I propose the Lane County Board of Commissioners refer a county namesake change to a referendum. We should change it from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lane to U.S. Sen. Harry Lane, his grandson. This idea is not frivolous, though maybe annoying.
I contend Joseph Lane is an unworthy namesake because he ran for vice president of the United States on a ticket endorsing slavery, and favoring secession by states which refused to extend the American passion for freedom to people in bondage.
Harry Lane is a worthy namesake for our county because as mayor of Portland and U.S. senator from Oregon, he represented independence and progressive government. I’ve found research suggesting Harry Lane was a maverick like Wayne Morse and Tom McCall. As a physician, “Doc” Lane charged low or no fees to patients who were up against it. He represented “the plain people” and was conspicuous in a U.S. Senate called even then the Millionaires’ Club.
Harry’s racial views were mixed: He defended Native Americans and home rule for Filipinos, but was unsympathetic to blacks and Chinese coolie labor.
Neither Joseph nor Harry lived in Lane County.
Family values: During 2003, a diary written by President Harry Truman made news because of unflattering judgments about Israel. I realized that if Joseph Lane had left a diary expressing a passion for pedophilia, Satan worship, anarchism, polygamy or the Communist Party, I wouldn’t be writing. The County Commission would have made a namesake change before sunset.
The obscenity of slavery: Americans have been soft on slavery in a way we were never soft on communism. I often hear, “We can’t judge people of the past by current standards.” Sure we can. The treatment of slaves included working them to death; punishment by whipping, ear-cropping and branding; and a sexual double-standard we just got a whiff of when Sen. Strom Thurmond’s illegitimate daughter came forward.
Political correctness: American history is a mixture of rebelling and conforming. Sometimes we flock like sheep; sometimes we say “No.” It was once PC to slap around first-grade kids who wrote with their left hands. Now it’s PC to let them perform naturally. Fairly recently it was PC to treat women, blacks and illegitimate children as inferior at their core. And to rank ethnic groups in order of desirability. And to keep handicapped folks out of sight, shut the stores on Sunday and deny or ignore wife-beating and incest. Political correctness is reversed now. The question is not whether a Lane change is PC. It’s whether it’s right.
Money: If we change the namesake from Joseph to Harry, no budget will be needed for revising signs, maps or letterheads.
My inspiration: I got this idea from the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard struggle and from James Loewen’s book “Lies Across America.” Loewen said many disgusting citizens have been honored by historical markers. In 1986, he reported, the King County Commission in Seattle changed its name from a slavemonger named William Rufus King to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
In the past few weeks, a West Eugene street name has been changed from Sam R. to Sam Reynolds, to redress a racial insult. The Corvallis School Board is reconsidering the name of Avery School, on grounds Joseph and Martha Avery were passionate racists. Respectable Congressional conservatives plan to replace Franklin D. Roosevelt with Ronald Reagan on the dime.
It’s time for a Lane Change.