The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

Chapter 10, “Hollywood, Florida,” is the first chapter of Part 4, “Race.” This chapter examines contemporary and historical American debates about streets named in honor of the Confederacy.

Mask’s guide through this debate is Benjamin Israel, an African American and Orthodox Jew who has been fighting to change street names in his hometown of Hollywood, Florida, honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and John Bell Hood. For Israel and other activists, these streets—which run directly through Hollywood’s prominently Black neighborhood—are an offensive remnant of a shameful period in American history. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the namesake of the street that bothers Israel the most, was a slave trader whose massacre of African American Union soldiers won him the rank of general. In addition to the street in Hollywood, memorials to Forrest exist across the country: In Tennessee, there are more memorials for Forrest than of Tennessean and President Andrew Jackson. Forrest Gump, the eponymous protagonist of the 1994 Best Picture winner, is also named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Mask’s exploration of the history of Hollywood, Florida, suggests that racist ideologies are essential to the city’s identity. The city was founded by developer Joseph Young in 1920, a period of intense growth in the United States.