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News and Views: "Nigger Creeks" Are Gone But There's Still a Lot of Leftover Racism on the Maps of the United States
In 1962 the United States Board on Geographic Names, the federal agency to which Congress gave power to issue regulations concerning acceptable language for naming places that appear on maps of this country took action. The agency abolished the use of the words "Nigger" and "Nip" (a derogatory term for Japanese) from official placenames in the United States. At the present time, these are the only two racially insulting words that have been officially banned.
Most, if not all, of the placenames that once contained the word "nigger" prior to the 1962 federal ban were simply replaced by the term "Negro." Nigger Creeks across the nation almost always became known as Negro Creeks.
In some cases, the words "Nigger Creek" were taken off official government maps but a new name was not submitted to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Officially, these places remained nameless. But for many years thereafter local residents continued to refer to these places as they had in the past, using the word "Nigger." Such was the case in Scott County, Arkansas. Finally in 1984, 22 years after the ban...