Next time you’re about, consider what that sign on the corner means and what it says about Seattle’s history. Many glorify presidents, early political figures or historic developers - in other words, those who initially took the land away from Native Americans. Almost every street in Seattle named for an individual is named after a white man. Which is true.īut some kind of substantive gesture is long overdue. I was told this would be politically impossible, in part because so few things in Seattle are named for women. I have never heard anyone call the West Seattle Bridge the “Jeanette Williams Bridge,” but that might be my ignorance. I suggested to some politician friends that if Williams were alive today (she died in 2008), she might see this idea as the right one for these times. Williams was a progressive Democrat, and a musician, who I knew a little. In fact, I recently learned the West Seattle Bridge already has an honorific: the “Jeanette Williams Memorial Bridge,” so named in 2009 after a Seattle City Council member.

On KIRO-TV, a commentator aired a rant saying it glorified a “drug addict.” It wasn’t even the city of Seattle that paid for the rock (radio station KZOK raised the funds), but it was approved by the Parks Department. Even this small gesture created controversy. Other than the Hendrix park, there has been only one other official Seattle memorial: a heated rock that in the 1980s was installed in Woodland Park Zoo - in the African savannah exhibit - with Jimi’s name on it. Efforts to get the city to save that house fell through, and reached a sad nadir in 2009 when it was taken down.

While the city was working on the park’s design, the nearby lot on which Jimi’s childhood home sat came up for redevelopment. The “Shadow Wave Wall” in Jimi Hendrix Park, located adjacent to the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle's Central District.

Hendrix name means