No one knows for sure when the dirt path wandering north from downtown Fayetteville started being called Murchison Road. Nothing much existed out that way before 1908, when the school that would become Fayetteville State University started building a campus.

But there's little doubt about where the road's name most likely originated: the Murchisons, a Scottish family who settled in what's now Spring Lake on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

Within three generations, the Murchisons had become wealthy, prominent landowners and successful in business. Chances are, they owned slaves on the plantation they called Holly Hill along the Lower Little River.

And during the Civil War, three Murchisons wore the Confederate uniform. One was a commander killed in battle. The other two survived, although one was captured and held prisoner.

The history of Scottish Murchisons has largely faded over time. As the road developed into the mid-1900s — first with the college, then with houses for teachers, and eventually into the thriving center of Fayetteville's black community — it became more commonly thought that the road was named after black Murchisons.

[What we know about the Murchisons]

Regardless of the origin, the name of Murchison Road has become more than a street sign. It has represented “my home” to generations of families and black-owned businesses since the 1950s, when a strong middle class took root at a time when blacks were largely excluded elsewhere. “Murchison Road″ would become synonymous with the black community itself.

That identity is now at the heart of an emerging debate over the idea of changing the road's name to University Boulevard, a tribute to FSU. A growing chorus of residents in the community think that it's time to shed the Murchison name to eliminate outdated perceptions and advance efforts at revitalization. Over the past month, the idea has seemed to gain traction among a segment who see it as an opportunity to redefine the corridor while rejecting the ties to slavery and the Confederacy. But to others, including some senior members of the community, the Murchison name transcends history books. It is a source of pride, not something to abandon easily.

[Join our new Facebook group, Turning Point: Murchison Road]

And then, of course, there are the logistical considerations, to include the expense of changing business addresses.

The question of renaming Murchison comes at a time when the City Council has agreed to make the corridor's revitalization a priority. The Fayetteville Observer in February launched “Turning Point,” a project to explore Murchison Road's history, provide a platform for residents and businesses, search for positive solutions and serve as a catalyst for a community-wide commitment to the corridor.

On March 26, the Observer will hold a forum at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church, 1217 Murchison Road, for the public to share their opinions about the road name. The forum will be 6-7:30 p.m.

Plenty of people have already formed some opinion, with supporters saying a name change could help revitalize the five-mile corridor from Rowan Street to the Outer Loop.

[Matt Leclercq: Murchison Road, tell us what you think]

“That's the reason I wouldn't mind it being changed,” said Agnes Smith, the owner of A Bouquet Florist on Murchison Road. She was unaware of the Murchison family's history.

Mayor Mitch Colvin said he sees advantages to University Boulevard, though he is sentimental for the name of the community in which he grew up. His second-generation funeral home business is on Murchison Road.

“I know that it's a community of good people,” Colvin said. “There is a new day, and all options are on the table in my opinion. And as we rebrand and the city redefines who we are, I think that you have to be open to whatever that includes for Murchison Road. I know the difficulties I've had over the years with trying to operate and do business in areas that are stigmatized.”

FSU is the largest stakeholder along the corridor, Colvin said, which makes it a fitting namesake.

Chancellor James Anderson said he personally feels the name change is “a great idea.”

[QUIZ: How much do you know about Murchison Road?]

“But we must give businesses and homeowners ample time to adjust to such a change,” said Anderson, who also spoke about the issue on WIDU AM last week. He suggests extending the new name from Rowan Street to the U.S. 401 Bypass, instead of all the way to Spring Lake.

Anderson said the conversations “speak to the important value of a university to the surrounding community.”

“The historical evidence points to the fact that the current name is associated with a family that owned a plantation in the area,” he said. “The calls for renaming Murchison Road to University Boulevard reflect the personal attachment that community members have to Fayetteville State University and its proud history. I support their right to express that concern and have it discussed as a serious topic.”

The Rev. Aaron Johnson, who has lived in the community since the 1960s, was one of the city's first black council members in the 1970s. He strongly recommends the new name.

Now 86, Johnson was pastor at Mt. Sinai for more than 40 years. He said the Murchison name “is really an affront to us who have lived in this community all these years.”

Segregation from the 1950s into the 1970s forced blacks to live in the black Murchison Road community, so businesses sprung up to cater to them. There were grocery stores, nightclubs, motels, beauty stores and other black-owned, mom-and-pop businesses.

“You had the people who lived in the community patronize those businesses,” Johnson said.

Discrimination prevented blacks from finding housing outside of the corridor. That led to subdivisions built for black homeowners and renters.

“Developers built homes in communities, like Broadell, for them to live,” he said. “Quite a few communities were built to provide homes for those black military families.”

Integration meant people could live in other parts of the city and patronize businesses elsewhere. Over time, the black-owned businesses disappeared.

“A lot of the families, the older folk, are dead,” Johnson said. “And they left those homes to their children. The children are not here or they have moved some place else. You've got a number of empty homes and the houses are going downhill.”

