Thread by @nsvarner

Andrew Jackson was a wealthy slave-owning mastermind of Indigenous genocide. An undeniably terrible person. Yet Seattle still has a major thoroughfare named after him and it’s time for that to change. A #PresidentsDay thread and call to action.

In case there’s any doubt in your minds, here’s a quick (and not at all comprehensive) lesson on Why Andrew Jackson was Bad.

As a seasoned general he invaded Spanish Florida to chase down fugitive slaves and terrorize Indigenous peoples, sparking the first Seminole war. “His actions were a study in flagrant disobedience, gross inequality and premeditated ruthlessness,” writes Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

A year into his presidency, Jackson introduced the Indian Removal Act aka government sanctioned ethnic cleansing.

The Act forcibly relocated some 70,000 Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole from their homelands to “Indian Territory” in what is currently Oklahoma. Tens of thousands died along the way.

In the case of the Cherokee, 7,000 US troops removed them “from their homes, not allowing them to gather belongings, and placing them in stockades, like cattle. They then endured freezing months of marching without enough wagons, clothing, or food.” teenvogue.com/story/andrew-j…

Jackson also owned hundreds of enslaved peoples. An ad he published to try to reclaim one man illustrates his cruelty: he offered “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”
washingtonpost.com/news/retropoli…

Jackson used his presidency to stem the abolitionist movement by making his postmaster general censor all anti-slavery mailings from northern abolitionists. He made a career and a fortune by systematically devaluing human lives.

Jackson Street traverses Seattle’s own history of white settlement and violent displacement. It starts in the heart of “Little Crossing Over Place” now known as Pioneer Square, Seattle’s epicenter of white settlement & displacement of Duwamish and other Coast Salish peoples.

Seattle’s most famous inebriate and founding settler, Doc Maynard, christened the street “Jackson” in his 1853 Plat of the Town of Seattle. Twelve years later Seattle’s first city council banned Native Americans from entering the city.

Jackson Street passes through what was once Nihonmachi and is now the Chinatown-International District. Before WWII Japanese American life thrived in the area.

After the signing of EO 9066 on February 19, 1942, seven thousand Japanese Americans living in Seattle were forced into concentration camps in Idaho and elsewhere. Here’s Jackson Street, before and after #EO9066:
ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-36-…
ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-36-…

Beginning in the 1950s, the construction of I-5 and later the Kingdome further displaced the mostly Asian immigrants who built homes, communities, and livelihoods along Jackson Street.

None of this was taken lying down. Groups like the “Gang of Four” serve as reminders that acts of resistance, both big and small, have been a constant in Seattle history. As “Uncle Bob” Santos liked to joke, they “were really good at occupying buildings.”
crosscut.com/2017/09/seattl…

Today Jackson Street courses up through Little Saigon and into the historically Black Central District, both neighborhoods that were originally defined by redlining and are now being devastated by gentrification.

The intersection of 23rd and Jackson, a storied place in Seattle Black history, is now marred by development; its four corners currently occupied by a Starbucks, luxury housing, and a large construction site that will soon be a Whole Foods/apartment complex.

So Jackson is in some ways a fitting namesake for this path of destruction. But at a moment when the Trail of Tears and Andrew Jackson are casually invoked by Trump, we need to take action to disentangle ourselves from this history. We can start by renaming Jackson Street.

And we can do so without the costly and complicated process of changing the street name -- as @jseattle notes, we could simply rededicate the street to honor Joe Jackson, the first president of the Seattle Urban League and a major player in the city’s civil rights history.

.@MayorJenny and the Seattle City Council could easily initiate this change. I’m calling on them to rededicate Jackson Street so that we distance ourselves from Jackson's tyrannical white supremacy. Contact your City Council rep & ask them to take action: seattle.gov/council/meet-t…

This change would be symbolic and there’s a lot more the city needs to do to support the Duwamish, urban Indigenous residents, immigrants, and Black communities along Jackson street. But symbolic acts matter. Exorcising the ghost of Andrew Jackson is a place to start.