When the New Orleans Street Renaming Commission recommended that Gen. Meyer Avenue be renamed Rudy Lombard Avenue in honor of my late brother, our family rejoiced.
My brother dedicated his life to public service. His role as a lunch counter sit-in demonstrator on Canal Street in the early 1960s, while a student at Xavier University, led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Lombard v. Louisiana, which struck down legalized segregation in our state and across our nation.
Years later, the 1976 Claiborne Avenue Design Team study, which Rudy helmed, was the first exhaustive analysis aimed at mitigating the damage done to North Claiborne Avenue by the Interstate 10 expressway. Among the study’s recommendations — one that Rudy himself championed — was a proposal to create a greenway along Lafitte Avenue stretching from North Claiborne Avenue to City Park.
It took more than four decades for his vision to materialize, but today the Lafitte Greenway is a testament to his foresight. If it were up to me, the Greenway — not Gen. Meyer Avenue — would be renamed “The Rudy Lombard Greenway.”
Among his other accomplishments was his 1978 book, "Creole Feast: 15 Master Chefs of New Orleans Reveal Their Secrets.” It was one of the first cookbooks by American chefs, as opposed to food writers. The Creole Feast food festival it spawned was decades ahead of the current crop of food and wine events around the country.
Rudy's mayoral run in 1986 sought to re-establish the principle of a two-term limit for New Orleans mayors. It had the added benefit of inspiring the creation of the Neighborhood Development Foundation, which has helped hundreds of New Orleans renters become homeowners.
He dedicated the last two decades of his life to increasing financial literacy among professional athletes, supporting the Algebra Project's work teaching math in underserved communities and increasing cancer awareness among African American men.
For these and other public-spirited efforts too numerous to mention, he richly deserves the honor of having the Lafitte Greenway named after him.
Unfortunately, all street renaming efforts have stalled.
I spent nearly five decades in public service. I've seen how public officials sometimes let an appointed commission become an end in itself rather than a first step toward solving a pressing problem. I worry that the City Council takes this view of the renaming commission, which it appointed in June 2020.
The commission recommended stripping 37 streets of names tied to the Confederacy and White supremacy and replacing them with the names of women and men whose lives epitomize our highest ideals.
Since then, only a half-dozen streets have been renamed. The commission's report languishes, largely not acted upon and, for all I know, largely unread by council members.
More than worried, I am fearful. Fearful that our city leaders fail to recognize what Martin Luther King Jr. once termed "the fierce urgency of now."
We live in an era when the tremendous strides toward democracy made possible by the civil rights movement are not just being forgotten, they are being questioned.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of that state, said in a 2018 podcast, "So many things were lost during the civil rights movement. So many freedoms were lost that shouldn't have been lost."
Robinson, who is Black, went on to question the wisdom of sit-in demonstrators like Rudy, who risked their lives to force American businesses to abide by the laws guaranteeing equality in the United States.
Such comments underscore why it’s particularly crucial right now to commemorate the work of my brother and others who struggled so mightily to extend the benefits of American freedom to all Americans.
As authoritarianism rears its ugly head in Europe and even on American soil, we need visible, tangible, undeniable reminders that civil rights are not, were not and never will be automatically guaranteed to all Americans.
I urge our council members to finish the urgent work they started. Affirm our city's values by honoring citizens who have exemplified our highest ideals.
Failing to do so is nothing less than a vote to extend the Confederacy’s traitorous legacy into a future few of us would want for ourselves and our descendants.