Tretter, E. M. (2011). The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans. The Professional Geographer, 63(1), 34-54. doi:10.1080/00330124.2010.537936
The names that we give our streets, schools, parks, and other places in our landscape reflect our collective culture and history. These place names can shape regional identities, give a neighborhood character, and recognize great people in our society. Dr. Martin L. King Jr. is the most commemorated African-American in the United States, and in fact around the World. Dr. King makes up nearly 2/3 of all African-American commemorations in the United States. How does the other 1/3 of commemorative place-naming of notable African-Americans shape our American landscape?
Image via WikipediaDr. Elliot Tretter has recently published a study on commemorative place-naming of notable African-Americans in the February 2011 issue of the Professional Geographer. His study explores how there are regional characteristics associated with where African-Americans are commemorated, particularly pertaining to cities. Dr. Tretter uses a variety of Internet-based mapping tools to collect a dataset on the regional variation of the commemoration of thirty famous African-Americans (fifteen men and fifteen women).Dr. Tretter’s finding show that while Dr. King may have reached a universal symbol of African-Americans transcending limits, other African-Americans figure have not. He found that African-American commemorations do follow a geographical pattern. In the fact, the patterns show that commemorations are in places associated with African-American. These figures therefore are not recognized as universal members of a nation and remain symbols of a separate “black nation”.
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