Uncle Luke: Liberty City Street Renamings Are a Message to Future Generations

Soon, a stretch of NW 70th Street in Liberty City will also be known as "It's Your Birthday Street," after one of my booty-shaking songs that still hypes up party crowds across America after [checks watch] 30 years.

Other nearby streets across a nearly ten-block stretch in Liberty City will bear the titles of songs by other famous Black Miami artists, including the late R&B singer Betty Wright's classic, "No Pain, No Gain," and rapper Trick Daddy's "Trick Love the Kids ("In Da Wind").

In March, after failing on his first attempt, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Keon Hardemon persuaded a majority of his colleagues to approve a resolution adding the song titles to street signs between NW 63rd Street and NW 71st Street from NW 18th Avenue to NW 19th Avenue. The legislative measure drew national media attention and some controversy in the local Black community as some neighborhood activists opposed it.

I don't see a problem with naming streets after the songs. After all, Hialeah's elected officials recently rechristened their city's Palm Avenue as President Donald J. Trump Avenue. Certainly, Wright, Trick Daddy, Flo Rida, Pitbull, and the other talented musicians represented in the song's title street names have earned their recognition.

But the debate over the song-title street names overshadowed a separate Hardemon resolution to rename NW 58th Street at NW 11th Avenue "Luther Campbell Way," a move the commission unanimously approved. The official unveiling will take place on Saturday, May 3.

It's not an honor I asked for, but I'm humbled to receive it. The effort began last year when City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and his staff approached me about naming a street after me. Suarez got Miami City Commission Chairwoman Christine King to sponsor a city resolution for "Luther Campbell Way" that was also unanimously approved.
King's district includes NW 58th Street and NW 11th Avenue, where my parents bought their first home more than 60 years ago. We were the only Black people on the block, and shortly after we moved in, a white man told my dad, "You're supposed to be in the Pork 'n Beans" — a reference to the Liberty Square public housing projects.

My parents raised five sons, including me, in that two-bedroom house. My brothers and I took a bus to Miami Beach to attend desegregated public schools. But the city was still a sundown town — meaning we'd go to jail if we were still in Miami Beach after dusk. Four of us became millionaires. I founded Southern hip-hop in that house, which served as my distribution warehouse when I started my record company.

When I'm dead and gone, new Liberty City residents who don't know about me may wonder: Who the hell is Luther Campbell? They'll Google me and find out I'm a free-speech icon who won rulings all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Those decisions from the nation's highest court essentially gave every artist who came after me the liberty to parody and sample hit songs, and to perform explicit lyrics without fear of arrest. And they reached the Supreme Court because I went to jail and spent my own money defending everybody's right to express themselves.

I also hope "Luther Campbell Way" fuels conversations between my supporters, who see me as a First Amendment champ, and my haters, who view my music as misogynistic and degrading to women.

But most of all, I want "Luther Campbell Way" to inspire young Black people to realize that they, too, can achieve their dreams.