‘We Can Not Forget’: Miami-Dade County Renames ‘Dixie Highway’ to Honor Harriet Tubman

By Atahabih Germain, The Atlanta Black Star

The Harriet Tubman Highway in South Florida has been unveiled after many county workers and a very determined teenager called for the removal of the road’s previous problematic “Dixie Highway” title. 

“South Dixie Highway was dedicated 50 years after the Civil War in 1915. This was a time when Women of the Confederacy (a.k.a “Dixie”) made it their mission to name as many streets and public buildings to honor Confederate Generals, and their beloved Dixie, as they could,” Isabella Banos wrote in a “Letter to the Editor” in 2019, which also marked the 400th anniversary of slavery and a slave-based economy. 

The Saint Brendan High School student highlighted the “shameful part of our history” and urged the county to change the Dixie Highway name, adding that “one of Miami-Dade’s main corridors should not honor this terrible legacy.” 

Banos suggested that “the best historical figure to represent this monumental fight is none other than Harriet Tubman.” She wrote that Tubman’s work as an abolitionist and political activist made her the perfect candidate for an alternative name choice. 

Two years and countless city and county meetings later, the switch was agreed upon and honored with a renaming ceremony at Vizcaya Metrorail Station in Miami-Dade, Florida, according to The Miami Herald. The city of Coral Gables decided unanimously to change its portion of the road formally known as U.S. 1 earlier this year.

Read the full article here.

Learn more about additional efforts to pay tribute to the life and work of Harriet Tubman here.

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