"I just think it's time to celebrate a different kind of history."
-- D'Andre Jones, Fayetteville City Council member
Fayetteville's Black Heritage Preservation Commission has proposed a good idea: Name a city street after Nelson Hackett, an enslaved man whose 1841 escape from bondage in Fayetteville led to an extradition battle of international proportions.
Hackett's story has largely been untold, but a University of Arkansas project (nelsonhackettproject.uark.edu) has shed welcome light on a fascinating story that reflects the tensions slavery injected into international relations. Little is known about Hackett while he was in Fayetteville, but his flight for freedom and, according to the project, his status as the only fugitive from slavery Canada ever sent back is a part of our human drama worth remembering.
"History" ought to mean the fullness of it. Nelson Hackett's plight and stories like it should be as natural a part of the nation's story as FDR or Benjamin Franklin or Bill Clinton. But so much of Black, Native American or other stories has gone untold. Correcting that is vital. Fayetteville's Black Heritage Preservation Commission is contributing to that with a push for the city to install a large bronze marker telling Hackett's story on the city's downtown square.
City council member D'Andre Jones has acknowledged the commission is attempting "probably the boldest thing that we've done" by asking the City Council not just to rename a street, but to remove the name of Arkansas' second governor from that curvy stretch south of the Historic Washington County Courthouse known as Archibald Yell Boulevard.
Walter J. Lemke, founder of the University of Arkansas' department of journalism and organizer of the Washington County Historical Society in 1951, proposed in 1953 that Yell be recognized with that new street's naming. Why? Because at the time Yell was considered the most famous Fayetteville historical figure because of his leadership in the early development of the state.
Yell, for whom Yellville and Yell County are named, was Arkansas' first congressman and practiced law in Fayetteville. He owned much of the land that makes up south Fayetteville today. His rugged law office was preserved by the historical society in 1992 and moved onto its headquarters property on East Dickson Street. The Washington County Bar Association, along with several well-established law firms in town, sponsored preservation of Yell's law office.
Yell died in military service to the nation at the Battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican-American War, one of four wars he fought in for the United States. He's buried in the city's historic Evergreen Cemetery.
Archibald Yell also owned slaves and signed the extradition request to have Nelson Hackett returned to Fayetteville from Canada.
Fayetteville really faces two questions: Should it name a street after Nelson Hackett and should it erase its 69-year recognition of Archibald Yell?
I would vote an emphatic "yes" to the first question. I'd vote "no" to the second.
It has been 175 years since Archibald Yell died. To suggest we should eradicate him from longstanding Fayetteville recognition because some aspects of his life don't measure up to modern standards is to demand a perfection no ancestor can achieve.
D'Andre Jones wrote to the City Council that "this is not about canceling or removing history, but rather about acknowledging individuals that have not been previously acknowledged."
So why target one of the few city streets named for prominent historical figures? It's the second time Jones and the commission have chosen to do that, pushing successfully last year to remove World War II hero Leroy Pond's name from the street next to Bud Walton Arena so that it could be named after basketball coach Nolan Richardson.
I wholeheartedly agree a "different kind of history" needs to be told. To write it should not require starting with an eraser.