SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Sacramento's Gold Rush colonizer John Sutter came down on June 15, outside the hospital that bears his name. The next day, top California lawmakers ordered the removal of the statue of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella at the Capitol.
As protesters have toppled statues and monuments to Confederate soldiers, colonizers, and those who owned and traded enslaved people, the Sacramento region is itself grappling with the symbols of racial injustice that are part of everyday life, particularly in the names of places.
One of the most striking is Negro Bar, a recreation area in Folsom. The name, which was changed from the N-word in the 1960s, according to California State Parks, is advertised with a sign and a place on the map that still reads as a shocking slur to many.
Taria Baker-Michalet, who has lived in the Folsom area since the 1960s, remembers growing up around the sign. She said it still used the N-word when she was a child.
"As a kid, this was very disturbing. In fact, terrorizing," Baker-Michalet said. She remembers Negro Bar as a site that served as a gathering place for racists. She feared the place throughout childhood.
Now, the California State Parks system, which has jurisdiction over the name of the day-use area, is in the process of reviewing the name for a change once again. They have been gathering information about the issue since a 2018 petition to change the name gathered steam, but plans for a public meeting earlier this year were postponed due to COVID-19.
The director of state parks may approve a name change after hearing from the public, Black community leaders and historians, the department told The Sacramento Bee in an email.
The push to rename Negro Bar is part of a nationwide movement that has seen community members calling, emailing, signing petitions and counter-petitions, and adding new agenda items to city council meetings. For some, the dam appears to be breaking.
The owners of the Squaw Valley resort have convened to discuss removing the word "squaw" from their name, which is a slur that is derogatory towards Native American women. The town of Placerville is rethinking the widespread use of "Old Hangtown," a moniker that brings lynchings to mind. And the city of Fort Bragg, named after a Confederate general who owned more than 100 enslaved people, is debating a name once again, although it will not appear on November's ballot.
What history do these names represent? Who do they honor? As protesters around the country fight against police brutality and ingrained racism in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the nationwide reckoning has shifted the way many people think about names, said Beth Piatote, an associate professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
"This is a time when people are attuned to thinking about not just these overt acts of racism _ things that we can easily name _ but the way in which racial structures and racism shapes our everyday environment," Piatote said.
Sacramento Historical Society president Bill George said that "names shouldn't offend groups of people if it could be helped" is a basic enough principle to try to follow. Changing place names or removing statues "will be a part of the evolving story of history," he said.
But flipping through an index of historical locations in California, he wondered, "Is someone going to go through these books and decide which names need to be changed?"
There are more than 400 places and geographic features that bear names with racial or ethnic slurs, names of colonizers, or names of people who enslaved people, according to a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. Geological Survey data.
"Who decides what the standards are for naming or renaming a location?" George asked. "Who's going to adjudicate this?"
