Copyright CBS News
The street name "White Settlement Road" has been debated for years in Fort Worth. On Tuesday, the Fort Worth City Council approved a name change with a 9-2 vote for a one-mile section of the road to be renamed Westside Drive. The change will affect the stretch between University Drive and North Henderson Street. Native residents voice opposition David Martinez, who is of Apache descent, spoke at the meeting. "I post on the Northside Facebook page, which has over 50,000 members. I asked them, and not one Native American was for changing the name," Martinez said. "If you take away the name, it does erase history." Flipstone Vintage & Thrift co-owner Dancing Heart Iglesias also opposed the change. "It was almost like a culture shock that a Native American business would even be on this road," Iglesias said. Iglesias, a member of the Lakota tribe, opened the store with her sister on the section of White Settlement Road that will be renamed. "I think that the street name does provoke a lot of people to ask questions, which I think is a good thing," she said. History and context of the name Tarrant County College history instructor Adam Guerrero said the history of White Settlement dates back more than 180 years. "They are referring to White individuals who are settling amongst Natives at the time," Guerrero said. General Edward Tarrant, for whom Tarrant County is named, commanded the Texas militia to attack Native Americans living in seven Indigenous villages beginning in 1841, according to Guerrero. "This is an extermination," Guerrero said. "There's violence that's enacted against them later as they further push west, so Indigenous populations here, they only had the option of they could stay and assimilate or those who resisted or didn't want to go into reservations, then they would face the military." Developer behind name change request The name change comes at the request of the developer of the 37-acre Westside Village, a proposed $1.7 billion mixed-use project. Larkspur Capital, the developer, will pay nearly $26,000 to change the street signs. "They're not paying the businesses that are having to change all of their stationery and having to update all of their information," Iglesias said. Call for more inclusive process Iglesias said she wishes the City Council had asked for input from the Indigenous community on what to rename the road. "There's a way to do it that would have created a lot of unity and kind of rebuilt some of those bridges, which Fort Worth has never done," she said. The city will begin changing street signs next Tuesday, Oct. 28. The process is expected to take about four weeks.
