"Magnolia" Not Appropriate For "Gateway Monument"

Despite increasing pressure from residents, media attention, and over 200 petitioners requesting the "Magnolia Gateway Monument" recognize "Park City" rather than "Magnolia," the City of Knoxville has dug in its heels: "lettering has already been ordered and is ready to go up soon," a city spokesperson relayed.

Today, many in East Knoxville prefer the name "Magnolia" not be elevated to a place of prominence on the area's main thoroughfare. While the street itself was historically lined with Magnolia trees, the name "Magnolia" actually references "Magnolia Branner," matriarch of a Confederate elite slaveholding family from southern Georgia who moved to Knoxville with her husband George M. Branner and son Hardy Bryan Branner in 1859. Her son became Mayor of Knoxville in 1880 and re-named Craig and Park Streets to honor his mother, with whom the younger Branner spent his childhood overseeing slave labor on the family's cotton farm in Western Louisiana.

History records Magnolia Avenue is not the only thing named for Magnolia Branner: the steamboat "Magnolia Branner" sank with 1076 bales of slave-picked cotton in 1855.  The Branner family built its fortune on slave labor before getting into the banking business in Knoxville and deeding land for Magnolia Avenue to the State of Tennessee to build State Route 1, the Memphis to Bristol Highway.

The Park City Preservation Alliance board of directors holds the view a sign elevating the name "Magnolia" to a place of prominence is wholly inappropriate, especially given the name honors the matriarch of a Confederate slaveholding family in a community that is now a largely African American community.

The newly proposed sign, which was never introduced for comment in any public meetings, effectively "re-brands" the historic name of the community of over 100 years that has been recorded on every large scale U.S. Geological Survey Map of the area since the maps were first produced in the 1930s.

The solution is simple: swap 6 letters, produced at a cost of less than $4,000, with six new letters: 

The "Magnolia Gateway Monument" should read "Park City," for the community not "Magnolia," the street.

M-A-G-N-O-L-I-A for P-A-R-K-C-I-T-Y.

Two letters, "A" and "I" can in fact be re-purposed.

A City spokesperson stated "[t]he city has been engaged with residents and business owners in developing a collaborative vision for this corridor project for about 10 years."

The detailed timeline below reveals the truth: while true the Magnolia Corridor project has been in development for about 10 years, the "Magnolia Gateway Monument" was a last-minute addition with no public meetings to discuss the design. 

The final "open house" in fact was so rushed that handouts did not accurately reflect the ultimate design.

Sixty-eight thousand dollars later, the monument is rapidly nearing completion, despite concerns voiced by area residents and over 200 petitioners supporting a change.org petition stating the sign should read "Park City" instead of "Magnolia: (https://www.change.org/p/dmfoster-knoxvilletn-gov-monument-sign-should-welcome-you-to-historic-park-city-instead-of-magnolia).

For more, see: https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/east-knoxville-residents-concerned-about-magnolia-avenue-monument/51-68982d10-0925-4916-942b-b70895185c86

Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist once said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

The retort to 200+ petitioners from the City of Knoxville is "[t]he suggestion to use the name Park City rather than Magnolia only came up in recent months from a small number of residents."

If over 200 petitioners asking the City of Knoxville to change course isn't enough to change the City's mind, what is?