With many others, I watched on television the March 8 Greenville City Council meeting during which tempers again flared between members over the Martin Luther King street renaming issue. Growth can be a pretty painful thing to watch.
Some might choose words other than growth to describe the voice-trembling anger and fiery exchanges that punctuated much of the meeting that night. The fireworks prompted some derision in the community, some anger. But the longer and more optimistic view suggests that such is the path government sometimes must travel to achieve appropriate or at least acceptable ends for its more difficult dilemmas.
This fight, of course, continues to be over how to deal with a mistake made years ago by another council when it decided to rename West Fifth Street for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. but leave East Fifth Street as it was.
This decision did as much to split Greenville's black and white communities as the name change split the street itself. The council's most recent rhubarb over this was among its most turbulent.
The council ultimately voted 4-2 that night along racial lines to reaffirm a previous resolution to return the name of West Fifth Street to Martin Luther King Drive. This came up after the state Department of Transportation apparently reversed itself on whether the city could have more than one street named for King. The board first voted in December to name the U.S. 264 Bypass after King and change MLK Drive back to West Fifth.
The March 8 vote followed about two hours of often racially charged and angry discussion among council and public speakers. It truly was reality television, excruciating and eye-opening.
As the often raw debate unfolded, the tense moments provided a window through which a community could watch itself — not its most attractive side, surely. But it was a place all of us have known in our own lives, a place where reason and moderation sometimes are clouded by the moment and balance is lost to one side or to the other.
As an observer, I could feel viscerally the frustration everyone involved was having with the intractable situation. The exasperation at times overwhelmed voices on both sides to the point that the threads of argument were frayed or lost.
The conversation on this issue had reached a near extreme limit.
I'm not exactly sure where this panel of volunteer leaders will go from here. Through the years I have come to know them all through personal or professional association, and I am confident that despite where their words might have thrown them during this meeting, their hearts and minds remain focused on how their public service can best serve their individual communities and the city at large.
Sometimes it takes an extreme heat to forge a strong consensus, a melting-down before a building-up. I hope that's the case with this council.
Struggle, doubt, frustration and anger — some or all are prerequisites for true growth — something that can be awkward, cantankerous, spiteful, petty, overbearing — but that's what must be overcome for any community to come together and prosper — that's reality.
Al Clark is executive editor of The Daily Reflector. Tell him what you think at 252-329-9560 or at aclark@coxnc.com.