Johnson, who ran for City Council on a platform of cleaning up Murchison Road in the 1970s, remembers how drugs became a major problem, with a stigma that persists today.

[POLL: How do you pronounce Murchison Road?]

“It was evident that those who were involved in law enforcement allowed the drug activities to take place in the black community, and the drugs were not just provided for the people that lived along this road,” Johnson said. “But people came from all over the city (to buy). It was sort of like the headquarters for drugs, and they allowed it to happen.”

In the early 1990s, the City Council voted to rename Murchison Road after Martin Luther King Jr. The proposal ignited months of debate, with critics including Johnson saying that King should be honored on a road that cuts through a diverse part of town, not just the black community. State leaders killed the change, and King's name would later go on the N.C. 87 loop in 1997.

The Department of Transportation would have to approve a name change after public hearings, said state Rep. Elmer Floyd, who remembers opposition from some businesses in the early '90s.

Wyman Edward, an owner of BJ's Used Book Exchange, said he would worry about the costs of updating signs and stationary.

“It is a business expense,” he said. “It would be a mess. It would be years of all my people sending mail to the wrong place.”

A Confederate connection

City historian Bruce Daws is certain that Murchison Road is named after the Scottish Murchisons, but he is unsure when the route took on the name. Today's Murchison Road leads to where the family settled in 1773, in the area they named Manchester.

Daws knows of no historical record showing that the Murchisons held slaves. He believes they probably did, because it was common for plantation owners.

“They may have,” Daws said. “They were wealthy. And slaves were not used just for agrarian purposes, either. I mean, merchants owned slaves during this period of time that conducted different kinds of businesses. Many of the slaves in Fayetteville were skilled artisans.”

Three grandsons of the Murchison patriarch fought in the Civil War, as did most men of fighting age: John Reid Murchison, a colonel who was killed in the 1864 Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia, his body never recovered, and Kenneth McKenzie Murchison, who was held prisoner for about two years, and David Reid Murchison, who became a captain in the 54th N.C. Regiment.

But the Civil War is not what Jimmy Buxton associates with the Murchison name. He grew up along the corridor.

“I don't relate that to a Confederate colonel or anything,” Buxton said. “Murchison Road has its own history by the people that lived on the street and off the street. We've created our own history. Even though the name comes from a Confederate colonel, he had nothing to do with our history.”

Buxton, who is president of the Fayetteville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, remembers riding in the back of the bus to E.E. Smith High School off Murchison Road.

“We walked that road just like we used to walk the railroad tracks all the way downtown,” he said.

Murchison is not the only road named after Confederates, he said. “The next thing you know, they'll change Fort Bragg and Fort Lee. All of those are named after Confederate generals.”

Ellison Ellison, the second vice president of the NAACP and a fellow native of the community, shares Buxton's sentiments.

“It is well thought of in the black community, and to change the name would hit the community hard,” Ellison said. “I know some people would like to see name changed because of that bad history.”

'It remembers'

Fayetteville is not alone in the difficult debate over community names, said Derek Alderman, a cultural and historical geography professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Streets and monuments bearing Confederate names are common in the South, said Alderman, who focuses his work on race relations, public memory and popular culture.

“These struggles are happening across the country, not just in the South but all over the U.S.,” he said. “It is a general questioning about the inappropriateness of the symbols we use to identify ourselves and identify public places. These challenges are not just saying, 'We don't like this particular piece of history.' It remembers. It is the fact that that name and that connection with that history is made part of public space.”

Alderman said he also understands how people who grow up in neighborhoods have fond memories of the street name.

“I will say there are communities all over the country that are now renaming places, realizing that while that name means a great deal to those people who live on that street or road or that part of town, that it's important that names are able to communicate certain values beyond just simply those folks that live on that road.”

A proposal to significantly expand the Martin Luther King Jr. Park, on the southern end of Murchison Road, could benefit from a name change, believes Wilson Lacy, who heads up the longstanding committee that developed the park. Initial designs call for a spire more than 100 feet tall above a building with waterfalls and displays.

“I think it would help the area if there were a name change,” Lacy said. “I think University Boulevard would bring some positive aspect to Murchison Road, because once an individual says 'Murchison Road,' one automatically thinks of a particular ethnicity group. And I think it would help to a large degree the Martin Luther King Park aspect.”

For now, several council members in support of corridor revitalization say they're holding back their opinions about the name change.

Councilman D.J. Haire said he wants to hear from more of his constituents. “Some like it, some don't like it. But we really haven't had a meeting of folks to come together and talk about that,” he said.

Councilwoman Tisha Waddell said the corridor is ripe for economic development, but it's too premature to start talking about a name change.

“I think that changing the name doesn't change the area,” she said. “We have to do the work to change the area, not just rely on changing the name.”

Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at jhenderson@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3596.

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