Creek’s controversial name to stay as slavery reminder

Little was known about Negro Creek, located in Kansas, before the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

Negro Creek is here to stay.

According to the Shawnee Mission Post, a local advisory council has decided that the unassuming Kansas stream, which flows 6.5 miles in Johnson County, will retain the name to better inform the public about the region’s painful history with slavery.

After more than two years of research, an informal group made up of area activists, including those in the NAACP and the Advocacy and Awareness Group of Johnson County, have decided it’s crucial to remember the past.

“The state that we are in now, we have people trying to erase our history – not only ours but indigenous people’s,” said Johnson County NAACP president Jay Holbert, according to the Shawnee Mission Post. “They’re trying to wipe out history and make another race look predominantly happy like they didn’t do any wrong. That’s not right.”

Little was known about Negro Creek – which appears on a few maps – before the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, which included marches in Johnson County.

The committee started working in 2021 and looked into several stories about the origin of the name, including those that claimed it was named for Black pioneers or that it was a path of escape for those seeking freedom – claims the group could not verify.

Diane Mutti Burke, with the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s history department, said the most believable account came from an 1879 article in The Western Progress.

The newspaper’s story contends a man who was afraid of being captured in the stream by pursuers decided to cut off his throat rather than return to enslavement. Even though it reportedly was dubbed Negro Creek from that day forward, the Western Progress writer observed, a racial epithet was frequently used as a substitution.

The Best Times, a magazine published in Johnson County, requested recommendations for a new name and received 63 responses representing a wide range of opinions with which, Holbert said, committee members didn’t always agree.

“The older ones felt if we kept the name it would raise more awareness,” he said, according to the Mission Post. “The younger ones felt it was more offensive to keep the name than to change it.”

Since the U.S. Geological Survey must approve any change to a geographical name, renaming the creek would have required a lengthy process. However, the federal government could still opt to do so anyway.

The decision to keep the name includes a strong recommendation to erect historical markers along the creek. The officials of Leawood, Overland Park and the county must now choose the markers’ design, placement and wording.

“History should be history,” said Holbert, the Shawnee Mission Post reported. “You can’t learn if you don’t know the truth.”

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