It’s official: Hyattsville’s Magruder Park will be renamed for a man who would not have been allowed to play in it as a child.

According to a press release from the city issued today, May 4, the City Council voted 9-1 on Monday to direct the city attorney to draft legal papers to rename the 32-acre park after David C. Driskell, the noted African-American artist and curator who lived nearby until his death from Covid-19 last year at the age of 88.

Driskell was born in 1931, four years after a deed officially gave a portion of the land for the park to the city on condition that it be “for the Caucasian inhabitants only of the said town of Hyattsville.” Similar terms were used on paperwork expanding the park in 1944, when he was just 13.

These restrictive covenants, common in Hyattsville’s Historic District and nearby University Park, have been unenforceable since a Supreme Court decision in 1948, although they often remain on the books even today.

The city considered several other options, including renaming it for the indigenous Nacotchtank tribe and the lone holdout opposed naming it for any one person, but ultimately the poetic justice of naming the park after Driskell won out, as first reported by Route 1 Reporter.

As the city notes, over 800 suggestions for new park names were submitted by the public as part of the renaming, with 230 in favor of renaming it for Driskell.

Not only did Driskell live near and frequent the park, but his career represented the antithesis of everything the racist words on that deed signified. An artist in his own right, Driskell famously curated a 1976 exhibit that was the highest-profile collection of African-American art at the time and advocated for Black artists his entire life.

Now, a park that is frequented by children of all races, playing side-by-side, will honor him with its name — the David C. Driskell Community Park.

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