A highway that was named for a Confederate leader has garnered attention after an online petition was created to change the name of the road.
The Washington Post reported the Jefferson Davis Highway is located in Virginia and it was given its name as an equivalent highway in the South to the Northern Lincoln highway.
The petition on Change.org was started by Daniel Zim, a lawyer in Vienna. He wrote on the petion, “Davis was an unrepentant white supremacist who fervently believed the Southern cause, slavery and segregation were right and just. It is therefore outrageous that a major thoroughfare…continues to bear the name of a morally depraved, non-Virginian who rejected the very idea of a United States.”
Already, there have been over 3,000 signatures added to the petition. Northern Virginia has always opposed the names, but in the aftermath of the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, they are hoping to keep the momentum going in fighting against Confederacy.
The Associated Press reported there are other highways that are named after Davis in the South.
Lawmakers in Northern Virginia have been discussing the change and are aware it is a challenge when it comes to changing names of landmarks and memorials.
Virginia state Senator Adam P. Ebbin said, “It’s a hard life, partly because of the issues of changing other historic references to the Confederacy. But I would like to see it changed.”