A petition on Change.org has been launched to rename Division Avenue west I-4. A number of Orlando residents see the street name as a testament to a racially-segregated past where the road functioned to separate black and white neighborhoods in The City Beautiful. Something which is fairly evident in this map we shared in earlier coverage of Redlining policies in Orlando which you can see HERE or by clicking the image below.
This isn’t the first time Orlando residents have tried to change the contentious name of the street though. In 2017 when the Confederate Statue, Johnny Reb, was moved from Lake Eola Park to Greenwood Cemetery, community leaders west of I-4 tried to keep the momentum and rename the street then as well but seemed to fizzle out by the end of the year.
To rename a street, 51 percent of the landowners that face it must consent to the change or the Mayor has the power to make the change himself, something he’s admitted to being reticent to do without the required public demand.
At the time of this post, there were over 2,500 signatures on the petition.
Unity ave