Opinion: Changing Hart Plaza's name just doesn't seem right

In the past few years, it’s become the "in" thing to change names on public monuments.

Chene Park is now the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, Cobo Hall is no more (although that’s what Detroiters still call it) and we’ve taken Ben Carson’s name off a Detroit Public Schools Community District building.

But we’re taking it a bit far with Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Waters’ proposal to change the name of Detroit's Hart Plaza to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

More: Detroit City Council members want to rename Hart Plaza after Martin Luther King Jr.

Waters introduced a resolution to change the Detroit plaza's name Tuesday, and it was referred to a council committee, possibly for some deliberation before it can move forward.

Changing the name of Hart Plaza would be a mistake.

Let me be crystal clear: This is not about the iconic works of Dr. King. He is one of my idols, and stood tall against racism long before I was born. Hell, I likely wouldn’t be a journalist today if it wasn’t for his work advocating for civil rights for Black people.

This is simply about Phillip Hart, the man we named our beloved plaza after in 1975.

But more importantly, this is about an elected official who either didn’t do her homework about Hart’s legacy, or simply chose to ignore it to score a few headlines and political points — and I’m skeptical that Waters knew nothing about Hart before she put the name change forward.

Waters told the Free Press that the resolution came after conversations she had with constituents in northwest Detroit who were "appalled by the violence" in the city.

"They wanted to see us have a place in Detroit that lived up to Dr. King's mission of nonviolence, of peacefully welcoming all. What better place to embody the spirit of Dr. King than the site where he gave his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech?" Waters said.

It got me curious about the man I’ve been honoring most of my life, and I let my reporting lead me.

The conscience of the U.S. Senate

By all accounts, Hart, a former U.S. senator, served us well for 18 years. According to his Senate bio, Hart "distinguished himself as a man of deep personal conviction and integrity and a steadfast advocate for the common man.”

When he passed in 1976, the headline on his New York Times obituary called Hart the “conscience of the Senate.”

Let me stop here at some key words: integrity and conscience. If there’s one thing we need to continue to celebrate and honor, it's men and women of integrity who were advocates for us.

We just need to educate this generation, and those to come, about this man of integrity, who served during some of the most critical times in American history.

See, Hart served during the heart of the Civil Rights movement. He was an avid supporter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and was the floor manager of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That’s a man of good conscience. He’s so well respected there’s a Hart Senate Office Building in Washington D.C., which opened in 1982.

So it is fitting that King’s statue sits within Hart Plaza. King’s work might have been in vain, if our representatives on the Senate floor hadn't pushed through what's probably the most vital piece of legislation of modern history.

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Waters, a legislator herself, should have known that before trying to move her resolution forward.

That’s the difference between Waters and “Da Mayor,” Coleman Young, who named the plaza after Hart in 1975.

Young — along with Carl Levin, Erma Henderson, Clyde Cleveland, Maryann Mahaffey and Nicholas Hood — certainly wouldn’t have named it Hart Plaza if Hart wasn’t a stand-up and conscientious guy for Detroit.

Despite the political climate in Detroit at the time, those Black leaders were still advocating for white politicians who did the right thing.

Honoring Detroit, preserving our legacy

I’m all for honoring those who’ve done great work in Detroit. With the recent passing of longtime city councilwoman JoAnn Watson, I’d advocate something named in her honor. Her legacy in Detroit deserves that. The same goes for former police chief Benny Napoleon, or community activist Marlowe Stoudamire, both of whom passed during the pandemic.

Dr. King has been honored all across America, and already has a street and a school named in his memory in Detroit, and his statue is in Hart Plaza.

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Changing Hart Plaza to Dr. King Plaza does not make the west side that Waters represents any more safer. We desperately need smart, reasonable legislators who try to find solutions within their districts to make it safer. That’s what was supposed to come out of electing members by district — they'd be advocates for the community.

Still, this is about preserving some of Detroit’s legacy.

It’s Hart Plaza. But in a sense it’s Heart Plaza. It embodies who we are as a city. It’s our pulse.

Across from the Joe Louis fist, it’s where I used to go for the ethnic festivals, where I saw Stevie Wonder, and broke down a Budweiser Superfest stage all night during the summer of 1987.

Changing that name just doesn’t seem right. Our Heart should continue to beat.

Council members are not expected to deliberate on the issue until after that body returns from a summer recess that begins in August.

Maybe it will give them time to either let this die, or let Waters pull it from the table.

Darren A. Nichols is a contributing columnist at the Free Press. He can be reached at darren@dnick-media.com or his Twitter handle @dnick12. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: Detroit Hart Plaza name change is a bad idea