WMAL News reports that the Maryland state senate is considering a bill to rename a historic landmark in the western part of the state. For centuries, the highest point on the National Road has been known as “Negro Mountain.” According to WMAL, Maryland state senator Lisa Gladden of Baltimore stated that the name “has bothered her for years,” but how far will we go to purge our language of anything which could possibly offend anyone?
The Historic Marker Database recounts the story behind what we might now consider a rather peculiar place name. “Nemesis, a black frontiersman, was killed here while fighting Indians with Maryland frontiersman Thomas Cresap in the 1750s. Legend tells us that he had a premonition of his death. In his honor, they named this mountain after him.” Indeed, in the past, the U.S. Geological Survey considered renaming the peak to “Black Hero Mountain,” but the measure was never adopted.
Which would be a darn fine name for this mountain and its history as well.
If the proposed legislation is adopted, it probably won’t do much harm by itself, but many other place names are full of potential hazards for the supporters of political correctness. Without some limit on how far political correctness can go, it won’t be long before the Maryland legislature or a some similar body will someday attempt to outlaw Webster’s dictionary and the Rand McNally atlas.
There is of course the Niger River in Africa and the proud nations of Niger and Nigeria which were named after it. Wikipedia credits the name of the river to a confusion of the local Tuareg name Egerew n-Igerewen with the Latin word… (yes the N-word), which at that early time meant black (and not yet racially loaded by painful human history). Similarly, in the Amazon region of Brazil, there is a Rio Negro which is named after the dark color of the waters there.
Moving from famous rivers to the world of food and drink, we must be wary of any offense which might be caused by the fruit of the Piper nigrum, a substance which is found on dinner tables and in restaurants around the globe. Or heaven forbid that anybody should order a Negra Modelo or a Negroni cocktail at the neighborhood bar without fear of an unintended insult.
Then of course, there is the irony that many other events in history use the term “Negro” proudly without any derogatory intent. There were the Negro Leagues of professional baseball which had a rich history full of heroic players who have been subsequently honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame. In the fight for equal rights, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself used the word in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Indeed, the famous and rousing final line of the speech refers to the words of an “old Negro spiritual.”
