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.