For more than a century, Negrohead Mountain (pictured left) has towered over the countryside north of Malibu, Calif. offering unrivalled views of the Pacific Ocean to generations of hikers. But this week, at the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen, the striking landmark's time-honored name disappeared from local maps (hat tip: Black & Right). The 2,031ft summit will henceforth be known as Ballard Mountain. The new title honors a blacksmith and former slave called John Ballard, who was among the first men to settle in its foothills in 1880, after fleeing Los Angeles to escape persecution by segregationist police officers.
Behind the scenes, the renaming of Negrohead Mountain marked the latest step in a controversial trend. And historians fear that the push to replace colorful words or phrases of America's landmarks with "acceptable" alternatives is seeing the nation's heritage sacrificed at the altar of political correctness. In San Francisco, the county board of supervisors debated a proposal to change the name of the Mount Diablo State Park to Mount Reagan State Park. The move was eventually rejected, but not before a group of conservative Christian activists had advanced a case to the effect that the park's historic name, which is Spanish for "devil", is profane and highly offensive to religious people. In the past two decades, nine U.S. states have also passed laws against place names deemed "offensive" to Native Americans. When South Dakota banned place names offensive to minorities, in 2001, Squaw Lake became Serenity Lake. In 2007 in Minnesota, liberal politicians attempted to change the name of Rum River because of the damage the drink did to the Native American community.
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Americans Redraw The Map To Erase 'Offensive' Names
