Activists and city leaders stressed the need to keep pushing for change at a press conference following the Norman City Council’s vote to rename DeBarr Avenue by next summer.
Speakers gathered outside city hall Oct. 25 after a long council meeting the night before, where, after two hours of public comment from community members and activists, the council voted to rename DeBarr Avenue no later than June 1, 2018.
“We need more culture competency from our city leaders when it comes to racial issues,” said Deon Osborne, a strategic political communication senior. “That’s why Norman Citizens for Racial Justice will continue to be a citizen watchdog coalition of all different diverse groups in the city of Norman and the OKC metro.”
Osborne has been an active voice for the renaming of DeBarr Avenue, named for Edwin DeBarr, who was an OU professor and national leader in the KKK.
Ashley McCray, co-founder of both Indigenize OU and a group opposing the Plains All American Pipeline, said she credits young activists like Osborne with getting DeBarr renamed. She said Norman still has more work to do and mentioned OU’s “Boomer Sooner" as a still-standing example of racism in the community.
City council member Breea Clark, who revived the 30-year-old issue in March when she launched an online petition to garner public support for renaming DeBarr, said she was ashamed it took so long for the city to deal with the renaming of the street.
“We took an historic action to move away from our sundown town past, but more importantly we took a historic action in listening to our residents,” Clark said.
The next step toward the street's renaming will take place at 8:30 a.m. Nov. 8 when an oversight committee will discuss amending the renaming policy for streets to make it possible for DeBarr Avenue to be renamed by the city, rather than by a 75 percent vote of the street’s property owners.
