ABSTRACT
In 1981 Reverend M.T. Billingsley asked the city commission of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to name a street after slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. 1 Rev. Billingsley's request, which came on behalf of the Ministers Union he helped lead, took place just five days after King's birthday, which had not yet been made into a federal holiday, and less than a year after a controversial court verdict had incited civil disturbances in the city. An all-white jury had acquitted two of three defendants arrested in connection with the shooting of four black women. Ninth Street had been the location of the Ku Klux Klan-related shooting, and, not coincidentally, it was also the road that black leaders sought to rename for King. In addition, Ninth Street had long served as the city's black business district and was the site of a federally funded downtown redevelopment program. 2
