A Minneapolis street along the Mississippi River has been renamed Lena Smith Boulevard to honor Lena Olive Smith, Minnesota’s first Black female attorney and longtime civil rights advocate.
The street, formerly known as Edmund Boulevard and named for segregationist developer Edmund Walton, is part of a broader effort to confront systemic racism in the city’s history and spaces.
The renaming follows a five-year, community-driven initiative called Reclaiming Edmund Boulevard, founded in 2020 by Joe Larsen and Mark Brandt. The pair said the project was inspired by Minneapolis’ reckoning with racial inequality after the murder of George Floyd.
“Edmund Boulevard was never a reflection of our shared values,” one committee member said. “Reclaiming it allows us to replace a name rooted in exclusion with one grounded in justice and belonging.”…