Voters in Kansas City, Missouri, will decide Tuesday if its reputation as one of the largest U.S. cities without a street named for iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. remains intact.
The city council voted in January to rename The Paseo, a 10-mile thoroughfare, to honor King. But in April, a group called Save the Paseo collected nearly double the 1,700 signatures needed to have the name change put to a public vote.
Many supporters of the King name have suggested the opponents are racist, saying Save the Paseo is a mostly white group and that many of its members don’t live on the street, which runs north to south through a largely Black area of the city.