In 2006, The Sentinel dedicated considerable coverage to the effort to rename North Portland Boulevard after civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In October 2006, Sentinel Publisher Cornelius Swart wrote an editorial in support of the name change.

But by the summer of 2007, as the first new Rosa Parks signs began going up on Portland Boulevard and became visible, a small backlash against the name change began to arise amongst residents. Little did they know that another street-renaming controversy was waiting in the wings.

In August 2007, The Sentinel street edition expanded on earlier online coverage about a campaign to change the name of North Interstate Avenue to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. The Sentinel reported that several neighborhood associations along Interstate Avenue had given initial support for the idea, but businesses were unaware of the proposal.

The efforts quickly grabbed citywide, statewide, and then national headlines as a determined activist group met with increasingly vocal opposition. Accusations of racism on one side were met by allegations of back-room deals at City Hall.

Over 200 angry residents showed up at two packed town hall meetings at North Portland’s Ockley Green School, where Portland’s tradition of polite and demure public meetings descended into catcalls, boos, hisses, crying jags and calls of “go back to Mexico.”

Reporter Amy J. Ruiz, then with the Portland Mercury, found a statute in the City Charter revealing that the Chavez renaming effort was not following due process.

The Sentinel documented Mayor Tom Potter storming out of a City Council meeting about the Chavez debate in a video clip that wound up on the evening news. For months, the entire city seemed fixated on the issue.

A last-minute proposal by City Council to rename Southwest 4th Avenue downtown for Chavez instead of Interstate Avenue caused a head-on collision with another group: Chinese Americans. Since Southwest 4th Avenue runs through Chinatown, Asian Americans united with Latinos to kill the proposal.

Many in Portland and across the country were shocked to see how hyperbolic and convulsive this debate became. It seemed to undermine the city’s image as a progressive, open-minded place. But as this paper noted, North Portland is home to hundreds of families who have roots in the neighborhood going back generations. When combined with a new middle-class wave of “gentrifiers” and a rapidly growing minority population, the Chavez debate became a flash point for a neighborhood that saw its identity as a free-for-all and residents who felt either misrepresented or underrepresented by the larger culture.

The Sentinel editorial position was to call foul and suggest a new process.

After more than two years, new street signs appeared last month declaring Southeast 39th Avenue as Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, rather than Interstate Avenue.

“We’ve learned a lesson on how to approach people, how do you open doors and not point fingers,” says Jesus Estrada, an organizer for the Frente Comun, a North Portland Latino group. “I think it could have been done better. We weren’t trying to take something away. We were trying to add to the community.”
Estrada is now working on getting Clarendon-Portsmouth K-8 School renamed after Chavez.

Bill Mildenberger, Jr. owns the Nite Hawk Café and Lounge on North Interstate Avenue and was one of the key opponents of the name change. He felt frustrated by the divisive process that caused so much racial tension in North Portland.

“I could never sit down and talk with the proponents, despite repeated attempts,” said Mildenberger.
Mildenberger doesn’t believe street names should be changed, regardless of where they are and whom they might memorialize. Instead, he believes the new light-rail bridge proposed for the Willamette River south of OMSI would have made a more fitting monument.

“I think renaming 39th instead of the bridge was a lost opportunity,” said Mildenberger, adding, “I think it’s a better symbol than 39th.”

While Mildenberger opposed the name change for both Interstate and SE 39th avenues, he admires the work of Chavez.

His father, Bill Senior, died in August 2008. While going through Bill Senior’s personal effects, Bill Junior discovered a photo of his father with Cesar E. Chavez.