Agenda Item: City of Brownsville Commission meeting, 4 p.m. Tuesday Aug. 6, 2019
Special to El RrunRrun
After having heard from Juan Rene Hernandez, a longtime resident of E. Fronton Street at their July 31 meeting on how changing that street's name to McNair Family Drive contradicted the city's historical preservation efforts, commissioner Ben Neece said that an item on the city commission's next meeting agenda would be placed to reconsider the renaming of the thoroughfare.Hernandez pointed out that while the residents had nothing against the McNair family, the history of the thoroughfare in the city's existence bore more importance than an individual family. He pointed out that:
1. El Fronton was one of the original city streets dating back to 1850.
2. That the street dated back some 169 years
3. That it was the only street in downtown Brownsville with a Spanish name
4. That it was the site where Afro-American populations had lived since the 1900s, and that Mitte Pullam, a black educator, ran the very first Frederick Douglass Elementary schoolhouse on Fronton St. before desegregation in Texas.
She was the teacher for all grades and the principal of the school for black children and lived there. According to newspaper reports of the time, the school was exceptional and the children were being taught at the same level as the best of the white private schools.After desegregation, she taught at Skinner Elementary and was recognized Teacher of the Year. Pullam was honored by having a new $40 million dollar elementary school building named after her in Brownsville.
5. That in 1889, E. Fronton Street it was the site for the switching yards of the newly-established St. Louis, Brownsville, Mexico Railroad.
Hernandez pointed out that the McNair family already had a park named after them on nearby St. Charles.
The commission also voted to adopt the ordinance defining the process by which streets are named. When the street was renamed after the McNairs, commissioner Rose Gowen asked city manager Noel Bernal to study the possibility of passing a city policy on renaming streets.
Interestingly, one of the first no-nos in city manager Bernal's policy included in Resolution Number 2019-069 is that streets should not be named "after living persons, other than a recognized national figure...," which would have prevented the name change if it had been in the books before the May 21 meeting.
While addressing the commission in the May 21 meeting, pro-renaming resident Enrique Mellizo assured the commissioners that "only 14" property owners of the 144 lots on the stretch of E. Fronton mailed letters of concern about the renaming.
What he didn't say - and that which Engineering Director Carlos Lastra included in this month's meeting packets - is that "only" four letters were received in support of the name change. Mellizo was able to procure "only" 30 names for the petition of the 144 property owners.
Obviously, there wasn't a groundswell of support for the change although Mellizo made it seem like the natives were clamoring for the McNair family to be enshrined forever along the historical route. This Tuesday, that knee-jerk vote to rename the street will be considered in an action item.