City residents and officials will gather on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to formally commemorate the renaming of the city's United Avenue, which was previously known as Confederate Avenue, CNN reported Sunday.

The news outlet reported that the street has been at the center of a year-long effort by residents and some officials to change the street name. City workers replaced old street signs with new ones that read "United Avenue" in November.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that hundreds of people gathered on Saturday for a celebratory march down the recently renamed street.

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The news outlet reported that the former Confederate Avenue was one of at least 25 streets in Atlanta named for Confederate leaders. Former Mayor Kasim Reed commissioned a panel in 2017 to examine those streets and rename them.

The fate of monuments, buildings and streets honoring Confederate soldiers and leaders have become a hot-button issue following the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.

The "Unite the Right Rally" was planned in August 2017 in response to the city's plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Since then, a number of municipalities and universities have moved to take down Confederate monuments or rename areas named after Confederate soldiers.

President Trump, who drew widespread condemnation for his response to Charlottesville, opposed removing the statues, saying the removals amount to the "history and culture" of the United States "being ripped apart."