[aomagrat]

This revisionist BS in Washington is nothing new. King County Washington was named after William Rufus Devane King, Vice President under Franklin Pierce. But in 1986 they "discovered" that Vice President King was a slave owner, so they renamed the county after Martin Luther King, Jr. See King County MOTION NO. 6461

How long will it be before they rename the State of Washington? And you can bet it won't be after Booker T. Washington since he wasn't a member of the NAACP.

[kdw]

That is not quite the whole story of the naming game. Washington’s two most important counties were named after the President and Vice President in an attempt to curry favor and get Washington admitted as a state. The national government responded by making Oregon a State (Washington remained a territory for another 40 years). William Rufus Devane King was as open a homosexual as anyone was in the 1850s. He was the only American executive to take the oath of office while outside the county. He was sworn in on March 4, 1853, in Havana, Cuba he promptly died on April 18, 1853 having never done anything as Vice-President. But the fact is, that almost nobody who lived in King County had any idea who he was. Most people already thought that the County was named after MLK before the name change. Considering there is a King holiday, the change made sense.