Published April 30, 2021 •
Updated on April 30, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Charlie Wojciechowski
A proposal to rename a stretch of Chicago s Lake Shore Drive is one step closer to reality after a City Council committee voted to approve the measure in a meeting that was contentious and at times profane.
The Chicago City Council Committee on Transportation met Thursday to consider an ordinance to rename a portion of Lake Shore Drive as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive. Don t miss local breaking news and weather! Download our mobile app for iOS or Android and sign up for alerts.
The ordinance was initially introduced by 17th Ward Ald. David Moore and co-sponsored by several other Chicago City Council members to rename the iconic roadway after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who arrived in Chicago in 1790 and was likely the first permanent non-Native American settler of the area.
Apr 29, 2021
For some time now there has been talk about changing the name of Lake Shore Drive to honor the man responsible for founding Chicago.
Will Lake Shore Drive be renamed after Jean Baptiste Point DuSable? That would be a good move if so. The City Council is set for a key vote on that today. Stay tuned.
According to the language of the initial ordinance, proposed in 2019, Lake Shore Drive would be renamed Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive from Hollywood Boulevard, located in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood on the North Side, to the South 71st Street merge on the South Side.
Moore later agreed to limit the proposal to Outer Lake Shore Drive from Hollywood to 67th, just impacting the city s harbors and not changing the addresses of businesses or residences along LSD.
Point du Sable arrived at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1790 and established a property near what is now Michigan Avenue. He sold his property in 1800, according to researchers, but the area where he settled is now marked by historic markers along the Chicago River.
UpdatedFri, Apr 30, 2021 at 9:25 am CT
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Chicago s Lake Shore Drive was changed to DuSable Drive after an unanimous vote in the City Council on Thursday. ( Scott Olson/Getty Images)
CHICAGO Seventeen miles of Lake Shore Drive is set to be renamed after Chicago s first non-native settler, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. The City Council committee of transportation voted unanimously for the proposition Thursday, but some aldermen wonder if Mayor Lori Lightfoot will veto the change when it goes before the entire City Council.
The expected change will rename a portion of outer Lake Shore Drive, from Hollywood Avenue to 67th Street.
March 16, 2021
Paul Butler
THE WASHINGTON POST – I grew up in Chicago raised by an activist mother who force-fed her kids race pride, so of course I knew that the city’s first nonnative settler was a Black man, the Haitian fur trapper Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.
What I didn’t know was that du Sable was also the first Black man in Chicago to get locked up. I learned that from
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, Reuben Jonathan Miller’s trenchant guide to the legal and social cruelties piled on Americans who have felony convictions. This group numbers nearly 20 million people, including one in three African American men.