Ida B Wells Drive Introduced In City Council She Was A Pillar Of The Community

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King said it was time to change the street—named for Mussolini’s air commander shortly after he lead a squadron of seaplanes to Chicago in 1933—for the former slave, journalist, anti-lynching activist, and woman’s suffrage advocate. The aldermen say this would be the first Chicago street renaming since 1968, when South Park Drive was renamed to honor Martin Luther King Jr., and the first downtown street named for a woman and a person of color.

                He said that there are other downtown streets that could be named for a “worthy” Italian-American who lived in Chicago, such as Saint Francis Cabrini or University of Chicago physicist Enrico Fermi, although he didn’t say which streets he had in mind.


          Ida B. Wells’s great-grandson Dan Duster, a Chicagoan who attended the ceremony, said that his ancestor deserves the tribute as one of the most influential figures in our city’s history. 




             Wells was “a pillar of the community. . . . Ida B. Wells deserves a street name. And if the street was named after someone who was dishonorable, he shouldn’t have his name on that drive.”