Valdosta, Georgia residents want street remaned ‘Barack Obama Boulevard’

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Residents of a Georgia city are pushing to change the name of a residential street to Barack Obama Boulevard.

The Valdosta Daily Times reports a citizens group plans to start circulating a petition Monday to rename Forrest Street for the nation’s first black president. The Rev. Floyd Rose says the petition needs signatures from 51 percent of the street’s residents.

Rose says the name should be changed because Valdosta city leaders named Forrest Street in April 1883 for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

But Donald Davis of the Lowndes County Historical Museum says notes from the period indicate the street may have been named for Elbert Forrest, a black businessman in Valdosta.