New York State Thruway Could be Renamed After Fredrick Douglas

Since 1964, the New York State Thruway has been named after Governor Thomas Dewey.

There is currently a bill in the Senate that is expected to have been passed Monday that would rename the freeway after Frederick Douglas.

The bill was brought into the Senate in April by Tim Kennedy, the Senate Transportation Committee chairman, but was moved up to the Senate’s active committee list as they are scheduled to vote on several bills managing civil rights and police brutality.

According to the New York Times, the bill that named the Thruway in 1965 was signed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to commemorate Dewey’s Role in finishing the superhighway.

There is some opposition to the bill, as infrastructure projects like the Thruway have been used in the past to destroy Black neighborhoods.

Jarred Jones, who’s family has owned an African-American Funeral home in Rochester since the 1920’s said there were better ways to honor Douglas.

“We do not need to disgrace the legacy of Fredrick Douglass by naming a highway, a vehicle of Black destruction, after him, I am in full agreement that we need to name more public spaces after prominent Black leaders, however this is an insensitive, and frankly an offensive, proposition.”

E.J. McMahon, the founder of the Empire Center For Public Policy said in a statement:

“Dewey helped the Thruway get built and should continue to be honored for it, as well as for his civil-rights record. No governor in NY’s modern history — no governor in the post-WWII era, pre-1960s —had a stronger civil rights record than Thomas E. Dewey, who in 1945 signed first-in-nation state anti-discrimination bill, now the state Human Rights Law.”

Sources:

Democrat & Chronicle

New York Times