Street renamed for first Black female attorney in Minn.

A Minneapolis street once named after segregationist Edmund Walton has been renamed to honor Lena Olive Smith, Minnesota’s first Black female attorney.

Smith’s legacy of fighting housing discrimination since her licensure in 1921 replaces Walton’s history of racial covenants in Minneapolis. 

Walton, a real estate developer, authored the first racial covenant in Minneapolis in 1910.

Longfellow residents gathered to celebrate the unveiling of the new street sign at the intersection of West River Parkway and 36th Street on Saturday.

Former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, a resident on Lena Smith Boulevard since 1995, said this has been a neighborhood effort. 

“We no longer want to honor a man who did so much harm in our community,” Sayles Belton said. “We want to elevate the memory of someone who made such a positive contribution to our community, and that’s Lena Smith.”

Lisa Boyd, a Longfellow resident for 21 years, said the project has been a success story.

“One of the things I love about living in Minneapolis is there really is a sense of these shared values,” Boyd said. “The value of uplifting someone like Lena Smith, who’s been ignored by history for so long, and being able to educate people about her work and honor her legacy. And just looking at all of the speakers that we had today, it’s kind of like that’s Minneapolis leadership in a nutshell.”

Bobbi Erichsen lives two blocks from Lena Smith Boulevard. She said the grassroots fight for the name change is inspiring. 

“I’ve just never seen this much care from people in a community, and it’s really inspired me to also come and get organized,” Erichsen said.

The neighborhood coalition Reclaiming Edmund has been advocating for the change since 2020. 

Joseph Larsen, one of the founding members of the coalition, said Edmund doesn’t reflect Longfellow values. 

“Edmund was never a street that was chosen by anyone that lived here,” Larsen said. “He was a real estate developer who put his own name on the street, and we thought that it’s time to see a change that reflects the values of this community.”

According to MNopedia, Lena Olive Smith helped found the Urban League in 1925 and was the first woman elected to lead the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Minneapolis home she lived in for most of her adult life — 3905 Fifth Avenue South — is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.