Martin Luther King Jr. was an integral part of the long fight for racial equality in the United States.

After he was assassinated, there was a nationwide movement to rename streets in the civil rights leader’s honor.

Chicago was the first city to do so. It renamed South Parkway in 1968, just months after his death.

The idea caught on, and now there are hundreds of streets and freeways named for King in the U.S. Streets were renamed in his honor in other countries also, including Italy and Senegal.

Portland was slow to adopt the idea of renaming a street. But in 1987, a group of community leaders organized.

They wondered why Portland hadn’t renamed a street, especially as King had visited the Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church as far back as 1961. Local pastors used that meeting to discuss campaign strategies and unite under their widespread support for King.

Renaming Union Avenue

The local movement to rename a street was led by Bernie Foster, the editor of Portland newspaper The Skanner, which is dedicated to advance the cause of the Black press in the Northwest.

Foster was joined by Portland Trail Blazers founder Harry Glickman, the head of Multnomah County Library Sarah Long, activist William Wyatt, the Rev. John H. Jackson, Rabbi Emanuel Rose and many more.

The group started the campaign by gathering about 4,000 signatures. Then they developed a list of possible streets. Participants wanted the chosen street to be highly visible, to have a relationship to a significant site, and to be in an area that could benefit from any resulting economic impact.

Initial suggestions included Front Street and Fifth Avenue in downtown, and Killingsworth Street in Northeast Portland. But in the end, city leaders chose Union Avenue.

Read Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in its entirety

Union Avenue had been named about 100 years earlier to mark the election that consolidated the cities of Portland, Albina and East Portland.

It was a busy street with plenty of businesses and a streetcar route that had been laid down in the 1930s. It was officially renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on April 20, 1989. But there was significant pushback.

Business owners balked and a white supremacist from Mississippi lent his support for keeping Union Avenue’s name.

“Extraordinarily controversial,” U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer told The Oregonian in 2010. “It revealed an unpleasant side of Portland’s racial past.”

Conservatives Rosalie and Walter Huss championed the opposition. And a group called, Citizens for Union Avenue, got the backing of tens of thousands of residents to undo the city council decision.

In the end, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the decision was “administrative” rather than “legislative” and therefore not subject to change through initiative.

‘The Dream’ on MLK Jr. Boulevard

In 1998, on the 35th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a bronze sculpture of King and three other characters was mounted on his namesake street, outside the Oregon Convention Center.

“The Dream” was sculpted by Michael Florin Dente.

The “unofficial mayor of Northeast Portland,” Paul Knauls, raised the money for the statue. And he told OPB in 2014 that he considered it one of his proudest accomplishments.

The three characters standing with King represent an American worker, an immigrant, and a girl who symbolizes, according to Dente, the “letting go” that occurs when people sacrifice for a struggle.

King’s birthday became a federal holiday, observed on the third Monday of January, in 1983. It was not recognized in all 50 states until 2000.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/19/martin-luther-king-boulevard-renaming-portland/