MIAMI _ Miami-Dade commissioners pledged this week to remove "Dixie Highway" from county road signs after the board's senior African American member declared the longstanding name a tribute to the states that fought to keep Americans enslaved during the Civil War.
"Dixie Highway was named for the Dixie states. ... The Dixie states seceded from the union because they wanted to continue the inhumane institution of slavery," Commissioner Dennis Moss, who represents South Dade, where Dixie Highway is one of the busiest commuting routes, said Tuesday. "This is what the name 'Dixie' stands for, and it is why we are having this discussion today."
No road name was changed during Tuesday's County Commission meeting. Moss said he was preparing legislation to order road crews to rename roads that have carried the Dixie Highway name for decades, and then lobby Florida to do the same for all counties that the road runs through. But fellow commissioners endorsed his plan without reservations, as did the county mayor.
"We're condemned to repeat the past if we don't continue to remind folks how we got to where" we are, said Commissioner Esteban "Steve" Bovo, a Cuban American running for county mayor.
Carlos Gimenez, the county's term-limited mayor now running for Congress in a Republican primary, told Moss: "You're 100% right. As a Cuban American I know how it would feel to have to go travel on Fidel Castro Highway everyday, or Che Guevara Avenue. ... I don't believe that we should have any street names on any of our roadways that have a negative connotation to any of our community groups here in Miami-Dade."
Launched in the 1910s after a campaign by Carl Fisher, the hotelier who put Miami Beach on the tourism map, the original Dixie Highway connected Chicago with Miami.
The name has since become an overlay with more generic _ and often more recognizable _ road designations, such as U.S. 1 where Interstate 95 ends in Miami.
Sensitivity over Confederate icons and tributes has helped chip away at the Dixie label along Florida highways. In 2015, Riviera Beach renamed a stretch of Old Dixie Highway running through the Palm Beach County city after Barack Obama. In 2017, Hollywood in Broward County changed the names of streets named after Robert E. Lee and two other Confederate generals into Freedom Street, Freedom Drive and Hope Street.
Old Dixie is a highway that runs alongside Dixie Highway in some Florida counties, including Miami-Dade. In the Homestead area, the city controls portions of Old Dixie Highway while the county controls the rest. West Dixie Highway, in Northeast Miami-Dade, is a mix of state and county control, said Karla Damian, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Transportation and Public Works Department.
The Moss push to expunge "Dixie" from Miami-Dade roads started at the suggestion of Modesto Abety, the former director of the county funding agency for youth programs known as the Children's Trust.
In an interview Tuesday night, Abety said he was in the car with his 16-year-old granddaughter Isabella Banos, 16, when the computerized voice of a GPS system declared "Turn right on South Dixie Highway."
"She said, 'That's just wrong,'" Abety recalled. He said his granddaughter's amazement that Dixie could still be celebrated in 2020 had him questioning why the name had endured as well. "I have to cross South Dixie Highway maybe five or six times a day. You see it everyday. You hear it everyday. But you don't react to it."
Banos wrote an essay for the Miami Times last fall calling for the county to rename Dixie Highway after Underground Railroad hero Harriet Tubman, an idea Moss brought to commissioners weeks later. Abety sent an email to Moss and the other 12 commissioners with a draft resolution to change the name as well, declaring: "Miami-Dade County ... continues to desire to be a welcoming place for residents of all races, creeds, religions and nationalities."
When Moss shared Abety's suggestion last fall, it prompted action in Hallandale Beach, where the city passed a resolution in December endorsing the removal of Dixie Highway from county roads there. The New York Times featured the Moss push in a January article under the headline "Has Dixie Highway Reached the End of the Road?"
On Tuesday, Moss asked for support from commissioners to remove "Dixie" from the various roads and highways running through their districts. Each agreed, and all commissioners on the dais asked to join as sponsors of his future bill.
Moss said he didn't want to hear about the downsides of expunging Dixie from county roads. "Some would say get over it, it's going to cost too much to change all the signs," he said.
"I say to all of us: If there was an Adolf Hitler Highway, would we say to the Jewish community, 'Get over it?' If there was a Fidel Castro Highway, would we say to the Cuban community, 'Get over it?'" Moss said. "We know the answer would be: 'Hell, no.'"
