For starters, if you’re a regular reader of the Greensboro News & Record you might have picked up on the fact that they care for Sen. Phil Berger. N&R ed page editor Allen Johnson made that clear when he just had to get in a cheap shot at Berger in Sunday’s column on the proposal to rename North and South Aycock streets and a portion of Westover Terrace to honor Josephine Boyd Bradley, who integrated Greensboro Senior High School (now Grimsley High School) in 1958.
Johnson must have gotten some blowback on his comments about Berger, because note they’re in the online edition. Interesting, because he took a full four paragraphs to rag on Berger before he got to the point. But let’s rise above the politics, especially since the local historian lobbying to rename Aycock Street is not doing so to aim at Charles Aycock—the segregationist governor at the turn of the century–but rather to simply honor Boyd, considering that part of Aycock Street runs past Grimsley.
Aycock Street transitions into Westover Terrace, a business district, and the concerns of those businesses who must change their addresses must be taken into consideration. And while there (as yet) does not seem to be opposition (as yet—it’s early in the process)–to the name change, there is a solution that would honor Josephine Boyd and not inconvenience anyone. The name of the street running through Grimsley between Benjamin Parkway and Westover Terrace is ‘Campus Drive.’ How boring is that? Why not simply rename that street in honor of Josephine Boyd? It would more directly honor her and keep the businesses on Westover Terrace happy.
