1. The Power of a Name: Martin Luther King Blvd.

2. Street-Naming: History
Began as an African American grassroots movement to bring public recognition to key political civil rights figures such as:
Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks
Thurgood Marshall
Malcolm X
Harriet Tubman

3. Street-Naming: Today
Today, street-naming movements are typically lead by local chapters of the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference with assistance from local churches

4. Street-Naming: Purpose
“Not only do these street names celebrate and commemorate great figures in black culture, they provoke our active participation in that history. What was important yesterday becomes a landmark today.”
(Melvin Dixon, 1994)

5. Street-Naming: Purpose
Naming streets for key political and social African American activists acts as a concrete reminder to all not only of our history, but of our collective hopes for the future.

6. Street-Naming: Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorializing King through the re-naming of streets began as early as a few months after his assassination in 1968.
Chicago, Illinois was the first city to memorialize King when it renamed South Park Way in his honor.
A significant increase in King-named streets came after a federal holiday was assigned in his honor in 1983.

7. Street-Naming Martin Luther King Jr.
“Renaming a street is a uniquely appropriate way to honor King. Streets unite diverse neighborhoods. They touch all ages, all races, all economic levels, and the resident and the visitor equally. They link places and people that otherwise would have remained insular.”
(St. Petersburg Times, 1990)

8. Street-Naming Martin Luther King Jr.
There are 777 places within the United States with streets commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. (Mitchelson, 2005)
The majority (70%) of King-named streets are located in the southeastern United States particularly in: Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi
Very few if any King-named streets are located in parts of New England and the Great Plains.

9. Chapel Hill, North Carolina

10. Selma, Alabama

11. Montgomery, Alabama

12. Orange County, Florida