Davis marker draws new criticism

NAACP launches petition to change highway name

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Wednesday, March 13, 2002

SEATTLE -- Civil rights leaders have announced a petition campaign to remove a monument dedicating a state highway to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

The move was announced Monday by officials of the Urban League and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a week after a bill to remove the marker from state Route 99 at the Canadian border died in the state Senate.

'Insult' to blacks

"To have anything named after Jefferson Davis, particularly in the Northwest, is an insult to African Americans and how far we've come in this country toward healing those wounds," local NAACP president Oscar Eason said.

Eason said the group will gather signatures and start a letter-writing campaign to state Senate committees and administrative panels that oversee parks and roads.

"Everyone that I have talked to, whether they were Jewish or European or Hispanic, said they would support it," said Raymond Miller, regional director for the National Association of Black Veterans.

"We must never underestimate symbols," said Roberto Maestas, executive director of El Centro de la Raza, the Hispanic community center in Seattle.

Bill died in Senate

The legislation, introduced in January by Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, would rededicate the road, formerly the principal north-south route through Western Washington, to honor William P. Stewart, a black soldier in the Union army who later settled in the state.

Senate Transportation Committee members said the issue was too low in priority to merit consideration during the current 60-day session.

Sen. Georgia Gardner, D-Blaine and vice chairwoman on the panel, also said Davis accomplished good deeds as a soldier, U.S. senator and secretary of war before he led the South in the Civil War.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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