Better late than never

We congratulate the members of the City Council-CARD citizens subcommittee for their successful efforts finally to name something in Chico after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We also commend Joe Person and Willie Hyman for their willingness to continue to keep the pressure on the right people to make this happen.

The solution to rename Whitman Avenue after King, add his legacy to the name of the Community Park and install a statue to his good works is a proper one. For years Hyman, and then Person and a host of supporters, labored to get this done. We salute them for their tenacity in the face of occasional ugly and derogatory comments and rude behavior by some in the community.

But much like the man they strove to honor, these people persevered and in the end got what they were after—the recognition of a man who helped bring the country out of a long, dark and ugly era. But their struggles to do so also show we still have a long way to go to get to King’s Promised Land.