City Council looks to rename Charles Carroll Park, other sites, due to slaveholding

Rochester City Council is considering renaming prominent public sites named for local founding fathers who owned people in slavery, including Charles Carroll and the city's namesake, Nathaniel Rochester.

Council will vote later this month on endorsing a change to the name of Charles Carroll Park along the Genesee River downtown; it also mentions Nathaniel Square on Alexander Street as a possible target for change.

The resolution further asks City Historian Christine Ridarsky to search for other questionable toponyms, and for possible candidates to be newly honored.

The resolution, put forth by City Council President Loretta Scott and council member Mitch Gruber, suggests two honorees in particular: Austin Steward, the first prominent Black resident of the city, and James McCuller, the longtime leader of Action for a Better Community.

"It very intentionally lifts up people who have been on the margins of the traditional historical narrative who absolutely changed the shape of our city," said Gruber, who has a doctoral degree in history from the University of Rochester.

The move would be part of a recent increase in sensitivity to the names attached long ago to public places, in Rochester and elsewhere. The Rochester City School District this year stripped Nathaniel Rochester's name from School 3 in Corn Hill and instead honored Alice Holloway Young, the first Black principal in the city.

Rochester, Carroll and William Fitzhugh were Maryland aristocrats who collectively owned scores of Black people in slavery. The wealth derived from that forced labor helped finance their purchase in the Genesee Valley, and all three men brought enslaved people with them when they moved to New York.

A statue of Nathaniel Rochester in Nathaniel Square was defaced in 2020, with the phrases "shame" and "white supremacy," among others, painted onto it.

More: Rochester's founders held people in slavery, but would name changes make up for past injustice?

Steward, meanwhile, was born into slavery in Virginia around 1793 and brought to New York as a young man. He gained his freedom in 1815 and, two years later, moved to Rochester and opened a meat market on what is now West Main Street, the first Black-owned business in the city. He also briefly conducted the first school for Black children and, later in his life, wrote a memoir that is still studied today.

McCuller, meanwhile, came to Rochester from Arkansas in 1961 and soon was appointed executive director of the anti-poverty organization Action for a Better Community, a post he held for 25 years until his death in 1992. He was nicknamed Mamba and known as a forceful community advocate.

"His leadership and commitment to racial justice and economic parity, was unparalleled," Scott said. "He really did motivate and activate the community to do that work."

The current Council resolution would not enact the name changes on its own. Rather, it would begin a process laid out in the city charter, to include a public hearing.

Fitzhugh Street downtown is also named for a local slaveowner. RCSD has a school named for Charles Carroll, though that is not within the city's purview.

City Council will discuss the resolution in committee Dec. 9 and potentially vote on it Dec. 14, its last scheduled meeting of the year.

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester City Council looks to rename Charles Carroll Park due to slaveholding