A once-segregated stretch of Minneapolis has a new name — and a new legacy.
What was formerly Edmund Boulevard, a street named for a real estate developer who helped enforce racial segregation, now proudly bears the name Lena Smith Boulevard, honoring Minnesota’s first Black woman attorney and one of the state’s earliest and fiercest advocates for housing justice.
The renaming, finalized after nearly five years of community advocacy, marks more than a symbolic gesture — it’s a powerful reclamation of space, history, and truth.
A Legacy Reclaimed
Lena O. Smith, who practiced law in the early 1900s, spent her life battling the deeply entrenched systems of racism that kept Black families from buying or renting homes in certain neighborhoods. She represented clients who faced racial covenants, fought segregation in public accommodations, and co-founded the Minneapolis Urban League…