WORCESTER -- What’s in a name? According to UMass Chan Medical -- a lot. The school is asking Worcester’s City Council to change the name of three streets in the city -- including a major thoroughfare flanking its campus.
The streets all contain the name ‘Plantation.”
In a statement to Boston 25 News, UMass Chan Medical School said “The word plantation connotes oppression in our country and serves as a reminder of the painful history of slavery in America.”
The school said such legacies appear in “both blatant and subtle ways and are structural, systemic and persistent.”
The streets affected: Plantation Street, Plantation Terrace and Plantation Parkway.
“I think we need to know our history better,” said WIlliam Wallace, executive director of the Worcester Historical Museum. “We need to understand it better and make decisions about the potential for change based on a full understanding of all sides of the issue.”
Wallace said the word ‘plantation’ had a much different connotation when it was used hundreds of years ago.
“When it was being used in the 17th Century, it almost meant ‘settlement,’ he said. “A new location to which English settlers were going, they were planning to settle. And part of that was planting. Planting crops, planting people.”
Before Worcester became Worcester, it was such a settlement -- one known as Quinsigamond Plantation. And Wallace said it eventually grew into a community that was a hotbed of anti-slavery activity.
“Worcester is a community that had serious conversations about social justice in the 19th century,” he said.
John D’Iorio says changing the name of Plantation Street would prove costly for him. His father established a beauty and barber shop, D’Iorio’s on Plantation Street in 1954. He now runs the business.
“Every resident has to change their address, their licenses,” D’Iorio said. “We’d have to change signs, you have to change all your paperwork and everything that has to do with businesses. So I don’t think they should have the right to change it.”
And D’Iorio said he’s never had a customer complain the street name was offensive.
“Plantation just means a residential farm,” he said. “Doesn’t mean there was slavery on it. Why should we have to change the signs because one guy wants to change the name? If they’re gonna put it out there, put it out to the residents. Make it a vote. See if the residents want to change it.”
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