Chicago alderman calls for renaming Columbus Drive as Barack Obama Drive
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A new proposed Chicago ordinance would rename Columbus Drive downtown to honor former President Barack Obama.
Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th) introduced the ordinance to the City Council Committee on Transportation and Public Way Wednesday. The new name for Columbus Drive would be Barack Obama Drive.
The ordinance would name the entirety of Columbus Drive – which changes names from Fairbanks Court at Grand Avenue in Streeterville, and runs south across a Chicago River bridge and down through the middle of Grant Park. Columbus Drive ends at a merge with DuSable Lake Shore Drive at William L. McFetridge Drive, just west of the Field Museum of Natural History, for a total length of about 1.8 miles north to south.
Robinson said Chicago needs more tributes to Black men and Black history.
"We need to honor more Black men, and this is one small way we can do that," Robinson wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "Chicago's children deserve to see that they too can become Black history and cement a new tourist destination to increase Chicago tourism highlighting where Black history was made."
On Nov. 4, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama gave his victory speech in Grant Park, steps from Columbus Drive.
Honoring explorer Christopher Columbus has fallen sharply out of favor among many Americans – particularly over the past several years. Following a push by Native American activists that dates back decades, many states and municipalities now observe the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day rather than, or in addition to, Columbus Day.
The change is rooted in a call to recognize the victims of colonialism, rather than to celebrate the explorer.
In 2021, President Joe Biden became the first president to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples' Day at the federal level.
Four years earlier, then-Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner recognized Indigenous Peoples Day as a commemorative holiday. But it is not an official state holiday, as efforts in Springfield to swap the holidays have stalled.
Three Columbus monuments also previously stood in Chicago – but they have been in storage since then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot had them taken down in 2020. This followed a year of racial reckoning that included protests at the statues.
Other major Chicago thoroughfares have also seen name changes in recent years in honor of Black Chicago history makers.
In 2021, the City Council approved a renaming of the outer portion of Lake Shore Drive after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the Haitian founder of the city of Chicago. The proposal would have initially renamed the thoroughfare Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Drive and eliminated the "Lake Shore" name – but following heated debate, a compromise was reached to use the hybrid name "Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive," or "DuSable Lake Shore Drive."
In 2018, Congress Parkway between Columbus Drive and Franklin Street was renamed Ida B. Wells Drive. Wells was a journalist and leader of the women's suffrage movement in the early 1900s. She exposed the horrors of lynching and helped found the NAACP.
Initially in that case, some Chicago alderpeople had suggested renaming Balbo Avenue and Drive in honor of Wells. Balbo Drive's commemorates Italian pilot Gen. Italo Balbo, who has been tied to dictator Benito Mussolini and who many argued should no longer be honored with a Chicago street name.
But some Italian-Americans resisted stripping Balbo's name at the time, prompting city officials to consider renaming a different street.
Meanwhile, while street name redundancies are rare in Chicago, the city does, in fact, have two unrelated roads named Columbus. West Columbus Avenue runs northeast-southwest through the Ashburn neighborhood and a small part of the Marquette Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side – it is known as Southwest Highway upon exiting the city for the suburbs.
Columbus Avenue is not mentioned in Robinson's proposed ordinance – only Columbus Drive.
The ordinance will need to pass through the Transportation Committee before a full City Council vote.
