasons – they just evaporate,” Mann said.
Langston said, “Martin Luther King was a controversial figure among certain segments of our community and they were opposed to the name itself. But, of course, it passed with a good majority.”
Langston remembers a march down Broadway to the newly renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and a day of celebration.
What about Canyon Lake Drive?
Does the street need to be named after a person?
Martinez-Garcia said, “Honestly, if it were up to me, I don’t think it should be named after a person at this point.”
Her thought was to use a word like “unity” or doing a play on words with unity in community.
former mayor david langston
Canyon Lake Drive is a nice name. There’s nothing wrong with that.
“I think it’s definitely unchartered waters for everybody, but I appreciate that we didn’t just rush right into it immediately. … It’s not something that one person can determine,” Martinez-Garcia said.
McBrayer said, “I thought the name of the street as it was, Canyon Lake Drive, was pretty descriptive of what the road was.”
Langston agreed, saying, “Canyon Lake Drive is a nice name. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Martinez-Garcia said, “It took a lot to get to this street name of Cesar Chavez. And I think it’ll be a lot to take it down. It’s tough. It’s very tough. And like I said, it’s very painful because it was just someone that had so much significance – so iconic to a lot of people.”
