Almost 10 years ago, my spouse, Dave, and I moved from the suburbs of Chicago into the city limits, on the Westside of the city. Not long after we’d moved, Dave was in the front yard chatting with a neighbor. Another person came by, and the neighbor introduced him and Dave to each other. As they shook hands, the new person said, “Underwood! You don’t hear that name too often. I’ve got a cousin by that name. Where do your people come from?”

“If you go way back, from Tennessee,” Dave answered, and the man responded, “Well, that’s where my cousin is from…” and his voice petered out at the end.

And Dave wasn’t sure what to say next.

Because the logical next question would be to wonder if they’re related.

And as Dave is white, and the person to whom he was speaking was African American, that relationship–though it could be a blood relationship–would more likely be that of an enslaved person and a slaveholder, and that is not generally a topic for chitchat.

Along with people and lives, names were stolen. And other names were forced upon.

Not long ago I looked up common Ghanaian and Nigerian names. A short foray into this revealed that the names were connected to tribes and rich cultures and extended families. They were beautiful names, with vowels that roll off the practiced tongue. All of this was ripped away from not only the millions of persons forced across the Atlantic to the Americas but also from all of their descendants–from my neighbors, who bear the names of the white people who believed they “owned” their ancestors.

Strange how you can get used to something so awful, so horrific. Till it becomes commonplace and simply a name that does not include with it a history of wrong.

Not long ago, as I walked our two dogs in our neighborhood, I noticed the street names as if for the first time. My street–Monroe. Walking south, I passed Adams, Quincy, Jackson, Van Buren. Heading north: Madison, Washington. These streets run all the way from the downtown Chicago Loop out to my neighborhood, Austin, and beyond the city limits into the town of Oak Park. Somehow, I’d forgotten they were named after U.S. Presidents. They’d become simply addresses, streets, ways to navigate the city.

And the irony bit me, hard. With the exception of Adams and Quincy (John Quincy Adams), all of these men were slave holders.* (I am purposely not using the language of “ownership” because I simply do not believe that one human can “own” another.)

My neighbors, 95+% of whom are African American, live on streets named after dead white men who believed they owned their ancestors. Who believed that persons with darker skin were not fully human (three-fifths, they determined, but that was purely for reasons of political power). This is not new news, but we have forgotten to speak of this horror. We have forgotten to speak of it AS a horror. We have gotten too used to street names that stand for–nay, that honor–men who did not think of all people as fully human. We have failed to recognize the impact of African Americans having to live on these streets, of having the presence of these dead white, slaveholders in their very neighborhood, on their street corners, on every piece of mail that comes into their homes.

*12 of the 18 presidents who held office between 1789 and 1877 “owned” slaves. Four of the first five presidents were slaveholders. U.S. presidents and slavery | Miller Center