At the Smithsonian | January 17, 2025

These 15 Photos Show the People and Places of American Streets Named After Martin Luther King Jr.

On a journey to six cities across the country over the course of seven years, a photographer captured images of the roads that bear the civil rights leader’s name

The upper portion of a statue depicting Martin Luther King Jr. at MacGregor Park in Houston on November 28, 2024

Leah L. Jones

Lead Photographer, National Museum of African American History and Culture

During a cool afternoon last October, on South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, two friends perfect a blend of seasoning for their guacamole.

Khari B., a poet who requested to be referred to by his stage name, and Dhe-Di Willoughby, a makeup artist and D.J., both grew up in the area. Willoughby moved to another part of Chicago in adulthood. Khari B. left Chicago for a while as an adult and then moved back thanks to an opportunity to live in a well-situated coach house surrounded by the grand architecture and history of Bronzeville, which has been known as the Black Belt and the Black Metropolis.

“I’ve always wanted to live over here,” the poet tells me as he chops tomatoes and onions and carves out avocados. The street was the first in the nation to be named after King.

I meet them as I continue a project that I’ve been working on for almost a decade: to present, through photographs, the people and places on streets named after civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. Today, almost 57 years since U.S. cities began naming streets after King following his assassination in 1968, these usually predominantly African American areas are often the focus of research on segregation, marginalization and socioeconomic hardship.

In a 2020 study, researchers Sweta Tiwari and Shrinidhi Ambinakudige examined the realities behind how streets named after King are racialized and negatively stereotyped. They analyzed the socioeconomic health of 22,286 U.S. census blocks with roadways bearing the name and found higher-than-average poverty rates, lower education rates and marginalization. “Though the characteristics of MLK neighborhoods reflect their marginalized status, this status is itself the result of a broader process of racialization,” the researchers write. And that process, they say, has formed and bolstered “negative stereotypes about African Americans while also stigmatizing their living spaces,” which often face policies of property devaluation, neglect and industrial pollution.

Willoughby says the negativity didn’t reach her when she was there as a child. “I just remember it being rich with Black people,” she says, and recalls that the intersection of 35th and King “was booming with stores.”

As a photographer interested in the quiet power held within the lives of everyday people, I wanted to see beyond the studies and statistics of these thoroughfares. I grabbed my camera and snapped pictures on streets named after King, and in their surrounding areas, across the United States over a period of seven years. I traveled to Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Orlando and Washington, D.C.

What I found was life—people worshiping, learning, creating commerce, cultivating culture, preserving history and just being.

As I walked along Washington, D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, camera in hand, I met several people who asked me to take their picture, a few who couldn’t care less if I was there or not, and someone who was upset that people are always around taking photos of “us,” which gave me pause. I immediately thought, “I am us.” But I had to step outside those feelings—I did not live there, nor had I ever. Before that moment, I had not thought about my presence as an interruption. So, afterward, as I continued my photography, I made an effort to let people know who I was and what my intentions were: The names of these streets are a part of King’s legacy, and I aim to document that legacy.

“I love my neighborhood,” says Willoughby. “I can’t speak for the rest of the MLKs around the country, but ours is a rollercoaster. But it’s a rollercoaster of history, and you can get a different response from anybody who experiences what it means to them.”

Ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, here is a selection of images that came from these travels: postcards from six streets named after King.

Chicago

Houston

Kansas City

MLK BLVD KCMO 1 — A mural of Martin Luther King Jr. on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, in November 2019 Leah L. Jones

MLK BLVD KCMO 3 — Martin Luther King Jr. Park, at the intersections of Woodland Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, in November 2019 Leah L. Jones

Milwaukee

MLK BLVD Milwaukee 3 — A bike rider near North Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Milwaukee in December 2017 Leah L. Jones

Orlando

Washington, D.C.

MLK Avenue DC 1 — Thurgood Marshall Academy on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. in July 2018 Leah L. Jones

MLK Avenue DC 3 — A view of the sign for King Gas Station on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. in Washington, D.C. showing the gas price for the day—in front of a mural depicting King—in July 2018 Leah L. Jones

MLK Avenue DC 4 — The headquarters of the Washington Informer, an African American weekly newspaper, on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue S.E. in Washington, D.C. in July 2018 Leah L. Jones