15 Jun WHAT’S IN A NAME?
A “plantation” has been defined as “an estate on which crops such as coffee, sugar, and tobacco are cultivated by resident labor.” Historically, the concept of a plantation has been associated with slavery. In South Florida, the name represents a local Broward County community of nearly 100,000 residents. Now, one of those residents has started a petition to change the city’s name citing it as being a “a symbol of its racist confederate past.”
While the country has been faced with the issue of monuments of its past being removed, has the question of physical locations been raised before? Actually, it has. Residents of a subdivision in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, voted in April 2019 to change the name of their community from “Swastika Acres” to “Old Cherry Hills.” The former name had been in place since 1908, long before the Nazis appropriated the swastika as the symbol which came to represent bigotry and hatred.
Florida statutes permit the name of a subdivision, street or other name appearing on a plat or map to be changed by ordinance if it constitutes an ethnic or racial slur. In this case, the issue is not any one of these categories nor is it an ethnic or racial slur. The question for the public and local government is whether the movement to change the City of Plantation gains momentum. As an attorney, as with so many things in the law, for me it raises new questions for discussion.