Below are names mentioned by Councilman Al Vann's office as possible street name replacements. (See original Brooklyn Ron post about streets named after slave holders.)
Councilman Vann says that those with other suggested names for Bed-Stuy streets should email their suggestions to him at: [email protected]
Sorry to be shameless about this, but Brooklyn Ron has suggested a maternal ancestor, Bertram L. Baker, the first black person elected to office of any kind in Brooklyn. Baker represented Bed-Stuy in the New York State Assembly from 1949 to 1970. He died in 1985 in his home on Jefferson Avenue.
[Note: Names applied to streets should be of those who are deceased, but this list actually contains a couple of living people. See if you can pick the living ones.]
Ralph D. Abernathy
Ira Aldridge
Marian Anderson
Arthur Ashe
Ella Baker
James Baldwin
Benjamin Banneker
William “Count” Basie
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune
James Hubert “Eubie” Blake
Herman Russell Branson
Ralph Bunche
Octavia Butler
Stokely Carmichael
George Washington Carver
Shirley Chisholm
John Coltrane
Angela Davis
Miles Davis
Ossie Davis
Frederick Douglass
Charles Drew
W.E.B. DuBois
Ralph Ellison
Medgar Evers
Ella Fitzgerald
Dizzy Gillespie
Alex Haley
Fannie Lou Hamer
Lorraine Hansberry
Matthew Henson
Lena Horne
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Mahalia Jackson
Coretta Scott King
Thurgood Marshall
Charles Mingus
Thelonious Monk
Huey Newton
Gordon Parks
Rosa Parks
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
A. Philip Randolph
Paul Robeson
Eddie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Nina Simone
Sojourner Truth
Nat Turner
Booker T. Washington
Ida B. Wells
August Wilson
Granville T. Woods
Carter G. Woodson
Richard Wright
Whitney M. Young, Jr.