The city of Hyattsville is considering renaming its most notable park in part due to a racist element of its past.
Earlier this year, Stuart Eisenberg, executive director of the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation, wrote in the Hyattsville Life & Times that the 1927 deed transferring a portion of the parkland to the city included a restrictive covenant:
“IN TRUST NEVERTHELESS to hold said land as a public recreation park and playground to be known as WILLIAM PINKNEY MAGRUDER PARK, for the Caucasian inhabitants only of the said town of Hyattsville,” and, “… to issue permits permitting persons of the Caucasian race, not inhabitants of said town.”
Hillary and Annie Willis, who expanded the park in 1944, put similar restrictions on it.
The park is hardly unique. As we’ve noted, homes in University Park came with restrictive covenants which barred them from being rented or sold to non-whites, as did homes in Hyattsville’s historic district. Eisenberg has found similar restrictions in the former Concordia Lutheran School and the nearby Clearwood Subdivision. The covenants were once common throughout D.C. as well.
The Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants unconstitutional in 1948, and they were later explicitly barred by Congress in 1968.
The renaming appears to have some momentum behind it. The Hyattsville Preservation Association intends to make a formal proposal to rename the park, a move that has drawn support on the city’s online forum, Speak Up HVL, and the Hope in Hyattsville email listserv. Councilman Joseph Solomon backs the move as well.
Still, the renaming would require time, energy and money, and without a concerted effort to push it, the city may decide its easier to just leave it. For now, there’s also no clear alternative name, although “The Jim Henson Park”, or some variation of that, would be an easy sell.
Re-Re-named Gray Squirrel Park
Sure, don’t like history just rename it, pave over it, take it down, and leave it out of the history books. Then YOU try and explain to your grandchildren why YOU don’t like our collective history! We made mistakes and we KNOW it! However, Taking down Peace Cross, re-naming Magruder Park ain’t gonna change a thing!
Guess what you ignorant people!…. Renaming will not erase it. As a women should I go and sh– because we didn’t have the right to vote until 1920??? What if Caucasian people demand the removal of the MLK memorial??? This is out of hand and the most useless use of time and money. Remember the adage that if we don’t learn history, we are doomed to repeat it.