Hollywood is replacing 3 Confederate street names with universal concepts

Three streets in Hollywood named for Confederate leaders will be renamed for universally admired concepts — Freedom, Hope and Liberty — under a plan discussed Wednesday.

The city commission will take a final vote on the new names next month.

“It’s been a long road — it’s taken 15 years,” said Benjamin Israel, the Hollywood resident who led the charge to change the names, according to the Sun Sentinel. “I’m elated with what has taken place today.”

The names for the streets, which run through predominantly black neighborhoods, came from Confederate Army commander General Robert E. Lee; Confederate General John Bell Hood, who led the southern forces at the Battle of Gettysburg; and Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate lieutenant who was an early Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard whose later racial views have been debated by historians.

“They were rebels against the country. Traitors. Human-rights abusers,” 67-year-old resident Julian Garvin told the Herald in June. “Why should we honor them?”

A rally over the name change ended with five arrests at Hollywood City Hall.

New Sons of Liberty founder Jake Philip Loubriel, 26, of Fort Lauderdale, dismissed the renaming effort at the time.

“Honestly, the Hollywood City Commission needs to work on actual issues,” he said. “We have the worst infrastructure down here, that is a real issue. These city commissioners are wasting their time worrying about fake controversies like changing street names.”

Hollywood commissioners voted to change the street names in an emotional Aug. 30 meeting that lasted more than five hours.

The side wanting the name change felt the current names honored those who fought for slavery of blacks or at least an economic system that profited from slavery. They found opposition in those who claimed the streets should stay the same out of city history or honoring Southern heritage.

This story was originally published October 18, 2017 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Hollywood is replacing 3 Confederate street names with universal concepts."